HomeMy WebLinkAboutPUBLIC HEARING - PH 2016-02-22 - APPEAL OF REZONING DENIAL
CITY OF LIVONIA
PUBLIC HEARING
Minutes of Meeting Held on Monday, February 22, 2016
______________________________________________________________________
A Public Hearing of the Council of the City of Livonia was held at the City Hall
Auditorium on Monday, February 22, 2016.
MEMBERS PRESENT: Kathleen E. McIntyre, President
Brandon M. Kritzman, Vice President
Scott Bahr
Maureen Miller Brosnan
Jim Jolly
Brian Meakin
Cathy K. White
MEMBERS ABSENT: None
OTHERS PRESENT: Mark Taormina, Director of Planning
Don Knapp, City Attorney
Bonnie J. Murphy, CER-2300, Certified Electronic Recorder
This is a Public Hearing relative to Petition 2015-12-01-03 submitted by Michigan
Properties Group, LLC, to rezone the property located on the north side of Schoolcraft
Road between Inkster and Middlebelt Roads, 28900 Schoolcraft Road, in the Southwest
¼ of Section 24 from C-2 (General Business) to M-1 (Light Manufacturing). And just to
note, this petition was denied by the City Planning Commission at their regular meeting
of January 26, 2016. The City Clerk has mailed notices to all persons in this area
effected by the proposed changes and all the other requirements of Ordinance No. 543
of the Zoning Ordinance have been fulfilled. The Public Hearing was called to order at
7:02 p.m. with President Kathleen McIntyre presiding. There were twelve people in the
audience. The Public Hearing is now open for comments. Please state your name and
address before making your comments.
McIntyre: We’ll begin with Mr. Taormina.
Taormina: Yes, thank you. This rezoning petition involves the site of the former
Cloverlanes Bowling Alley which is located on Schoolcraft Road. The
facility has now been closed for several months and is currently in
receivership. This site was developed around 1962 and the bowling alley
itself contains roughly 60,000 square feet of floor space. Looking at the
zoning map, you can see the site in question is zoned C-2, General
Commercial. Properties laying to the east as well as to the west are
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similarly zoned; you have Henry Ford Medical Center to the west and you
have a variety of commercial properties to the east. Looking to the north
are residential homes that are part of the Mar-Git Subdivision Number 2,
zoned R-1, one-family residential, and then to the south of course is the I-
96 Expressway and Schoolcraft Road.
The purpose of the rezoning is to facilitate the redevelopment of this
property for two separate uses that are currently allowed only in an
industrial zone. The first would be and the primary use would be that of an
indoor climate controlled self-storage facility and then secondarily, the
other use would involve the use of the surplus parking lot area for outdoor
storage of recreational vehicles.
The indoor self-storage building would essentially replace the existing
bowling alley utilizing the same footprint. The structure would be
conceptually at this point two stories in height and contain a gross floor
area on both levels of the building of roughly 116,000 square feet. On
either side of the proposed self-storage facility between the building and
the east and west property lines the plan shows storage lots for
recreational vehicles and it is intended that the RV stalls that wrap around
the perimeter of these lots would be covered, would actually be better
referred to as RV ports but are carports, essentially larger and designed
for larger recreational vehicles. The lot and the RV storage areas would
be fully enclosed with a 6-foot fence, access to the site would be
controlled via a gated entrance that would be centrally located on the
site’s frontage along Schoolcraft Road and there would be an exit gate
near the west end of the property.
The Future Land Use Plan does show the property as General
Commercial, the Petitioner is voluntarily offering a statement of conditions
that would limit the use of the property as approved. As was indicated
earlier, the Planning Commission unanimously adopted a denying
resolution on the change of zoning, however, on its own motion they are
considering a language change that would treat indoor self-storage
facilities as a waiver use in the C-2 District and in fact, tomorrow evening
the Planning Commission holds its Public Hearing on that item.
And with that, Madam President, I’ll answer any questions you may have.
McIntyre: Thank you. Council?
Bahr: Madam President?
McIntyre: Mr. Bahr.
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Bahr: Through the Chair to Mark, was the primary reason for the Planning
Commission’s denial the fact that they were uncomfortable with this going
to M-1 zoning and with what they’re considering now, is that something
that would have alleviated your concern or was it somethings else?
Taormina: Well, yes, to answer the first part of your question, were they concerned
about introducing M-1 zoning in this area? Absolutely, yes. The change
to the C-2 District regulations that would treat this type of use as a waiver
addresses just the indoor climate controlled self-storage component. It
would not, however, address the issue of the RV storage,that still would
require M-1 zoning in order for that aspect of this development to move
forward.
Bahr: Thanks.
McIntyre: Councilman Meakin.
Meakin: Could we do the outside storage with a waiver to the C-2?
Taormina: Well, that’s only if the City were willing to consider that type of use within a
C-2 zoning district. I think that that introduces some complications
because it isn’t an intensive outdoor activity, it seems most appropriate in
our industrial zones just given the nature of the use. We may have a
unique circumstance on this particular property, but if you consider where
many C-2 zones are located, I think that would present some
complications, just because by the nature of the use. So, it’s something
we can consider but it wasn’t something that the Planning Commission
has decided to bring forward to this body for recommendation.
Meakin: Well, since you just created the uniqueness to this zone or to this property,
would it be easier to just then go to the Zoning Board of
Appeals on it?
Taormina: Well, I’m going to refer that question to Mr. Knapp, I think there’s equal
complications of treating this as a use variance by nature of the fact that
the C-2 zone, it would have to be demonstrated that it couldn’t otherwise
be used for the zoning that is currently established. We know that for forty
years, fifty years it was used in compliance with the C-2 District.
Knapp: If I may, Madam President, I think Mr. Taormina is right, the use variance
is, as a former ZBA member, it is for those instances where there is no
other real alternative use. And this place while it is shuttered, it was a
commercial property for forty years and certainly just because it’s
shuttered now doesn’t mean it’s not viable in its current zoning, it could be
used as commercial. Whether or not the property owner wants to do to
that is a different question. So I think realistically that’s not an option.
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McIntyre: Thank you, Mr. Knapp. Would you like to ask the Petitioner to come
forward, Mr. Taormina?
Taormina: Yes, at this time I think that would be appropriate.
D’Ascenzo: Thank you. Ernie D’Ascenzo, Michigan Properties Group, 34355
Gloucester Circle, Farmington Hills, Michigan.
McIntyre: Good evening.
D’Ascenzo: Good evening.
McIntyre: And what else would you like to tell us about your project?
D’Ascenzo: I put together a quick slide show, if we could. I’m a developer by trade,
commercial real estate is what I develop. I brought one of the first Pei Wei
to Michigan, which is P.F. Changs, brought one of the first Chipotle’s to
Michigan before anybody knew what Chipotle’s was. Built CVS’s, T-
Mobile’s, Casual Male, Portrait Innovation, brought the first Portrait
Innovation to Michigan.
Whenever I look at a site, we look at the same thing that the City of
Livonia is looking at, is it the highest and best use and what is the highest
and best use. When you look at it from a commercial stance, which as a
commercial developer, if you can give me that first slide, Mark,
commercial development nowadays runs on a co-tenancy, so when you
look at the slide everything south of the freeway is on a co-tenancy as far
as the tenants, so Burger King wants to be by McDonald’s, McDonald’s
wants to be by Burger King, and those co-tenancies are what makes it
work. Now when you look at everything commercially, it’s south of the
freeway, there’s really no commercial north of the freeway. So in order for
this location to be commercial you have to have some type of impulse
along with it. With the expressway exit which is after the property, that
means you have to go past the property, come all the way around, then go
back over the service drive to get to it. That makes it more or less a
destination location, a Home Depot or a Lowe’s, those type of things. But
again we put synergies together for commercial, they all want to be by
each other. Nobody is going to go out by themselves and try to put a
location like that together as far as a junior box or a box. And I know Mr.
Knapp mentioned it being commercial; we don’t see it being commercial,
it’s on a freeway, fast moving traffic, it’s more of a destination location.
When we did the commercial analysis of all the commercial going south of
the freeway and further down by Plymouth Road and Middlebelt, that’s
where the synergies are for commercial. We looked at it as far as a hotel,
because it was mentioned as a hotel at one time. If you could go to the
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next slide, Mark. So you have the hotel right next door currently to the
property in the center, you have the Quality Inn over behind the Olive
Garden, you have the new Holiday Inn Express going in to the east by
Inkster Road, and you have two proposed hotels going in just on the other
side of the freeway. Now, again the hotels on the other side of the
freeway make sense because you can walk over to the Panera, you can
walk over to the shopping districts, there’s a co-tenancy there. To put
another hotel next to a hotel on the other side of the freeway isn’t going to
make sense. It’s too competitive. And additionally, the one to the south of
the freeway are going to be close to the shopping district which makes
that that walkable area.
We looked at office buildings, currently the office buildings in the area,
there’s a medical office building there behind the Olive Garden, it’s about
30 percent vacant right now. This building is an obsolete building, it’s not a
reusable building so the building is going to have to be tore down and
rebuilt. If you tore it down and rebuilt it for office, it would be close to a
$30 dollar rent, which would be about 30 percent over the current rate for
rent on office which wouldn’t make economic sense for somebody to do
that. Especially with that vacancy. Detroit has about 19 percent vacancy.
Detroit, Metropolitan Detroit has a 19 percent vacancy rate current. And
the average price is somewhere around nineteen, twenty dollars. If we
tore this down and rebuilt it as office, the economics would be closer to
thirty dollars a square foot. So we looked at all these aspects as to what
to do with the property with the footprint that’s there, in making it self-
storage which is a destination location, then also recognizing the issues
that the neighbors have with the bowling alley and the venting that we got
from the neighbors because of the bowling alley. I’ve read the papers and
I’ve talked to all of the neighbors and we’ve talked to all of the neighbors,
it’s been a nightmare obviously. And so the other thing is to say C-2 and
say to the neighbors hey, it’s going to be another restaurant or it’s going to
be something else, I don’t think anything else commercially can go there
myself, but if I was one of the neighbors and you say a restaurant is going
to go in there on C-2, you’ve got the restaurant and you’ve still got the
midnight, two in the morning stuff, you’re going to have liquor, you’ve got
the grills, and you’ve got the smells and you’ve got the noise. What we’re
proposing is very low impact. There’s roughly twenty, twenty-five cars a
day, twenty-one cars a day is the national average. It’s a unique piece of
property because you have an obsolete building. The building has to
come down. Nobody can reuse that building. It’s all glass, it’s all single
pane. You couldn’t heat that building, you couldn’t maintain that building,
especially with the roof and the way it’s designed. If we can go to the next
slide.
So, again, it’s a unique building. When you look at the footprint of the
building, we’ve married RV storage with the building before on the climate
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control, it works very well. If you have a boat, you want to store your stuff
inside somewhere, your skis, your ropes, all your expensive stuff. If you
have certain RVs, certain snowmobiles, you want to store certain things
inside, it works really well. The nice thing, too, with the outdoor storage or
the RVs recreational vehicles, is usually you park your RV for the winter, it
stays for six months, and you pull it out in the summer. You can’t get any
lower impact for the neighborhood because you’re parking it, you’re
leaving it there and you’re paying and coming back and taking it out. So
both of those are very low impact. So what we’re proposing is what Mark
mentioned is the same footprint, so we’re not changing the area in any
way, shape or form, we’re using the exact same footprint, same utility
lines, we’re decreasing the back of the building to match the footprint as
you’ll see in the photos later on that the back of the building actually hangs
over and there’s also an outdoor area out back where they have all the
make-up air which we’ve heard a ton of complaints from the neighbors on
the make-up air and how loud it is in the summer and what have you. So
we’re looking at, now the building I know looks plain, because we do just
plain because we really want the involvement from the municipality and
from everybody involved to say hey, we kind of want something like this,
we want something to look like this, which we’d love to work with the City
of Livonia and the Planning and the Law Department to make that happen.
But I know it looks plain. But it’s just a concept. So again here’s the site
plan, the same footprint, and then the RV parking, again, with the carports.
The carports are going to create two things: one is the noise from the
freeway, the lighting from the freeway, the trucks that go down the service
drive, it’s going to take all that noise away from the neighborhood and it’s
going to be a great buffer for the neighborhood because it will catch all
that noise and all that sound. And again, it’s all climate controlled, it’s all
gated, it’s all secured, there’s cameras on site, there’s keypads to get into
through the gates and into the building both in and exit.
So again, here’s the carports, and it’s just renderings to give you an idea,
we can go to the next one. Here is the RVs. On the covered RV, we find
that on covered, some people won’t even have their RVs there and will
actually pay the year round bill just so it’s available to them to come back
in the fall or come back in the spring. That makes the impact to the
property even less. But we find that because covered is so valuable, you
can’t find covered. Our feasibility studies, again, we talked about vacancy
for the office was roughly 20, 30 percent, our vacancies rate for Climate
Control is 5 percent for Climate Control. And if you can put RV covered
out there, it wil be filled. But people will pay the year-round price because
they don’t want to lose the option of not having the parking. So it’s a very
low impact.
This is one in Plymouth that we helped pour some concrete on and did
with a friend of ours, it’s just a plain, simple building. We would like to
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dress ours up a little bit more, we want ours to be a showpiece. We’re
looking at state of the art, something that hasn’t been done – we’ve done it
before but not to this concept. Not to have the covered the way it is and
have everything laid out. This would be a first class showpiece for sure in
Michigan, if not one of the top pieces in the United States.
So you walk in the front office, you’ve got Bob at the front counter there,
he does all of your paperwork with you. You can see behind Bob there is
two big screens, those are all the cameras that go through the hallways,
the property constantly on motion detectors to keep an eye on everything.
Key pads, every time the key pad is noted, it’s noted, recorded. To the
right is a conference room, what we’ll do is we have a small conference
room and to the left over there we have P.O. boxes. So, your small
business owners will have a P.O. box there, they’ll pick up their mail,
they’ll go to the conference room, they’ll make a few calls. If they’re a
pharmaceutical rep, they’ll go to their locker, they’ll grab their samples for
the day and they’ll leave. They only do that maybe once a week. They
pick up their mail, they do their thing, what have you. But what it does is it
takes all that small business out of the community and gives it somewhere
to do business nowadays. Fifteen, twenty percent of our business is that
concept right there.
It’s the same thing with the RVs. It takes the boats and the RVs out of the
neighborhood, off the side of the drive, off the side of the house, and gives
them somewhere to go.
So you’ll see up here on the left is the keypad, after you finish with Bob in
the office you go to the keypad because you’ll have your key code, you’ve
got your credit card, your signed lease, and you punch in the key pad, the
garage door opens. Then you would drive in the garage, now you’re in a
controlled environment, it’s recorded, it’s climate controlled, you’re not in
the rain, the snow, nothing. Very nice. You take your time, you unload,
we have carts out there. This is the elevator to the left, these are the
hallways, the carts are there, you roll your stuff to your locker or you go on
the freight elevator and go up to the next floor, put your stuff in there, you
come back down, all your stuff is secured and then again on the other end
the garage door opens but to get off the property you have to punch the
key code again.
Roughly, this is put out by the Self-Storage Association of America, and
it’s roughly twenty-one cars a day is the average per self-storage. And
again, you can see there, it’s right about 3.25 million dollars in property
taxes is paid per year in the self-storage industry. This is a multi-million
dollar project for us, this is going to be state of arts, if not one of the nicest
in Michigan, again, it’s one of the nicest in the United States.
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This is a letter from the receiver of the Bank of America that we’re working
with on the property, we have a working relationship with both the law firm
they use and with Bank of America. This is a letter or recommendation,
we’ve done other projects with these folks.
This is our partner in the deal, his name is Kelly Denha, I’m sure you all
know him, his family has been in the city here for a number of years, thirty-
five, forty years. And this letter speaks from the Chamber of Commerce to
both his and his family, their operation and their character and me and
Kelly have been partners on other properties, we’ve built CVS’s together
and shopping centers. And when I came to town here and I was looking
at this parcel and we were looking to put it together, I stopped by the party
store, had a coffee with Kelly, we started talking and he said I like it, let me
in I want to go in so I said sure, we were partners on other stuff years ago.
So this is a letter from the Chamber of Commerce.
Again, this is the back of the building, and you can see how the back of
the building hangs over, our footprint would be the blue wall so it would
clean all that up. And if you can see the wall to the left, farther down there
that wall is only about four or five feet down. Down there on the far left
see how the wall drops down, so our proposal is to make this wall 6-foot
all the way down, clean the wall all the way up, make it 6-foot all the way
across, all the way down.
These air conditioning units to the left will be gone and this will be a big
driveway, so we can drive through this driveway, clean all this up, and
then the neighbors won’t have the sound of that make-up air and that air
conditioning and all that running all summer. Ours will be on top of the
roof, you’d have screening, our stuff will be a lot more modern than that,
more efficient.
And then again if you look farther down that wall, farther down there, down
the wall again, you’ll see it drops down again. Again, we propose to make
the whole thing 6-foot, clean the wall all up.
And that’s the air conditioning units there is a basement, all that will be
cleaned up because the make-up air goes down the basement, so all that
will be cleaned up.
This is a detail of the wall which again we would clean up to 6-foot, put a
cap on it and then the carports. So, the carports would come down on our
side of the wall, the rainwater would be caught on top so it would not run
in the neighbor’s yard, come down through the gutter system and on to the
pavement. Again, this is a great buffer for both sound, lighting, and
everything off the freeway for the neighborhood and to me it truly gives
them their backyards back.
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This is a view from one of the houses here, to me that’s ugly, you put a
cleaner building, you put something up that looks nice, and you’ve got to
have the property values go up, got to have them go up for those houses
there.
If you look through the neighbors right there on the street, we talked to I
think there’s twenty-one houses and I believe we talked to seventeen of
them, sixteen, seventeen of the neighbors. Three or four of them, five of
them weren’t home, two of them just came up here at the thing and just
signed additionally, so I believe we have roughly nineteen out of the
twenty-one houses that support it. These are the signatures and their
support of it. You can read on the top it supports both the climate control
and the RV and again their signatures and we just added two more
signatures to that while we were here. So we basically have ninety-five
percent of the neighborhood supports and is asking for it and understands
it.
This is what we’re asking, and again, I know this is a unique situation,
given the situation C-2, M-1, this is what we’re asking for in the support if I
can read this to you. “Dear Council members, With this letter we are
asking the Council to rezone the property at 28900 Schoolcraft Road,
Livonia, from the current C-2 zoning to M-1, Light Manufacturing. With the
zoning request we voluntarily propose or offer this statement of conditions
including, but not limited to the following: Building to be used for climate
controlled indoor storage facility only. Outdoor storage for recreational
vehicles only, no construction equipment, no material storage of any type.
Outdoor storage month to month only. No occupancy permitted in outdoor
storage vehicle RV campers.”
If I could explain that in detail a little bit. When we were talking to Mark,
the Planner, he said well, we don’t want people staying there for a night
and camping out and then going, so that’s not what we wanted, that’s not
our intent. I just wanted to get it on paper but as far as the actual
verbiage, we can clean it up.
Hours of operation will be 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. with management on site.
We do have an emergency number that if somebody had a major issue
where they had to get their vehicle or get in the building, they can call the
manager but that would only be on an emergency basis only, otherwise
it’s 8:00 to 8:00 with management on site.
Lighting controls is not to mitigate into the neighbors’ yards or migrate into
the neighbors’ yards. It will be a Class A facility both inside and out. No
storage allowed of explosives, radioactive, hazardous or volatile
substances within the building or on the premises.
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Limited to storage only and not used for operating any business, repairing
vehicles, hobbies or any purpose other than storage of personal or
business property.
Again, we don’t want somebody repairing their RV in the parking lot, we
don’t want those type of things, working in the bay, you know E-listing stuff
for Ebay or something like in one of their units, that’s not what we’re –
we’re just storage.
We will work with the Planning Department and the Law Department to
finalize the rezoning agreement prior to the final approval.
We believe this project will be a great project for the City of Livonia, the
community, and ask for your support in moving forward.
We truly feel this is a very low impact project and a great project given the
obsolescence of both the building and the real estate property itself and
given the impact for the neighborhood being the houses that are directly
behind this property. We truly don’t feel there is a better use, we’ve
studied every use possible and we’re looking for your support and we feel
that fastest way is to M-1 with conditional zoning or a stipulation to it, we’d
love to work with the municipality to establish those rules and laws so
everybody has a comfort level. Thank you.
McIntyre: Thank you. I’d like to ask if anyone else from the audience at this time
would like to comment on this project.
Brosnan: Madam Chair, can we ask the Petitioner questions?
McIntyre: Sure.
Brosnan: Sir, before you sit down, I’m going to ask you some questions relative to
your proposal. Can you tell me a little bit about the timeline that you’re
working with? You heard at the top of the meeting that as a follow-up to
your meeting with the Planning Commission right away they turned around
and began the process of looking at a zoning that would be more
conducive to your project and they’re actually going to be meeting
tomorrow night for the first time in putting that in place. Can you wait?
D’Ascenzo: Well, we only have a certain amount of time with the bank because the
receiver wants to sell and the bank wants if off their books. But with that
being said, the C-2 zoning doesn’t cover any outdoor storage whatsoever
so then you’re back to the M-1 zoning. Then you have three acres sitting
out there with no value that’s still C-2, that we could still put a restaurant or
a bar or something that we could find in there. I think the neighborhood
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would have a nicer comfort level if they knew this project was complete
and they knew it was going to be there, not something coming back in the
future. Not to say that we’re not workable, but we are on a tight timeline
only with the bank.
Brosnan: How integral to the plan is the outdoor storage?
D’Ascenzo: It adds to the value of the property to support the economics so it’s pretty
valuable.
Brosnan: Would you consider doing it without the outdoor storage?
D’Ascenzo: Yes, we would.
Brosnan: Okay. Through the Chair to the Administration, I’d like a report from the
Assessor’s Office on the potential tax implications of a change of zoning.
If we are moving to a Manufacturing zoning on this property and if it were
to be developed in the fashion described today, what could the City expect
in terms of tax revenues versus what we currently could get if the site was
optimized with its current zoning, C-2.
Meakin: Madam President, can I add something to my colleague’s? If we could put
a time certainty on that to get the report back so we could expedite this, I
don’t want the report to take six months.
Brosnan: I’m assuming they’re going to try and turn this around and help us make a
decision so.
Meakin: Can we ask if we can get that as soon as possible?
Brosnan: Yes. Mr. Knapp, if you can convey that, it’s the kind of information we
need to make a good decision.
Knapp: Sure.
McIntyre: Councilmember Bahr.
Bahr: she asked a great question, though, about whether you’d go forward
without the outdoor storage; have you considered putting two indoor
storage buildings on this site, does it make sense for something like
instead of the indoor and the outdoor?
D’Ascenzo: well, once you change the footprint of the building itself, then you have
new water detention rules and laws, which could be up to a half million
dollars to store the groundwater, then you’ve got other utilities, you’ve got
other additional fire protection. Also, let me state that in our feasibility
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studies there is room for about another 300,000 to 325,000 square feet
within the three mile radius for development. We’d like to stay somewhere
around 115,000 square feet we’re at currently in order to know that we can
absorb the whole market and be an economic success for all of us.
Bahr: Thanks. And thank you for your presentation, too, by the way, it was
really excellently done.
D’Ascenzo: Thank you.
McIntyre: All right. At this time I think we’ll go to the audience. Thank you, we may
ask you to come back up depending on what we hear from the audience.
Good evening.
Whitmarsh: Good evening. My name is Kevin Whitmarsh, I live at 28679 Buckingham
Street, Livonia, Michigan. My property backs right up to the area and I just
want to say that I support this. I’ve spent the last years not being able to
open my windows at night, you know, there’s been cars doing donuts in
the parking lot, people yelling and screaming, and I think that any time
we’re going to get some sort of restaurant, bar, it’s going to be that same
loud noise, people throwing beer bottles over my wall, you know, people
screaming, and I’d just like something that’s a little more low key. So if
you guys could find a way to push that through, I know I’d appreciate it.
McIntyre: Thank you.
Whitmarsh: Thank you.
McIntyre: Anyone else? If there’s no further questions from the audience, I’d like to
ask the Petitioner a question that I thought maybe would get addressed. I
know you’re going to --- I assume if you did have the outdoor storage in
the rental agreement there would be language prohibiting repairs of
vehicles; would there also be language prohibiting the idling of vehicles?
D’Ascenzo: Oh, yes. No, the only purpose would be to warm them up and drive them
out, there would be no staying there forever, da da da da, no. And again,
we’re willing to work with the Planning Department and the Law
Department to fine tune that and give everybody a comfort level.
McIntyre: Right. We don’t want to be ridiculous but if you back up to that you don’t
want ten RVs idling for an hour, right?
D’Ascenzo: No, correct, no, I understand.
Jolly: So the north side of the building that will be backing up to these houses,
do you mean to state that they will be covered with windows just like the
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rest of the building that you’ve shown us because I can foresee a problem,
especially on the second floor if you have windows that are overlooking
potentially into people’s houses.
D’Ascenzo: Correct. Great question, great question. And it’s bringing up a couple
other things I’d like to point out. But yes, the only thing that we have as far
as the windows on the second story or even the first story would be just
the windows on the top so that people can’t -- like over 6-foot tall in the
hallways just so we get natural lighting in but there wouldn’t be windows to
where somebody could look out, just at the very top, just so we can get
natural lighting in.
The other thing is I forgot to mention, and I think it’s noted in the site plan,
is the carports that stop at both ends in the site plan right here, what we
were going to do is make that wall continue from that carport on the east
side to the car port on the west side to have the same matching metal at
the same height all the way across. So, in other words it won’t be a
carport, but it will be a buffer and the metal will match from end to end so
all the backyards will look the same. I meant to mention that.
McIntyre: Councilmember Meakin.
Meakin: Through the Chair to Mark, are there any other conditions that your
department would want associated with this?
Taormina: Well, we can sit down and have that discussion with the Petitioner. We’ve
identified several and in fact looking at this language amendment actually
brings rise to other items that I can then discuss with the Petitioner to see
if he’s willing to include those in the conditional zoning.
Meakin: Madam President, when does this get read out?
McIntyre: This will be read out, thank you for asking, at the Wednesday, the next
th
regular meeting which is Wednesday, March 9.
Meakin: And my next question back to Mark then, do you feel the changing the
zoning to M-1 and adding conditions would be the cleanest way to do this?
Taormina: It has the same effect in the long run. The question of the tax implications,
I’d be interested to see what the Assessor’s response is on that to the
extent that it’s driven mostly by the use then I’m not sure the zoning would
have any major issue with that. The nice thing about the waiver approval
is we would predefine all of those conditions that he would have to comply
with. The M-1 zoning, while it’s not ideal for this location, some could
argue it’s a spot zoning situation, you know. If in the end it’s determined
that the RV storage is something that we want to see with this site, then
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we’re going to have to introduce and more than likely some component of
the M-1 zoning to this site, so it’s either in part or it’s in its entirety and I
don’t know that that matters a whole lot, quite frankly. I agree with the
Planning Commission, however, that you know the time is probably ripe,
however, to look at the C-2 District regulations and amend those. And
that’s actually an issue that came up I think with this body during the
review of the Grand River and Eight Mile project.
Meakin: Through the Chair to the Petitioner, you mentioned the RV bays, they’re
basically 40-foot bays, they’re for the larger motor home, bus type
vehicles, is that correct?
D’Ascenzo: That’s correct, yeah. Eleven feet wide roughly and 40-foot deep.
Meakin: So you’re not looking at a 10-foot bass boat out there, you’re looking for
the big?
D’Ascenzo: Yes.
Meakin: And do you think your percentages of 80, 95 percent of those right away
or would be full?
D’Ascenzo: Yes. We anticipate we could probably fill in six to eight months on the big
40-foot. If you just saw the Detroit Boat Show just finished, and both the
RV show just finished, and the numbers that they sold are staggering. I
mean fuel is down cheap again and people are buying the stuff again. We
feel we can fill it in six to eight months and again it would be higher end.
Right now I think that the feasibility study showed roughly 3,700 RVs that
still don’t have parking spaces. Now that percentage, which ones are 40-
footers, I couldn’t tell you. But we’re going to have 180 spots roughly that
we will be filling.
Meakin: Madam President, I’m going to offer an approving resolution of the M-1
zoning with the conditions and I’m sure we have a couple weeks, there will
be more conditions added to it, we can work with the Petitioner and the
Planning Department. I know we’re not going to talk about site plan with
this but when we do get a site plan, this Council has made it pretty clear
that they want the best of the best for Livonia and I believe this project will
do that. It’s creative, it is thinking out of the box. My first impression when
I heard about this was there’s no way that we’re putting that on
Schoolcraft Road in Livonia. And now that I’ve seen this, it’s creative, it’s
a significant investment and as the Petitioner mentioned earlier, you know,
if you want to put office space in there, you know, it’s going to be $30.00 a
square foot. That’s a Class A office space and we have abundance of that
already in the city. So this is something new that they’re proposing and
the key to me in what it might do to the property values of the neighbors
15
behind them, I mean right now they’re taking a hit by having that building
behind their property. So if we could clean that area up, and I believe this
project would do that, this is a good move for the City of Livonia. Thank
you, Madam President.
McIntyre: Thank you.
Brosnan: Madam Chair.
McIntyre: Yes.
Brosnan: I gave up my position on the floor and lost it. Through the Chair to Mr.
Taormina, and I know, Mr. Taormina, that you’re aware this is very
unusual that we have a manufacturing abutting residential in Livonia. It is
actually one of the things from a planning perspective that we pride
ourselves on, is that we’re such a well-planned community that we have
not allowed that to happen. And that is my main hesitation in this.
Because zoning is exactly that, it determines how the property can be
used, twenty, thirty years from now. You know if you would have told me
twenty years ago that we’re going to need to store this much material and
vehicles for people, I would have never believed you. But that’s how
things evolve. So the groundwork that we lay in terms of zoning is really
the promise that the community makes to itself that this is how we’re going
to use a piece of property. And zoning for manufacturing right up against
residential presents me with a lot of concern. I look at the building and I
agree with Mr. Meakin, this is amazingly creative. I came prepared tonight
to make an easy no vote and you made my life much more difficult. But
what I fear is that twenty years from now, we have a marvelous structure
and it looks like one that will withstand the test of time, but for some
reason we’re no longer needing to store material, we’re no longer needing
to store furniture and supplies and things like that for people. And all of a
sudden that building looks like an ideal location for a manufacturing
facility. And we’ve got some property along the side that could provide
ideal locations for truck stops. And all of a sudden there is a large, you
know, maybe perhaps noise in a manufacturing operation that could take
place there, and that I know the neighbors don’t want to live behind. I
know that will drive down their property values.
So, my big concern is how do we make sure that if this is a great site plan,
because really, that’s really what we’re looking at tonight is your site plan,
we really need to focus on the zoning, that’s what the public hearing is
about. You know this is a great site plan how do we protect the future,
how do to protect the promise. So, Mr. Taormina, is there – Mr. Meakin
mentioned conditions and I understand we can place conditions on a
piece of property like this, but how do we condition its use?
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Taormina: That would be spelled out in the conditional zoning agreement and it
would limit the use of the property to whatever we prescribe as part of this
process. And the zoning for the land would revert back to its original
classification in the event of a change. So, much of that has to be placed
within the actual document that, in effect, treats the property while zoned
on one, to a very restricted use classification. And so we’ve done it in a
couple of instances and it can be done here and we did it most recently at
the Grand River property, a little bit different development that was a mini
storage type of complex as opposed to this indoor climate controlled and
didn’t involve the outdoor storage activities. But it would be through that
document that we would retain the control that I think that you’re most
interested in, and would not allow for the property to revert to some other
use without first this, well, the Planning Commission and Council, had their
say in it and if you disagreed then you’d either have to continue the use as
prescribed or would have to revert back to C-2.
Brosnan: Well, in this case the difference for me because I am familiar with the
Grand River project that we just wrapped and to me the biggest difference
is the size and scope of this. In terms of looking at that structure and
envisioning it potentially being used as a manufacturing facility of some
sort in the future. I can see that happening here. So, I’m going to ask for
committee on this only because I would rather us really look at this
underlying zoning being what controls the use of this property. And I know
that even if one of the conditions be commercial zoning as the Planning
Commission is going to soon be discussing, it presents another problem
relative to what we do with the outdoor storage and if in fact that becomes
viable in that space. But I’d like us still to be able to consider that
separately so I’m going to ask for a resolution to send this to committee.
D’Ascenzo: I know the floor is closed if I can answer.
Brosnan: No, it’s not.
D’Ascenzo: Okay, thank you. Again, we would love to work with the Planning
Department, the Law Department, and stipulate to these things and we
don’t have a problem with and we voluntarily offer them, that if this
property is ever sold, ever, now, I’ve never sold anything I’ve developed
and I’ve been developing since ’87. If this property was ever sold and it
wasn’t for the same usage that it would revert back to C-2 zoning. We
don’t have any problem stipulating to that. And just to let you know, the
last forty years if you look at the household, the average per square foot
per household used to be five square feet per household to self-storage.
Today it’s 9.15 is the national average. So in the last forty years it’s
almost doubled in self-storage. Detroit is 7.8 and we’re underneath that
number, that’s why our feasibility studies had shown us that we could build
this type of building and fill it within twelve to eighteen months and it would
17
be viable. Again, if it’s viable for us, it’s viable for the municipality and for
the city both in property taxes and in revenue, jobs. Thank you. Thank
you for the floor.
McIntyre: Thank you. So, are you requesting that it go to the Committee of the
Whole?
Brosnan: Yes.
McIntyre: We have a resolution form Councilmember Meakin, an approving
resolution for M-1 zoning, and we have a resolution from Councilwoman
Brosnan to put it in Committee of the Whole; anyone else?
This will be on the regular agenda meeting, the voting meeting on March
th
9 and we’ll ask you to be present at that meeting.
D’Ascenzo: I thank you all for your time and consideration.
As there were no further questions or comments, the Public Hearing was declared
closed at 7:49 p.m.
SUSAN M. NASH, CITY CLERK