HomeMy WebLinkAboutPLANNING MINUTES 2019-05-28MINUTES OF THE 1,143rd PUBLIC HEARINGS AND REGULAR MEETING
HELD BY THE CITY PLANNING COMMISSION
OF THE CITY OF LIVONIA
On Tuesday, May 28, 2019, the City Planning Commission of the City of Livonia
held its 1,1431d Public Hearings and Regular Meeting in the Livonia City Hall, 33000
Civic Center Drive, Livonia, Michigan.
Mr. Ian Wilshaw, Chairman, called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m.
Members present: David Bongero Sam Caramagno Glen Long
Betsy McCue Carol Smiley Peter Ventura
Ian Wilshaw
Members absent: None
Mr. Mark Taormina, Planning Director, and Stephanie Reece, Program Supervisor,
were also present.
Chairman Wilshaw informed the audience that if a petition on tonight's agenda
involves a rezoning request, this Commission makes a recommendation to the City
Council who, in turn, will hold its own public hearing and make the final
determination as to whether a petition is approved or denied. The Planning
Commission holds the only public hearing on a request for preliminary plat and/or
vacating petition. The Commission's recommendation is forwarded to the City
Council for the final determination as to whether a plat is accepted or rejected. If a
petition requesting a waiver of use or site plan approval is denied tonight, the
petitioner has ten days in which to appeal the decision, in writing, to the City
Council. Resolutions adopted by the City Planning Commission become effective
seven (7) days after the date of adoption. The Planning Commission and the
professional staff have reviewed each of these petitions upon their filing. The staff
has furnished the Commission with both approving and denying resolutions, which
the Commission may, or may not, use depending on the outcome of the
proceedings tonight.
ITEM #1 PETITION 2019-02-01-02 Etkin Management, L.L.C.
Mr. Caramagno, Secretary, announced the first item on the agenda, Petition 2019-
02-01-02 submitted by Etkin Management, L.L.C. pursuant to
Section 23.01 of the City of Livonia Zoning Ordinance #543, as
amended, requesting to rezone the property at 37640 Seven Mile
Road and part of the property at 19290 Victor Parkway, located
on the north side of Seven Mile Road between Newburgh Road
and the 1-275/96 Expressway in the Southeast '/A of Section 6,
from R-U-F (Rural Urban Farm) to R-8 (High Rise Multiple Family
Residential District — Maximum 4 Stories).
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Mr. Taormina: This is a rehearing involving the rezoning of two parcels that are
located at the northeast corner of Seven Mile and Victor Parkway.
These two parcels are separated by a drainage channel. The
addresses are 37640 Seven Mile Road and 19290 Victor
Parkway. The Seven Mile Road parcel is the larger of the two, at
6.38 acres. The Victor Parkway parcel is 3.79 acres, so
altogether the land area involved in this request is 10.17 acres.
The north 100 feet of 19290 Victor Parkway is excluded from the
rezoning request. The reason for the rezoning is to allow for the
development of a multi -family residential apartment complex.
Apartment complexes or apartments are treated as a permitted
use in the R-8 zoning. Buildings are required to be over 2 stories
with a maximum height of 4 stories. Directly to the north of the
properties are residential homes that are along Northland Street.
To the east is a childcare center, which is zoned R-C
(Condominium Residential). South, across Seven Mile Road is a
small office building, as well as Mission Health Medical Center
zoned PO (Professional High Rise Office) and residential homes
that are a part of the Caliburn Manor and Melody Manor
subdivisions, zoned R-3 (One family residential). To the west,
across Victor Parkway, are office buildings zoned OS, as well as
a pond that is used for storm water management. In 1997 a
consent judgement was entered into between the city and
Oakwood Health system. The consent judgement divided the site
into three distinct parts and addressed the future development of
each part separately. Parcel "A", which includes most of what is
37640 Seven Mile Road, is located south of the drain. Despite
the current RUF zoning, the consent judgement treats this parcel
as if it is zoned Office. There was a three-story medical office
and ambulatory care facility that was approved for this site, but it
was never developed. Parcel "B" encompasses a portion of what
is now 19290 Victor Parkway and contains about 2 acres north of
the drain at the west end of the property. Parcel "B" is also zoned
RUF and is required under the consent judgement to remain as
open space and is subject to an open space preservation
agreement. Parcel "C" which is mostly on the north side of the
creek at the east end of the property, includes a portion of 19290
Victor Parkway. Originally parcel "C" was intended to be
developed consistent with multi -family housing under the RC
(Condominium Residential) zoning classification. In 2006, Talon
Development Group sought and obtained approval to amend the
consent judgement in order to develop the easterly part of this
site as a childcare center. The consent judgement also requires
a 100 foot wide landscape buffer along the north end of parcel
"B" and a portion of parcel "C", all of which is included in the legal
description of the petitioners property, but it is excluded from the
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area proposed to be rezoned. Over time there have been three
amendments to the consent judgement. The latest version allows
the current owner, Etkin Equities, to construct a one-story, 54,000
square foot office research building. The current request seeks
the rezoning of parcel "A" and °B" and a portion of parcel "C" for
the development of a multi -family housing under the R-8
classification. The R-8 district treats multi -family housing as
permitted use. The maximum ground coverage by principal
structure is limited to 20%. Density, which is the minimum lot
area per dwelling unit, is determined according to the height of
the building, which is expressed in stories and the corresponding
number of bedrooms per dwelling unit. The yard setbacks are
also determined by building height. There is a preliminary plan
that was submitted with the application that shows two apartment
buildings. The main apartment building would be on the south
side of the drain, whereas the second and smaller apartment
building would be located on the north side. Parking is shown
both in the form of surface lots as well as a multi -level garage, or
deck that would be incorporated within the footprint of the
apartment building. The master plan shows the address at 37640
Seven Mile as a corridor for commercial and then 19290 Victor
Parkway as parks and community. Mr. Chairman, we received
18 letters of opposition to this rezoning petition, as well as a
protest petition that contains nine signatures. We have provided
each of the commissioners with all of the correspondence
received in connection with this item. l will answer any questions
you may have at this time. Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Is there any new addition correspondence that is beyond the
letters?
Mr. Taormina: There is not.
Mr. Wlshaw: Do we have any questions for our Planning staff? I don't see
any, so we will start with our petitioner. Is the petitioner here
this evening? We will need your name and address for the
record please.
Josh Suardini, Etkin Management, 150 West 2nd St., Royal Oak, MI.
Mr. Wilshaw: We have heard this item previously at a meeting, but due to the
sign not being posted properly you needed to start the process
over. Is there anything you would like to speak to in regard to
that?
Mr. Suardini: No. Nothing has changed with the plan since the last time we
met. Mark's summary is exactly what it is.
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Mr. Wilshaw: So, there is no additional overview or information you want to
provide right now? Ok. Thank you. is there any questions for
the petitioner?
Ms. Smiley: I wanted to talk to you about .... this is going to be four stories but
with the land itself .... like it goes up hill on Victory Parkway. Is
that right?
Mr. Suardini: No. Actually, it goes .... it kind of drops from west to east.
Ms. Smiley: That is what I was thinking about.
Mr. Suardini: On the east is where the detention for this site actually is.
Ms. Smiley: Would you be across the street? Actually, this is probably for
Mark. Are they across the street from where the new hotels,
Marriott, is going? The Aloft and Element? Would they be across
the street or north or south of that?
Mr. Taormina: That site is a little further to the north. It is not directly west of this
site. It is northwest of this site.
Ms. Smiley: So, it is north and west.
Mr. Taormina: Not by much, but yes.
Ms. Smiley: Those are four story, aren't they? The Marriott's?
Mr. Taormina: Six stories.
Ms. Smiley: Oh, six stories.
Mr. Suardini: There is elevation change from north to south.
Ms. Smiley: That was my question.
Mr. Suardini: It kind of slopes to the southeast. The north property line would
be higher than it is in the south.
John Woods, DTN Management, Lansing, MI, If I could just clarify.
Ms. Smiley: Sure.
Mr. Woods: From kind of the middle of our parcel, parcel "A" and "B" to the
north, to put a first -floor elevations of the homes to the north on
Northland. The lowest first floor elevations, which is where the
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first floor that people will be seeing from their homes, the
difference is about 12 feet. The biggest difference is closer to 19
feet. Parcel "A" and "B" will sit about 12 to 19 feet lower than the
first floors of the homes on Northland. Just to clarify.
Ms. Smiley: Thank you. That was my question. I didn't put it out there very
good, but that was my question.
Mr. Wilshaw: Any other questions for our Petitioner?
Mr. Caramagno: Can you explain the parking again? For the benefit of most of
these people here that weren't here last go around, how that
parking works. Your parking garage, people may be frightened
by that or people can be. Can you tell us a little bit about how
that works?
Mr. Suardini: So, this design is classified as a wrapped type system. Basically,
the parking structure, if you look at this drawing is in the pinker
color. The yellow is the residential. You have a three-story deck
but you have a four story residential that wraps around the north,
west, south, and east. You enter the deck through that
roundabout that is just south of the creek. For the lack of better
terms, that portion of parking cars are hidden by the residential,
so you don't see that from any street view. You don't see that
from the north either.
Mr. Caramagno: Will you see cars driving up and down from the ramp to get there,
or will you not see that either?
Mr. Suardini: No. The ramp is actually on the south side of the deck. You can
see cars pulling in, they drive over to the south side, and use the
ramp so you would not see that because the residential is higher
in stories than the structure.
Mr. Caramagno: Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Any other questions for our Petitioner?
Mr. Ventura: Mr. Suardini, can you address the traffic pattern that this
development will result in on a daily basis with that, say an office
building, which I know you have a great deal of experience with
and it was initially an office building that was approved on this
site. So, can you talk about the difference in patterns on a daily
basis?
Mr. Suardini: Yes. John will jump in too, but the way we looked at this is that
we believe that most people that would enter or exit the site are
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going to use Victory Parkway. We believe that people are going
to head to Victor Parkway, south to Seven Mile, get to the
intersection, and a vast majority of the population of the building
would be heading towards 275 or westerly to Haggerty. We do
have a curb cut that is shown here on the south part of the
property on Seven Mile. We recognize that most people are
going to be using Victor Parkway, and we would entertain signing
that intersection, however it may be so that it is right turn only to
go towards 275 to alleviate any stresses and pressures that there
would be with turns along Seven Mile to the east We believe that
Victor Parkway and heading to the west is primarily the going to
be the traffic pattern for exiting and on the inbound side, we
believe that people will stop at the intersection of Victor and
Seven Mile and turn left at the signalized turn at Seven and Victor.
Mr. Woods: Just to add to that, traffic patterns, traffic counts, and
ingress/egress of these buildings are very different that office
buildings. Josh has some empirical data that he has polled.
From our experience in owning these, number one in the
buildings where these are renters by choice that we have
described on a luxury property. The people that stay home and
work from home is a greater percentage. You don't get the
normal commuter time traffic from those folks. Also, there is
typically a broader distribution of the times that they leave and
come back, because we believe given healthcare and some of
the other businesses and jobs that are available in the area, are
going to probably be non-traditional hours. There will be people
working morning shift, afternoons, evenings, so that again is
different than office. I will let Josh talk to the numbers. Those are
a couple of big differences that we would like to point out because
that is a concern with the traffic. The other thing that we have
talked about in this project is its accessibility. The location is one
of the reasons we like it. Because of its accessibility to 275, we
feel, we certainly don't' know for a fact, that a majority of this traffic
is going to 275 in the morning. People aren't coming out and
probably turning left and going to Seven Mile, nor are they
probably going up Victor Parkway up to Eight Mile and turning
right to go east. It is hard to say, but we really feel that the 1-275
corridor along with everything else that around it is really the
draw. That is where people are going to move up and down is
those corridors, these main arterial corridors in Metro Detroit.
Mr. Suardini: As far as the peak demands for traffic, to just kind of talk about
that ...on an office building which we have studied this a lot in our
portfolio, but an office building your peak demand generation is
usually in the AM between 7:45 and 9:00am for example. In the
PM, it is between 4:15 and 5:30 to 6:00pm, although 4;15 is
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starting to slowly peel back a little bit as people work under flex
time, so on and so forth. Usually 92% of your total peak parking
are trips to the site in the morning. So for instance, the office
building that was designed and approved previously for this site,
had around 220 parking spaces. You could expect a peak
demand of around 150 — 180 trips in the morning inbound to the
site. At night, because people tend to peel off from an office
building staggered throughout the afternoon, at night you would
have around 90 -- 120 trips leaving the site. The residential
building for example, we believe, will have around the same
number of trips but the difference is, or potential trips, because of
the one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom scenario and you
take the industry standards.... John has a lot of data on there
portfolio. The number of cars that would be entering and leaving
max would be around the same 220 vehicles per day. The
scattered diagram, if you will, are times when people will leave
because you are opposite flow at a residential than you are office
in the morning. Your leaving versus coming to is not at a peak
over an hour. It is scattered over several hours, because as .John
talked about, people are leaving to go to different types of jobs,
and they leave at different types of the day. The same thing holds
true at night. So, you have a little bit of a different scenario so
you are not leaving and entering at the same time, but the total
amount of cars and the total amount potential peak number of
trips to that site would be relevantly the same.
Mr. Ventura: So, if I net those comments out, you have the same number of
trips for both residential and office development, but not the
density in a shorter period of time, so you don't get the density
out of the residential development that you would get out of the
office development.
Mr. Suardini: Yes. At those peak one hours. 7:45 to 8:15 to 8:30. That is what
we believe. We primarily develop office, John and his group
primarily develop residential, and looking at the data between our
portfolios, that is what we have empirically seen. That is what we
believe for this site to be true as well.
Mr. Ventura: Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Any other questions for our Petitioner?
Mr. Caramagno: You said something a few minutes ago that caught my attention,
that I think you need to tell this crowd. You said luxury apartment
living. What does that mean?
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Mr. Woods: Well, you really have two classes of apartments, or three. You
have affordability, affordable projects that are typically subsidized
based on the areas median income. Then, you have what we call
renter by necessity. That is somebody that doesn't have a choice
from a housing standpoint. Apartment living is the only option.
Then you have renter by choice. We typically qualify that as a
market rate luxury community. That is what this community is.
The average rents are in the $1,800 to $1,900 range. People are
here by choice. They are here because they like the location and
flexibility. There is a myriad of reasons but based on the average
median incomes of the people that we have in other like buildings
and that area is supported also by other studies and data shops,
the median income in this community will probably be about
$90,000 per year. So clearly someone that makes $100,000 per
year can afford to live in a condo, they can afford a single-family
place, but they will choose to live here for whatever reason. That
is what I mean by luxury. It is by choice.
Mr. Caramagno: You find in your other properties that this is sustainable, it holds
up? People continue to want this type of living?
Mr. Woods: We do. We have a project, a community that is very similar to
this. As a matter of fact, it is on 1-127 just north of 1-96. We
actually have three projects like this. Two of them are on 1-96.
One is in DeWitt Township, and one is in Grand Rapids. This one
in Lansing is a five -story with retail underneath it. It is behind the
Eastwood Heights mall. That project was stabilized, which
means it was substantially full in 2016, and it has been full ever
since. Rents are actually probably higher than our financial pro -
forma for this project, but we are being conservative. We think
this project, this location, is going to be more successful quite
frankly.
Mr. Caramagno: Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Any other questions for our Petitioner?
Mr. Bongero: I think that a lot of people are concerned that the rents are pretty
high, and the economy is doing really well right now, and that is
great. People can afford it. Most of these renters would probably
be a little bit younger I would guess. They are probably maxed
out, a lot of them, on what they can afford. They don't have a lot
of experience on borrowing and renting and whatever else. A
downturn comes and they can't afford the rent, so you start
getting people leaving. What is the business plan to offset these
vacancies to stop you from dropping the rent drastically and
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bringing in people just to fill units? Do you know what I am
saying?
Mr. Woods: I do. Respectfully, I don't agree with that entire scenario because
I don't think a large majority will be maxed out, so to speak, from
an income standpoint. In Lansing we have median incomes on
$96,000. 1 know we have a couple people that are in the mid six -
figure range. Barring mass lay offs and job losses, those are
things that I really can't talk to.as far as a recession or the state
of the economy, but I think what is important for you to understand
is how we operate as a company and why it is important to
understand about DTN. We own roughly 9,000 apartment units.
All in Michigan. We have been in business for 45 years. We have
never lost a property to foreclosure or a distressed sale. Not one.
Part of the reason is because we run our business relatively
conservatively. It is one of the reasons we feel fortunate to be a
partner with Etkin. We don't put ourselves in a position as an
owner/operator to have to necessarily deal with that. Have we
had properties that have had vacancy or occupancy issues?
Sure, we have, but we have been able to manage through it. We
have been able to capitalize our projects accordingly. No
differently than anyone else runs their business in the face of
adversity and a potential recession. We feel like we know what
we are doing. We have the experience to back it up. I don't think
there are a lot of apartment operators/owners in Southeast
Michigan that can honestly say they have been in business for 50
years and have never lost a project. We can say that. I think it is
a combination of a couple of things...
Mr. Suardini: I think you may want to talk about the people that are looking to
rent these types of properties are not 100% younger people. For
the first time in a long time or maybe ever, the 20 somethings or
the 30 somethings want the same thing as somebody that could
be 55 years old and empty nester. They want the same thing.
So some of the people that will be renting here may not have the
same restraints, if you will, on resources or capital that a younger
person may have, but you may have those two different types of
renters at the same time. John can talk to that.
Mr. Woods: I think we provided it to City Council, so I am not sure if all of the
Council and Planning Commission got the same packet we
provided. We sent out a package from a couple of the top multi-
family organizations that talks about how there has been a
transformational change in multi -family over the last couple of
years. It is exactly what Josh has mentioned. You now have
household formation in the United States that is now a majority of
rental versus homeownership. A lot of that is by choice, and it
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isn't just in the big Metro cities like Detroit, Chicago, and others.
It is moving back into the suburbs. It's not the same renter that
even I was accustomed to 15 or 20 years ago where often times,
to your point, people who were higher income were in an
apartment for the sake of convenience or maybe they were
transitional between jobs or between homes. It wasn't a way of
life and it wasn't necessarily a permanent choice. We are actually
seeing more permanence and longer term than we have seen in
the past. There is a lot of information in those reports that we
sent that really support that. Again, not just in the big
municipalities, it is also in what I will call the suburban urban
environments or surban environments. Really where Livonia fits
is their larger suburban community have a lot to offer. When
people decide they want to transition from a single-family home
or even come, out of Metro Detroit to come back to the suburbs
they have options. They do it by choice.
Mr. Bongero: One last question. What is your vacancy percentage on your
properties? What can you expect? Do you think you will be 100%
leased out here or ....?
Mr. Woods: No. Most communities are not 100% just because transitional
people moving in and out. For the last several years, and I will
say in the suburbs it is even higher than the metro areas, we will
be in the mid 90's all day long. The break even point on a
community like this is probably 82% — 83% so you really have to
have some challenges before a property consistent like this or
make some mistakes to where you are at least not paying your
bills. For us, low 90's is a bad day. Mid 90's is pretty consistent.
Anything beyond that, your rents are probably not high enough.
Mr. Bongero: Thank you.
Mr. Wlshaw: Mr. Woods, we did receive that additional information in our most
recent packets for this go around. We appreciate that additional
information. Again, I want to remind the Commission and the
folks here in the audience that this is a rezoning request and we
are focused on the zoning of the property and if the zoning is
appropriate for this area. We are looking at RUF to R-8 zoning.
In talking about the use of the property we can't help but talk to
some extent of how the property is going to be used in terms of
the number of stories and how many units and those type of
things, but we are truly focused on zoning at this point and we will
get into the details of the actual site plan at a future plan if this
zoning proceeds through City Council. 1 think it is always good to
have that little refresher. Are there any other questions for our
Petitioner from the Commission? I don't see any. Thank you,
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gentleman. We are going to go to the audience and look for any
questions or comments from the audience. Anyone wishing to
speak for or against this item is welcome to come forward. We
do have some folks. Feel free to come forward and you can line
up at either podium. Again, we ask that you address your
questions to us. Any questions that we need to go back to the
petitioner to ask, we will do that at the end, so that way we aren't
having to go back and forth debate. Feel free to start with your
name and address sir.
Michael Ladwig, 18728 Susanna, Livonia, MI, I live approximately'/4 mile north of
the proposed site. Now can I make a recommendation on what I
think they should do with this for zoning?
Mr. Wilshaw: You are welcome to speak about anything at all.
Mr. Ladwig: Well, I am in favor of the rezoning. I have heard what these
gentlemen have to say and I think it makes a lot of sense. I don't
see anything... sure there can be problems. I was in business for
42 years and there is always going to be things that you can't
control. I have seen that in the last 42 years, but it seems like
they are good people. They have had businesses that have
worked out well. I am for it. I wanted to address just a little bit, a
lot of people may have gotten this flyer and it says, "Dear Livonia
Resident". I just want to make a comment of this flyer. I am
always skeptical when people want you to vote a certain way on
something or be in favor of something and the person or group
that puts this out never says who they are or what organization
they represent. I don't' think it is good. They made some points
in here that I think are very ... they just don't seem to make sense.
We know it is in a high traffic area but it isn't as bad as the traffic
area on Haggerty and I am sure that the City will do traffic studies
to see if they can handle it and what they need to do to make it
work. There is a little bit of maneuvering that probably will have
to be done on Victor Parkway heading south toward the houses
that are south of Seven Mile, but it could all be worked out. It
shouldn't be that expensive. They said that the people that live
there are going to be very upset because they thought they were
going to be living in an area where there are two story houses. I
am thinking to myself, I have bought and sold four houses in my
life. Never did I want to look to see how tall the buildings were
going to be around me. I just wanted to make sure they have
good schools and good property value and that it was a safer
neighborhood. The monthly rentals .... I think that is the kind of
person that Livonia would like to have here. I think many of those
people, like they said, they are moving and maybe they are only
here for a year or two contract. I wouldn't be surprised, as I have
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heard a lot of retirees are having a place in Florida and they have
a place up here but they don't want to deal with a house up here,
so they rent a house or apartment up here. There are a lot of
good things that they do. The main thing that I wanted to say is
that I hope that the Planning Commission doesn't take too much
weight from this flyer by people who don't even say who they are.
You kind of wonder what their reasons are. Thank you
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you Mr. Ladwig.
Ms. Smiley: Sir, can I ask you a question? That flyer that you got, did you get
it....
Mr. Wilshaw: Mr. Ladwig, Ms. Smiley has a question.
Ms. Smiley: Did you get that in the mail or in your mailbox?
Mr. Ladwig: I think it was rolled up with a rubber band and put on my front
door or it was left in my mailbox where the newspaper slot is. It
was not mailed to me. It had no return address. It was just put
there. It is really kind of beat up because it was raining.
Ms. Smiley: Just to clarify, you said you have no idea who wrote it or who
composed it? Who is in front of it or behind it?
Mr. Ladwig: I can give it to you because I have already read it if you would like
to see it.
Ms. Smiley: I would love to. You can leave it with....
Mr. Wilshaw: Ms. Reece.
Mr. Ladwig; Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you sir.
Phillip Michalski, 18979 Glengarry, Livonia, MI, I am four houses south of Seven
Mile immediately adjacent to the property in question. There are
a lot of great points the petitioners have brought up. I do take
objection to a lot of it. You may have seen some of this data that
we, the public, have not seen, but I think it would help if it were
made public. The empirical data that has been done regarding
the traffic. Give us some actual numbers instead of estimates as
far as rental rates. Proof that these are the numbers of 90%+ is
a valid rate. That may sway some of our fears. Also, with regards
to the zoning, I have lived in this neighborhood for five years.
Prior to that I was off Merriman and 1-96 for approximately 40
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years. In the 40 years...my street was Berwick Street, which
abuts directly to Schoolcraft Ave. right across the bridge going
across 1-96. In 35-40 years I witnessed 2 accidents. In the five
years I have lived here, I have witnessed or seen the aftermath
of at least seven accidents between Victor Parkway and
Newburgh off Seven Mile. Seven in less than five years. So that
is just what 1 have seen. The last one was a motorcycle that was
hit by a car exiting Glengarry. It was a very hot summer day. I
was there. My neighbors gave the police officers some water.
went and got them some Gatorade. We were talking to the officer
and he said this intersection in this area is a mess. Adding this
kind of volume of people, I believe will only make it worse. I do
take exception to the traffic studies or ideas that the... I forget the
term that was used, but the density won't be so bad or would be
the same as with an office building. When you have a four-story
apartment building that is of this scale that will have 300 — 400
units or however many it is, I see a lot more cars than probably
in an office building in traffic. I can tell you right now that turning
off of Glengarry onto Seven Mile is a challenge. It will only be
worse for us residents. The way the freeway comes up off and
the way that Victor Parkway comes in, it isn't a great intersection
to begin with. Adding a very high density of people to it isn't
probably going to help anybody. I firmly believe a lot of people
will go up Victor Parkway to Eight Mile and making a left on Eight
Mile, which means you will need to put a light up at Eight Mile
eventually too. It is going to change traffic patterns for the entire
northern quadrant of Livonia. With that also, with the new
proposed hotels going up on Victor Parkway that are going to be
six stories, I don't know that as a resident I really do want to see
high rise apartments across my street. I am going to see the
hotels, and I already see the office center on the corner of Seven
Mile and Newburgh Rd, that is fine, it is a nice office building and
they take good care of it. I really get the feeling; it has the smell
of an inner city look. A Southfield look. Westland on Marquette
Avenue look, which I don't' know is what Livonia wants. I really
don't. The visuals of it don't' fit in with what I moved to this other
neighborhood. Like I said, I moved here four or five years ago.
We could have chosen anywhere. We love Livonia because it is
a Family First community. One -bedroom apartments aren't really
family first. Especially at this price rate. The gentleman before
me said that this might be a good idea for the snowbirds that are
moving back and forth between Florida and Michigan, I don't think
people are going to spend $2,000 a month to leave it vacant for
four to six months a year. That is a lot of money. I see this fraught
with issue. I especially thank Mr. Bongero for your questions
about economic downturns because as we saw in the last 10
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years that is a valid question. I am very concerned. Thank you
for your time. I really appreciate it.
Mr. Wlshaw:: Thank you, sir. We appreciate your comments. Mam, since we
have people at both podiums, we will go back and forth.
Rebecca Peters, 18813 Glengarry Drive, Livonia, MI, as other people have many,
many, many concerns, I brought my little map because one of my
big concerns is the traffic issue. As we have talked about, at
Seven Mile and Newburgh area is very congested. This little red
dot is my house. Years ago, the Safety Commission took out the
stop signs in a lot of residential neighborhoods because they felt
yields would be better. As a result, we found in our neighborhood,
since you don't stop from Caliburn to Glengarry, we see people
coming down out street that appear to be 30 -- 35 mph. You don't
stop. There is one yield sign. What 1 am afraid of is that people
are coming into the Seven Mile area, whether the entrance is on
Seven or whether it is on Victor Parkway, which would be Blue
Skies, they are going to cut through our neighborhood to avoid
having to turn left. It kind of makes sense. People do it already.
What is going to happen is it is going to become that
thoroughfare, so people don't have to wait. I come to this
intersection and I kind of chuckle and say gosh I am so glad I live
in this neighborhood because I can turn left right here. That is
what people are going to do. They will go through on Blue Skies
as well so they can hit the light and easily cross Seven Mile. That
is my biggest concern, that we are going to be used as a
thoroughfare. We moved into our house 22 years ago and we
did that because we wanted to start a family. We chose Livonia
because it is so family oriented. We have had kids; they have
gone through Livonia Public Schools. I think in my calculations I
have paid about $130,000 in taxes, but every time we have to pay
that tax, my husband and I remind ourselves from where we lived
before, we don't mind because it is a great neighborhood. We
love the city. We don't want to see anything that would devalue
that, for ourselves or our property value. Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you very much, Ms. Peters. We will go over to this podium.
Good evening, mam.
Laurie Colley, Caliburn Manor, Livonia, MI, we have several issues with this. We
don't want apartments in there for several reasons. First, I heard
tonight is that is possibly would be a three bedroom, which is how
are your going to stop multi-family's? 1 will probably be jumping
around but ... that came up first when I heard it tonight. How do
you prevent any multi-family's from coming in to one three --
bedroom unit? That would affect the number of cars that you are
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estimating for the traffic around there. The other point that I want
to make is that no matter where you make that exit on Seven Mile
to turn right with a turn right only sign or whatever, it is going to
affect our Glengarry exit. We, like the other gentleman said, have
to wait, pull into the turn lane, move over to get on to the e-way.
That is just, going to be a million times worse. What I don't
understand is why you are not pursuing condos. We have a great
community of condos. It would be less units. It would be people
that have a sense of community and pride with their ownership,
rather than people that are in and out and not giving a crap about
Livonia. If they own it and want it and pay it .... look at the condos
by the post office. They are great. By the Laurel Park Mall. They
are great. Quiet communities. Not a lot of traffic. I think they
have a lot of units that....I can't think of the word .... they are filled.
So if someone did a study and said that there are 500 available
high rent apartments in our area now, and we have that many
apartments open, how are these guys going to fill the ones that
are coming up now? One of these gentlemen said accessibility
is the reason they want to be there. Accessibility is one of the
reasons we chose it as well. We want to be able to get on to the
expressway to go to work, to go shopping, to go to the restaurants
on Haggerty, without having to deal with... no matter what time of
day. We live there too. He is saying it may be different times of
day based on businesses. We are there 2417. If we have to get
out at a certain time, we want to get out. That is how we feel. We
would rather have you think about it as condos or even single-
family homes. If you need a tax base, I get it but go some other
route with ownership instead of apartments where people are
going to be coming and going. Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Ms. Colley.
Curt Peters, 18813 Glengarry Drive, Livonia, MI, I received this flyer as well. I
wasn't worried about it. I feel that what this is probably all about
is someone without any power ...
Mr. Wilshaw: Sir, we will ask that you speak to us.
Mr. Peters: took this drawing and wanted to let people in the neighborhood
know about it. I don't think there was any maleficence about it. I
don't' think there was any under handed behavior about it. I think
it was informational. I appreciated it because some of this may
not be accurate, but just the idea that this meeting was
happening. I didn't know about that, so I appreciated this,
whoever did this to let the people who live in the area know about
it. I have a number of concerns. I want to start with some of the
things that were talked about a little while ago involving traffic
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patterns. I heard a lot of "we believe" "we think". I see no
evidence or proof. How do you prove what direction people that
you don't even know about yet are going to move in? How do
you know? They are saying they are all going to turn right. Are
you kidding me? How do you know a thing like that? I was just
amazed. And this is the basis of which they are going to try and
go on and try to get a planning agreement on this? Do you know
what is going to happen if people actually turn left coming out of
Victor Parkway in large numbers? And they might. They might
have work down Seven Mile. They might have work elsewhere
in Livonia. We don't know. We won't know until they move in. I
think that is a real problem. This traffic pattern, if they turn left,
would be disastrous. Right now, that road between and
Newburgh and Seven Mile and Victor Parkway and Seven Mile is
a pock marked mess. You can hardly drive on that surface right
now. Nobody has cared about it until now to even look at that
problem. We have people patching it but you practically ruin your
car just driving over it now. Getting around during rush hour is a
nightmare already. I don't know .... when you add in potentially,
they are saying 400 units there, that could be two people driving
a car. What if there are actually 800 cars there? How do they
know that? They don't know that. You can have people all over
the place with cars with nowhere for them to go. This
development is land locked. There is no green area around it.
Where are people going to go? They want to walk their dog at
night. They want to just go somewhere. Most apartments have
somewhere around them that people can go. A park, a
development of some kind? There's nothing like that available in
the development that I see. It is such a huge development
completely out of scale with everything around it. They didn't go
small here, they went about as big as they possibly could. Now I
am not going to throw dispersions, but it is certainly not what I
would call an auspicious plan. This is not in scale with the
community around it. It is not designed to work with the
community around it. If these people have no where to go at
night, for example, where do we think they are going to go? They
are going to walk right down Glengarry and other streets trying to
find a place, a nice place, to walk. Can our community, our small
Caliburn Manor community, accommodate an additional 400 to
800 people? I was also interested in their thoughts about when
these traffic patterns would happen. How can they predict that
these people are all going to be stay at home workers?
Seriously? You are going to make that assumption? To make
this work your going to affect our lives that way? Your going to
make an assumption based on zero evidence of that? You can't
prove that the people who move in there are going to be working
from home. They could all be working all over the place. Again,
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having to turn left at Victor Parkway, again affecting all of our lives
and making it dangerous potentially. My wife mentioned the
problem with Glengarry Drive. No stop signs, only yield signs.
People ripping down that street already at 40 mph. Little kids
nearly getting hit. I was one of those people, by the way, that was
in an accident at Victor Parkway and Seven Mile. Brand new car.
It happened right there. I know it is a bad area. It has been a
bad area since we moved in almost. Hasn't gotten any better. It
has only gotten more congested. These are serious issues and I
think it behooves all of you, looking on all of this data, to think
about how this is going to affect the existing community.
Mr. Wilshaw: The folks in the audience, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we
do need to proceed with the meeting, so I would appreciate it if
you could avoid the peanut gallery comments. That way we can
kind of move smoother.
Mr. Peters: Let's talk about appearance of this structure in relation to other
buildings around it. If you look at this from any of the angles that
I have seen provided online and elsewhere, it is a very large
urban style apartment complex. This is something... when 1 look
at it, it looks like something I would expect to be built at
Woodward and Warren downtown Detroit, not in this small
community. Again, it is a scale issue. It is a behemoth
considering the property around it. An eyesore? Maybe not for
everybody, but it certainly isn't in scale. It presents, again,
problems from a planning perspective. 1 guess one last thing I
would say is having to do with this whole issue of luxury. Luxury
apartments. I know that is a nice way to sell a project like this.
Oh, it's all going to be luxury apartments. You don't know if
people are going to spend the money you put up. Property is only
worth what people will pay for it. I asked myself, if I was a person
with some disposable income like that and looking for an
apartment to stay in, would I choose of my own will to stay in an
apartment that costs me that much and has a view of nothing? I
expect something that is going to be expensive to have a nice
view of a park if it is a luxury apartment. Or a nice view of a
beautiful city scape. Or something interesting. This development
is going to be overlooking nothing but very pedantic or very
average things. It is not a luxury location in my mind. There is
no where for people there to go. There's not stores or shops
immediately nearby. There is a couple of restaurants and soon a
new six story hotel. They would have to walk a mile to get to a
place like Laurel Park and enjoy some kind of shopping. Again,
apartment complexes like this "luxury apartments" normally
include some place for the people there to go. Again, I don't see
anything in this development. I have heard nothing of it, and 1
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don't think this works with the community and with the people who
are going to go there. How are they going to sell these high -ticket
apartments with no reason for the people to actually buy in that
location? I think this is a very serious problem. If this is okayed,
and they go ahead and build that, and of people don't want to pay
that money guess what they will do? They will lower that rent and
they will have every opportunity to do that. When they do that,
they may fill those apartments, but it won't be with the people they
are saying are going to be coming in here. Again, it could be
people that are going to be turning left at Victor Parkway. These
are serious things. I am really not trying to make jokes; I am
actually very concerned about how this is going to affect this
community and what it says about Livonia and its leadership if we
don't care about the people who are here already. We don't hear
their voices. So, thank you for your time.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Mr. Peters.
Joe Schewe, 19003 Glengarry, Livonia, MI, we are three houses from, so we are
the closest from everyone you have heard. We have been in
Livonia for 46 years. 45 years ago, we decided that Livonia was
a place to raise a family because it was noted for great homes,
great schools. I maintain that is the reason why all of these
decades that Livonia is perennially rated tops or near the top as
far as a place to live. It always revolves around the family, your
home, your community, your neighborhood, and schools. After
our kids grew up, and all of that worked out great for us happily,
we decided not to leave Livonia, but to move to Glengarry 22
years ago, during which time we have looked over at the empty
grass space and wondered what the city is going to do. We sure
hope they don't build businesses and offices. We don't need
those. That is kind of a thing of the past anyway. Look at all of
the empty businesses. It better be residential. Certainly, it is.
We didn't even think it would be apartments, because that is
completely contrary to why we moved to Livonia and why we have
been there for all of this time. We think what makes the city strong
and attractive to other people come here is the family aspect. We
all know the motto is "Families First". It didn't used to be that. It
used to be "Families Still First". I don't know why the still just
dropped. It is a very simple, clean, and clear concise motto. A
philosophy for this city is based on families. Now if you want to
change the definition of families to something else, I guess you
can justify it. To me a family consists of one or two parents or
guardians with kids. They are raising them to adulthood to be
solid citizens and they are going to go to the schools in order to
do that. That is what makes your community strong. So when
saw this was going to be apartments, I don't see where anybody
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in an apartment is invested in the community. I don't see one and
two bedroom apartments being a source for families in the
traditional sense. Yes, call me a traditionalist. I think this panel,
this board, is at a crossroads as to what it wants to do for this city
in the future. Do we want to keep doing what we have been
doing, put in a subdivision in there, which is what we may have
made a false assumption would happen, a single-family
subdivision there would down the number of units although you
would have more people because there would be three, four
bedrooms with kids. You would increase the population of the
city. You would increase the student population and you would
have a property tax base with people who are more than likely to
be invested and committed to this city and community and the
neighborhood, than the people we have heard talked about.
When I saw that it was going to be four stories, I was kind of
floored. I just thought that was a sore thumb. Everybody has their
taste. They can't possibly be your standard traditional families.
Not with one bedrooms, primarily. One and two. If they are going
to have a family, they are probably going to move out eventually
anyway, so we don't really know... I agree with the comments, we
don't really know traffic patterns. We don't really know people
coming and going, but we would know, and we could rely on, I
think, more firmly if it were a subdivision type development
instead of apartments. Vehicles, underground parking, it doesn't
really matter to me if it is underground parking. It is the coming
and going that is going to make a difference. As my next -door
neighbor pointed out, seven accidents. I couldn't remember how
many, so I will go along with that because I haven't counted. Yes,
we have had many accidents there including motorcycles. We
have had a motorcycle death right at Victor Parkway. I have
heard three accidents from inside my house. I don't see how 400,
200, 300 vehicles who may or may not be turning left or right is
going to help. I don't see that being in the best interest of this
city. I am asking this group to deny the request for rezoning to
allow a four-story structure of this type. 1 think it is a mistake. I
think there is probably places for such. We have already heard
that. We don't know if they are successful or not, but frankly I am
not interested in that. I am interested in Livonia and what is going
to happen near 275. Haggerty, 275, Seven, Mile, Victory
Parkway, Newburgh are getting congested all the time. I am not
a traffic expert. I hope you get some of that advice, but I know by
the eye test there is a lot of traffic there and it is getting worse.
The potholes are a whole other issue. We know that. That will
probably, maybe, slow people down a bit. As far as where we go
from here, I would strongly urge you not to allow this type of high
rise residential. Let's keep it homes. That is what makes Livonia
great. If in the future this ends up... I am afraid if somebody asks
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me how do you like living in Livonia, I would probably be
compelled to say I used to. Thank you for your time and
consideration.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Mr. Schewe. .
Katherine Harris, 37718 Northland, Livonia, Ml, my husband and I have been there
for 31 years. I did not intend to speak this evening as I wrote a
letter to all of you, which I believe you received this afternoon
regarding my concerns.
Mr. Wilshaw: We did, thank you.
Ms. Harris: I do, however, want to mention the flyers. I just want to say very
briefly that the person that wrote this ... I respect her, her property
will abut right up to this. I live pretty much across the street from
her. Her intention was to inform people. That is what we were
doing. I probably left this at your house sir, because my husband
and I passed out several of these. Just for that, to let people know
who have no idea any of this was happening. Thank you for your
time.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Ms. Harris. We certainly have no problem with the
flyers. I think that anything that promotes information to the
community is a good thing. Thank you.
Janet Sangala, 18763 Susanna Drive, Livonia, MI, I have seen the traffic increase
over all of those years. My son was one of those people in an
accident. His car was totaled. I have had many near misses in
that intersection since I have to enter and exit that intersection
every day to go anywhere. When I went to turn left from my
subdivision, which is usually where I am going, it is do difficult to
get out. The only way that I can get out on a left turn on most
hours of the day, except for at night, is turn at the same time the
people turning right out of Victor Parkway, so that I can get into a
lane. If I want to get on to the freeway, that lane is backed up for
me to even get over to go north on to 275. 1 think also by having
an apartment complex, we are talking about a transient
population. I don't think they are looking for a community. I think
it would just be a place for them to stay temporarily. Obviously,
if they are only looking to be there for a short term, between jobs
or whatever was mentioned...I think that people that live in this
community in those neighborhoods have an interest in what is
going on there. So that is why I oppose this.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Ms. Sangala. Is there anyone else in the audience
wishing to speak on this item?
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Steven Rooker, 37605 Northland St, Livonia, MI, I am not in favor of this petition.
I echo the sentiments and say all the things we have heard from
everybody else except the one gentleman that is in favor of it. I
agree with my neighbors. I agree with my fellow citizens. I want
to touch on the moral compass of our city and the direction we
founded ourselves on and the typical business we have carried
on here. It has been families first. I understand that it is a
wonderful piece of real estate and very attractive to developers.
It should be developed into a useful, purposeful thing for the City
of Livonia. I can't see how, for the residents and for the city, how
this is going to be beneficial as it ties into our families first motto.
In fact, I think it will have an opposite effect. I am going to call on
the moral compass of you folks here tonight. Hopefully it won't
get to the City Council, but I think this should be nipped in the bud
and eliminated tonight. Morally, it goes against the compass and
the direction that this community was founded on and has been
managed on. It would be a shame... I am 46 years old and I have
been a resident of Livonia for 46 years. It would be a shame if I
had to start questioning where I live because we are changing the
direction of the community that I was born and raised in and still
support. Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Mr. Rooker. Just so you understand, as I mentioned
at the beginning of the meeting, with zoning requests our
recommendation of approval or denial will go forward to City
Council regardless. That is the process. We just give a
recommendation. City Council will hear this item. Just wanted to
get that out there. Good evening, sir.
Ron Urso, 37862 Pickford Dr, Livonia, MI, I have lived in Livonia for 25 years and
I came from the City of Dearborn, which was at one time a
wonderful family community. I left there when things began to
change in that community. I came to Livonia because, and
fortunately in 25 years, I have raised my kids here and they went
to Livonia schools. I like the City and 1 like what it represents. I
am thankful that someone dropped this because I also was not
aware of what was going on. So, when I look at this complex,
also agree I am not going to reiterate what a lot of people have
said, but it certainly doesn't fit in to the area that it is being placed.
I just jotted down a few things of additional items that are going
into this area. We are talking about a hotel where Doc's used to
be, an apartment complex that is being developed on Haggerty
Road at what used to be a Magna facility where I used to work.
We have Chick--Fil-A going in front of Kohl's on Haggerty Road.
On the Schoolcraft property, St. Joes is putting in another facility
that is going to be there. We have at the current site of 123
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Corporation a new Beaumont facility that is going there. Correct
me if I'm wrong. This is what I understand to be true.
Mr. Wilshaw: You are correct so far.
Mr. Urso: Ok, thank you. The U of M facility was only in the last couple
years in Northville. Next to that is an auto supplier that is building
there. A lot of these places are not open yet. We are talking
about traffic problems and we are looking at 200 units or whatever
we are putting in here. The gentleman brought this up, comparing
with facilities in Lansing and Grand Rapids. This is Livonia. This
isn't Lansing. This isn't Grand Rapids. We are not a city like that.
We don't desire to live in a city like that, or else that is where we
would be. I also would like to understand that all of these
complexes that we are talking about and the vehicles that are
coming in are part of this traffic study that we are talking about.
The current structure, the way it is, there is no way it can handle
the additional amount of traffic that we are talking about with the
seven or eight facilities that I just named. I live and go through
the traffic light at Blue Skies across Seven Mile to Victor Parkway.
I live a mile from where I work at Trinity Health and 1 guarantee
you that there is not one day, honest to God, not one day that
there isn't someone that drives right through a red light at that
facility. It is a horrible traffic area. It is not going to get better with
all of this going on. The last thing we need is an apartment
complex there. There are better things that the land can be used
for. Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Mr. Urso. Good evening, sir.
Rick Rondy, 37793 Northland, Livonia, MI, my property abuts the property in
question here. Like many others here, I grew up in Livonia.
When I started a family, we moved back here and raised two
children here. I have been a resident for a long time here. My
concern, amongst the other ones that have already been stated,
is a little more specific. i am not sure what is going to happen to
the property values of the houses that are on Northland Street. If
a four-story apartment building gets erected pretty much in the
backyard. I don't know if there has been any consideration for
that or if anybody has done any studies on that when we seem to
be tossing around a lot of numbers from studies tonight. If I am
standing in my backyard and I am looking at a four --story
apartment building I am pretty sure it's not going to be good for
the property value. There is a grade change there, but if 1 am
looking at the second story or the third story or waving at
someone on the fourth story, it is all pretty much the same for me.
We have an inground pool. We have invested a lot of money
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there to make it a nice place. I am the second lot from the end
so I already have the concern of a six story hotel not to far to the
west of me there. Now I am looking at a four story, potentially a
four story, building in my back yard so 1 am obviously not in favor
of this. I agree with others that say it is incongruent to the city. I
don't see at all where it aligns with the family first concept. I would
just ask you to reflect. How would you vote if it was your backyard
and you were going to be looking at this building every time you
walked out your backdoor? So those are my thoughts. Thank you
Mr. Wilshaw; Thank you, Mr. Rondy. Is there anyone else in the audience
wishing to speak against or for this item? If not, we will go back
to the Petitioner and see if they would like to speak to anything
they heard so far or give any additional information.
Mr. Suardini: Just a couple clarifying numbers and points. Number one is the
number of units proposed. It is 265 not 400 or 500 or 800. It is
265. As far as the green space that was questioned or places to
go, we do have, if you look at the site plan, in the 100 foot buffer
on the north side of the property, we have designed green and
open spaces in that area for the people that live there so that is
incorporated into the plan. We can further have discussions with
the committee and commission later if we needed to enhance
that, but that is part of it. Speaking, again, going back to the word
luxury and what we meant by that, the luxury word is a word
meaning to have a choice of where you want to live. Not
necessarily what style and what people like and what things cost.
It is more about having a choice. Some people, there is a lot of
speculation on traffic patterns and what things look like, and what
people like and what people don't like. There are people that pay
a premium to have location and accessibility, as a lot of these
people have probably too to live where they live versus what they
are looking at or how certain things are built inside their space.
Truly, this development will have a lot of amenities as part of it,
but I just want to point out that some people, and there are plenty
of buildings like this across the country, where people pay to live
in a certain location because of its proximity. It doesn't mean that
they are not going to be part of the community or not want to be
a part of the community, it is just a different style of living and a
different form of meeting a demand. John, I am sure you have a
couple points you would like to talk about.
Mr. Woods: Just to clarify on some of the parking discussion. The ratios are
for a typical building. About 1.5 to 1.7 cars per unit. There is a
lot of speculation of the coming years. That number with
autonomous vehicles be significantly less so this building is
actually able to convert.
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Mr. Wilshaw: Please give him an opportunity to speak.
Mr. Woods: Coincidentally, the question was well where are these jobs,
where are these people coming from? Ironically, the American
Center for Mobility which is one of the top four facilities in the
country is located at Willow Run with a huge federal grant. You
have Masco. You have all of these other businesses that people
described. This is one of the reasons we want to be here. We
do have some experience in the area. We are building a 260-unit
building, very comparable to this, at Grand River and Novi Road
in Novi and a couple other buildings are scheduled as well. We
have been through the experience a little bit with the traffic
discussion, the parking decks. I think it is important to understand
that we have a lot of experience with this. Of the 265 units, we
are planning about 360 parking or 390 parking spaces I believe
with the deck, which we feel about 340 — 350 will be utilized at
some point during the week. There are accommodations for
guest parking, but the old 2 to 1 ratio has supported suburban
development for the years. Typical garden level apartments
really are not the norm anymore. This is really, quite frankly, the
new norm. The architects that designed this building did 120 of
these last year throughout the United States. They are the
number one architect in the country for this particular type of
product. We have invested a lot of time and effort to go with the
roughly billion -dollar portfolio that we already own and manage.
We feel pretty confident that we understand the dynamics of
owning this, designing this, building it, and supporting it. One final
comment, I can certainly be empathetic to the family situation.
That was one of the reasons we thought this might be a better fit
in the particular location because it was closer to the highway and
the accessibility is there. I guess the only challenge that I would
have to those is, family isn't defined by mother, father, child,
multiple child. I would challenge that everyone in this room at one
point didn't have kids when they were younger and they spent
their entire life in Livonia, yet at some point they may have
considered themselves without having a house full of children. I
don't see how that is any different here. A building like this is to
some extent a gateway into Livonia. It is coming off of 275
heading east. It is an important statement for your community.
Forget the fact that it is in a office park that has a couple million
square feet already, but it's a prominent statement as people
enter your communities. When we designed the building, we
really felt that it was important not just to design a big square
building. It doesn't show here, and I understand why this is a
rezoning meeting, this isn't a site plan review, but the building has
a lot of dimensional appeal to it from the street scape. It's brick,
May 29, 2019
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it's masonry, it has glass in it. It is what 1 call a toned down urban.
We didn't feel that taking a building that was pure urban and
putting it in this environment, even though it is supported by what
I will call a higher tech office environment. We tried to make it
feel warmer with the faux wood on the corners. We elevated the
rear of the smaller building that gives a somewhat transition from
the back of the homes that are roughly 329 to 500 feet away, so
I understand that they are going to be looking into the building
and they may be looking up a story or two, but it is still 300 to 500
feet depending on where you are at. It is a building that we
fenestrated and elevated to soften it up. We do feel it's a more
appealing alternative than an ambulatory care facility with tons of
asphalt and parking lot lights that are on 24/7 and ambulances
that are ingressing and egressing. I realize that is no longer the
issue, but ....that is another reason why it is wrapped around the
parking deck. The idea was to bury the parking as opposed to
create a building and park around it where you are looking at
acres and acres of asphalt and striping and lights. To create
elevation that has some warmth to it. It has some feel to it. I
guess one of my other comments would be as far as the viability
of the project, and I know you are not here necessarily to evaluate
that, but I want you to understand that we feel we are a good
partner to Etkin and we are always a good partner and we are
invested in the communities that we are a part of and that we
build properties in. Residential has a much lower fail rate than an
office building. With all due respect, Etkin is one of the best in
Metropolitan Detroit and they do an excellent job. When you look
at true value for the long haul, office doesn't really compare to
what I will call a luxury market rate property. There is a big
disparity there and I feel qualified to say that because we own a
million square feet of retail and office space as well. That is why
we don't own anymore, and we aren't buying any more of it. We
are more focused on this type of project, because the demand is
there. The jobs are being created. The 1-9611-275 corridor are two
of the last undeveloped corridors in Metropolitan Detroit. It is no
guess, or it is no surprise why Cooper Tire and Beaumont... I think
two Beaumont offices between Farmington downtown and the old
A123 site are developed along this corridor. I think you are going
to continue to see it south. There is more land down there. There
are many of us as developers looking at that corridor that used to
go down into metropolitan airport and you have a tremendous
amount of investment around the airport by out of town private
equity that is gobbling up hundreds of acres at a time around the
airport. This corridor is going to continue to be a popular corridor.
A bustling corridor. I understand and my hat is off to you. It is a
tough challenge balancing all of this. We understand that and we
appreciate the time. We understand the concerns from the
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community. We do think it is a good viable project that hits the
demand of what is going on today in housing. We think it is very
important and worth considering from your perspective as the
leaders of the community to look at what is going on in housing
and kind of what I will call transformation of housing. No different
than what we have seen in the auto industry and some other
industries and things that are going on around us. Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Mr. Woods. It would probably be a better question for
Etkin, but can you speak just briefly about the history of this
property in terms of the fact that it originally started as a medical
office facility through a consent judgement, but you looked at this
as an office property as well. How did you end up at this particular
use of R-8 and apartments versus medical or R&D office space?
Mr. Suardini: We bought the property several years ago and initially we had a
54,000 square feet office building designed and approved
through the city. At the time we thought that was going to be in
demand, which it turned out to be in demand. The hard part about
office buildings then and now proving out two things: 1. Cost 2.
Timing to get the product to market When you build an office
building you don't have the luxury of the ramp up that you might
have with residential to where you can get to the occupancy rate
that is stabilized. When we held it for several years which we
have come back in front of this body to get extensions on, we
continue to market it. It isn't like we stopped. The market just
didn't bare out. There were a couple of things that were close,
but just didn't work. A few years ago, when we started looking at
other avenues or other types of developments for the property,
one of the things that always was called upon, I field calls still, is
more retail. Starbucks, a bank branch, some sort of fast food
branch, a fast -casual thing. When we talked about that before,
that was not something that was talked about with Master Plan
but also with also what that part of the city was trying to achieve.
We were asked to look at any other options and bring any other
viable options in front of Planning Commission and City Council.
When we looked at the multi -family, we really thought that two
things were really apparent. One being, that we believe that the
demand is there. We believe the demand is there because of
what is happening in your community but what is also happening
in surrounding communities. By Iocationally being in the center
of a lot of the jobs that are being created today in Metro Detroit,
we feel it is a very viable demand generator for a lot of people
where they can choose to live. If we don't build it here, someone
is going to build it in Plymouth. Someone is going to build it in
Northville. Someone is going to build it somewhere else. This
type of development does not necessarily exist in Metro Detroit,
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29163
other than downtown, you can say Royal Oak, but not really. Just
because it doesn't exit doesn't mean that It's not something that
people want. The other reason that we looked at it and we
thought it was the right thing to do at this time was the fact that
the market for residential is clearly changing. There is vast
majority of reports, and we would be happy to share them with
the people that live in close proximity that we have shared with
council and with your board, where things are changing
dynamically in the United States as far as home ownership.
Home ownership is going down and rentals are going up. Home
prices are escalating to values that are growing at rates that are
much higher than the rental rate growth. People in different
categories of their life are wanting to live in the same type of
community for the first time in a long time. It doesn't mean there
won't be families. It doesn't mean that there won't be empty
nesters. It doesn't mean there won't be businesspeople or not.
It just means that people are looking for different avenues and
different opportunities to live. For those reasons we have talked
to DTN for the last two years. We have gone through various
planning modules for this site plan and we have come up with
what we believe is a responsible design for the two parcels. We
have kept a buffer. We have added green space. We have talked
to multiple industry leaders about what people like and what they
would tend to want as an amenity. We have incorporated that into
the project as well. I don't' doubt and I don't discount at all what
everybody has said about the traffic. That is something that we
cannot change. Detroit is a motor city for a reason. People drive.
Your right, we can't predict that everyone is going to take a left or
everybody is going to take a right. We can only tell you by virtue
of how we have designed the site where it would be Intended that
people would pull out of this community and where it would be
intended for them to pull in. Short of that, there is a lot of
speculation and I can't sit here and tell you we can be 100%
accurate on what we are predicting, but we think we are pretty
close given the expertise in the portfolios that we both manage
and have developed over time.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, sir. Is there any other questions of the Petitioner from
the Commission?
Mr. Ventura: Mr. Suardini, one of the folks spoke and I have lost track of who
asked this question but said you could end up with two families
living in a unit. Is there a way to prevent that? Would you know
that is happening? Is that permitted?
Mr. Suardini: I believe DTN has policies for that and I will let John speak to that.
May 29, 2019
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Mr. Woods: From a rental standpoint, we do not allow two unrelated groups
to rent. I can't say .... we really haven't had the issue. Also to
speak to the number, this particular community we only have
maybe 15 or so three bedrooms and they are going to be priced
around $3000 per month. Those will really be ....we have other
projects like this where your going to have people that are going
to be transitioning in jobs that have housing allowances or we
have had cases, and someone else brought it up here earlier,
where we have folks that have moved out of a house and they
have a unit in Michigan...we have one guy that has a unit in
Traverse City, a unit in Lansing, and then owns a condo in
Florida. That is not unusual from a maintenance standpoint from
seniors that don't want to deal with even condo fees and
maintenance. It is a real broad spectrum. To say we have
families grouped up, splitting a $3000 a month rent really doesn't
happen in these properties.
Mr. Ventura: Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Any other questions for our Petitioner?
Ms. Smiley: For Mr. Taormina, what is the approximate percentage of green
space for this property.
Mr. Taormina: We have not calculated that out yet.
Ms. Smiley: But there is a 100-foot buffer between the homes and the
building. Is that right?
Mr. Taormina: The consent judgement does provide for what is a 100-foot buffer
that is being respected in this case to the extent that there would
be no building construction within that 100-foot zone. They are
showing some walking paths, as well as a potential dog park and
other kinds of recreational amenities. The building itself would
appear to again respect the 100-foot setback and it may even be
a little further than 100 feet from the north property line.
Ms. Smiley: Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Once we get to the site planning phase of this, we would look at
the percentage of green space and hammer out the details of
exactly... landscaping details, and so on. Correct Mr. Taormina?
Mr. Taormina: Correct.
Mr. Wilshaw: Any other questions for our planning staff or for the Petitioner? If
not, I will close the public hearing and a motion is in order.
May 29, 2019
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On a motion by Smiley, and seconded by McCue, and adopted, it was
#05-45-2019 RESOLVED, that pursuant to a Public Hearing having been held
by the City Planning Commission on May 28 2019, Petition 2019-
02-01-02 submitted by Etkin Management, L.L.C. pursuant to
Section 23.01 of the City of Livonia Zoning Ordinance #543, as
amended, requesting to rezone the property at 37640 Seven Mile
Road and part of the property at 19290 Victor Parkway, located
on the north side of Seven Mile Road between Newburgh Road
and the 1-275196 Expressway in the Southeast 1/4 of Section 6,
from R-U-F (Rural Urban Farm) to R-8 (High Rise Multiple Family
Residential District -- Maximum 4 Stories), is hereby approved,
subject to City Council approval, for the following reasons:
That the proposed change of zoning is compatible to and in
harmony with the surrounding land uses and zoning districts
in the area;
2. That the proposed change of zoning is consistent with the
developing character of the area,
3. That the proposed change of zoning would provide for the
development of the subject property in a manner that is
appropriate with its size and location; and
4. That the proposed change of zoning, along with
amendments to the Consent Judgement and Open Space
Preservation Agreement, would permit the development of
a multi -family residential apartment complex that will help
support an expected increase in employment in the
northwest part of the community.
FURTHER RESOLVED, that notice of the above hearing was
given in accordance with the provisions of Section 23.05 of
Zoning Ordinance #543, as amended.
Mr. Wilshaw: Is there any discussion?
A roll call vote on the foregoing resolution resulted in the following:
AYES: McCue, Smiley, Ventura, Bongero, Caramagno,
Wilshaw
NAYS: Long
ABSENT: None
ABSTAIN: None
May 29, 2019
29166
ITEM #2 PETITION 2019-04-02-07 Ocean Wellness, L.L.C.
Mr. Caramagno, Secretary, announced the next item on the agenda, Petition 2019-
04-02-07 submitted by Ocean Wellness L.L.C. requesting waiver
use approval pursuant to Section 11.03(u) of the City of Livonia
Zoning Ordinance #543, as amended, to operate a massage
establishment at 16345 Middlebelt Road, located on the west
side of Middlebelt Road between Puritan Avenue and Six Mile
Road in the Northeast % of Section 14.
Mr. Taormina: This is a request to operate a massage establishment within a
multi -tenant building located on the west side of Middlebelt Road
between Puritan and Six Mile Road. This property is a little less
than an acre in size. It has two hundred feet of frontage on the
main road, which is Middlebelt. An additional 200 feet of road
frontage on Greenland, which is just to the south of the property.
The site is split zone, meaning that it has two zoning categories.
The southerly 130 feet of the property is zoned C-2 (General
Business), while the north 70 feet of the property is zoned C-1
(Local Business). There is a multi -tenant building located on the
property. It has gross flooring of about 9,120 square feet. All of
the retail units, in this case, face east toward Middlebelt Road.
You can see most of the parking on the site is in the front yard,
between the building and Middlebelt Road. The unit that Ocean
Wellness Spa would occupy is located within the C-2-zoned part
of the site. There are a couple special requirements that apply to
massage establishment. Section 11.03(u)(2) requires that no
massage establishment shall be located within 400 feet of
another massage establishment. There are no other massage
establishments within 400 feet of this property. That provision is
being met. Section 11.03(u)(3) requires that no massage
establishments can be located within 400 feet of a school, place
of worship, state licensed daycare facility, library or playground
or public park. That provision is being met as well. The unit itself
is about 1,400 square. feet. It is a 20 x 70 foot space. There is
a plan submitted with the application that shows the layout of the
unit. It shows individual private massage rooms. There would be
restrooms, a staff lounge, as well as a front reception area. No
modifications are being proposed to the exterior of the building.
It would be allowed one wall sign, measuring 20 square feet.
Parking for the plaza is sufficient. With that, Mr. Chairman, I can
read out the departmental correspondence.
Mr. Wilshaw: Yes, please.
May 29, 2019
29167
Mr. Taormina: The first item is from the Engineering Division, dated May 3, 2019,
which reads as follows: `In accordance with your request, the
Engineering Division has reviewed the above referenced waiver
use petition. We have no objections to the proposed project at
this time. The existing parcel is assigned the range of addresses
of #16329 thru #16349 Middlebelt Road, with the address of
#16345 Middlebelt Road being assigned to the overall parcel.
The legal description provided with the petition appears to be
correct and should be used with the subject petition. The existing
building is currently serviced by public sanitary, storm and water
main. The information submitted does not indicate any new
connections to the existing utility services, so it appears that there
will not be any additional impacts to the existing systems at this
time. Should alterations to the existing services be required, the
owner will need to provide plans to this Department to determine
if permits will be required. Should the owner do any work within
the Middlebelt Road right-of-way, they will need to contact the
Wayne County Department of Public Services forany permits that
may be required." The letter is signed by David W. Lear, P.E.,
Assistant City Engineer. The second letter is from the Livonia Fire
& Rescue Division, dated May 8, 2019, which reads as follows:
"This office has reviewed the site plan submitted in connection
with a request to operate a massage establishment on property
located at the above referenced address.." The letter is signed by
Keith Bo, Fire Marshal. The third letter is from the Division of
Police, dated May 3, 2018, which reads as follows: "1 have
reviewed the plans in connection with the petition. I have no
objections to the proposal." The letter is signed by Brian Leigh,
Sergeant, Traffic Bureau. The fourth letter is from the Inspection
Department, dated May 22, 2019, which reads as follows:
"Pursuant to your request, the above referenced Petition has
been reviewed. This Department has no objections to this
Petition. I trust this provides the requested information." The
letter is signed by Jerome Hanna, Director of Inspection. The fifth
letter is from the Finance Department, dated May 3, 2019, which
reads as follows: "1 have reviewed the addresses connected with
the above noted petition. As there are no outstanding amounts
receivable, general or water and sewer, I have no objections to
the proposal." The letter is signed by Coline Coleman, Chief
Accountant. The sixth letter is from the Treasurer's Department,
dated May 8, 2019, which reads as follows: "in accordance with
your request, the Treasurer's Office has reviewed the address
connected with the above noted petition. At this time, there are
no outstanding amounts receivable for taxes. Therefore, 1 have
no objections to the proposal." The letter is signed by Lynda
Scheel, Treasurer.
May 29, 2019
29168
Mr, Wilshaw: Are there any questions of the Planning Director?
Mr. Wilshaw: Is the petitioner here this evening? We will need your name and
address for the record please.
Haiyan Pi, 37735 Colonial Dr, Westland, MI, six years of ownership in Farmington
Hills, we do the business and right now I am ready to do my own
business because I waiting to sell my part of the business to my
partnership. I live in Livonia for seven years, so I really like
Livonia as a city. My son graduated from Livonia City. This is
close to home, so I think I want to do business in Livonia.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you. Where is your current business located?
Ms. Pi: Orchard Lake Road between 12 and 13 Mile Roads. 29218
Orchard Lake Road, Farmington Hills.
Mr. Wilshaw: You said that you are a partner in that?
Ms. Pi: Yes.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you. Is there any questions for our Petitioner?
Ms. Smiley: You said you have been in this business for a while with a
partner?
Ms. Pi: Yes.
Ms, Smiley: But you live in Livonia, and you want to break off from that
partnership and start your own business here?
Ms. Pi: Yes.
Ms. Smiley: How long have you been doing this?
Ms. Pi: 8 years.
Ms. Smiley: Will you be in the business by yourself or will you have a partner
or anyone helping you here?
Ms. Pi: The Livonia one I will be by myself. Farmington one has a
partner.
Ms. Smiley: You are going to have people working for you though?
May 29, 2019
29169
Ms. Pi: Yes.
Ms. Smiley:
Your not going to do everything yourself right?
Ms. Pi:
Actually I will work myself too.
Ms. Smiley:
So you will be alone?
Ms. Pi:
No. I will have people working, but also I am a worker also.
Ms. Smiley:
Oh, so your going to work and run the business but also have
other therapists right?
Ms. Smiley:
Thank you.
Ms. McCue:
Can you just tell us where you get most of your clients from? Do
you have a referral source? Are they repeat?
Ms. Pi:
Actually, we do Google. People can Google us and find a place.
Also they just walk in. Some of my clients know me from many
years. They all follow.
Ms. McCue:
Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw:
Any other questions for our Petitioner?
Mr. Ventura: Ms. Pi, your application says that you are going to do therapeutic
massage.
Ms. Pi: Yes.
Mr. Ventura: Do you have a certification to do that? Do you have license to do
that?
Ms. Pi.. Yes I do.
Mr. Ventura: What kind of therapeutic massage do you do?
Ms. Pi: We do mostly acupressure and deep tissue.
Mr. Ventura: What kinds of problems do people have that they would come to
you?
Ms. Pi.. Mostly the back and neck problems.
Mr. Ventura: Are these muscle problems or skeletal problems?
May 29, 2019
29170
Ms. Pc I'm sorry??
Mr. Ventura: I am not asking my question well, but is this something that can
be fixed with massage or this just a part of another therapy?
Ms. Pi: Yes. I do like everyday almost.
Mr. Ventura: Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you. Mr. Long?
Mr. Long: The individual rooms, they have existing walls or are you going
to have walls built that go all the way up to the ceiling?
Ms. Pi: Yeah, I will build a wall myself because of the empty space.
Mr. Long: Ok, then there are doors that will close so that if I am getting a
massage ... are the rooms private, are they closed? Is that
correct?
Ms. Pi: Yes. Correct.
Mr. Long: You have four rooms. Are you planning on having four massage
therapists working?
Ms. Pi: Yes. We have three single and one double for the couple.
Mr. Long: Ok, so a couple could come.
Ms. Pi: Yes.
Mr. Long: Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Any other questions for the Petitioner? See no other questions,
is there anybody in the audience that wishes to speak for or
against this item? Seeing no one coming forward. Ms. Pi, is there
anything else that you would like to let us know before we make
our decision?
Ms. Pi: I think I will do good business. It is a business helping people.
Lots of people come to us and then they come back because their
back hurts or neck hurts and we help lots of people I believe. I
hope I get through. Thank you
May 29, 2019
29171
Mr. Wilshaw: We always like to give you the last word, so thank you. With no
other comments I think can close the public hearing and ask for
a motion.
On a motion by McCue, seconded by Ventura, and adopted, it was
#05-46-2019 RESOLVED, that pursuant to a Public Hearing having been held
by the City Planning Commission on May 28, 2019, on Petition
2019-04--02-07 submitted by Ocean Wellness L.L.C. requesting
waiver use approval pursuant to Section 11.03(u) of the City of
Livonia Zoning Ordinance #543, as amended, to operate a
massage establishment at 16345 Middlebelt Road, located on the
west side of Middlebelt Road between Puritan Avenue and Six
Mile Road in the Northeast Y4 of Section 14, be denied for the
following reasons:
1. That the petitioner has failed to affirmatively show that the
proposed use is in compliance with all of the special and
general waiver use standards and requirements as set forth
in Sections 11.03 and 19.06 of the Zoning Ordinance #543;
2. That the petitioner has not adequately established that there
is a need for the proposed use in the shopping center;
3. That the petitioner has not sufficiently demonstrated that the
proposed use would be compatible to and in harmony with
the surrounding uses in the area; and
4. That the proposed use is contrary to the goals and
objectives of the Zoning Ordinance which, among other
things, are intended to ensure suitability and
appropriateness of uses.
FURTHER RESOLVED, that notice of the above hearing was
given in accordance with the provisions of Section 19.05 of
Zoning Ordinance #543, as amended
Mr. Wilshaw: Is there any discussion?
A roll call vote on the foregoing resolution resulted in the following:
AYES: McCue, Smiley, Ventura, Bongero, Caramagno,
Long
NAYS: Wilshaw
ABSENT: None
ABSTAIN: None
May 29, 2019
29172
Mr. Wilshaw: Ms. Pi, you have 10 days in which to appeal our decision in writing
to the City Council. That is your path if you would like to take that.
Thank you for coming.
Ms. Pi: Thank you.
ITEM #3 PETITION 2019-01-08-01 18th Street Development, LLC
Mr. Caramagno, Secretary, announced the next item on the agenda, Petition 2019-
01-08-01 submitted by l Wh Street Development, L.L.C.
requesting approval of all plans required by Sections 18.47 and
18.58 of the City of Livonia Zoning Ordinance #543, as amended,
in connection with a proposal to construct a professional/medical
office building at 39000 Seven Mile Road, located on the north
side of Seven Mile Road between the 1-275/96 Expressway and
Haggerty Road in the Southwest 1/4 of Section 6.
Mr. Taormina: This is a revision to a previously approved plan to build a
professional medical office building located on the north side of
Seven Mile Road between Haggerty Road and the 1-275/1-96
Expressway. This property is 35 acres in area, and it was on
February 25, 2019 that the site was rezoned from M-1 (Light
Manufacturing) to POI (High Rise Professional Office — Maximum
6 stories). The site contains, as you can see from this aerial
photograph, a building that is roughly 296,000 square feet in size.
It is presently occupied by A123 battery systems. Directly to the
north of the property is an oil well that is operated by West Bay
Oil Exploration. To the west is the Pentagon Center
entertainment campus zoned C-2. Across Seven Mile is the
Seven Mile Crossing office complex, as well as Andiamo
Restaurant and Schoolcraft College. On February 25, 2019
Council granted site plan approval for a 4 Y2 story office building
to be located at the north end of the property. Under the original
plan, the existing office and industrial building would remain as
part of the overall redevelopment of the site and be used primarily
as a warehouse. The reason this item is back before the Planning
Commission is because the Petitioner, 18th Street Development,
and the main tenant Beaumont health, have made substantial
changes. The new plan is for a slightly smaller four --story building.
It would be built near the center of the site, replacing the existing
office and industrial building, which would be demolished in its
entirety. The north end of the property where the building was
previously shown will be left vacant and retained by the owners
for future possible development. The ground floor area of the
new building is approximately 134,00 square feet. The original
building was 160,000 square feet. The building, as you can see,
May 29, 2019
29173
is positioned in what is currently the main parking lot that lies just
east of the existing A123 office building. At the closest point, the
building is roughly 105 feet from the 1-275 off ramp. Customer
and employee parking is mostly located on the west and south
sides of the building where the non -emergency entry points to the
building are located. The emergency drop off would be located
on the east side of the building with additional parking located on
the north side. There are other building support and ancillary
services located on the north and east sides of the buildings,
including the shipping and receiving area, an area designated for
the ground mounted mechanical equipment, a mobile MRI unit,
and the trash containment area. These elements would all be
screened using both masonry walls as well as landscaping. You
can see from this site plan that the Loop Road would remain. This
Loop Road would parallel the expressway on the east side of the
property as well as continue on the north and south sides where
it would connect and provide access to both Seven Mile and
Haggerty Roads. The road bi sects the northerly part of the
Historic Orson Everett property, where it would connect to the
access road that runs through the Pentagon Entertainment
campus and ties into Seven Mile at the signalized intersection,
which is located directly across from Sauk Drive at Schoolcraft
College. There would be 281 parking spaces required to support
the medical part of this development. There are 346 parking
spaces needed to support the physician or general office use.
Another 12 spaces would be needed for building support and
amenities. Overall, the amount of parking required by code is 639
parking spaces. The site plan shows 568 parking spaces,
resulting in a deficiency of 71 spaces. However, the Petitioner
believes that the parking that is needed to support the use is
roughly 560 spaces, but because the provided parking is less
than what is required by code, this is an item that will have to be
reviewed and approved by the Zoning Board of Appeals. There
is a fully detailed landscaping plan that was provided showing the
landscaping throughout the site, including around the new road.
Site lighting would be limited to a height of 20 feet. Many of these
items are similar to the site plan that was previously approved.
The one item you did not review in detail previously was the
design of the building. I am not going to be able to show you ... we
do have new renderings and if we wait a minute, it will provide a
much better understanding of what the building will look like.
Essentially, it will contain a combination of brick and metal panels
throughout the design. There are louvered screen wails on the
top portion of the building that would screen the mechanical
equipment. Overall, the height of the building is roughly 67 Y
feet. We have the architect here this evening who can show you
a material sample board, and the renderings that unfortunately I
May 29, 2019
29174
am having trouble showing you right now on the screen. We do
have some new items of correspondence Mr. Chairman, so
should read those out.
Mr. Wilshaw: Yes, let's read out correspondence and if the pictures load....
Mr. Taormina: The first item is from the Engineering Division, dated May 9, 2018,
which reads as follows: `In accordance with your request, the
Engineering Division has reviewed the above referenced petition.
We have no objections to the proposed project at this time. The
existing parcel is assigned the address of #39000 Seven Mile
Road. The legal description provided with the petition appears to
be correct and should be used in conjunction with his petition.
The existing site is currently serviced by public sanitary and water
main that can be extended to the proposed building. Storm sewer
detention will need to be provided for any new impervious areas.
The submitted drawings do not indicate any proposed utility
extensions, so we will review those items when full Engineering
drawings are submitted to this department. The owners have
been in contact with this Department and aware of the utility
requirements for the proposed development. The proposed
paving improvements shown on the submitted drawings, indicate
the new road will tie into the existing exit from the Pentagon
Centre Development. Prior to any construction, the owner will
need to provide access agreements from the other property
owners, or revise the proposed roadway to use their existing
approach. If the new layout is approved, the owner will be
required to remove the two existing approaches from Seven Mile
Road, and replace any missing or damaged sidewalk along the
frontage. Any work within the Seven Mile Road right-of-way will a
permit from the Wayne County Department of Public Services.
Also, right-of-way permits may be required from the Michigan
Department of Transportation depending on the access and
grading required to install the proposed walls and landscaping. "
The letter is signed by David W. Lear, P.E., Assistant City
Engineer. The second letter is from the Livonia Fire & Rescue
Division, dated May 9, 2019, which reads as follows: " This office
has reviewed the site plan submitted in connection with a
proposal to construct a profession allmedical office building on
property located at the above referenced address. We have no
objections to this proposal with the following stipulations: 1.
Subject building(s) are to be provided with an automatic sprinkler
system, and on site hydrants shall be located between 50 feet
and 100 feet from the Fire Department connection (north side of
building). 2. Adequate hydrants shall be provided and located
with spacing consistent with the use group. (Please add location
to be determined at the pre -construction meeting.) 3. A fire
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access road shall be provided with not less than 20 feet of
unobstructed width and have a minimum of 13 feet 6 inches of
vertical clearance in accordance to 18.2.3.4.1.1 and 18.2.3.4.1.2
of NFPA 1, 2015. 4. Fire lanes shall be marked with wall or pole
mounted signs that have the words: FIRE LANE — NO PARKING
painted on both sides (for pole mount) or single sided (for wall
mount) in contrasting colors at a size and spacing approved by
the Authority Having Jurisdiction. 5. Fire Department Access
shall be maintained in accordance with Chapter 18, Fire
Department Access and Water Supply, NFPA 1, 2015. 6.
Commercial kitchen Hood and Duct fire suppression shall be a
UL 300 system and comply with NFPA 96. (If a system is
installed.) 7. Knox Box installation is required for Fire Department
access. 8. CO2 detection required for beverage distribution
systems and coolers (if installed). If tank/tanks are 100 lbs. or
greater. (Per 20151FC 5307.1)."The letter is signed by Keith Bo,
Fire Marshal. The third letter is from the Division of Police, dated
May 15, 2019, which reads as follows: "1 have reviewed the plans
in connection with the petition. 1 have no objections to the
proposal." The letter is signed by Brian Leigh, Sergeant, Traffic
Bureau. The fourth letter is from the Inspection Department,
dated May 22, 2019, which reads as follows: "Pursuant to your
request, the above referenced Petition has been reviewed. 1. A
variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals would be required for
the deficient number of parking spaces. 2. Signage has not been
reviewed. Signage must conform to the sign ordinance or obtain
a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals. This Department
has no further objections to this Petition. I trust this provides the
requested information." The letter is signed by Jerome Hanna,
Director of Inspection. The fifth letter is from the Finance
Department, dated May 10, 2019, which reads as follows: "1 have
reviewed the addresses connected with the above noted petition.
As there are no outstanding amounts receivable, general or water
and sewer, 1 have no objections to the proposal." The letter is
signed by Coline Coleman, Chief Accountant. The sixth letter is
from the Treasurer's Department, dated May 8, 2019, which
reads as follows: `in accordance with your request, the
Treasurer's Office has reviewed the address connected with the
above noted petition. At this time, there are no outstanding
amounts receivable for taxes. Therefore, 1 have no objections to
the proposal."The letter is signed by Lynda Scheel, Treasurer.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Mr. Taormina. We do have the pictures of the
renderings that Mr. Taormina is trying to bring up on his computer
in front of us. I am sure our very capable Livonia television staff
will be able to zoom in on those pictures sometime during the
presentation to make sure our TV audience gets to see them as
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well. With that I will let our Petitioner come forward and speak to
this item. They may even want to talk about these renderings and
material samples that they have. Good evening, sir.
Tom Kelly, 1621 18t" Street, Denver, CO, thank you, Commissioners once again,
and we appreciate your time to revisit this with us. As mentioned
in the study session, when we really looked at the prior site plan
that was previously approved, there was an intended purpose for
the warehouse that when push came to shove, it wasn't the
highest and best use for this site and there were opportunities to
be able to utilize, for Beaumont, those needs elsewhere and just
focus on what the best long term is for this site. What we have in
front of you is very familiar. 4.5 per 1000 parking stalls is what
we previously proposed. The building has shrunk so the parking
is reduced. In our experience of developing these facilities
around the country, that is sufficient. That is what we are able to
function with and not have a plethora of empty parking stalls. In
addition, we now have a site plan that the building is a little more
centrally located. Loop Road remains unchanged from what you
previously saw. We are working with the Pentagon Association,
and we are working with the Historic Preservation Commission to
find amicable solutions to be able to achieve this. We know that
the site plan is conditionally up to us being able to do this. In
addition to the site plan, we are proud to present, first and
foremost, our partner on this project, Beaumont. Hence, the
prototype of what you see is what we are working with Beaumont
on to develop, not just here, but in other locations in Michigan. A
new prototype for an outpatient facility. They are all built in a way
that is going to have a Beaumont brand and feel to I,t but is going
to be able to attract independent physicians. The intent of this is
to have full comprehensive outpatient care under one roof, where
Beaumont provides higher acuity, more hospital -based care, and
the independent physicians have an opportunity to come in and
compliment those services. It is a well-rounded care network all
under one roof for the community of Livonia and some of the
adjacent surrounding communities. Now that the renderings are
pulled up, the overall look and feel of this is going to be a four-
story, more of a modern window, glass, brick, metal fagade. Our
architect, Kendall Ruhberg, from HKS is able to speak more when
it comes to the architectural elements. Kendall, if you wouldn't
mind elaborating on these and I believe we have them in a way
that we can kind of give you a rotation around the building, orient
you as we do so.
Kendall Ruhberg, HKS Architects, 235 E Main St # 102C, Northville, MI, the
materials that are proposed, as Tom indicated, are predominately
brick, glass, and metal panel accents, in the sense of the detailing
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of the true architecture of the entire fagade. The metal panel,
which is shown in these renderings to be a steel grey color, is
represented on the board. Below we have two other metal
materials that we are proposing, they are really to be around the
window frames, whether it is the high story volume of the glass
which we are referring to as the lanterns in this design are really
the lighter color of the metal and clear glass. The punched
windows we are proposing are a darker frosted color, toned to the
glass, and that will have different color of the aluminum frame for
that. The blue accent, as Tom mentioned, is following the
prototypical brand image. We want to bring in some of the blue
architecturally into the facility for that recognition of that brand.
The brick is a grey with a grey mortar. You have a real modern
sensibility. The different coursing that we are proposing also, if
you pick up on the verticals in that fagade, we are also turning the
coursing slightly. On one of the facades you probably noticed in
the actual submission that we provided you, there is a section that
is facing the parking area which has a combination of punch
window and strip window. We are proposing in that strip window
area to provide some relief to that facade in its full dimension. It
would be every other coursing as you move vertical across the
building. A horizontal expression of that brick would be pushed
forward slightly to give a shade/shadow appearance and it will
actually make that brick of all uniform color actually appear
different because of the shade/shadow in that tone. A little bit of
architectural detailing to provide some interest on that side.
Mr. Wilshaw:: A little architectural trickery huh?
Mr. Ruhberg: That is a sense of what is proposed before you and the
architecture of the building. I can answer any questions you may
have specific to the architectural character and material.
Mr. Wilshaw: While you are here, are there any questions about the
architecture of this building? Doesn't look like it so, thank you for
giving that presentation. We will make sure your presentation is
attributed to your name. Mr. Kelly, is there anything else you
would like to add?
Mr. Kelly: No. I appreciate the opportunity again, and 1 am here to answer
any questions you may have.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you for coming and we will see if there are any questions
from the Commission.
Ms. Smiley: My question was about the signage. Is it going to say Beaumont
on the blue? Is that the plan?
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Mr. Kelly: We are working with Little Fish Sign Design company that
Beaumont has a long relationship with to explore signage
opportunities for the building facades. That will be presented as
a separate package, but it has not been finalized and we are
looking into that right now.
Ms. Smiley: Does Beaumont have something like this somewhere else? I
know your doing a lot of building at Beaumont but...
Mr. Kelly: This is the first of this new initiative for Beaumont and outpatient
care center. Beaumont has been more hospital based in the past.
With the changing in healthcare and moving to a more outpatient
building rate, we are all paying a much higher deductible and
paying more premiums for our insurance, the outpatient care is
designed to be able to treat 90%+ of medical cases and do it in a
much more economical way. We are doing this initiative and
Beaumont couldn't be happier to be doing this, being able to
provide the highest quality healthcare but at a much lower rate
you would receive on campus at a Beaumont hospital. There is
this one and there is another one in the northeastern suburb of
Michigan that we are working towards down the road, but these
are the first prototypes of this type of facility.
Ms. Smiley: So, this will have an emergency room?
Mr. Kelly: It will have an emergency room, it will have ....
Ms. Smiley: Outpatient surgeries?
Mr. Kelly: It will. It will have a surgery center. It will have a lab. It will have
a comprehensive imaging, and a pharmacy operated by
Beaumont. It will have infusion therapy within the facility and then
a quite a bit of both specialty and primary care. Everything from
moms and kids is a big focus for this and focusing on family
healthcare within this facility. Whatever you can think of from an
outpatient care perspective, primary care, to special care is what
is envisioned in this. In addition to what you mentioned earlier,
the more hospital -based services.
Ms. Smiley: Will you also have doctors' offices in here?
Mr. Kelly: Approximately half of the building will be Beaumont and the other
half will be private physicians. There will be primary care,
OBIGYN, possibly even a dentist. It will be a mixed tenancy
within the building. We are going to own the building as the
developer. Beaumont is going to lease half of the building.
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29179
Beaumont owns the land. We are going to do a long --term ground
lease just to kind of help paint the picture of the arrangement, so
it is a long-term arrangement/structure. It will be full of
independent physicians. Half of the building will be.
Ms. Smiley: When you say independent, they aren't Beaumont doctors, they
are independent physicians that have privileges at Beaumont?
Mr. Kelly: Yes, mam. That is exactly right.
Ms. Smiley: Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Other questions for our Petitioner?
Mr. Ventura: At our study meeting we had a long discussion about how you
were doing with the Historic Commission and your ability to move
the road access from Chippewa north and to get through the
parking lot adjacent to the theatre. What kind of progress are you
making on that?
Mr. Kelly: We have a June 11th meeting with the Historic Preservation
Commission. A vote that would be coming up, so we are working
right now on .... we have a memorandum of understanding that
has gone back and forth and we are working through an updated
version of that, to be able to present to them, based on some of
the feedback that we received from out last meeting with them.
Mr. Ventura: That is talking about having the roadwork located on your site
plan here tonight?
Mr. Kelly: Yes, sir.
Mr. Ventura: We also discussed getting the road further north and working with
the property owner up there. Are you having any luck
accomplishing that?
Mr. Kelly: No, we have not had anything that is definitive. We have been
exploring every option, but no we have not been successful to
date with any alternatives.
Mr. Ventura: Thank you.
Mr. Long: Just really quick, once you get all of the approvals, assuming you
get the approvals, what is your construction time table? When do
you think this facility will be open?
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Mr. Kelly: We are looking to break ground this year and then be open as
soon as the 4f'' quarter of 2020 to see patients. The full building
will probably not be fully open by the end of 2020, but leading into
the 1st quarter of 2021, as we do some of the buildouts for some
of the independent physicians.
Mr. Long: Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Anybody have any other questions for our Petitioner?
Mr. Bongero: At our study meeting I think you were going to talk about the traffic
and possibly do a traffic study?
Mr. Kelly: Yes, we have had numerous traffic studies. We are in the
process right now of updating it because before we had a larger
building with the existing facility still in operation as a warehouse
so that resulted in more trips than what is currently there. We are
updating the traffic study to eliminate the existing facility with our
smaller building. The traffic is only going to get better than from
what we previously presented. I don't have that latest and
greatest yet.
Mr. Bongero: My concern on that Loop Road, where is comes out from behind
the historical building, where it connects to Chippewa Street. 1
was out there today at 5, and it was a bear. I was trying to get on
to Seven Mile. It is really tight right there. I don't know if those
three lanes .....looks like it might help to go north instead of
feeding everybody to the south going toward Seven Mile. I don't
know how you would make it work. I couldn't get out of there
today. It's bad.
Mr. Kelly: It is and the prior traffic study we had recommended that there
needs to be timing adjustments to all of the signalized
intersections in that area. That is part of what we are proposing,
for our development, is to take that on. The updated traffic
study... again, it is only going to get better than what we had
previously. That traffic signalization, the sequencing of it, needs
to be adjusted, and certainly during peak movie times. Even after
hours from your typical rush hour traffic there is build ups there.
Mr. Bongero: One last thing, where the Loop Road connects to Chippewa,
between the historic house and Chippewa it is super low there.
That is going to be a lot of fill. I know you guys were concerned
about retaining walls and stuff. I don't know how you are going
to be able to go around it or if you can grade it out. There is going
to be a lot of fill needed to bring that road up to Chippewa. When
I was standing down there at the bottom of it, there is probably at
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least a six to seven -foot height difference from Seven Mile to
where I was standing. For that road you are going to need to
bring in a lot of fill, and I was just wondering how you are going
to make that work with the house staying there. Then you have
the parking lot and dumpster enclosure to the north, you know
what I am saying?
Mr. Kelly: I do. It would be quasi bridge with .... it is solved with a culvert for
the wetland crossing and build the road up. It is a tricky
engineering feat, but yes, we are well aware of it. It would not
impact the building. 1 think we are 32 feet away from the back of
the house, so we have ample engineering opportunities to make
that crossing work without having it impact the physical
component of the building.
Mr. Bongero: So, you are looking more at a bridge than grading it out? Is that
what you are saying?
Mr. Kelly: That is correct with a culvert.
Mr. Bongero: I think that would be a better solution than trying to fill all of that
in. I don't know what you would do with the water.
Mr. Kelly: We have been working with a wetland consultant and exploring
all of the impacts, outside the Historic Preservation Commission,
but the wetland impacts and how we can engineer this and make
our impact as minimal as possible.
Mr. Bongero: Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Mr. Bongero. Your expertise in this matter is always
appreciated. Is there any other questions for our Petitioner? Is
there anybody in the audience that wishes to speak for or against
this item? We have some folks from the Historic Preservation
Commission here I believe.
Betsy Calhoun, 33023 Grennada, Livonia, MI, more members would have been
here tonight but for scheduling conflicts.... this is an exciting
project and the Historic Preservation is working with them. The
Historic Preservation Commission, like the Planning
Commission, is composed of citizens who take our appointed
responsibilities seriously. We are trying our very best to be good
stewards for our community's heritage and we have been open
and forthcoming about our concerns for the Orson -Everett
property. The entire site, not just the house, is on the local and
national register of historic places. We do understand that this
development will be a good thing for Livonia, so we have been
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working with Beaumont in good faith to respect the historic
integrity of the Everett property by moving or rebuilding the replica
outbuilding and to minimize other impacts upon the house. In the
weeks since the planning study session, we have had time to
reflect upon and discuss the surprise revelation from last weeks
meeting. In it we learned that the actual reason for the 10-foot
boundary at the north end of the proposed Loop Road was so
that Beaumont would not have to build a retaining wall. The HPC
has been very clear that the Loop Road threatens the structural
and historical integrity of Livonia's only Queen Anne structure.
We have continually requested the greatest distance possible
from the house. In response, we have been told repeatedly that
zoning requires this distance, but this appears to not actually be
the case. Last week, the three lanes of the access road were
also mentioned, maybe they won't be needed anymore if they got
an updated traffic study. I did confirm the traffic study but maybe
we could see that study to see what it talks about. I agree with
what everyone on our commission has been saying all along, that
there is going to be an insignificant amount of traffic turning north
into the movie complex after visiting the hospital. Beaumont's
position is that they don't want traffic backing up but consider that
this extra lane is for traffic leaving not entering. As they said, the
HPC has a meeting scheduled with Beaumont and `[Wh Street
developers on June 11t" to discuss and resolve the distance
between the house and Loop Road. We will continue in the dialog
in order to work these issues out. Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: Thank you, Ms. Calhoun. I appreciate you coming and giving us
that perspective.
Kathleen Glynn, 15566 North Blue Skies, Livonia, MI, Betsy's remarks are quite
sufficient. I did want to say we haven't seen any updated plans
and we do have the meeting on the 11t". if the plans are
presented that day, we will need some time to look at them and
discuss them, so I don't think we can do a vote at that time.
However, if we do get some final plans and these issues have
been worked out then we will have no problem voting at that time.
Some of the most important issues are the distance from the
house to the road, the issue of the outbuilding, and one other
concern is the planned use for the building. An empty building
will only deteriorate. As Betsy mentioned, this is a very unique
building in Livonia. We appreciate the time and consideration you
are giving to this and we are sure we will come to a satisfactory
solution to this. Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw: We will ask that the Petitioner try to get those updated plans and
information to you. I am sure they will be able to in advance and
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29183
if for some reason they can't, you can always get those through
the Planning Department as well because they are part of our
public record. There are always ways to get those things.
Ms. Glynn; Thank you.
Mr. Wilshaw:: Is there anyone else wishing to speak on this item? Ok, I don't
see anyone else. Again, we always give the Petitioner the last
word. Mr. Kelly, if there is anything else you would like to add?
Mr. Kelly: No, thank you. I appreciate it.
Mr. Wilshaw: With that, I will go to the Commission and ask for a motion.
On a motion by Long, seconded by Bongero, and unanimously adopted, it was
#05-47-2019 RESOLVED, that the City Planning Commission does hereby
recommend to the City Council that Petition 2019-01-08-01
submitted by 18th Street Development, L.L.C. requesting
approval of all plans required by Sections 18.47 and 18.58 of the
City of Livonia Zoning Ordinance #543, as amended, in
connection with a proposal to construct a professional/medical
office building at 39000 Seven Mile Road, located on the north
side of Seven Mile Road between the 1-275196 Expressway and
Haggerty Road in the Southwest'/4 of Section 6, be approved and
subject to the following conditions:
That the Overall Site Plan identified as Sheet No. C2.10
dated May 6, 2019, as revised, prepared by HKS Architects,
is hereby approved and shall be adhered to;
2. That the OPCC Site Plan identified as Sheet No. C2.20
dated May 6, 2019, as revised, prepared by HKS Architects,
is hereby approved and shall be adhered to;
3. That this approval is subject to the petitioner being granted
a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals for any
deficient parking;
4. That the Landscape Plans identified as Sheet No's. 1-1.10
and 1-1.20, both dated May 6, 2019, as revised, prepared by
HKS Architects, are hereby approved and shall be adhered
to;
5. That all disturbed lawn areas, except for those with steep
side slopes, shall be sodded in lieu of hydro -seeding and
properly irrigated;
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29184
6. That the Exterior Elevations Plans identified as Sheet No's.
A5.00 and A5.01, both dated May 6, 2019 prepared by HKS
Architects, are hereby approved and shall be adhered to;
7. That all rooftop mechanical equipment shall be concealed
from public view on all sides by screening that shall be of a
compatible character, material and color to other exterior
materials on the building;
8. That all trash containers shall be properly screened from
view with masonry enclosure walls constructed, and the
enclosure gates shall be of solid panel steel construction or
durable, long-lasting solid panel fiberglass; and all ground -
mounted mechanical equipment and mobile MRI facilities
shall be screened appropriately using masonry walls and/or
landscaping;
9. That this site shall meet either the City of Livonia or the
Wayne County Storm Water Management Ordinance,
whichever applies, and shall secure any required permits,
including storm water management permits, wetlands
permits and soil erosion and sedimentation control permits,
from Wayne County, the City of Livonia, and/or the State of
Michigan Department of Natural Resources and
Environment (DNRE);
10. That only conforming signage is approved with this petition,
and any additional signage shall be separately submitted for
review and approval by the Zoning Board of Appeals;
11. That all light fixtures shall not exceed twenty feet (20') in
height and shall be aimed and shielded to minimize stray
light trespassing across property lines and glaring into
adjacent roadways;
12. That the specific plans referenced in this approving
resolution shall be submitted to the Inspection Department
at the time the building permits are applied for; and
13. That the final alignment and geometry of the access road
connecting to the Pentagon Centre Entertainment Campus
road shall be subject to reasonable adjustments as
determined by the Planning and Inspection Departments,
and the final grades, side -slopes, road elevations, utility
placement, and drainage of said roadway shall all be subject
to the final approval of the City of Livonia Engineering
Division; and
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29185
14. Pursuant to Section 19.10 of Ordinance No. 543, the Zoning
Ordinance of the City of Livonia, this approval is valid for a
period of one year only from the date of approval by the City
Council, and unless a building permit is obtained and
construction is commenced, this approval shall be null and
void at the expiration of said period.
Mr. Taormina:: Related to item #10, this condition reads that the sign plan would
have to come back before the Commission for review. Is that
something that you would like to see or are you comfortable
sending that only to the Zoning Board of Appeals for any signage
that is in excess of what the ordinance allows?
Mr. Wilshaw: The maker of the motion has the option on that one.
Mr. Long: I would be fine if it just went to Zoning Board of Appeals and did
not come back to the Planning Commission.
Mr. Wilshaw: Supporter?
Mr. Bongero: I agree.
Mr. Wilshaw: We will base the motion on that going directly to Zoning Board of
Appeals. Any discussion on the motion and that minor change?
Seeing none, Secretary, please call the roll.
Mr. Wilshaw, Chairman, declared the motion is carried and the foregoing resolution
adopted.
ITEM #4 APPROVAL OF MINUTES 1,142"d Public Hearings and
Regular Meeting
Mr. Caramagno, Secretary, announced the next item on the agenda, Approval of
the Minutes of the 1,142nd Public Hearing and Regular Meeting
held on May 14, 2019.
On a motion by Long , seconded by McCue, and unanimously adopted, it was
#05-48-2019 RESOLVED, that the Minutes of 1,142"d Public Hearings and
Regular Meeting held by the Planning Commission on May 14,
2019, are hereby approved.
A roll call vote on the foregoing resolution resulted in the following:
AYES: Long, McCue, Smiley, Ventura, Bongero,
Caramagno, Wilshaw
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29186
NAYS- None
ABSENT-, None
ABSTAIN: None
Mr. Wilshaw, Chairman, declared the motion is carried and the foregoing resolution
adopted.
On a motion duly made, seconded and unanimously adopted, the 1,143rd Public
Hearings and Regular Meeting held on May 28, 2019, titres adjourned at 9:21 p.m.,
Sam C&amagno, Secretary
ATTEST:
Ian Wilshiaw, Chairman