City Council - public_hearing

The purpose of this public meeting is for a presentation on the RFP process and RFP 26-10, the Van Boren Road properties. And at this time, we will have roll call, Councilwoman Abdo. Okay. Councilman Bullitt. Here. Councilman Jones. Here. Councilwoman Roscoe. Here. Councilwoman Talley. Here. And we know that Councilman Wadsworth is absent. Yes, it's him. So noted. And Councilman White. Here. Madam Chair and Council, we... have a quorum for tonight's public hearing meeting. Thank you. The public hearing agenda reads as follows. Number one, roll call. Number two, agenda. Three, public hearing discussion, the RFP process, and RFP 2526-10, Van Forne Road Properties. Okay, there was a typo there. Public comment. Number five is adjournment, and a motion would be in order to accept the public hearing agenda as presented. Thank you. So moved.

Support. It's been motioned by Ms. Abdo, supported by Ms. Roscoe. For the approval of this public hearing agenda, Ms. Abdo. Yes. Ms. Roscoe. Yes. Mr. Wilhite. Yes. Mr. Fuller. Yes. Mr. Jones. Yes. Chair votes yes. Motion approved.

Thank you, Council. We're at number three, the public hearing discussion, and I believe leading us up is our wonderful director, Mr. Kevin Krause. Thank you.

Thank you, Council, Mayor, and all in attendance. I'm excited to be here tonight. This is kind of a little bit of a shift in what our office has been doing and focused on over the last four or five years, and excited to have this project in front of you tonight. Before we get to the details of the actual project, just want to kind of go over a little bit of a historical background on how we got to where we're at today. You know, starting with acknowledging over the past four or five years that, you know, not only are we focused on bringing jobs to the city of Romulus and helping build that job base and make that really kind of a a work center, but also the amenities and the housing that comes with those jobs and making sure that we focus on getting that housing and expanding the housing and focused on raising the overall population in the city of Romulus. So we kind of embarked on a larger scale visioning process when Mayor McCrae took his first term of office and then we've used that visioning to kind of guide us along a pathway of making sure all our long-term plans, our master planning, our infrastructure planning is in place. So part of that we created and started looking at eCourse Road and the eCourse Road corridor project with Michael Baker International. Many of you sat through those listening sessions and those listening sessions included elected officials, citizens, stakeholders, business owners, organizations throughout the city. That process, while it was mainly geared towards infrastructure, also looked at zoning and ordinance and housing along the Ecorse Road corridor. And from that process we quickly identified that we needed to also conduct a housing study. And Jessica Hobbs here went to work with MSHDA, received a grant from MSHDA, and conducted a full housing study of the city of Romulus, which is, I believe, we've done some housing studies in the past from different sections of the city, but that's the first full in totality housing study that the city of Romulus has had done. and really looked and identified what our current housing stock is, where our shortcomings are, and what the expectations for housing units and needs are moving forward in the next three to five years. So from that study, we passed it along, passed both the Ecorse Road corridor study and the housing study along to our zoning and building departments, and then they went ahead and did our five-year update for our master plan. which now the state of Michigan master plan also requires a housing component of it. So this came in kind of right at the right time, and we were able to give them all the information they needed to update our master plan as it pertains to housing and meet the state requirements. So we did all of that work to then say, okay, what are the outputs? And what the outputs really were clearly for us is that we knew we had to look at our land that was available within the city of Romulus and the land that we controlled, and how can we get that to market first and really make it available for partners and developers to come in and develop that land and help increase our overall housing stock in the city. So we took the parcels of property that we had, which was the acreage behind Fire Station 4 down on Eureka Road, It was the Goddard Road, I'll call it the bend of property right there by the railroad tracks as you're going into downtown. There's that section on the north side of Goddard along the railroad tracks. A lot of times we use that for parking during pumpkin fest and stuff. That property is also city owned. And then also the property that you'll see tonight which was proposed to us a little over a year and a half ago from a church that owned the property and unfortunately wasn't able to pay the back taxes on it. So prior to it going to tax sale, they offered to donate it to the city of Romulus and we accepted that property knowing that we had some housing interest in this area and it was already our one property and we'd be able to do the proposal and the RFP on it and get it out to market. So moving through that process, we created the RFPs. We worked with our purchasing department, and we put all three of those locations out for RFP. And lo and behold, on the Van Boren property, we have a developer that submitted a proposal that we're going to share with you tonight and that Jessica is going to go through with you. And we're pretty excited about it. It's going to bring kind of – a good makeup and mix of different type of housing options to the city and add approximately 70 to 80 units of new housing to the city of Romulus. So with that being said, that's kind of the background on how we got to where we were at tonight by following a plan that was put in place four years ago, five years ago, and updating all of our master plans and really getting us to the point where we're ready to start executing and showing some actual construction coming out of the ground on this. So if you don't have any questions on that, I'm going to turn it over to Jessica, and she can walk you through the proposal from the developer.

Any questions? Before we start to go through the proposal. I do have a question.

I was going to try to hold it to the end, but I'm not.

No worries.

Why didn't we kind of go through this process for some of the development we have, like Creekside or Gateway? Why couldn't we find – why? Why?

Um, so different, different, uh, scenario that was privately owned property. We didn't have control over it. We can't, we can't put something out to bid or request the bid for some property that somebody else owns unless they came to us and said, we want to partner with the city. We need the help. Uh, so a little bit different scenario. This is property we owned and that we know we can, you know, we're still talking to developers and looking for developers to buy property in the city and develop property. Okay. But this is property that we own and that we own because of a donation. Therefore, we could bring that to the table and make it very desirable for a developer to come and develop the property. Makes sense. Thank you. Yeah.

Before we get into the proposal, I want to make clear that any... approvals today on the RFP process won't release the property to the developer at this time. And it will also not provide any site plan approval. This is just a conceptual idea and the proposal that was submitted that we'd like to move forward with. And then when we get to those more formal stages of the project, they'll go through the proper approval system. So this RFP went out for the Van Boren properties, as Kevin talked about, and this is the response we got from the MC Group, which is a Metro Detroit consulting firm. Founded in 2005. They have over 20 years of experience as a firm, but between their employees, as you'll see, moving ahead, they have probably over 50 years of collective experience doing housing development, housing rehab, working with federal programs, state level programs, and local governments. So we felt pretty strongly about the expertise that they bring. You can also see on this slide that they have over 50 employees. So they're like a mid-sized firm, still pretty local in their perspective and their reach, but definitely have the capacity to do this. So this is the development team. Kevin and I did sit down with the team when they first submitted the RFP to go over their initial vision to find any initial thoughts that our department had. I think almost everyone on this slide was there. We kind of vetted their backgrounds as well. During that meeting, we also reached out to their references provided to kind of substantiate the claims that they made in terms of experience and their backgrounds. So speaking to that experience, their most recent project was a single family development in Madison Heights that just completed last month.

We spoke to the staff in Madison Heights. It was a big ass spike.

I tried to let it go, but it was just coming back for me.

Sorry about that. No worries. There's some wipes right there too.

I had to take care of them.

So this project is their most recent completion. It's over in Mattson Heights in Olsen County, and they did it for about 2,000 square feet, and this is for sale for the construction. They also completed this mixed-use development in Rochester Hills this past winter. So they've gotten some projects off their books and are ready to go. Some new things, you know, mixed-use, for sale and and multi-failure all things we discussed kind of during our initial meeting as things that the city could be open to and the developer really focused on tailoring the project to the robulus market and what residents want to see And then they also have a background. I think how the company started was more focused on multifamily rehab. So this is a project that they completed in Detroit, and they have quite a bit of rehab experience. So not only do they have kind of greenfield development experience, but they also have kind of general building knowledge and research knowledge as well. So this is the proposal. This was the proposal that they came back to the table with. There are seven units proposed, all duplexes or townhomes. They will all be for sale properties. units that are connected in some way but available for purchase by current or future romulus residents whether they're seniors people that work in the community but don't currently live here or kind of anyone else that would be interested in that style of housing the project is located on van bourne road and kind of runs along henry rough as well so they'll be trying to kind of activate in Along Van Boren and Henry Rothen areas, they currently sit pretty vacant. Van Boren is the border with Wayne, so Wayne's on the other side down there.

Through the chair. I'm so sorry. Through the chair. So Henry Ruff and Van Born kind of intersect there on Van Born is by the flower shop and that car wash. So will that still be there, or is that being eliminated?

Yeah, so this is just to the west of that location. Just a little bit further? Yeah, so those will still be there. Rushes will still be there, and the car wash as well.

Okay. So there are 48 townhomes and 22 complexes proposed in this initial proposal. Obviously, things might change as they go through the formal planning and zoning process, but this is the general idea for the development. The smallest units will be around 1,200 square feet, and the largest units will be around 1,900 square feet. Those will be the duplexes. The countings are a little bit smaller. And what we liked about the proposal was the... ambitious scope of the development overall and adding 70 units, but the more conservative phasing to allow things to absorb into the market. Obviously, that timeline can be adjusted as things absorb. If people are really buying homes and there's a lot of interest, things might speed up. But otherwise, there's a plan to construct between 15 and 20 townhomes. four duplexes per construction season for the next, I think, four or five years.

So we haven't kind of said on what kind of models or anything we're looking at right now that's still kind of up in the air?

Yeah, this is just, you know, this was a conceptual proposal in the RFB. And again, as Jessica said, you know, the approval tonight means that they get to move on to the next process, which is the submittals and everything through building and planning and all of that. And that's where all that stuff gets kind of finalized. Okay.

So in general, the project benefits to Romulus are 70 new housing units. We did the housing study. Our consultant identified that over the next five years, Romulus will need 2,000 housing units to keep up with projected demand. And so this is a contribution to that number that we'll need to kind of keep up with the people that want to live in Romulus or might be kind of aging out of their current housing stock. It expands home ownership opportunities. One thing we heard very clearly during the housing study was that residents were really interested in expanding home ownership options. We've had some issues with rentals in the past that are improving, but we also heard that people are really interested in running with residents coming to stay and being a part of the community. And residents felt that home ownership is one way to achieve that. So we're excited about the home ownership opportunities that this will provide. It supports missing middle housing by offering A solar square footage is the average of the current housing stock. And it provides 70 units on a less than six acre site, which is pretty dense for the city, but not overcrowding. And it also activates that Van Boren and Henry Rock area of the city, which right now is pretty sparsely activated. In general, the projected new taxable value from the proposed project is about $13.6 million, which reflects a $20 million private investment.

I think it's important, too, when we talk about the taxable value, this is an area that's outside of the TIF, so that impacts general fund. And this proposal doesn't come to the city and ask for any tax abatements. The only thing that really is on the table with this proposal is the land itself, which was donated to the city and will have positive public benefit to bring equity to this development from the city's behalf and spark it and get it going.

So when they talk about sources of funds, they have on here Brownfield and TIF, what does that mean, 1.5 million? How does Brownfield work into this?

On the capital anticipated funding sources, there's a number of different things that they've listed here, but the original proposal lays that out. Is this the one you're talking about, the capital stack? Yes. Sources of funds? Yes, sources of funding. The property is the equity that we're bringing to the table with that.

Oh, is it? Okay. That will cover that 1.5?

I mean, that's up to 1.5 there. And there's other state projects also that will be evaluated.

Okay.

Yep.

But one thing we felt kind of confident about with this developer was their experience on their team with navigating both the state and the federal process for grants. Obviously, things change a lot, but they have a tremendous amount of knowledge on their team about how to apply for those things and where to best slot them into their project. So we felt pretty good about the experience sitting around the table.

I'll go backwards. Oh, there we go.

So in general we felt pretty strongly that this was a very appropriate and well thought out project for these two parcels. This provides high quality attainable and financially feasible missing middle housing to our community that prioritizes home ownership and we liked the combination of phase construction Any questions from council

So again, this is one of three sites that we put out to RFP. This was the only one that received an RFP project proposal. We're excited to have this evaluated and looked at, and we think it's a quality project. But we are going to go back pretty hard at the other two pieces and get creative. One thing that Jessica has been able to do is work with DCC and the Brownfield and secure some additional site readiness as far as environmentals. So the more due diligence we do on those sites and prepare them and get information on them, the easier it is for a developer to see the picture and clearly on what potentially can be developed there. So this is one of three that we hope to accomplish in the near future. And we'll continue to work on the housing issue. And we do have a couple other interested parties on some other private developments within the city, kind of like the ones you discussed earlier, that they're purchasing the private parcels and walking through the process themselves.

Okay. So even with this going on, it looks like 19, 20, we're not quite a few. We only got one submittal, but we're comfortable with that one submittal. Okay, because it looked like I screened them.

Yeah, they came in very conservative. Their original plan they came in was very conservative with the number of units. And we looked at it and we said, you know, we think you can raise the density a little bit more. We don't want to see you max it out and, you know, kind of take up every single space. Yeah. But we're comfortable with a little bit more density in there because we know that we have the need for workforce type housing. And we don't really need those large single family, you know, kind of three bedroom, two bath, you know, attached garage type locations. There is a need for them, but that's already 86% of our housing stock in the city. So we need that kind of workforce housing to accommodate some of the stuff that we're developing right now on the commercial and industrial side. So we challenged them up with that, and they came back with this proposal, and we thought that it was a good balance between their original proposal and where they potentially could be. It was kind of right in the middle.

Okay. Thank you.

One more thing. I hit on this initiative a little bit during the city speech. We know we need additional density, additional road impact to bring in more families. For the school system to take this a little bit. So that's what we look hard at this. And where I think council's helping is if you talk about workforce housing, some people start to think negative about that. I'm in workforce housing. I grew up in a 1,200 square foot ranch, like most of us did in this community. And we are workforce housing. But sometimes it has that negative connotation. So it's important to make sure it's market rate or higher. So it's not going to be assisted. It's going to be something that's going to add value to the community. And the goal is not only to increase population, but also median income. And that's how you attract your retail. Time and time again, Kevin and I hear from all these retailers, you don't have the rooftop, you don't have the population, and you don't have the median income. So it's important to bring in more projects like this. And I think that the team is ahead of the curve, because a major initiative right now out of Lansing In fact, City Council voted unanimously to oppose the legislation move that's talking about preemption because they want to take our say so out of the table to increase density. So you're going to see a major initiative pretty soon, I think, out of Lansing. You're going to have some money put on behind it too to offset infrastructure to have affordable housing. Right now you have young policemen, firemen, teachers that can't afford to buy a home in Michigan. It's a crisis right now, and Michigan as a whole is losing. The government's going to come out with an initiative for it. I think we're ahead of the curve. I think you can see more programs like this develop around here. So I'm excited about this one. And where you had somebody look at this one, now we'll have one develop when we look at a different property. They'll say, oh, that's what it is. I know what it is, and I feel comfortable with it. Because people aren't always afraid of change. They're afraid of that perceived loss that comes with change. And this will be able to show the proof is there. So the initiative is not only to increase housing stock in Romulus, to give a variety out there that people can afford, but also to raise median income.

And it keeps saying throughout this document, maximizing Michigan missing middle housing. Maximizing Michigan missing middle housing. So it's clear it's a need. And it's documented throughout this document. Any other questions? I'm good. I think we're good.

All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Good job. I can't speak enough for you. I heard you.

If there's no further discussion, we are now at number four on the agenda, public comment. And this is the portion of the agenda for those who are in the audience and who would like to address City Council regarding tonight's public hearing meeting. To address City Council, just raise your hand and after a minute, now it's by the chairperson, approach the podium and you will have three minutes to speak. Is there anyone that would like to address City Council concerning tonight's public hearing discussion?

Do we have anybody who would like to speak on this portion of the meeting?

All righty. We're going to close that out then. Thank you, Madam Chair. It takes us to number five, adjournment. Madam Chair, I'll make that motion to adjourn.

Support. It's been motioned by Mr. Roscoe, seconded by Mr. Jones for the adjournment of this special meeting, public hearing. Ms. Roscoe? Yes. Mr. Jones? Yes. Ms. Abdo? Yes. Mr. Bullock? Yes. Mr. Wilhite? Yes. Chair votes yes. Motion approved. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council. Thank you.