Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Everyone, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Item two is roll call.

Roll call. Ms. Jemison?

Yes.

Mr. Long? Here. Mr. Gloutfelty? Here. Mr. Green? He's excused. Mr. Crover?

Here.

Ms. Roscoe?

Here.

Mr. McAnally?

Present.

I am present. Mr. Boguede? Chair Freitag?

Here.

Item three is approval of the agenda.

So moved, Madam Chair. Support.

I have a motion for Mr. Long, supported by Mr. Prova, to approve the agenda as presented. Mr. Long?

Yes.

Mr. Prova?

Yes.

Mr. Prova? Yes. Mr. Gladfelty?

Yes.

Ms. Roscoe? Yes. Ms. Jemison? Yes. Mr. McAnally? Yes. Chair votes yes, the agenda's approved. Item four, approval of the minutes of the Planning Commission meeting held on Monday, June 15th, 2026. So moved.

Support.

Who supported it? I have a motion for Mr. McAnally, supported by Mr. Long to approve the minutes from the meeting of Monday, June 15, 2026. Is there any discussion?

Discussion. I have one correction on page 8 of 9, one-third down the page where it says my name, and it says UABD. That's UABB, so we're going to correct that to say UAB with two Bs.

Say that again.

Right below my name, it's like a third down from the bottom, or a third up from the bottom.

It says UABD. It's UABB. So two Bs instead of a D?

Yes, sir. So it's two Bs instead of a D? Yep, two Bs. Did you add? Just want to make sure that's correct. I'm going to change it right now.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

So...

As amended.

So the motion will be to approve. As amended.

Amended, yes, okay. As amended. Mr. McAnally?

Yes.

Mr. Long?

Yes.

Mr. Green's not here. Mr. Gladfelty? Yes. Ms. Roscoe? Yes. Ms. Jamison? Yes. Mr. Grova? Yes. Mr. Bobade?

Yes.

Chair Pochette, the minutes are approved. item five we have comments from the public on non-agenda items is there anyone here who wishes to speak on anything that's not on our agenda tonight see no one we'll move right along item six public hearings we have no public hearings tonight item seven old business and we have spr 2024 007 premier hospitality premier hospitality town place suites uh And you're looking for an amended site plan approval. Is the commissioner here? Oh, you were hiding.

Not for long.

Name the address for the record, please.

Andy Andre from Triumph Engineering 10775 South Saginaw Street in Grand Blanc, Michigan. So I'd like to take the opportunity to walk through the project. As members of the Planning Commission may recall, earlier in the year there was a request by the Avenue to do a site plan extension. So I'd like to talk a little bit about that and why we're at this point right now. Recalling back to the prior application, it incorporated two hotels on the property. And the request for extension back, I believe it was in January, was really to help facilitate the applicant moving forward to define the plans a little bit more and then also to go out for financing on the project as well. And as that extension allowed, as that went out into the marketplace, it became evident that the two hotels on the properties was probably a bit too much and the focus should be to come back with one hotel that we know that we can move forward with. And in this case, that's the application and the proposal that you have in front of you. So the extension allowed the time to really help solidify the property and the request that you have. The project that we have in front of you is a single hotel. It's a Town Place Suites, which is an extended stay, very similar to the other I think I can bring this forward, familiarity with it. This is the previous development that you see here. That was the development that I had mentioned. And probably still, Carol, I think we're looking at the old set of plans here. In any event, let me continue to walk you through. So there were two properties that we were looking at. This ended up being divided. The properties were divided through the Unit 17 and Unit 18 as part of the overall condominium. And so when we were evaluating moving one hotel forward, it became evident that we have to pick one side over the other. So we picked the east side of the development. And the reason behind that is that's where the access management is from. So having the roadway out to Wick Road that would be able to provide access both for this hotel and then what we're also doing as part of the development, understanding that the property to the west that once was proposed as a hotel, we don't have that property under contract, but we recognize that access management is a key feature along Wick Road is that we are providing cross access to that adjacent property. So we'll work very closely to provide that access through there. So we'll have access in from Wick. We'll have full circulation in and around the property. We work closely with the fire department on the circulation. They approved that as part of this review they currently have in front of you. So it constitutes 116 rooms. four-story building, very standard for what you typically see for hotels in the area. And as I mentioned, the extended stay product has a small kitchenette within the space. The site plan was reviewed. The plan that you have in front of you was reviewed. There's a couple of conditions that went along with it as part of the recommendations. Those were very manageable to us. A couple of minor points to address. One of the key features that we were looking at also is because we are only working on one portion of the property, access management was a key issue. the to the west to extend public utilities across the entire frontage along with so we'll have public sanitary we'll have water we'll be looping the water main for hydrant coverages for suppression purposes and then also providing stuff for future connections as well so we're trying to future plan as much as we we can as part of this uh proposal And lighting is always a key issue. We work very closely on a couple of key lighting points. We are meeting the lighting requirements and landscaping as well. We're exceeding the landscaping requirements that are part of the roadway and also interior to the property as well. consider these items that we have in front of you. We'd be happy to answer any questions. I'm sure there'll be some questions that come up related to this and appreciate your consideration.

Thank you. Carol, do either of you have anything before we... Before we turn it over to the commissioners?

Or do you want to wait? Jessica, did you want to go over your comments? You had...

All of our comment, we did have a few comments that were clean up in nature and once they were taken care of, they are still in compliance with all of the ordinance. It just gives us a clean site plan to go forward with. And then the rest of the comments that we had were to be addressed in engineering review. So we had, we worked with the applicants and we have no comments that should be discussed tonight. Okay, thank you.

He's gonna pop this up. The one thing that we did wanna see was the elevations that are in there. Oh, okay. You didn't bring any copies of the... or what was in here.

I can talk a little bit, while we're bringing it up, a little bit about it. Again, we're proposing a which is a Marriott product. So obviously there are high design standards that come along with that. In the building elevations that we submitted as part of the site plan package, we provided a breakdown of what the materials were for the exterior materials. And depending on what face is going perfect, I'm going to go ahead and advance everybody to the building. The four faces of the building, anywhere between 75% to 80% of it is brick or stone. So we're talking about durable materials accented by metals, ethers, and glazing as well. So we are proposing a very durable building. So there's some renderings of it. I think it's something that would be characteristic of the area. There are high design standards when it comes to Marriott itself, but we also recognize that we want to put forward a building in the city of Romulus that is characteristic as well. So color schemes, and again, 75 to 80% of the material would be brick or stone.

Through the chair, and I just wanted to comment that it's actually more than that based on how you typically see the calculations. We don't include glazing or windows in those calculations, so they're closer to 95% stone on all four of their facades. So I just wanted to make that comment that they were much higher than what even you're seeing in the plan set right now.

All right. So is that what it's going to look like? That's correct. You didn't bring any materials for us to look at?

No. We have materials that are pulled out on the plans. But again, brick, all the face brick, stone that you typically see in any development. We have color patterns. I think it's pulled out as well on the plans.

Go ahead. Through chair to petitioner. So the previous two buildings, one was 121 rooms, the other was 127 rooms, and this is 116. And based on your market research, that's all we can support in this town?

Yeah, I think that's a very good question. So I think I don't want to speak more broadly to what the overall market would be as much as what can be advanced with this particular development. So the overall market, depending on where it is, because the location along Wick has, while it doesn't have direct access to the highway or it doesn't have direct access to the airport, it's a great location for these hotels. um there could be other hotels within the market that could be supported but this for this location it was it was appropriate just for the one so it's not it's not necessarily a referendum on the entirety of the hotel market but it was characteristic of having two hotels immediately on these this property right here

Sounds like what you're saying is they couldn't support it. It was determined that they couldn't be supported, and that surprises me with all the business we have in that area. Okay, that's all I have.

Mr. Gladwell.

And to the Chair, and where exactly were these EFAs, what were they being used at, higher up panels?

Yes, that's exactly right. So if you have an opportunity to take a look, the materials all kind of run through, again, Materials are called out in this location. You have set plans in front of you Ephesus used a lot utilized in accent points across these are These colors that you see here are all brick Okay, so it's just a character color variation of brick that goes along with it So Ephesus is an accent the same that goes with the metal itself. So I think when we talk about What we have proposed and what we have shown on the plan included the glazing at the 75% to 80%, but as City Engineer has mentioned, it's a little bit higher. EFIS only is an accident. It's typically done at the higher elevations.

I'm very familiar with that. I just don't want to see any at ground level.

No, we don't like EFIS at ground level. It becomes a maintenance from a hotel management perspective. I probably should have mentioned that Premier Hospital already owns and operates 30 plus hotels within Michigan. And so part of the learning experiences, Ephus doesn't work well at ground level. It gets beat up. It's a maintenance problem. What most people don't realize is you know the weed the weed with uh webbing and all that it'll hit stones and it'll it's not a good material so i think moving you know with a with a product like this is much better from a long-term durability standpoint as well as an aesthetic standpoint all right thank you sir

Through the chair, I had a question. I think the majority of your suites will have a kitchenette in it, I believe. Do you have a maximum amount of time that you'll let somebody rent so that it doesn't become an apartment type complex? Absolutely. That's a great question.

So one of the things that we always work within hotels are characterized as the residential portion of them. They are transient in nature, so it doesn't allow us to... to rent out any of the rooms for any conditions more than 30 days. So that's a code issue, and so that's something that we keep track of as part of the reservation system. The typical stay on an extended stay is anywhere between three to five days. Now there could be situations where, and this has happened, somebody's house lost power and they had water damage they might need to stay for an extended period of time that you know typically will happen here for you know they might stay for a couple weeks but there's a maximum stay of no more than 30 days that the reservation system will not allow them to do that okay thank you thank you

I mean, I come from automotive, and we've had people coming in and installing assembly lines that could take months. So if somebody were there the maximum period, how long would they have to be out of there before they could come back?

Sure. That's a good question. I think one of the things is you always have to look at, is this the right location for them to stay? There are other products that are out there that are beyond extended stay from a hotel perspective, but are short-term rentals. And I think that would classify it better than that. We are not proposing short-term rentals. And so if somebody, a customer came in and said, what we need to say for the next three months, probably say, this isn't going to be the best selection for you. And while you never like to turn business away, you also have to recognize limitations and that this may not be the best fit for that. And that has happened.

Yeah, through the chair. So you mentioned earlier there was an extension, and there was financial constraints in there. That's when you had two buildings. Now you have one. I'm assuming it's been resolved, and so you'll move forward?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So let me back up and I'll show you the site plan here. So when we were going through the extension, as I mentioned, the site plan allowed a little bit more flexibility in going into the CP financing. And so what it became was a One hotel is really the route to go on this. And so we're able then to advance one hotel. And so the question would be, I think the logical question is, are you going to get this done? Are you going to be able to get this one hotel done? And I can say absolutely yes, because we've been able to, through that extension, work through financing for a singular hotel, which we've been working very closely with advancing the town place as that. as their product.

Okay. Mr. Grover?

To add on to the two comments myself and Commissioner McNally had, I think a lot of times the facility will give discounts for 30-day stays, which competes with apartments. That's when they become apartment complexes. That's right. You're saying you're not going to have that type of pricing. No. That's really what keeps it out.

We would not be considering it. That would be a short-term rental of the apartment. We don't do that. that's not allowed as part of the reservation system with Marriott, and so we wouldn't even be able to do that. So it's not even as much of a competition as staying in compliance with the rules and regulations.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for letting us know.

Through the chair, if I could, real quick. Just to answer some questions and some clarification. So our ordinance department, in our city ordinance, there is specific time frames for how long you'd stay at a hotel, and there's a code issue. And our ordinance department reinforces that in the hotel district on a regular basis. They go in, they do checks on their log books and everything, and quite frequently tickets. Some of our kind of hotels that don't comply like they're supposed to be, and they have people that stay over that 30-day period. So, you know, they're in that district on a regular basis, checking and enforcing that. We've also addressed a lot of those issues coming out of COVID with the hotels through the quarterly hotel meetings that occur through my office and my staff. And we've talked to the hotels very significantly and heavy about the overstays. um but we also do work with some of the hotels because to um the uh mr mcnally's uh question and point you know sometimes you have um workers that come in and quite frankly i'll tell you the one that we see a lot is marathon workers come in and they're cleaning the tanks the fuel tank and the tank farms and stuff and they usually it's about a 45-day operation So, we allow them to stay the 45 days, but they have to have identification on record. There has to be a letter from the corporate office saying that it's a limited, you know, overstay and they're there for work and specific reasons. So, there are processes in place to address some of those things.

Through the chair.

Mr. Long.

Yes, petitioner. You say your site plan will be to the west, to the east of the proposed units before. So how would you, the sidewalk connecting, going back to the west, would you be willing to fulfill that or would it be just a dead spot until it's developed?

right yeah that's a great question so as part of what we're doing here and hopefully this will this will come through so we'll provide the sidewalk the connection from the hotel directly out to the walkway the pathway that's already there and i know it's a little bit tight in through here but we are showing cross connection points to the property to the west unfortunately we can only bring it to the property line but we are doing that in order for that once that once the property is developed they can extend that off continue to extend out so we do have a ramp shown and extending the sidewalk to the property line in that location that would provide that pedestrian access between the two properties so Carol how would that sit with people walking that path because it's not going to be sidewalk all the way through I don't believe

Did you guys talk about that?

I'm looking back at our letter, sorry.

You are speaking of the sidewalk that's to the north that would make the connection to the access drive in North Point? No, I'm talking about on Wake. To the west.

On Wake, going west of the proposed site.

They're on WIC.

So they don't have an owner for that property yet, so you can't develop on that property, can you?

But the pathway is there.

The pathway up there, up to?

Up to the Great Lakes Water Authority parcel, and we don't have any jurisdiction over that parcel that's in between. So North Point has paved all around WIC, Vining, and Smith where they own the property. And, yes, there is a gap that would be nice to get filled in.

Also, Mr. Wong, we are proposing not just the connection, as I mentioned, from the hotel right here. We are also proposing another walk adjacent to this drive that will extend up. To the north, right? That's correct. It will connect all the way to the north, and that will be able to connect into the north point development.

Well, hopefully that other part shall be developed sooner than later.

We agree.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Just a comment through the chair. Probably like what I'm seeing, and I'm hoping for some commercial retail development on the other parcel. That would be a welcome development. Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Chairman. there's no other comments i'll make a motion that we approve site plan for spr 2024 premier hospitality town place suite subject to this middle of rebuy site plan for administrative review addressing the outstanding items in all agency and department reports support

MOTION FOR MR. MCINNELLY, SUPPORTED BY MR. BOLUAGE. BASED ON THE FINANCE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE CWOHM AND ARC COMMITTEE REPORTS, WE RECOMMEND THAT THE PLANNING COMMISSION APPROVE THE SITE PLAN FOR SPR-202407, PREMIER HOSPITALITY, TOWN PLACE SUITES SUBJECT TO THE SUBMITTAL OF A REVISED SITE PLAN FOR ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW ADDRESSING THE OUTSTANDING ITEMS IN ALL AGENCY AND DEPARTMENT REPORTS. Any discussion? Mr. McAnally? Yes. Mr. Bobade? Yes. Mr. Kroger? Yes. Ms. Jamieson? Yes. Ms. Roscoe? Yes. Mr. Long? Yes. Mr. Blackfelty?

Yes.

Chair votes yes. It's approved.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Good luck.

Moving right along, number eight is new business, and we have SBR 2025-014, store flex, self-storage, and flex suites. It's at 15303 Merriman Road. It's redevelopment of the Merriman School into an indoor climate-controlled self-storage facility and flex business suites within the existing school building. Practitioners here?

So what we are proposing here is to redevelop the Merriman Road School into a self-storage facility that would include indoor climate control storage, dry-bunk non-climate control storage, and also outdoor RV storage. These would be intended for the use of professional services, contractors, light duty commercial businesses, mainly office space for those types of users. We have five units proposed inside of that existing building. And finally, we would also be adding a moving van rental service in with this facility. So this site would have access to the customers of the storage facility as well as tenants of the flex suites between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 p.m. So what we are looking at is a 13-acre site on the east side of Merriman Road just south of Eureka. This property was conditionally rezoned to M1 light industrial to allow for this particular use. As you can see here, the center of the site is an existing 48,500 square foot building. This was the school that's remained vacant for quite some time. And so the The developer is looking to utilize the existing facility to the greatest extent feasible. So beyond repurposing of the building, we're also looking at repurposing the existing infrastructure. There is an existing parking area located at the north end of the site. This will be utilized for lease-based tenant and storage customer parking, as well as the drive-up storage units would be placed in this parking area. To the southwest, we have an existing parking area. We're looking at utilizing that for, again, the tenant parking, storage customer parking, and then RV outdoor storage and rental van parking. And then in the southeast corner of the site, we have more existing pavement. And we're going to expand that a little bit. That's going to provide more RV outdoor storage, rental van parking, and also have fleet parking spaces for the lease suite tenants. You have maybe a plumber renting space. They have a van or two that has a place for them to park overnight, leave the vans there. They're strictly for fleet use. They take their personal vehicles home. The existing bituminous pavement throughout this site will be restored as part of the at closing the existing south driveway on merriman road as the school was originally laid out this was set up for one-way traffic to loop through the parking area and with this facility we need two-way traffic so we're going to eliminate that south driveway close that off we're going to widen the north driveway to 24 feet and then not widen the existing drive files to 22 feet so that we have two-way traffic throughout the site that also allows us to put a fence around the facility and then have a gated access at the north entrance so that we control access during that business operations will utilize either a phone app access or access to open up that gate during access hours for the drive up storage buildings that are going to go into that north section modular units they're actually manufactured off-site and brought in and they can be placed on the existing pavement without having to construct new foundations it gives us the opportunity to utilize the existing paved areas at this stage of development using this type of a unit now these are all metal units so they're going to have a metal exterior siding a metal door except for those units that are visible from merriman road from the north adjacent property we do show on sheet sp3 which areas are going to be a masonry facade and then that masonry facade is shown down in the lower right corner of that drawing and then the make sure i get this one right The siding that will be utilized is the brownstone finish, and that is what will be red on your drawing. So this is an actual masonry product. It is installed by the manufacturer during the shift, and it is... So looking at some other improvements to this facility, we will be paving Merriman Road from the existing end of pavement just south of Eureka down through the north entrance of the site. We will be constructing a new sidewalk along the frontage of this site within Merriman Road right away. Coming back to the existing building, The green areas is where we would have indoor storage units. The blue areas are the flex business suites. Again, there's five there, so they're about 1,300 square foot each on average, a little over 6,600 square feet total. And then the yellow area would be the rental office for both the storage units as well as the rental van for the moving vans. We do have a series of waivers we've requested as part of the site plan. There's a current waiver as well as some landscape waivers. I'm assuming you're going to want to go through those one at a time, so I'm going to stop and see if you have any questions about the overall development before we really get into the waivers.

I have a couple comments. Go ahead. Through the chair, to the petitioner, We, looking through this, there seems to be a lot of quibbling about landscaping in here. I mean, we could just be here all night arguing about what rows we should go where. As I read it, our goals up here and with the administration is the same. We want a right amount of screening to block the residential on both ends and to make sure we have enough to screen it. We don't want you buying more than you need. We don't want you to spend money you don't need to, but we have to be sure that the residents and the things that we're trying to screen your property from are actually screening. So when I read about partial waivers, that's kind of where I'm sitting. I'm saying, okay, we can grant partial waivers depending on what's required at the time. The administration can go out and look at the site after the plannings are put in and determine if more is needed and less is needed. That's kind of where I'm sitting. I don't know what you think about that, but to me, that makes the most sense. Everybody gets what they want. You don't spend money you don't have to because we're not holding you to the letter of what the ordinance says, but at the same time, we're getting proper amount of screening on the property.

and if the agreement is for us to move forward through landscaping as we've proposed it and then have a uh a visual inspection once it's installed and up and out and operating uh if that's where you're going at i believe uh that would be acceptable

See, my point is go ahead. No, that's that's different, because he's saying he's asking for full waiver and then they add more.

We're saying we're I think Jessica, you guys are recommending more that we work it out administratively ahead of time so it would be a revised plan or no.

So I am going to say that Carlisle Warman did the landscaping on this one. I do not have any recommendations necessarily on this landscaping.

I think that was what you guys have to decide. Sorry, I forgot about that. No, that's okay. There are two approaches. You have to go out and put it in and then see what you think, or I think what Doug was talking about, Doug did the review on this, was more working it out before the plan got finalized, but yet allowing it to be finalized administratively. just want everybody to be very clear about it it's a good question because it does there's two different what what was talked about what's in the letter is partial you guys bringing partial waiver to say, basically, you don't necessarily need to hit every single one of those requirements. We're going to sit down with our landscape consultants and work it out.

Yes.

And as opposed to, no, we're just going to go do it, put it in, come out and take a look at it. Is that what you were proposing?

Well, that's what I thought he was proposing.

I'm more leaning towards a partial waiver, allowing there to be some flexibility with the administration looking at the landscaping. Now, I'll let everybody else have their say on this, but I'm trying to uncomplicate this as much as possible for everybody up here on this commission.

That's fully acceptable as well. If that's something we're going to work out administratively and not spend six hours here discussing it, that's fine as well. Our goal is to avoid putting in a lot of landscaping that's going to get impacted during future development the goal here as we showed you in the rezoning meetings is to be able to have future development and continue to expand this facility as the demand is there as there's more need for storage to be able to continue developing this property with more drive up storage units which is going to impact anything we put in today so our goal is just to work with the administration to make sure that we're not wasting money by putting in planning so we have to rip out in the future and our goal is to protect the citizens that have lived in that street and make sure that they're not being impacted by your business right yeah i think there's definitely The landscape requirements are very extreme based on the size of the property. And when you look at the amount of existing vegetation on this site, we're saving all the existing trees in this property that's just developed. So there is significant screening here. And we just want to work within that existing screening and provide the best for both parties involved.

I'm not at all positive we've got a concurrence on this, but I think we're close. Other comment I had, and it has to do with the ordinance for concrete curbing, and basically the letter I'm looking at here, this is only a waiver for the existing pavement. Anything new you put in, that waiver doesn't apply.

We understand. Yes, what we're looking at is, again, we're trying to repurpose everything that's existing to the greatest extent feasible. and to do that if we start adding curve around the existing pavement it causes issues with some of the existing grades the existing drainage patterns and it also adds a lot of impervious area which creates other issues with development but before we understand as this project progresses and we come back to you with a new proposal to expand and add more units all of those new pavement areas yes we will

Through the chair, if I can. Go ahead. There is some sections of new pavement that is being proposed right now. However, it will be contained within, as the phases progress, it will be contained within larger pavement sheets. This is the waiver that they are requesting is a request for a waiver from all concrete and curb and gutter right now. There's one area. Could you go back to the site plan for phase one? If you can go back to a paving area down in the southeast corner, there is a extended pavement that's going to be added to a concrete pad that's already there. However, the second phase completely paves that area out. So putting curb and gutter around that small area right now, we do feel is a step that would get ripped out in a phase two. So I wanted just to make sure that you understood the waiver request is for no curb and gutter right now.

So they will not be required to provide any curbing at this point?

At this point, no. Yes, for this stage of the bill.

How do we control it down the road?

I suggest, and I read the resolution that Carol put in, I suggest that you state in the resolution that all future phases require curb and gutter around all pavement.

I'm looking at this sample resolution we have in our packet. I don't think that has that in there. a waiver from curb requirements in accordance of the zoning ordinance subject to parking blocks being promoted around the parking space areas and then what would we add in there applies to phase one only maybe yeah because you know they're going to be bad they're going to have to come back during phase one okay that's fine

So then it's on the record that it only affects phase one. Only phase one. Okay. And you're good with that, Mr. Petitioner?

Yes.

Okay.

Mr. Provost.

Through the chair, I had a couple things. The flex space, I know we had a lot of public comment, and they were worried about the traffic on the roads. And I don't believe self-storage creates a lot of traffic, but the flex space is the one that we did put a cap on during the initial time you were up here. I just wanted to make sure that the flex space square footage matches what we approved in the initial rezoning.

The exact square footage?

i think they're yeah so then going forward you're not going to request any more do you want to uh you just know that you uh you hit your match you're not going to request more in your revised site plan down the road or additions that is something that i could not

guarantee at this point because it all depends on what the market brings. If everybody throws all their stuff out and nobody wants storage anymore, then there could be a need for it, but we would have to come back and ask for that approval. We wouldn't expect that to be done without approval. Okay. Right now, under the conditional zoning agreement, we have a maximum that we can utilize, and a maximum portion of that can be office-based. So those limitations are set. If that was a further request, we would have to come back to the city and request that it's not something that we just do.

Yep, that sounds good. The other one, too, is you're paving the road between Eureka and your facility. um is there any objection or is it possible that we could put a right turn sign only on your exits so that people would you know they wouldn't legally have to turn right but at least they're advised to turn right only that way would keep people off the southern section of the road and there's a uh there's a drainage ditch down there it does have a weight limit it used to at one time i don't believe it's been improved It still has that. Yeah. So I wouldn't want to see those medium duty trucks going across that anyways.

I mean, we could we can put a sign out there. I don't know that we could put a no left turn sign unless it was mandated by the city because. it is a two-way street we have done in other developments we have provided you know recommendations you know turn right to major thoroughfare things of that nature we can provide a suggested sign it would have to be something that would have to be mandated by the city for us to say no left turn because it's a full access driveway and it's a two-way street

um yeah that's what I would be thinking too it wouldn't be a it's not a mandatory but it would be a recommendation and I would have to say that 95 of the people are going to make the right turn anyways yeah so we can put a recommendation so if it was a traffic light it's an easy one turn right you know traffic light access uh sometimes you'll see the pork chops where it makes you only go right now I'm not suggesting that because I think you guys could police it in-house

That would create issues with moving fans getting in and out as well. But, yes, we can certainly look at some type of a company directional signage.

Madam Chairman, I'm going to piggyback on that. I remember when we put the Taco Bell in at Wayne Road there that we required them to have a no left turn sign.

The county did. Is that the county did?

We brought it up. Yeah. Okay, so this would have to go into law enforcement to get this an actual no left turn.

Yeah, it would have to have a traffic control order in order to issue tickets off of it. We could, maybe a suggestion would be to say trucks must turn right. and i don't know that passenger vehicles are our issue here so it's a heavier weight yeah so if we say trucks must turn right um it is it's a guidance for them like you stated the the culvert that is south is not load rated for potentially the vehicles that are leaving

Okay, if the administration can work something out, whatever is legally permitted. We're just talking one sign, right? Whatever, however many exits you have, the sign's there.

Yeah, the trucks turn right sign, I think, is probably a very good idea because we could even have, you know, listed as trucks over, you know, 10,000 pounds, you know, something of that nature, so that we're directing them in the proper location.

And then I know you didn't get into your variances yet, but while I have the floor, I might as well bring up the other point I have. You're asking for a variance for the VZA for over 10,000 pounds vehicle rentals.

So that is specific to a U-Haul type moving van. And if you look at what is available through U-Haul, The 20-foot box, which is kind of a smaller unit, it has a weight of 8,800 pounds. They have two larger than that. There's a 26-foot box and a 29-foot box. The 26-foot box is 1,300 pounds and change. The 29-foot box, that truck is 1,400 pounds and change. And so that's what we're looking for is to be able to utilize all the different U-Haul sizes through the facility. But for those two larger trucks, we would need a variance.

would go to the bza and i i don't see where they would have a problem but it's really up to them but the problem my recommendation to them would be to put a maximum on it so that semi trucks aren't there someday and i think you answered my question you said that right now you're looking at trucks up to 14 000 pounds

Yeah, they're 14 and change, so if we called it 15,000 pounds, that's probably in that range.

You would be happy with that 15,000 pounds?

Yeah, I would just want to make sure that U-Haul is going to be the service provider and not Hertz or something else that, you know, make sure that we're covering their trucks. But somewhere in that range would be acceptable.

Yeah, that would be my recommendation to the BZA is to put a maximum on it, just so we don't have semi-trucks. You're right. Within that couple thousand pound range, it sounds good to me.

Chair Greg Musil. Thank you, Mr. Krova. As the chair of the BZA, I'll be seeing this. So, yeah, why don't you dig up some maps before you submit.

All right. Chair Greg Musil. I'm done. Thank you, Chair. Chair Greg Musil. Madam Chair and Chair.

Mr. Black.

Mr. Chair, you talked about installing a gate at your facility. How far off the road is it going to be?

behind the right of way, so we're putting the fence itself at the 45 foot setback. And so that gate is going to be at the 45 foot off of the right of way. And it's gonna be right in line with that front fence.

And your security manager's gonna open and close that every day, I imagine?

that's going to be open and closed by the kiosk and You know that I guess I'll leave that as an operations question typically when we do a storage facility You have to stop you have to use your phone after you have to use the kiosk to open the gate, but with the business speech Yes So it would be open during business hours for the lease suites and outside of their business hours. If you're coming in early in the morning before the business suites open and you're just coming in for storage, you would have to use the kiosk to open the gate. And again, after business hours, so we're looking at later evening hours, just to access storage, you have to be a customer, you have to utilize your app to get in through the gate. And again, with that 45-foot setback, you can pull in with a fifth wheel, get out of the road, clear Merriman Road, and still be able to operate the kiosk over the gate.

What I was concerned about, let's say you had a large family moving in there with a semi-truck to deliver their goods there to store. They're at the 75-foot mark. They would be out in Merriman Road then.

Well, they shouldn't be allowed to come in with a semi. I was just wondering.

I know, but I see it happening. I hope I don't.

Yeah, the facility isn't really intended for semi-truck use.

What about the customers bringing the U-Hauls back and there's nobody there? Are they just going to drop them at the gate? Will there be like a key box or something with them that way they're not stacked out on the Merriman Road?

Brian? So U-Haul has a system where there is a key drop box that essentially you rent online and you go in, drop the key, leave, pick up your car. So there's a whole system behind it where that's all protected. They come in and they leave, the gate closes right behind them. so they'd come in with the truck they'd be able to access the gate correct and get the truck off the road yes yep yeah it's very automated uh you know a lot of it is done through apps and uh in putting a code in there so you would put in a code the gate would then open you would come in um and and the gate is Essentially, so a lot of it has to do with there's a flex space component and there's a self-storage component, right? And there's a lot of components here, operations-wise. I can't give you specifics on, you know, who has what and how it's going to happen because who comes into the flex space is variable. But I will tell you that to get into the facility, anyone renting will require a code. OK. Yeah.

All right. Thank you.

MR.

Yes. MS. So a couple of questions. One, I want to agree with the landscaping. When the residents were here doing public comments, none of them wanted this facility. So we absolutely have to make sure we do everything possible to screen as much as we can for the residents. Otherwise, it won't be pretty. And they are our main concern. Um, and then of course the city being prosperous, a couple of things, um, regarding the, uh, flex space. Well, one other thing. So commissioner Kovac mentioned about the pavement. So it's going to be paved up to your entrance, not the entire facility or your entire property. Is that correct?

Correct.

So, so it's partially down there, so not completely down. I just wanted to make sure I put that on the record because initially I think the comment was that it would be in front of the facility, but it is not. It's just up to the driveway.

Correct. Merriman Road would only be paved through the driveway, but our sidewalk would extend the entire frontage.

Okay. I just want to make sure we had that one clear. And so for these suites, I think I asked a question before, and I'm not really sure I got the answer that I wanted, so I'll ask again. It says professional offices, contractors, consultants. So are we expecting foot traffic from customers? And what does that look like? And is there some kind of limit? What are the business hours? Because, again, the residents are not happy with that at all because you don't really have control over who comes.

and so now we're functioning as a retail front in a sense in a residential area so so this is going to be it's going to victory based on the tenant if you have a professional office say an insurance agent most people they do their insurance job online but the agent has to have an office even myself as a professional engineer I do have an office. I have an office space. I have an open door. I might have three clients a week that actually show up and come into my office. Most of our stuff is done online through the computer. So there is going to be a customer from time to time from these different businesses, but it's going to vary on the business itself. as well as their business hours now they're going to be within that standard core they're not going to be operating between you know midnight to 6 a.m but they are going to vary based on their particular business model and that would have to be agreed to as part of the lease suite as part of the lease agreement for that suite

OK, so you can control the type of businesses that come in there basically by saying what you will and will not allow. So if it's something that's a heavy use as far as something that gets a lot of foot traffic, I think that would become problematic for the residents, especially because there's a lot of children around there. And so I know they're concerned with that.

I understand that concern and I think that that we went really deep into that with the conditional zoning agreement to prevent a lot of the specific uses In light industrial that are not going to be allowed for this because with the conditions that we have and they're stated on the zoning agreement on what uses are allowed and light to moderate uses so no heavy uses have been allowed on there and they they stated towards the end i think it's in one of the exhibits so yeah that was we made sure that we were not going to have any of those uses and and i think we have even on the conditional zoning agreement it's appointment by appointment where you know people would call in but WHEN I GO TO THIS GUY'S OFFICE, I'M LETTING HIM KNOW. YOU KNOW, THERE'S NO ONE EVER IN THERE. AND THOSE ARE ESSENTIALLY THE USES THAT WE HAVE. AND THEY'RE SPECIFIC IN THAT CONDITIONAL ZONING.

So it is stated by appointment only?

We do have it in there, yeah. So most of these uses are usually coming in appointment by appointment. Yes. I'm so sorry. Go ahead. You stated a retail component. We have no retail in there, and that's also stated on the conditional zoning agreement.

Well, when retail, I'm just talking about the foot traffic, because there's certain retail that does bring a large amount of foot traffic, but there's also certain business offices that bring a large foot traffic. I mean, you could have a hairdresser in there. You could have a masseuse in there. I could go down the list, but then it gets interesting. So just looking to make sure there's some control with the type, because it's not really the type of location that you're expecting. All sorts of business that brings all sorts of customers to the area.

And correct me if I'm wrong, that if someone does decide to come in for a use, they still do have to come in for approval with the city for that specific use, for that area, for that facility.

For the flex spaces? Correct. Carol, is that correct?

REACs, yeah. Yeah. If somebody's coming in and going to set up a... Yep, they want to see a vote. So we're just looking at your rental agreement that does have limitations. The residential use, retail, storefront operations, manufacturing, food preparation, medical clinics, automotive repair, fitness facilities, assembly uses, hazardous operations, and any use prohibited by applicable zoning are prohibited.

So you mentioned a phase two. Do we know how soon that's going to be?

I wish I could start it today. But we are studying the market and getting, we have to first understand what we can succeed in. And I think that the plan that we put together is gonna allow us to get to that decision point.

So some of the waivers that you're asking for is based upon limiting what you have to do now because of phase two and keeping that in mind. But phase two could be 15, 20 years. Is that possible? I mean, because you have no idea.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I'm not going to lie. It can be. Do I want it to be? No. But, yeah.

So we're open-ended, basically, with our decision to make here.

I'll tell you what, I do my research very well to make sure that I come in to a city that will thrive, that we can bring success here, and that success is gonna be brought to the city. We wouldn't come here if it wasn't, so it'd be a little bit less of a time.

So last question, fleet uses, you said overnight. Is there any way that they may be parked longer than that?

Um, you know, if he goes on vacation and he leaves his vehicle there, I wouldn't be opposed to it. But you know, if he's, if he's leaving it there and it hasn't moved in like 30 days and it's not looking good and people are complaining about it, it's out. Yeah. We don't want anything like that.

Carol, do we have restrictions on that regarding vehicles that are left parked indefinitely or extended amount of time?

Yeah. There would be no long-term parking establishments in these suites. A lot of that would be done with the REAC, but then also with our ordinance department. If there's vehicles that are sitting for a long time, we look at them as in-ops or they're just sitting. Then we enforce them that way. When these come in for these flex suites that might have vans or something that park overnight, obviously they'll have to specify that, you know what I mean, pretty clearly. But no, we wouldn't allow anything to sit there for, it wouldn't be long-term parking for six months at a time or anything like that, no.

So is that what's long-term? Your agreement probably addresses that as well. That's one of those things that you get a multi-tenant building like that, and you'll get a call from another tenant that's like, what the heck, can't get the snow plows through, this vehicle hasn't been moved, or something of that nature.

Yeah, totally. We don't want it.

I believe the additional zoning agreement requires that all vehicles be...

Thank you, I think that's all my questions.

Duty chair. Yeah, on that statement alone, you should probably put that revision in your agreement to by it being near the airport property, there will be a lot of cars or people coming in and parking there and Uber into the airport. It's $36 a day to park at the garage over there.

I should probably just stay up here. No, that was just a comment.

That was just a comment. So maybe you might want to... Yeah, they do.

And even now when we're going to the building, we notice it. They're just kind of hanging out in Merriman Road. And we'll make sure that that's not going to happen. I mean, it's... You know, if I go out there and kind of point them in another direction, we will, but we can only do so much with what we have, and we don't want to put anybody at risk.

Yeah, yeah, but like I'm saying, but just, you know, emphasize that in your agreements that what you might call no overnight parking and this, that, and other, so. At least law enforcement, at least law enforcement would have at least law enforcement would have an avenue to cite just in case or whatever. OK. Thank you.

What's that?

Yes, ma'am.

So the chair.

To the chair, I just have one question in regards to your business hours and your gate being closed and open. You said during business hours they'd be open, but then you said they would have access between 5 in the morning and 11. So 11 p.m. at night to 5 a.m. in the morning, if somebody came up there to try to open that gate with their...

with their code or or their phone or what have you they would not be able to open that gate and get inside in the middle of the night no so um we do have uh we do have site access hours and we have rent office rental hours so during the office rental hours the the gate will be open yeah and that's your standard not you know I don't know if we have any detail there it's I think it's part of the conditional zoning agreement that's variable your standard office hours and then from there it closes okay I just wanted to clarify that thank you

Through the chair, if I may. There's just a few points that I did want to bring out in our letter to make sure that are discussed and are on record. I have six of them. So I'm going to go through them one by one. And if there are any questions, please feel free to ask. The sidewalk should be installed as part of the project. There are notes on the plans for the site plan that say to refer to the Merriman Road paving plan. Just noted that no occupancy should be granted prior to the sidewalk being installed on the frontage. Also, the sidewalk needs to be carried through the driveway, which may require some rework of the driveway. Both of these things are noted in our plans. I just wanted an acknowledgement from the development team that they understand that that needs to be in place. And I'll keep going. Then Merriman Road, it has been noted a couple times verbally that the paving is going to start where the paving ends. The current plan set shows that there's actually going to be a mill and overlay of the existing HMA paving at the... right after the concrete the concrete at um eureka is in good shape or is it okay shape um the asphalt that's just south of that needs to be repaved it is noted on the plans i'm just restating that this is a requirement of the um the project um the concrete curb and gutter we did talk about the fact that this is granting a waiver for all concrete curb in this phase um And that this waiver should not be extended. It's not precluding any requirements for curb in subsequent phases. And that all pavement in subsequent phases should be curbed. The parking lots are required for any parking spaces. Well, for any parking spaces that are established because there is no curb right now. And I can't remember if there was a note added to the plans that stated as such. Um, the stormwater management in future phases does have to accommodate for any new or resurfaced area in this phase. And that's also noted in our, our, um, review comments. It is something that Wayne County will also keep track of, um, as they issue the permit for the, um, the stormwater management. Um, We did have a notation in our letter stating that Wayne County needed to exclude this sidewalk from their stormwater management. They have received that in writing from Wayne County that the sidewalk is not included in the impervious calculation that they have on the site right now.

And then last, the lighting.

We do need to see photometrics for the lighting, the retrofit of the existing lighting to LED. And we are recommending that new lighting be installed in the storage area that we were speaking of where the fleet and rental vehicles are gonna be parked. That is something that should be discussed and either required or waived until a future phase.

Right now in our packet or list for approval, it says that a revised light plan must be provided for the OHMCWA comments to be reviewed and approved administratively. Does that cover your concerns in that section?

I think that we should either have a statement saying that they do have to provide lighting for the fleet area of parking. Sorry, my screen is not working, but it's that southeast corner or it's something that can be provided in a future phase because there's been discussion back and forth and our recommendation is that there needs to be lighting in that parking area. Southeast corner, the fleet parking area.

So southeast corner lighting must be addressed.

As part of the lighting plan that's resubmitted in phase one in phase one. Bless you.

OK. Miss Jefferson, yeah, don't share one one.

So I just have a little struggle regarding hypothesizing, just doesn't exist in math that much. But if we don't have a timeframe of when phase two happens, we're making waivers on property, they may go unfinished for who knows how long. I just think about fairway is a gateway. part of it just sat for seven, eight years and it looked like a hot mess for a little bit until finally market got better and someone came in and now they're rehabbing. So between phase one and two, we're waiving all curb requirements. There's one area that obviously, which you mentioned, would get ripped out during phase two, which I think was the southeast as well. So waiver that, but all the others, not knowing that when phase two may happen, If it does happen, I know we're hopeful and business looks like it should continue, but we just don't know. We don't have crystal balls. So I'm just concerned about leaving something hanging. So what I'm proposing or thinking is that we do a time limit. If there's no phase two in process by a certain date, then we get those curbs in there so that it just doesn't look like an unfinished process. piece of property, curbs are curbs for a reason. I don't know because we don't have an idea. When North Point came with their development. They had a plan in place that they brought to us, which was brilliant. They guaranteed that they would actually continue these phases in a certain period of time. If they did not, then they had to pay a penalty. And so they put the restriction, they put the pressure on themselves to give us a finished product in a certain period of time so that we didn't have a partially finished product and we just waited endlessly for the other parts to come and so they wanted us to approve this project so they said hey if we don't get this next thing started in 18 months after we finished the first one then we have to pay a bond or whatever the the verbiage was and so that's my only concern is that i know that in business things are hopeful but we don't really know we kind of guess that based upon what industry is looking like and doing But we also know that business has its ups and downs, because that's just the cycle of it. And so my concern is that leaving something undone and just hoping without actually having something in place that protects the residents over there and also the city. So we don't have something that's just kinda out there looking unfinished for 10, 15 years. I mean, it could be in five years or two years that you actually are able to start that, but the endless just saying that it's just kinda gonna hang out there, it's just something that I'm struggling with myself, so.

so if i may then so this this existing facility was obviously designed and constructed at a time when the curbing gutter was not required and so the way the entire facility is laid out all the drainage patterns where the rainwater flows is all designed based on not having curve so it's not that it's an unfinished product where you come to the end of the pavement and it drops off everything blends right into the lawn areas And in order to add curb and gutter to the existing pavement, it's going to require a significant amount of reconstruction of pavement areas, of lawn areas, and things of that nature. And so it becomes a situation where not feasible for this particular development based on the existing pavement. And as future development happens here, when that happens, it's going to require significant reconstruction, new stormwater, new storm sewer, all of those things would come into play at that time. To put a timeline on it now and say, okay, if you haven't done any future expansion in 10 years, you have to come in and put on curb and gutter. In order to do that, you're looking at a situation where you're going to tear out the entire pavement area and start over and then go through a process that is not necessarily going to give you a different product or a finished product as compared to today. It would just, it would provide you that curb and gutter, but I think it's, if I may, the expense of that part of the project could kill the business. If they're not going forward with future development, if they're just operating what's there, it could create a situation where it becomes cost prohibitive to do that amount of work to continue that operation. get to a point where you're left with another vacant building and that's what we like to avoid and so we're trying to re-utilize what's there based on the design that's in place and again being a low traffic generator i'm not concerned about you know vehicles trying to pass each other by cutting around through the edge of pavement, through the grass. We do have to provide the bumper blocks at parking spaces to help make sure the cars are not going off in the lawn area. So I would ask that you do not put a time period on it just because we're trying to utilize what's an existing facility at this time.

So Carol or Jessica, if that's the case, then why is it that they weren't required but they are required now? And why would it make a difference if he does it now or does it later? Because it sounds like with the ordinance, he's going to have to do it. So still going to have to spend that money. So I'm just kind of trying to wrap my mind around that.

okay so that would be you jeff through the chair so they are so i did a walk through of the site with the developers and uh they are we looked at all the pavement and they're going to be capping and milling filling and repairing the existing pavement that's there for the phase one operation my thought process is okay so in the discussion was at the time the pavement we got to make there's not there's not there's not going to be any trip hazards that the pavement's going to look good. Now, will the pavement last forever? No, the pavement won't last forever. So possibly instead of a timeline, if there is no phase two, when it comes time for the parking lot to actually need replaced, then at that time we would require curb. Because the only section, like the southeast corner section that's expanded that you're talking about, other sections are And my thought process why we wouldn't require the curb now is some sections like widening the drive aisle, it's like widening on one side. So why would we have curb on one side of a drive that we don't have on another side of a drive? So my thought on this phase one was, We don't require the curbs. And then if you're worried about a phase two not happening, which we all hope a phase two happens, because that means the business is operating and going well. If a phase two doesn't happen, there will come a time, because that pavement is old. Even with the repair, there's going to come a time that it's going to need replaced. When the time comes replacement is needed, then curb and gutter would be required.

OK. I mean, that actually makes sense to me. Thanks.

I believe if it doesn't have underground water retention, if we put the curb in there, make him put the curb in there.

Well, what would happen is when it comes time, if they have to remove and replace the pavement, then that detention is going to be required at that time anyways.

Yeah, if we required it right now, it would be a pond for them. It wouldn't drain off. Yep. Yep.

Madam Chairman.

Go ahead.

So what we're saying is a waiver from the curb requirement subject to parking blocks being provided around parking areas, and this is in effect during phase one development, or if any refurbishment of the parking lot occurs, then they would be required to add.

Yep. Okay.

Try not to build too much into this motion here, kids.

Any other questions or comments?

Madam Chairman.

Mr. McHale.

Make a motion that we approve site plan for SPR 2025-015, store flex self-storage and flex sweeps subject to the following huge list. Number one, completion of the land division through the assessor's office, including conveyance of rear property with the associated easements to the city. Number two, there are three non-use dimensional and use variances that must be granted by BZA. I won't read those, they're not applicable to us. Number three, the following waivers must be approved by the Planning Commission. We're including it in this motion. a waiver from the curb requirement in accordance with section 11.17 and section 14.04 of the zoning ordinance, subject to parking blocks being provided around the parking space area. This applies during phase one development, or if any refurbishment to the lots occur, then gutter and curbing will be required. B, landscaping waivers, partial, in accordance with Section 13.02U for the Merriman Road Greenbelt, buffers north and south property line and rear yard, detention pond plantings and irrigation subject to each waiver being addressed administratively with the petitioner. four any outdoor rv or moving van rental truck must be screened and upon completion of redevelopment and prior to issuance of a certificate of occupancy if storage is visible as determined by the city additional landscaping shall be provided by the developer this must be noted on the site plan five a revised lighting plan to be provided per the OHM and CWA comments and reviewed and approved administratively, including the southeast portion of the property, which must be addressed in this phase one development. Six, submittal of complete revised site plan for administrative review addressing all outstanding items in all agency and department reports for administrative review and approval. And I guess I'll put seven, Petition to provide a sign stating trucks must turn right. Did I miss anything, guys? Okay.

Support.

All righty. I have a motion from Mr. McAnally, supported by Mr. Long. to approve the site plan based on what Dan just said. The summary report dated by the planner, dated August 10th, 2026, page three. Is that okay? Any discussion? Mr. McAnally? Yes. Mr. Long?

Yes.

Ms. Roscoe? Yes. Ms. Jamieson? Yes. Mr. Glyfalty?

Yes.

Mr. Prova?

Yes.

Mr. Boboade? Yes. Chair votes yes. Good luck.

Thank you.

Make it pretty. Are you part of that?

Yeah, if I could through the chair real quick, I don't know if you want to do you want to call the next item on the agenda before we? As long as you guys I didn't know if you had to read it into the record is all I wasn't sure.

Oh, yeah SPR 202 6008 Romulus public safety headquarters and we're developing public safety headquarters for fire and police.

Correct. Through the chair and commission, good evening. Good evening, administration. Before I turn it over to Bailey this evening to go through the presentation, I just want to take a minute and kind of go over a little bit of history on how we got here with this headquarters building. As many of you know, we've been evaluating a new police station for the Romulus Police Department for some time. And the McCreight administration has been very dedicated and made a priority public safety, you know, throughout his entire first term and going into the second term. And we've been trying to find a solve for this police station issue. As many of you know, they're in a hundred year old school that is absolutely dilapidated. And we've looked at many options over the last several years coming out of COVID. we were hoping for some arpa money coming out of covid and unfortunately uh that never you know came to fruition um to help us get this project off the road or off the uh kind of off the ground and rolling but we've evaluated the current building that they're in for a reconstruction and because of the challenges of a school building that really was made for a bomb shelter right at one point in time in history It's kind of difficult to expand and do some of the things we wanted to do within a reasonable price per square foot footprint. So we determined that that site probably wasn't feasible with what we were looking at. We looked at the old court building and very similar challenges on that building because of jail cells that are in the building and weight-bearing walls and everything else. So, then we paused for a little bit and started really evaluating how we can get this project done. And through my office and through TIFA, we restated our TIFA plan. We went through a five-year restatement. We went through that restatement plan and really incorporated our public safety into that plan to a much higher level than it's ever been done in the past. And with that, we've been able to provide a mechanism for the city of Romulus in conjunction with TIFA to move forward with a state of the art public safety facility for both police and fire that will provide additional services to the city, expand our fire scope of services, and to do so without any additional tax dollars to the citizens and to the businesses within the city, because it's coming from TIFA, and TIFA's bonding from this, not the city itself. So zero impact to the general fund on this project for the citizens. which I think is very, very important because we've really, in my opinion, failed to utilize TIFLA to the highest standard in the past. And we've really, really looked at that and how we can get more benefit for the infrastructure and for the community as a whole. And this is definitely one of the ways for us to be able to do that. So, um, you know, the, the locations were kind of looked and evaluated. We've identified the funding source and got that in place. Um, I talked a little bit about the response, you know, the response and, uh, increase in service. Uh, this will be both police and fire headquarters. Um, so it'll consolidate on, on behalf of the fire department, the two Northern stations, the one that's on middle belt and e-course. and the one that's at Wayne and Ecorse, and it'll put them kind of in a north central position in the north end of the city. We will keep operating on a fire station for it, Eureka and Middlebelt, and a separate TIFA project, which we're in the process of developing right now as well, will be the redevelopment of Fire Station 1. So in essence, for the fire department, it'll create kind of a triangle around the square airport for us to have a response model. And obviously for the police, they operate a little bit differently. And I don't want to speak on behalf of Chief Fonis' operation, but they're a little bit more mobile and move throughout the city all day long anyway. So it definitely has benefits to both police operations. In addition to that, it's very significant to recruitment and retention. When you look at the building that they're operating, the police department's operating out of right now, there's some significant issues there. And for anyone coming to work, to be able to work in a healthy, clean, nice environment is important, especially what we ask our public safety officers and police and firefighters to do. And that building just doesn't really project that we care about our public safety to the level that we say we do. So it's well overdue and definitely needed. So those are some of the big highlights over the last really four or five years that we've discussed this project and worked towards its movement forward. One of the biggest things that I really want to highlight, especially for the Planning Commission this morning is, or this evening, is that we have incorporated every department administrative staff throughout the entire city in this process. Um, that hasn't necessarily happened in the past with city buildings when they were built and we've kind of taken some, um, some, you know, kind of liberties as far as that. We'll let that slide. We'll do this. We'll do that. Uh, mayor McCrae made it very, very apparent that. We're going to walk through our own process. We're not going to ask for any exceptions that we wouldn't expect a reasonable business that was applying for a location in the city to ask for. And we weren't going to take any of those ourselves. So that's the reason why this is coming in front of you. Jeff, Carol, Jessica, our IT department, our police and fire, civil engineers, our inspectors, have all sat through planning processes in this process, moving this building forward. And we're going to continue to do that with Fire Station 1 as well, and any other project that we do in the city. We're pulling all the permits, we're requiring our own inspections on all of these things, and we really want to make sure that We're holding ourselves to the standard. We expect any other business to be held to when they come in front of this commission or any other body for the city of Romulus. So I guess with that, if you don't have any questions of me, I'm going to turn this over to Bailey from Partners in Architecture. PIA has been a good partner. You're probably familiar with them from the court building. They worked over at the court with our city staff and everything over there. And then we also, in partnership with Partners, we also have Gil Bain as our construction manager on this project as well.

Just a couple of questions.

Will they be housing any fire apparatus at this new site?

Yes, absolutely. So this, like I said, this will be a combination police fire headquarters. Fire Station 3 and Fire Station 2 will be combined into this location. Our ladder truck will be housed out of here because it's right in the hotel district. We'll have a primary response engine, primary response ambulance, and probably our secondary ambulance, along with our air trailer and then our administrative staff there as well.

So that's a pretty good location. Get on the freeway, you can get downtown.

100%. The combination of centralizing this location and adding Fire Station 1 will have a significant impact for our fire response in the city. And this has been, you know, 14 years when I took over as Deputy Chief that I've been working towards. We knew that we had an old antiquated system that had to be consolidated down. get rid of kind of the the old fleet the old buildings and then slowly build it back up and we've done that from opening up player station two we've increased our our apparatus and replaced the fleet we've increased our staffing now and uh it's it's time to uh time to remodel and uh make sure we're we're providing the you know the higher level of service the only other question i had was did the city have to buy the property we're building on our Yes, so we purchased the property. That property used to be known as the Schupner property. The gentleman who owned it passed away. It went into a trust that his daughter is the executive and we purchased that property from them, a portion of the property. All together it's about 18 acres and runs just east of the corner lot. There's a windbreak there and we're from that windbreak about 800 feet of frontage and from Wick Road to the 94 area. So it's the sliver that you'll see on the map here. In a minute, but it's about 18 acres all together There'll be about 11 acres of development at the front up towards wick of the building and the site And then we have some drainage and some detention and stuff also in the back and around the building

The reason I bring that up is years ago, back in Metro World, I think they agreed to give land for a police station, I guess.

It's been talked about for a long time. Part of that, there's the other fire station up in Vining on one of those sites there.

So TIFA does own a piece of property on Vining. It's five acres. It's dissected by one of the drains. It really wasn't a very... useful site as far as development we did have plans that were developed on that site i remember very early when i was first hired here in like 2000 we had some plans for it but it was it was a difficult site to design on um in in a building of this size to accommodate both police and fire you definitely need you know additional space okay thank you yeah all right bailey bailey has been in most of our open i'm sorry no okay bailey were you going to explain the whole section 61 process or do you want me to do that

um if you feel comfortable doing that yeah yeah very very comfortable so um just to get it get get it on record so so as you know what you're seeing tonight is a little different than what you saw in your first two applications this is uh per the michigan enabling legislation um you're in section 61 it's a review of a public building kevin did a great job introducing it it follows a little bit different procedures than what's in your zoning ordinance Typically, we don't outline that process in zoning ordinances. Every community does them a little differently. And we are following our same process that you guys have seen these before. The animal shelter, the court, you've seen them. We used to call them courtesy reviews. So they're technically, this is technically kind of a preliminary Section 61 review of a full site plan. You've got that in front of you. We have a time limit of that you need to take action on it within 35 days. And the key thing tonight that we needed, the reason we needed to get you this is for these waivers. You have the authority over those waivers. The rest of the site plan is just pretty straightforward. We'll do a full review of that administratively. But the waivers are under your authority, so we needed to get those to you tonight, have who's ever going to be doing the discussing of them, and get your feelings on that. So wanted you to be assured that there will be a full review of this site plan. We can do it administratively. It's real straightforward. If anything emerged from it, THAT WE NEEDED TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT LATER AND BRING IT BACK, WE CERTAINLY CAN. SO OUR RECOMMENDATION IS, WE HANDED IT OUT TO YOU TONIGHT. I'M SORRY IT WAS SO LATE AND IT'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU RIGHT NOW, BUT BASICALLY, OUR RECOMMENDATION TONIGHT IS FOR YOU TO HEAR THE PRESENTATION, HEAR ABOUT ALL THE WAIVERS, DISCUSS THEM, TAKE SOME ACTION ON THOSE WAIVERS, AND THEN CONSIDER APPROVING THE SITE PLAN WITH THE CONDITION THAT ADMINISTRATIVELY WE FINISH IT UP.

Yeah. I will, Director Krause did an amazing job at outlining our objectives for this project. So I want to get straight into what this project is going to look like. General site, this is where we're located, just east of the Wiccan-Viking intersection in that parcel that we described earlier. And I think we did a good job at explaining those. So as you see, the development takes place on the northern half of the 18 acres, which only takes up about nine and a half acres of the entire site. We did make mention in some of our documentation that we submitted that the southern portion of the site is being set up for potential future development. We do have like water storm access and water access that we're just taking to the edge of where we're developing but will allow for future development to take place whenever that happens getting in closer you can see the colors divide up the building we have the police station on the eastern part of the building we have a community focused central entrance and training room And then on the westernmost part of the building, we have the fire department and the apparatus bay with all the trucks. We have a public parking lot on the northern part. The public is not encouraged to come to the southern part of the site due to security reasons. So we do show some gate arms that will come down and be managed by dispatch to let in trash trucks and things like that. But we'll deter the public from coming back into that space. You also see our locations for our on site detention ponds, trying to make those look natural and landscaped as well. Okay, this is showing our landscape plan, again, touching on how we're trying to make this site beautified for the future development of Oak Road. Not sure how familiar you are with these renderings. We've been showing kind of this modern and traditional spin on this building for quite a while. And the blue and red symbolizing a very easy way to identify where police would be and where fire would be in case of emergency for the public. Community entrance there where we would have public events.

Bailey, can you make sure you're speaking into the mic there? Yeah, I apologize. Thank you.

Police main entrance and mirrored is the fire main entrance. They look very similar from the exterior with the difference being the color in the signage. We are in conversation right now about kind of expanding that color So these are some images of what that might look like. We have not come to a conclusion on that internally, but I wanted to put both of them in front of you and get your opinion on these both. Including the exterior elevations in here, we kind of did look at the main focal.

I noticed one of the entrances said community. Yes. Now, what is that? If I were coming up there, I'd say, okay, police, fire, am I supposed to go in here as community, as a citizen? What is that intent?

Yeah.

Oh, go ahead.

I was just going to say we did put a community entrance in the front for when there are public events in the training room. For the most part, that door would not be open to the public at all hours. It would be more timed with events, and people would have to then enter through the police or fire lobby.

That's for official business. You go to there. Yeah. This is just special events. Yep.

We really took a look at how we currently interact with the public now and in our current facilities we really don't have areas where we get to interact with the public on a regular basis. Fire Station 4 a little bit more because we have like the training room or the multi-purpose room. we used to host the citizens academy there and that kind of stuff but this will be geared this community space here will be geared again with a multi-purpose training room that can be used for first aid cpr tours of the facility both police and fire we've incorporated a bus parking area for school buses when they come to tour the facility but really looked at a more holistic view of how public safety really interacts with the public and making sure that we have a good forward-facing receptive area for when they come into the facility. That area will be, you know, there might be some historical artifacts for both police and fire and cases, glass, you know, type cabinets in that area, but that will be the central area that we welcome the public into the building.

So like I said, the renderings do a much better job at explaining what that front facade is going to look like. I included these elevations to give you a better picture of what some of those other elevations might look like. We are taking the brick all the way around the building. If I had to put a percentage on it, it would be somewhere around 90% brick and stone. And then there's these decorative pilasters we take along the front of the building to add a little bit of design there. Our exterior materials, the majority of the brick will be this dark charcoal color with the blue and the red being the accent you saw in the renderings. We do have some cast stone details and then a block below the windows. It's very hard to see. Our building is so big. But the police and community rooms and fire, this is our composite plan so you can see the main level. And then we do have a small basement to this that would house our fitness facility, our Milo room, and some of the more private police and fire dedicated spaces where they would train. Where the prisoners come in at the prisoners come in here. There we go. This is the Sally Port in the southern southeastern most corner, so that's where they would come in with the patrol vehicles and they pull inside. Yes, they would pull inside. Let me get back to the site plan. Actually, I'll show you where that's located on the site. So here we have, and this is another thing I should speak on, is our entrance drives. Where am I? So we have the easternmost drive is going to be essentially our police dedicated drive. That's where they're going to enter and exit most. And one of the concerns with the police entrance drive was making sure that the public is not impeding their ability to get out to emergencies when needed. So we did add this. central drive that is going to be public dedicated to keep them primarily from here. This is connected just in case someone does accidentally pull in here. They can easily get out of the way in case there's someone coming in the opposite direction. But to get to the Sally Port where the prisoner drop off would be is they would come in this easternmost drive and pull right into this security gate and then the Sally Port entrance is right adjacent.

My only thought was that we have whatever development's going to go on across the street. You don't want them hearing people being wrestled into the building.

No, it's definitely around the back.

Yep. To continue with the drive, we have this wide apron that is our fire exit only for all of the apparatus. And then on the west side is our fire-dedicated drive. They do have the ability to use this loop, both police and fire, but the public would not. Okay, so that was the end of this presentation. We can get into the waivers. I don't have the list in front of me, but I know them, so we can talk. I apologize if they're not in the same order. One of the waivers being that we have more than two entrance drives on the site, this being the nature of the facility and wanting to have that separation between police, fire, and the public to maintain proper egress out in case of emergency. The second one being we are eliminating the berm along the front northern part of the site for visibility purposes. We want people to be able to recognize this as a police and fire building. And in case of emergencies, like I said, they should have clear direction into the facility. So we don't want to obstruct that at all. The third being in the same location, we are showing vegetation. And maybe the landscape plan is better at depicting this. We are showing vegetation along this northern front. This is within the easement. We have talked with building and planning department about this and are working with them to come to a solution. So that is in the works. We did have one variance or waiver for the vegetation along the sides of the east and west edges of the site, and we essentially want to use the vegetation we're showing for the detention ponds as also our parcel barrier. The last waiver that is on my brain is our parking calculation. So because of the nature of the building not being fully accessible to the public, we did our own parking calculation that essentially separated out what is public space within the building and then what is staff only space and so we weren't doubling down on parking spaces and we were able to condemn the amount of impervious surface on the site through the chair

Sorry. Oh, sorry. No, no problem. I know you probably have not gotten an opportunity to read our response letter, and I am noticing a few things that this was finalized today, but I'm noticing a few things that do need to be corrected as well. Would you like me to run through to just respond and say how we are recommending the waivers to be addressed? Yes. Okay. um in regards to the landscaping i think we'd be looking for something similar to the merriman the store flex just offering the ability to reduce and locate landscaping to meet the objectives of the site in regards to safety visibility view sheds and maintenance of the site we do believe that there is a way to make the aesthetic of the the site meet the intent of the ordinance and still maintain the safety that is necessary to operate the police and fire here. With that being said, some of the landscape requirements, some of the landscape waivers that were requested we wouldn't necessarily say adopt or resolve on them exactly as they're written. We would like to have the opportunity to go back and forth with the design team on the landscape waivers.

So administrative review then?

That would be for administrative review. So that would be the front green belt.

So that would be a conditional waiver or partial waiver?

Correct. So that would be the front green belt berm and the buffer landscaping and the parking lot landscaping. And then the in-ground irrigation with temporary irrigation measures in place until very similar to what North Point did. until the planting material has been established. Then in regards to the parking calculation, I believe, I'm trying to get back to the letter that was written. I believe originally it was requested as a variance. We are in agreement with the way that they created the parking calculations. It's a very unique situation and use that is not prescribed in the zoning ordinance. So we don't necessarily believe it needs to be a variance and referred to BZA. That is not what our, we do say we support the variance, but we do think that it can be considered a waiver and it's a waiver based on the use of the building.

Is that based on numbers or what is determining that?

It's based on their parking calculations, which were provided in one of the letters, are based on the current employees of the police and fire departments and then the public spaces that are available, the community room and then the public spaces being the lobbies of both of the services. So the lobbies of both of the services in the community room do use calculations that the zoning ordinance prescribes, and then the rest of the police and fire are based on the number of employees. And then there's additional 15 Parking spaces above and beyond the current number of employees that both police and fire have so there is room for growth in that In the current parking layout, so I don't number five parking we use that as a waiver at this point

The reason that it's a waiver is your ordinance allows for an applicant to come in and tell us what they need, and we actually really like that. It helps a lot of our standards in our ordinance are updated, and then you do have these unique uses. They came in with a method, as Jessica just explained, and came up with a number, and they came up with 141 spaces that was required, but they're proposing, I think, 153, which was more, So there's also a provision in your ordinance that gives you the authority to allow up to 10% more of the required. So you do the math, and they technically, and that's why it says 155 in the memo that we did there. Technically, if you took the 10% that you're allowed to approve, which... falls into your waiver category, they're fine with the 155. Had they done their method and come up and said, based on this, this, and this, with some future, we need this number, there would be no need for a waiver. That's just an acceptance that you're doing to accept their method of calculation. It was something very creative Brad Strader wrote years ago in your ordinance.

How would you like that worded in the motion then?

It's in your list on the sheet that we gave you. So basically it just falls under that waiver category. In essence, in this case, it's an approval. It's our planning commission approval of allowing them to go 10% higher from what they say is required based on their method of calculation.

So the only change in our list of waivers is that one's not a variance, it's a waiver. And then the landscaping will be reviewed as a partial waiver Right. Okay. Right.

The final two waiver requests are in regards to the driveways. And as Bailey had pointed out, there's two very distinct uses. There's only one public driveway. In fact, the fire apparatus is exit only. It'll be entrance through the easternmost driveway for the fire apparatus. driveway spacing is as efficient as it can be for the length of frontage that the property does have and then the the number of driveways are based on multiple different uses for the property so the busiest driveway with the the most public use is the one in the middle that is separated as far as it can be from all of the driveways on the north side and all of the driveways on the south side

Is that in the boulevard area?

No, it is not. It's directly before the boulevard starts. The boulevard is kind of where Tesla is going to be.

My concern is whatever goes in across the street now we have kind of tightened up where they can put a driveway.

And you will see on some of the plan pages, is it located, is it on that plan? Does the driveway on the north side show up?

One of them does. That's the old construction one. I don't think that's one of the actual drives.

One of the hotel that we actually did just see this evening, that driveway is going to be outside of the property to the east about 200 foot from the center line of the police driveway.

So they're not direct on each other.

No, they are not and they don't they won't have conflicting attorney movements.

Thank you So Jessica, can you speak just briefly? So as part of this through Tifa we we did evaluate as we went through this and we had Roberto in in our meetings and Jeff we discussed what the impact on Wick Road looks like and and we went to OHM and we said I you know, what would we have to do and can you give us a construction cost estimate on widening Wick Road there where we have that center turn lane to give relief to any traffic in that area. Just advanced, again, thinking to ourselves, we want to make sure we're setting the example in this area as the first development on the south side of Wick Road and this is what's going to be expected to make sure that everything flows, you know, very well in that area. So we've gone through that exercise. We have a number and estimate on that and you know that'll be something I take back to TIFA to address through the TIFA board and it's just going to be a matter of timing on when to do that at this point.

Yeah, so to speak to the average daily traffic, even after this headquarters comes in, there will not be a need for a cross-section of a road, more than two through lanes, an east and a west, and then the center turn lane. And the way that the road is configured right now, there is a line of utility poles that will be just directly north of this building. There's a... established county drain, and that's all on the south side of the road. So the road would be widened to the north where we have plenty of room between the edge of the pavement and the safety path that was installed with North Point. So the 12-foot lane widening would be to the north.

Through the Chair, a question I have is when we're talking about the road, like on Middle Belt Road, you have your safety light there that stops traffic when the fire department needs to come and go out of there. Are we going to do anything similar here, or do you think that the traffic doesn't warrant that?

Yeah, right now the traffic doesn't warrant that. The only emergency light that we have right now is on Eureka. Eureka Road is the only one we have currently right now. The traffic here currently through the study that's been done wouldn't warrant that. As this develops and grows out, maybe down the road it may, but right now it doesn't.

And I, through the chair, I agree with that because I drive that way every day. And there isn't a lot of traffic right there. But if down the road we need that, then we can address that then. And because, like, I know definitely, I know we won't have the station there at Ecorse and Middlebelt anymore when this is. And that is a big issue when they're coming out of there. 100%. Because I'm over there every day, too, and there's been times when they have a hard time getting out of there and getting into the lanes they need to leave out of there. Yeah. So that was just a concern.

To the Chair, I know we're early in the stages, but do we have plans for a standby power generator? No.

Yes, we do. Okay. We have a generator enclosure on the site with two backup generators on there. It'll be a full building generator.

Okay, and another question. Are we going to have fuel on site, diesel and gas for our fire vehicles and police cars? No.

Not at all? No fuel. No fuel.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

So from beginning to end, once we break out ground, how long do you think it'll take to get this up and running? So we're looking probably like.

I'm going to say conservatively second quarter of 28, so Q2 of 28. And we are working very rapidly with Gilbane, with PIA, with you guys tonight. The plan came in very late last week, and Jeff reached out and said, hey, it's short notice, but I can get it on the schedule. Do you want me to? And I said, absolutely. And we're looking at going through the bid process for an early bid package for groundwork and underground utility and site work and earth moving. So we should be, right now we're looking like probably October, I think it is, to actually start the site work.

Madam Chair, one more question. Because you addressed Station 1 over on Distill, let anyone out there that doesn't know where that's at, it's Northline and here in the River Drive area. And I know we don't have any of that here tonight in front of us, but what is the proclamation of getting started with that?

Yeah, so we've been concurrently working on design for that as we have this. This was the priority to get this in front of you guys, get this approved, move forward, get the groundbreaking going and getting this. This is the longer standing project right now. Station one is a much smaller building, a much smaller project. We've looked at that a couple different ways. We went through a study process with PIA. to determine if keeping the original building there was feasible or utilizing the site to a higher level because we have more room over on that site than where the current footprint is. We have room to the west on that site as well. And it's a little bit of a challenge because there's a cell phone tower on that site as well. That's being repurposed by T-Mobile. It's been shut down for a couple years, but they're reactivating the site here in the near future so we went through those studies with them and the determination was to rebuild that site so that site will be scraped and then reconstructed as a new location with with some additional amenities for the public such as Public parking for the bike trails and everything that are over there as well but that site probably if everything goes to plan we may be working on demolition of that site this year with early spring construction start and that'll be a much shorter timeline thank you i'd proudly make this motion because i remember my grandfather talking about combining station two and three

When I was a little kid. So it's finally being done. It couldn't happen at a better time because it's so hard to recruit good personnel for police and fire today. And this will help. This will help the city big time recruit the best and the brightest people out there. So I would like to conditionally approve, make a motion that the planning commission conditionally approve the site plan for SPR 2026-008 Ramos Public Safety Headquarters, subject to administrative review and approval of a complete revised site plan subject to the following seven waivers. They're listed a 3g and the Planning Commission summary report number B letter will be a conditional approval That you'll have to work with administrative review on the landscaping and then also what was mentioned about number five about the parking That being a waiver versus a variance So item B is going to be a partial waiver for the

for the landscaping for us to work out.

And I think that's it. And any other comments noted by the Planning Commission during the preliminary review of this site plan, which I believe there was a lot of other comments.

So moved. All in support.

Mr. King, you supported it?

Yep.

All right. I have a motion for Mr. Prova. Supported by Mr. McAnally. to approve the SPR-2026-008 Romulus Public Safety Headquarters petition. Subject to all of the items set. Mr. Prowell, let's see. Anything else?

No, just maybe for the memo, David, i'm sorry you can just maybe reference the memo the summary memo data at 17. yeah i referenced it today okay so any discussion mr grova yes mr mcganally yes

Mr. Robuade? Yes. Ms. Jamieson? Yes. Ms. Roscoe? Yes. Mr. Long? Yes. Mr. Blackhouse? Yes. Chair Roches? Yes.

thank you commission on behalf of the police and fire departments uh you know i'd like to express my heartfelt gratitude and thank you for supporting this uh it's long overdue it's uh it's the right thing to do for our public safety individuals and it's the right thing to do for the city as as a whole uh for our service models for both both police and fire it'll uh this is gonna bring our public safety into the future tenfold compared to where we've been operating so thank you very much yeah there's there's both of these sites could potentially be in construction at the same time yeah yeah well that old police station river back to the school Well, it is in a lease with the city for a period of time, so we're going to have to have some conversations with that. That has been one of the things that's come up. What are you going to do with that site? How is it going to be handled? That's a whole other project, a whole other conversation.

I was hoping it would revert back to the underlying residential. Oh, well, we'll see. Okay, thank you.

Thank you on behalf of PIA. We really enjoy working with you. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Bailey.

It's funny because The other night I had to call 911 and myself. They took me to the hospital, my asthma. And so while we were talking, we were talking to the fireman, and one of them talked about getting a new fire station. And I forget which one of the guys was, and he says, oh, it won't be in my lifetime.

it will and i'll share with you hopefully it will now i'll share with them yeah i'll share with the commission also uh last wednesday was the bond sale for the tiffa bonds and we actually had a tiffa meeting the same day we were scheduled for two hours for the bond sale it closed in an hour and 45 minutes we were two and a half times prescribed the the dollar amount so we were asking for 45 million for the project And there was about $115 million in request for it because of the performa of TIFA and how well funded it is and what we're doing here and the longevity and sustainability of that district. So again, the foresight from Mayor McCreight of really finding ways to use TIFA for what it was meant to be. And we're doing that and we're going to be able to provide You know, a lot of additional public benefit through those TIFA dollars that, you know, wasn't really thought of in the past. But zero additional tax dollars, which is really the key. And, you know, it's long overdue.

I know in the past we haven't really heard a lot of TIFA being spent for various things. In some cases, some people didn't even know what TIFA was or what it was for.

so so you're gonna you're gonna see it to a much higher level and we're gonna uh we're gonna make sure everyone knows and and mr long knows he sits in those meetings and we've been aggressive at going after uh projects um that you know that are long overdue with with roads and infrastructure and buildings and everything else. So we got a long way to go, but there's some things we can do with it. There's some things we can't do with it. But I try to find that happy medium and run everything by Pat McGow, our bond attorney and our TIFA attorney to make sure we're staying within the guardrails and getting whatever we can get done for the city.

That's the way to do it. Thank you. Thank you. WE WILL GO AHEAD AND MOVE RIGHT ALONG. AND THEN WE HAVE ITEM 9, WHICH IS PC CASES INVOLVING ADVISORY INPUT FROM GLEN COMMISSION. ALL RIGHTY. THANK YOU. Next, we have item 10, which is reports on interest and segregation. And Ms. Roscoe, do you have something to report to us?

Sure, I do, of course. So tonight I want to really push the fact that everyone should have gotten this in the mail. Yes. Our Romulus Community Connections magazine. and right smack dab in the middle is everything you need to know about the pumpkin festival all the events all the times everything that's going on and of course that's september 18th 19th and 20th so mark your calendars but get your book out hopefully you didn't pitch it and you get all the information but on top of that there's um all kinds of different articles as to uh some of the things that have been going on and uh and different things, you know, fire department or police department. And again, another section, it tells you everything that's coming up. For instance, In September, we have the garage sale weekend, which is September 24th and 25th and 26th, 27th of September. But it also goes on and tells you some things that's going on in October, not just what's coming up in September. And so, yeah, so get your book out. Go through it. Information on the senior center. is in here, it's just chock full of anything and everything you need to know. And again, there's phone numbers for you to contact different departments, all right here. You need a number, there it is. So, again, I'm really pushing this little magazine because it has all the information we need.

This last one, the one we just got, it's jam-packed with some really good stuff. All kinds of stuff. I think it's the best one they've ever put out.

There's no vacant spots in this book. And another thing I really want to push is the fact that there's all the information right on the back about Code Red. Code Red is what you can sign up for for all the emergency contacts. Believe me, I get it in my email. I get it in my text messages. I get it in my phone rings. I mean, you can set it up to get it, you know, Every different way. And when there's a problem and there's an issue going on as far as weather, different road issues or what have you, that are emergency situations, you'll get a call, a text, email, all different ways. Very important. But you have to sign a report. So do that. It's very important.

That's all I have tonight. Thank you. Mr. McAnally, do you have anything to report on VCA?

Last month's meeting, we did have Project General on our agenda. We approved both their variance requests. The only other item we had was drain and pot. They wanted a temporary use variance, and we provided that for them, so they'll be going this year, come Halloween. So that was the only two things we had this month. That's good.

Nothing in for September. Probably the next ones you'll see maybe store flex. Those will probably be coming.

Does anybody else have anything on interest as ignition?

Not exactly my designation. I just want to piggyback off of Councilwoman Roscoe. So for the Pumpkin Fest, a couple things I wanted to point out. So as we know that we have Freighter Lights on Friday. We have our car show, Classic Cars, on Saturday. And on Sunday, we call it Unity Day. And what we try to do is something a little different for the family. So this year, We're actually going to have Rockwall. We're bringing that back. We're bringing back a virtual roller coaster, because we don't have a spot for an actual roller coaster. But we'll have a virtual one, which I'm told is probably more drastic than an actual one. And then we're actually doing train rides. So we're going to have a train riding around. for the families and so most of the things we try to do is for the family to come together because that's what unity is all about but we'll have the worship in the park our hometown superhero we do have a um a special presentation that we'll be doing and we have a huge announcement that we'll be making uh something else that you have is going to be doing for romulus it's new So, can't let the cat out the bag, but I'm gonna say you wanna be around to hear about the big announcement that we're gonna make right after we do our Hometown Superhero Awards. We'll have live entertainment. We are trying to leave a space for local new artists, so if you know someone who has a skill or a talent and they want a platform, tell them to reach out to Pro Tem Tina Talley and contact her. But we're trying to leave a space, maybe a half hour, so if someone has a talent or a skill or ability that they want to display, because we're trying to get local people some exposure to grow. So yeah, we're looking to do that, and then of course we have live entertainment, and then we'll be doing our Ron and Sis Got Talent, which has also been great. The very first year we did that, the group that we sponsor, they actually now are popular and they have grown. And so I'm glad that they come back and they give us the credit for helping them get exposure. So we want to do that for someone else again. So but yeah, look out for that big announcement that we have. That's one of many that will be coming in the near future.

Thank you. Anybody else?

I just want to ask, Kevin, will there be a groundbreaking ceremony for the public service building? MR. There will.

Under communications, I was going to talk about that.

Okay, I have 11 communications. And before we go to the project status report, did you want to talk?

Yeah, if you don't mind, through the chair. So yeah, now that you were able to approve our ask this evening for the site plan, I will share that we are working on plans currently right now to do our groundbreaking on September 11th. We felt that it would be appropriate to really reaffirm our dedication to public safety on that date. It's going to be 2 p.m. It'll be at the site. We're going to be a little bit earlier than when ground actually starts moving, but we think that it's appropriate and long overdue to get this done. uh publicly kicked off and official so um you will receive a um an email invite um through your city um through your city emails um but yeah september 11 2 p.m we will be doing a groundbreaking ceremony I have a couple other things, if you don't mind, through the chair. Go right ahead. So you've heard me speak on behalf of some of the things that have occurred out of my office over the last couple years. Primarily, you know, we kicked off an eCourse Road Corridor study. And that corridor study led to some actions and some things through zoning and through planning commission for stuff coming in front of you at North Point and with a number of other things. So we were really excited how that went, went into our five year master plan review. It turned into a housing study as well through Jessica Hobbs in my office. And we've taken all of that data and we put it together and we looked at this LDFA, this land development funding authority in conjunction with Taylor, Van Buren, and Aerotropolis. And it really looks at the breadth of Ecorse Road all the way through the city and Inkster Road, because Inkster Road isn't a Class A road, but it has a lot of M1 and heavy use. So the three cities went together with Aerotropolis. We went to the state. We asked for an LDFA. And I can officially say that as of about two weeks ago, we received our approval letter through the state treasury department in MEDC. So that's been approved. Next steps for us is our assessing department right now is working through creating the district. and doing the estimates on the capture of that LDFA and what that looks like moving forward. But once that happens, that funding mechanism will go towards the design and the conceptuals for what happens with Ecorse Road. We know that primarily when we did that Ecorse Road study, it was an infrastructure study looking at the roadway. How do we expand it to three lanes through the entire breadth of the city? How do we hit some low-hanging fruit with drainage and ditching and stormwater, which are all kind of imperative along that corridor and problematic for everybody. So it's been about an 18-month process to get that approved through the state. We're only the third one that's been created through the state. So we actually have two of them. We did the Amazon one for the extension of Vining Road, and that's very successful. It is self-paying, so this is a second one that we're going to be doing, and hopefully between the three cities, we really can build some synergy across Ecorse Road and make some significant improvements, because they're well overdue on that roadway. uh so really excited about that i also want to touch on real quick the hotel district um you know that we started our quarterly hotel district meetings a while ago so we have these once a quarter with all the hotels we bring all the hotel years in last uh last quarter we brought dte in to talk about power outages and how that impacted the hotels and um you know some of the hotels house pilots and staff for the airport and it impacted some of them which then impacted flights at the airport as well to an extent. So we really kind of brought DT and looked at that. But one of the other big things that we've been working on with them is kind of the special assessment district over there and how to improve it. TIFA has approved a lighting, a street lighting project for the entire SAD district. So that will be Vining Road, Wick Road, Wickham and Smith. um from merriman road east those areas where the sad is so we're in process with dt on that there has been a couple hiccups with the planning of that project because of the glwa water main on wick road so we're reworking a couple of those uh of those areas uh with that but that'll be going in shortly shortly Um, this fiscal year, as I talked about utilizing TIFA to a higher, higher extent and higher level, we, uh, budgeted, uh, half a million dollars for, um, road, uh, maintenance and upkeep for the roads that TIFA put into place, which were Flynn, uh, Smith Road, Hildebrandt over off Middleville, and then Warman Road on the south end. So we'll be kicking off a road maintenance program here at the end of August that will cut patch a lot of those Crack seal and just fix some general concrete issues that are problematic in those areas primarily when you turn off Wickham Road going to wick that that cement apron area right there is horrible that'll be getting fixed and that's one of the Those kind of couple areas have been one of the biggest complaints of the hotel district And ways we can help them. So we're trying to work on taking care of that and addressing that as well and walkability and pathways over in that district. Uh, they've also asked if we can find a way to connect the hotel district to the North point bike path, walk path and nature path over there. Uh, which, um, uh, Mr. McAnally, we've talked to you several times in regards to what that's going to look like. And I can say that, um, we have, uh, entered into a contract with, um, Hennessy to help us, uh, develop that kind of entryway, uh, on behalf of your mom. And, um, we're, We just signed that last TIFA meeting, and we will have some conceptuals and be looking for your input on what that looks like in the near future. But that'll have some increased amenities along Wickham with the pocket park. just some benches in the area, some garbage cans, just in general, just trying to really kind of lift that entire area up even more than we did for the draft two years ago, right? We really started doing this two years ago, three years ago for the draft and then Here we are two years later, starting to kind of go into phase two of it, primarily because in 2027, we're going to have the final four here in Detroit. And lessons learned from the draft, even though we had a record-setting draft, our hotel district didn't really feel the compression or the business increase because most of them were Michigan-based attendees at that draft. The final four is a whole different game. They will fill hotel blocks, they will pack those hotels, and it'll be busy in that district. So we're really starting to work in that direction to start working with them and what that looks like. Councilwoman Celeste mentioned the Pumpkin Fest. We will be bringing the... Oh, shoot, what do they call it? It's the NCAA Fan Jam, I think it is, to the Pumpkin Fest, which will be kind of promoting and kicking off the kind of pre-advertisement for the Final Four for Detroit, which will actually be coming to the Pumpkin Fest Friday night. So that'll be a fun kickoff for the Friday night, yeah. Working very hard with them. And then if you didn't know... A couple years ago, working with the hotel district, we were able to bring the Little League World Series teams back to Romulus. We lost them years ago. I might have talked about this before, but they were at the Sheridan last week and had a very, very successful week over in Taylor at the Heritage Park with their Little League World Series. But all those teams that come into Michigan, and some of them are international from Taiwan and other areas, Argentina and South America all stayed at our Sheridan last week and really increased business in that district. So it was nice to see that. And then lastly, I just want to touch on something that Mr. McAnally had asked about earlier as far as capacity and hotel rooms in the district you know we are the largest hotel district in southeastern michigan we have currently right now more hotels than detroit i've said it publicly multiple times and i still stand behind this is i don't think we are overbuilt with hotel rooms i think we're under demolished with hotels and i say that because the majority of our hotel stock are is out of date uh the buildings are end of life the buildings are exhausted uh they've been the flags have been passed and and uh they've they've been used up and we really need to see these new type of hotels that are being proposed these are the the home two suites and the you know those type of um you know high efficiency hotels with some amenities but if you look at some of the sprawling hotel sites that we have you could fit two three of these hotels on that site and also have mixed use room on that site for restaurants and retail and other amenities to join it. So we have one win with the the roadway being tore down, and we're gonna be working on getting that home two suites built there with Cooper Hotels. I think it's a start, but I think we got a long way to go with some of these old hotels. I met with a company called Revpar, and Revpar is the company that really looks at hotels and says for any area, like what type of hotels do you need the different service levels like a full service hotel like the sheridan and our marriott and the westin at the airport um you need like a couple of those kind of top tier hotels you need a bunch of middle tier hotels and then you need a couple that are like kind of the extended state hotels what is that old hilton what is that anymore the old hilton the brown one right on the curve coming onto wick

That's to be safe.

What is it, the Metro or something?

Oh, no, it's, no, that's not.

Skyline. But it's going to be, it just got purchased, the one that's Skyline now. Oh, yeah, Skyline. It's going to be somebody just. It's going back to a double tree.

Yeah. That's going to be going back to a Doubletree. So that is in bankruptcy holding and the Mayor and I met with the new potential owner a week or two ago. He has his capital stack in place and his financing. He used to own the Doubletree in Dearborn, then went to the Chicago market and is now coming back to Michigan. So if everything goes right, he's got about 60 days to close on that. And then it'll be back in a hotelier's hands that has experience. Because the one who bought it was Skyline. It was a whim. It wasn't kind of a history brand. But that RevPar meeting went very well, lasted about two hours. everything I'm sharing with you and then some in two hours was shared with them. And that information, when they look at Romulus and they see all the growth, they see what's going on, they take that information, and then that information makes the determination for the hotels when they have to do their refresh. So when they have to do that refresh, they say, okay, this is what's coming to that area. You need to be here in the market, both locally, regionally, and nationally. So this is the level we want you to invest into the property. So making sure we're doing our part and putting in, you know, I say it all the time that, you know, private money follows public investment. You got to put the infrastructure in place and then the private money will flow in afterwards. And I think we're doing that and we're going to be doing it to a much higher level. So hopefully that meeting last week with Revpar will also pay some dividends in the future with some of these hotels.

Kind of like the sheets effect. You get a sheets and suddenly everybody's upgrading their gas. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

So with that being said, I won't take any more time. I don't get here every month to see you guys, but when I do, I'd like to try to let you know what I'm working on on the front end of all of this before it gets to you guys.

Okay, move along. Well, I don't have anything nearly as exciting, but we do have a meeting in September. Actually, we've got two public hearings. Romulus Trade Center North, you just saw their conditional rezoning. The plan, we did a first review on it and a few minor things to clean up, but pretty much what you saw during the conditional rezoning, you'll see that. And then Huron Park is a... I saw that. I was looking at that. Oh, that's what you're pointing at. I thought you were telling me my microphone was off. I think it's actually on. It's at the corner of Haro and Huron River Drive, mixed-use developments with a retail building or commercial building with apartments up top and then a bank of townhomes. So it's kind of – it's not a total, total, total – It does require conditional rezoning and special land use and density, but that's going to be in front of you as well. Do you think Universal will be ready?

I do.

Universal is an e-course road development expansion. Two sites kind of put together and blending it. Oh, thanks, Edna. There you go. So, yeah, so you're going to have a busy September.

Anything going on with the drugstore, the old CVS?

Nothing as of right now, so there's still about a year and a couple months of the current contract with CVS, even though they're not operating, they're paying that contract. The challenge we run into is the owner wants a long-term lease, so if we were to get a small business in there, at the end of the year, in three months or whatever's left, they're gonna force them into a long-term lease that may or may not be viable for a small business. So we're kind of in a holding pattern with them right now, trying to figure out who we can get in there. They don't market it very hard because they're getting paid. So it's one of those things like there's no reason for them to go to work to find somebody new. We probably market it more for them than they do themselves right now, trying to be aggressive and find somebody. I had a couple conversations with the Dollar General Fresh, I think it is, or it's Dollar General or Dollar Tree Fresh Market or whatever they call it. And they're doing a couple of pilots of those throughout the state and they're looking to see, they want one year of pilot information before they make a decision to move forward. So we've been in some contacts and discussions with them, but they're not at the point where they're ready to start expanding that program yet.

What about the hotel at Middle Belt and Hildebrandt? Are we ever going to see it?

I can say that I have had some conversations as recent as today with some different individuals that are involved in that project. I don't know the answer to that, but I know you will see action soon.

How about the Drysdale Pallet at Goddard or Middleville? That's been months you're supposed to clean that up.

That is, and now it's an enforcement issue, and we've got the buildings and everything down. It started to clean up. Now they just haven't completed it, in which we will get completed if we have to go in and do it themselves and building owners. That's what we're going to do.

It's been a long time coming.

I know. I mean, we got that far. I wish it had got completed late.

I think I ask just those same questions weekly. The things we do. I get asked almost daily, what's going on?

All righty. Anything else on the status report from anybody?

I will tell you real quick, there's a couple in for engineering review now, which is Bucks Oil and Super Y. Engineering Review, Super Y actually submitted construction drawings, so they're concurrently under both reviews right now. So that's some approvals that have come through you guys recently that are now moving forward.

I got one more. I see some dirt being moved over there in Aztec that Harrison wrote between Eureka and Northline. I've seen a movement over there for several days, now it's stopped. Apex? I'm sorry, Apex, yes.

So Apex, I've been in discussions with them on their, We went through one round of like a site plan review administratively. I talked to the owners there. They're pausing. I know that they were planning on farming that, but obviously they're probably not doing it. It's a little late in the season now, but I don't know about any dirt moving right now. But they said they're pausing and they're thinking this winter time they're going to re-up and go through their site plan and everything like that now.

All right. Thank you.

That's it. I know that's what I'm just saying.

That's why that's important anymore. OK, next item is adjournment.

So move. Support.

I have a motion for this. Mr McAnally to adjourn. Miss Jensen, yes. Yes. Mr. Rasko? Yes. Mr. Long? Yes. Mr. Blackfelty? Yes. Mr. Prova? Yes. Mr. Boboide? Yes. Chair votes yes. This meeting stands adjourned.