Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

for Monday, September 15th, 2025 will now come to order. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I aliance 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. Next item is roll call. Roll call. Uh, Mr. Frederick, present. Mr. Gloely, he's excused. Excuse. Mr. Mcanelli, present. Mr. Long, here.

Miss Rosco here. Miss JSON here. Mr. Crover here. Bubad here. And Chair Fright also. Excuse. Excuse. Next item we have is the approval of the agenda. So moved. Support. Motion by Miss Jameson. Supported by Mr. Long. Roll call. Miss Jameson. Yes. Mr. Long. Yes. Miss. Rosco. Yes. Mr. Kova. Yes. Mr. Bobo. Yes. And I vote yes. Mr. Mr. McNav and Mr. Frederick.

Yes. Thank you. Next, approval of the minutes from our meeting held August 8, 2025. So move. Support. Motion by Jimson, supported by Mr. Long. Roll call. Miss Jimson. Yes. Mr. Long. Yes. Mr. Frederick. Yes. Miss Rosco, yes. Mr. Crova, yes. Mr. Bobo, yes. I vote yes.

Next comments from public on non-aggendum items. Anybody out there? I see no one. Moving on to public hearings. TA 2025-00002 section 111.07 07 vehicle uses. Okay. Sorry. Um we want to open the public hearing first or did you want me to introduce anything? Just give an introduction and I'll go into the public hearing portion.

Great. Uh basically you saw this last time and this is a pretty extensive section and as you are aware it was generated by the city council's gas station moratorum which is in article 11 section 7.06 again 7 I'm sorry 7 11.07 um which also includes several other vehicle and truck related uses. So, we started looking at some other sections, particularly used car dealerships that's had some significant run uh revisions as well. And you'll also see that there's still continues to be some notes at the side here. We're continuing to work with Jessica Kers and with Mr. Hitchcock on some language regarding the traffic study aspect of it. And Jessica is looking into what's reasonable and what uh what what language we should be using which is likely going to lead to some changes for some other land uses in the ordinance for consistency. So that's what she's working on right now. Um, Steve, did you want to you had an opinion? One question that came up was the the amount of spacing you're basically with the gas stations, we're proposing only two up to two at an intersection. Um, and they have to be within two 2500 feet of each other. So, that number varies from municipality to municipality. And this one's on the higher side. And there were some questions and we inserted a map in your packet with with some bubbles on it that sort of showed the areas where where this is going to be effective and what you're going to get at these areas. Again, that's Steve did that map and explained it a little bit more and much better.

Should I go into the public hearing at this point? Officially open the public hearing and Sure. Sure. Okay. Public hearing is now open. We have an affidavit of first class mail on file. There's anybody in the audience that wishes to speak to this. Seeing no one, I will close that portion out and open it up to commissioners for questions. Mr. Frederick. Yep. Uh so I I look on the map here, all the blue dots and uh Wayne Road gas station and Cadre gas stations.

Those don't exist. They don't. They are they are two proposals that we have in this map. In addition to showing the ones that are physically existing there are also showing the ones that are in the process. Okay.

Um I will tell you this, the Wayne Road gas station, we actually just closed that account out that uh opened in 21 sitting on this many years. We haven't had any activity on it. a couple inquiries here and there, but no substantial um involvement with the applicant. So, we decided to close that one out. The one on the other side of the street is the former Speedway station. Very, very preliminary stages. Some complications with utilities there and he's investigating I think something related to the sanitary, isn't it? Yes. Yes. About how to get sewer over there. Yep.

So, they're both you needless to say, you haven't seen them. So, so interestingly enough, the old Total Speedway was an existing location for gas. So, it's zoned for that. Correct. It's zone C3. Yes. But it was never zoned where the bar was. Uh that corner the other corner. Uh down on the Huh? City Lounge. City Lounge. No, not City Lounge. Where the uh the old free PJ's Distillery was when it burned. That was never a gas station there. Which which corner is that? be the northeast where that store is at now. Oh, where the where the party store is. Yeah, I know they wanted pumps, but they wanted diesel, but that was never a gas station that I can ever remember.

No, just the strip center with the party store. Yep. So, that was never zoned for No, no more than I know it's that thing where if it was there once it until the zoning and and not necessarily. So, um, just because something was there once, if it's lost its and it's non-conforming, I mean, you got to start again. You've got to meet current rules. Okay. So, yeah, I just wanted to Yep. No, good question. Good question. We see names that that aren't physically there. So, thank you, Miss Jameson. Yeah. Um, yeah. Can you explain that home? What is that? Uh, home rule city act. What is that? What does that entail?

Sure. There's a state statute that cities are incorporated under. It's called the Home Rule City Act. It's been around for a long time. And that act specifically has in it provisions that says that local governments can regulate and limit oil and gasoline services in the city. And then of course your charter as I point out in the letter has mimicked that and says the same thing. So I I don't think there's any question that you have the authority to limit the number of them. So you don't have to have one on every corner in the city. Um, so I tried to explain that and and I would also say that the the number the 26 number that I used in my letter,

that doesn't count the ones that are on plans to be opened, there's 26 that had active licenses with the state this point in time. So, um, and we left those I think it's is there four of them that were that are that are currently in the process, right? And like I said, one of them is this one that we've closed out. If they were to come back, they they um but yeah, the reason we're counting them, I I think it's questionable whether or not someone who's applied and is in the process, you can change the rules underneath their feet while they're in process.

So that's why we include them on on the map in the event that they actually do follow through and they get opened. So um and I'm changing the rules in mid during a moratorum period. Doesn't that have I mean well the whole purpose was to look at this at the Yeah, we issued a well we issued a moratorum about them finishing them and opening them. the ones that had already applied and had spent money and had drawings and things like that have gone down the road somewhat to then say that they can't build at the location when they did all that stuff would be permitted then

okay I understand I didn't realize we had that far in the process different really um you know the Yono the Yono super Y they are just finishing up they're they're very close to getting ready to submit for engineering so you've approved them. City council's approved them. The conditional resoning um has not been published and it's not uh totally effective yet because of just a few housekeeping things that they they need to do. However, that's a that's probably the one that's the furthest along and just what he's talking about that's that's in there. We don't want to change the rules on them right now. That I understand. I was I didn't realize we had people that close in the middle of this. Any other questions?

Sheets was one of them. The second sheets was one of them, but it it got built and opened. So, I I did have a question. All the comments because tonight we're looking to recommend to city council. The comments that are tied to all these notes, are they incorporated?

They're not. They're not here yet. And that's that's one of the things we wanted to get get this in city council's hands. So even even with some outstanding um things that need to be added, we're pretty confident that we can get them tidied up. They're basically going to say things again pertaining to traffic. So for example, on truck stops, you know, there's a comment in here right now that talks about, you know, they can require a traffic traffic impact study, which we do. And then there's a traffic study shall demonstrate that the transportation network adjacent to the site um and we changed site access got rid of that will operate a level of C or better. So Steve you had some some question about that.

There was two things that I had a problem with. One was access to the site when the intersection which is right close to it may be bad but yeah getting in and out of it in the drive to the gas station was okay. So we we really did need a traffic study that was limited to the ingress and egress out into and out of the gas station. We want to know what the impact of all the traffic that's going in there and out of there is going to be on that intersection at that corner. you know, traffic lights got to be changed. Do we need right turn lanes if we don't have them? Um, a good example of that was sheets up at Smith and Middle Belt

that needed right turn lanes. Um, you know, so you ended with some acceleration deceleration lanes and stuff. So the idea was to make sure the language is a little broader so that it didn't include just the entrance to the facility that you're having the study looked at. You're also looking at the intersection. And then secondly, what is the impact of the intersection that you can rely upon? We I have a little issue about the language about a level C or better because unfortunately the law is that the developer is not responsible for improving our roads,

right? So if we had an intersection that's already a D, let's say, and now we're telling them, hey, he can build his facility, but he's got to raise the whole intersection to a C, we're not going to be able to make that stick. we can make him do so he's not damaging the intersection. So if it's a C now, yeah, we can make him do whatever is necessary to maintain the C status, but um this one right now says we'll operate at a level C or better. M uh I think we got to slightly change that

that will be at at the same level or better that is prior to the operation of the gas station. Well, Carol, is your intent to clarify a lot of these comments prior to city council seeing this? Yep. Well, there will be no there will be no side boxes on the bottom through the chair. Um, that was going to be my major question. It No, all this is going to be clarified and in the language before it comes. Absolutely. Some of it was clarified. She was just pointing out what changed or who who suggested the change in some cases. You just don't want to have an open debate on

Oh, no. They're going to look at this and go, "No." Um definitely some of this was timing just on everybody's end with the master plan with we're we're also dealing with several site plans right now sort of everything kind of came in at once and so we were went through this we're pretty comfortable and because of the timing of the moratorum which is um expires in January we really you know city council requires the two readings and a little bit more timing there so uh we wanted to make sure that we had you guys looking at it and at least concurring that we were heading in the right direction and just needed to tweak some of this.

So, we need to know that whether there's a you have any heartburn that's going to cause us to change things beyond the few points here that we still have some refinement to do on. I Yeah, I don't see anything. I think they're good ideas. I just hope they can be implemented. The 2500, what heartburn we're going to get from developers on some of this. I know it's what is it 1,500 per used car lots. Yes. Separation. Yes. Which and used car lots. We added also that you had to be 150 ft off the intersection, I think. Yeah. 150 ft off the intersection. So we won't have used car lots at our corners basically.

That's a big one. Yeah. Okay. And we got that is a constantly in flux thing too because there becoming more popular. I think I explained this maybe last time about what's going on with insurance companies totaling out cars earlier and so they get cars that really are fixable. And so we got a lot of people that are in want to be in the business of getting those cars, recreating them, and then selling them as used cars for 30 40,000. So a piece.

That's one of that's driving this a little bit too because they're getting a lot of inquiries about I'd like to open a used car lot. We just Carol just got an interesting one that we have to think about too. somebody who wants to be a pawn broker car shop. In other words, you can go in and pawn your car and if you don't come up with the money in a certain the number of days that's in the statute, he's got a pawn brokerage license. You sign a document, he owns your car, then he'll sell the car. Pawn your car.

Pawn your car. I said, that's what I said. Wait a minute. Isn't that the last thing that people would pawn? they would have nothing because once you pull in your car, you can't get the work. So, I don't know. But that was his that was his business model.

Uh, so we're going to we're going to actually tweak tweak the definition on that. We put in sharing. It wasn't in the statute before because some places in the country they're doing kind of ride sharing, whatever you want to call it. You use your car only on the weekends. you deliver it to this facility during the week and they rent out your car. So you people are sharing the use of your car with you. Uh so we want to treat them the same as this it's as it's a used car lot also. It's like people running out their houses for other people to stay in.

Yeah. Right. That well that goes on too. the verbboing of your house for the weekend in some communities where you can do that not zoning big problems. Um I had one another community where the guy had a great pool in his backyard. He had a little putting green and he had uh outdoor grill and all said he was staying with some relatives during the week and Friday night his house would be rented until Sunday night. People would show up just to party. Of course, the neighbors hated that because they had music going at 2:30 in the morning, you know,

and there's a big party going on out there. So, uh there's all kinds of craziness going on about renting out your stuff.

And in big cities, that's that's you know, if you live in Chicago, for example, you don't have any place to park your car, but on weekends you like to go out with your car and get out of Chicago, go places. This is this kind of concept is ideal if you've thought through the insurance issues that you park your car at some lot where people can rent your car during the week long as they got it back by a certain time on Friday night. You want to pick it up to go for the weekend. Uh probably not too big a demand around here, but uh because everybody's got cars, uses them all the time. But just trying to be ahead of the curve on that stuff.

One of the things that um you know as we're kind of working through this, as we get a lot of these requests in um and it actually got picked up in your ecourse road corridor study about assembling parcels together and the M1 district is a very very popular district for used car dealers. And they're all these little tiny they're old houses and they're very very very small. So the one acre which many of them didn't didn't fit into that. But that's one of the reasons why we said let's let's up this to two acres. Did some research in other communities and saw some other stuff that that's pretty reasonable. Possibly get some of some assembly going and at least you have a bigger you know a bigger site to work with rather than all these little little scattered things. Same thing with gas stations. Uh there was a provision in the ordinance years ago I think of with one acre minimum. For some reason it came out but we threw that back in. So we have we have one right now that um you know they call and ask about I don't know they're ever going to be able to you know pull together a proposal but it's less than an acre. So, it's like, you know what? Unless you start talking about buying some surrounding property, make your site bigger because you're never going to get the curb cuts. You're never going to get

Mhm. So, so that's what what's happening with a lot of this dimensional stuff. Okay. Any other comments

to the chair? Dan, I would like to ask the question about um so when we do send this up to um council for review, are we trying to influence them to stay with the moratorum or are we trying to open it back up again? What's our goal? Well, the goal would be to try to get this done by January 1 because the moratorum ends and u and they'd be something that we could let everybody go forward and put in applications if they wanted to and you know like the fit is going to be difficult.

There's only without some zoning change there's only maybe a couple of spots on here you can really put a new gas station. Um, but you know, everybody's got the right to come in and say, "Oh, we want we want to put one over here on the west side and we want a reszoning for something." And they can bring that to you and try to convince you that they they want to reszone it and there's no there's nothing within 2500 ft of them. And um but at the same time if this doesn't make it to council in December's meeting then they could consider extending the moratorum until

they can legally the longer you go with those things the shakier they get because you know some point it's not reasonable to keep applicants from being able to apply for things. So I I would my preference would be that they this be figured out by January one. That makes sense. Thank you Mr. Ross.

Thank you the chair and and I think that was the purpose of the moratorum in my opinion was to get this cleaned up better um so we we could better utilize um where and when and how and all that. this this needed to be done and uh I don't think the intention and this is just my opinion was to keep extending that it was to get the wording right um how do we want to see it what do we want to do about it

so it actually would have been done sooner if we were doing just the gas stations but then that was resulting in some in inconsistencies with some of these other vehicle uses and then again like we mentioned you know the dealerships has been a big big uh big area of focus and a lot of communities doing a lot with with both both those two particular uses in in this area. Okay. Nothing else. There's a motion.

Excuse the chair. Yes. I make a recommendation to approve TA2025-00002 section 1107 vehicle uses to city council to approve with conditions and uh that's it support support can I clarify some discussion I'm assuming when you say with conditions you're meaning incorporate modifications as discussed tonight. Yes. For the menu. Perfect. Yes. After you memo get done cleaning it up. Great. Cheryl's good with wording. So motion secretary to

recommend a city council approval for TA 2025-002 section 11.07 vehicle uses. Motion by Frederick supported by Jameson. Roll call vote. Mr. Frederick. Yes. Mr. Jameson. Miss Jameson. Sorry. Yes, Mr. Long. Yes, Miss Rosco. Yes, Mr. Croba. Yes, Mr. Boglotti. Yes. And I vote yes. Motion carried.

Next item, public hearing, TAS 2025-003, article 13, site plan review requirements and procedures. All right. This is another public hearing. Uh one that you didn't have any any forewarning about because it's just doing a little bit of housekeeping. Uh from an administrative standpoint, uh the planning department consumes quite a bit of room over at DPS with all of these site plans. And unfortunately, many of them are very incomplete. They start and um they sit they sit in our drawers, they sit on our shelves, they sit on our cubbies. So, um I got looking back at just some past practices, um overall good practices, and we are going to be postponing or recommending that postponing, I didn't mean postponing. Um we are going to be recommending that your timing on site plan approvals gets shortened up. doesn't mean that somebody can't come back, but this these extensions that you've been doing, um your policy has been to give up to three extensions, which isn't even an ordinance or that's just something that's been your policy. Um it's always been a one-year period of time after site plan approval, and we use the date that it's here whether the plan's got to be revised or not. So, that has led to a couple problems. Sometimes when you grant a site plan approval and it's got conditions on it, we have several in the hopper right now that the plans just aren't coming back. They've been sitting for several years. You've given extensions.

Project Spectre, perfect example. You you approved that a few years ago and you're now and it's a it's a conditional approval. They still need to give us a plan site plan. So, we have all these copies and, you know, all these loose ends, and I think they're on their last one right now. I think they're going to be done and they'll they'll be gone. But by giving them three extensions, starting with an 18month period as opposed to a 12-month period, you know, somebody's got three and a half years and and that's kind of a long time to have a a site plan laying around. So, we are proposing two things that first of all, when you grant a conditional approval that somebody's got 90 days to get it in here and get it all cleaned up and and kind of put away for the 12 months or they've got to pay the full site plan review fee. So, that one just kind of boils down to money. Um, you know, for us to, you know, when things sit around for that many months, we all have to get back on board, go back through our files, go back, you know, talk to everybody. What did the engineers do? aware of that with this. Has anything changed? So, that's our that's our first recommended change. And again, that really isn't going to impact you guys at all. It's just going to make things a little easier for us. The the second thing is changing the 18 months to 12 back to 12 months. Uh we changed it to 18 months back right after the recession and with, you know, giving giving people time to get kind of back on their feet and get things going. And we found that most of those plans are some of these that that have sat in our system. So, we're proposing back to 12 months as opposed to 18 and then allowing you to grant one 12-month extension. And that means that they need to have engineering done and come in and start pulling a building per, you know, they have to pull a building permit. If they don't, it expires and they can come back in six months and submit that exact

same plan again. again, they've got to pay full full review fee. So, that's really all it's doing. It's not giving anybody um you know, because they still have to come back for these extensions. So, okay, let me go ahead and open the public hearing. Let let the record show we have an affidavit of first class mail on file. Is there anybody wish to speak on this agenda item? Seeing no one, I'll close out the public hearing and we'll open up commissioners to questions. So, I guess I got a question first through the chair. Go ahead. So, so 18 month it gets shortened to 12, right?

What if Wayne County is involved in that hold like a bridge over like something to do with Wayne County? That's that's a perfect reason to come in and and those are the good ones. You've you've had a few of those, not many. Um, those are those are pretty valid, but that should in in a 24-month period. Yeah, that that should be resolved. Yeah, should be resolved. So, that was the first thing that hopped in my head was I know some people have come back for an extension because they were being held up by Wayne County. Well, so they say, or the economy or or So, keep in mind the ones that you've heard are it's so they say. So they have to in order to to get a response from Wayne County, you have to submit something to Wayne County,

right? So to say you're being held sometimes being saying you're being held up by Wayne County, it's like well you do have to submit you have to submit the right stuff. So got you know. All right. And and those are some of the the challenges is that we're having is that um you know when the plans come in kind of messy and they sit around when they it's just housekeeping. So it's like are you serious or or not? And clearly let me dovetail a second part of the question. So what if eagle's involved? Eagle can be a little bit more complicated but that tends to be at the construction level. So often times there may be during the engineering level before permits though. Yeah. Before per

before permits. Okay. And I I think if that were the case um and that that has been but like Ashley Capital for example right now they have a per Eagle is involved in that involved that's and they but they and Eagle made some changes from what they're wanting to do and they're working through that and they have a they have a permit to do but they do they do have a permit. Yes. Right. Okay. So no good questions. If I could dovtail onto that we have standard three roof extensions. We've gotten a lot of builders used to that. So now we're going to really cut them back to one. Mhm. And how much does it cost for them to pay for a site plan reapplication?

So basically it's going to take a fee from $500 and and this was one of the things we toyed with in working with the engineers and the planning consultant. You know just how how people are doing it. We're one of the few communities that that actually kind of had this this even this fee on here $500. It will take that $500 to probably $2,500 I mean or $3,000 because that those full fees are but those fees are most of those fees are escrow. So they go into a bucket and if it turns out that this was a plan that just needed some minor tweaking or some minor finishing off it. We won't use that or the consultants won't use that big say it's a $2,500 chunk. say they'd only use the 500. So again, it all depends on on what the nature of the change is and how serious somebody is about building and getting going here.

So the most they'll get for free is 2400. Well, not free. They pay first and they get a free 12-month extension if we grant it. Y then after that they start over. Then they start over. Right. And and back to your questions, you know, with Eagle in Wayne County, I I I do believe that we probably would be um you know, probably we'd be working with somebody along those lines. Those are those are the big projects and those are the the ones we're very involved in. And um

and a lot of times the water main permit for Eagle is the one that takes the longest. And I've seen some developments where they've been able to start doing foundations, get a permit to start putting foundations in the building and everything and not put water man in the ground until they get that water man permit. And then so there are permits pulled on that aspect of things before they sometimes before the eagle permit becomes in hand. They just can't actually do that underground work prior to Thank you. Good question. Sorry. So, we're basically just trying to keep up with industry standards because we're probably the only one that extended people for several years,

right? Some some just shut I mean, you know, you got your 12 months and then you're if you're if you're not serious about being doing this, you're you're done. Or it's not that you're done. You're done with that one, but you come back. some of the things that with that three and a half year period um you know from the engineer standpoint we didn't think Jessica needed to be here to explain all this but this is where a lot of it's coming from that things change you know things change in the industry things change with how things are being interpreted sometimes sometimes you know we recently when was the Wayne County storm water um manual and those standards changed that was a significant change everybody had a lot of a lot of time to plan and and deal with that But um you know it it allows us to be you know sometimes a little bit better at things when you get through and well for some reason this isn't getting built. What's going on? And you look at it the next time around and maybe they're making some tweaks which is oftenimes what's happening.

So So this also prevents us from having property that just sits around looking decayed because you're just kind of dragging their heels. Yeah. Exactly. get it moving. I know a lot of other cities they they don't really allow that. So, we have been very um lenient in that cause and inexpensive in that call. So, there's no urgency for them and they just kind of get around to it. So, um, the other thing was, um, do we have verbiage in there anywhere that says they can't slide something in like the night before or two days before and expect us to make a decision when we get here? It's like, I haven't really seen that.

No, we do. We have um, we do it very informally uh, but people honor it. Um, we we are different than many communities. We are we are just I don't want to call it friendlier, but we're we're more lenient with stuff. We don't have deadlines. Basically, you submit a site plan and you've got to clear the art committee. I mean, if your plan is a mess, um you've seen some of them. We've brought you some that are a real mess and um you kind of let people know it's a real mess. We try very hard to clear it as much. Um get as far as we can with it. Again, in different in other communities, they'll often times have a two-step process, a preliminary and a final. We do preliminary in essence administratively to get them cleared up for you to get somebody through the process much much quicker than if you had to go back, make some few changes, come back and go see them again with virtually, you know, just a few few tidies, you know, tidy things up a little bit. So, so it's a fast process if your plans are good. You know, it uh you know it's the question all the time. What what's my deadline? How long is it going to take to get through? And the answer always is it depends on who you hire to do your plans and how good you are and you know we'll get we'll get things in going through one right now and like why is this stuff not here? Oh, we didn't think we needed to do that. I like well it's on our checklist. It's a requirement. like nice of you to think that, but that's gonna get you an extra extra month.

So, last last question. I know last year we had and I think it was in the fall and I can't remember the petitioner, but they came before us and they didn't have all of their docs and then they wanted to come before us and then they wanted to come back again and they still weren't ready. It's kind of like they were nickel and dimeming us and pulling information but really wasting a lot of people's time and they never did come back with anything after the second or third time. Is there a way to prevent that?

Well, that's what we're trying to work on that this this will help with that again because it's it's going to be more money, you know, to come in and and you know, resubmit particularly that 90day thing if you you come in and you've got to turn it around. Um, you know, if you've gotten a conditional approval, say example. Bless you. It should it should it should speed things up. That's that's one of the goals. Thank you, Mr. To the Chair. Um, Carol, could you How did we come up with the with the 12 months? Why did Why can't it be six months?

Well, that's that's pretty quick. 12 months is a is a pretty standard. Most zoning ordinances will give an applicant once they get their approval 12 months to to pull a permit. Um, and I'm talking about the extension part of it. The extension part that's just another 12 months, right? I'm talking about why can't that be six months? I mean, you still have 18 months to get your project through. Yeah, that's a thought. I guess it could be. It just they're going from I guess people to having four years to button it down to 18 months. Yeah, it's pretty that's that's pretty tight. We said we wanted to move progressively, didn't we? I mean, yeah.

Well, yeah. I feel like we're doing a pretty drastic kick pulling back from three to one. So, if I could dump tail once again. So the like six months would we have you know the seasons we have winter. Yeah. That that would probably really cause a lot of heartache. Good. It'd be a lot of sight plants in July. Yeah. I mean tell me where where did the I mean ever since I've been been doing planning here you've had this policy of extending three times. Do you Well, we had I think Yeah. And I don't it was more or less a verbal thing. There's never

because it's not written anywhere. It's just sort of this this policy that's carried on. And yeah, you know, every time unofficially drew a line in the sand is all it was. Yeah. Every time I talk to my peers and people in other communities like wow that's crazy. We submit. I have another question. So, Carol, when we do give an extension and they say, "Oh, you got a one-year extension." And they get her back in here, they come in for permit like four months. They haven't used a year, right? How many How often does it say that happen? Oh, it happens. More than not. Um, no.

Boy, timing wise, no. Most most of them most of them that are serious are are in. They're in. They're done. and they're ready to submit engineering plans before they're even done. And some of them they are cleaning up their site plan and concurrently getting ready. You're and as they're going through engineering review, they're submitting building plans to be looked at concurrently while the engineering review process is ongoing. So the ones that are looking to develop like that are on it, you know what I That us it usually goes pretty quick as soon as they can get they do whatever they can to get their approvals as quick as they can so they can break around

because right down the street here at Grant and Wayne Road they wanted to do that that I think we give them with their second one already. You know site plan approval uh extension that wedge shaped piece of property down here next to the birdhouse. What was it? Metro airport. And that that actually went away. Well, that went away. And that one, oh my goodness, we extended that. I think we did, we did two rounds of extending that. They came in, they came after their three and a half years, they came back with some tweaks and we did that and they're they're now Yeah.

I I just brought that up as an example of what we're Yeah. And that's a great example of of plans that are that clutter up our I mean and that's the the clutter part of it is is not necessarily the but it's it's think about sometimes we've had consultants change in that three and a half year period. So here you got to get you know somebody somebody new that I mean and for all of us you know you you don't touch a plan for a few months and you know you're back pulling out all the you know it it's and that's and on the consultant side of things that's time and money

you know that that cost costs the applicant money right there and then they complain about that. It's like, well, wait, you've had this plan for It's like, guys, we're not looking at your plans, you know, checking on it every month and getting ourselves back up to speed on what was there. So, Gotcha. So, shortening it might actually be beneficial to all involved the the 12-month extension. That's it. Mhm. Right. Yep. and and they can resubmit again if they want if they're you know that new if that plan is still you know and then the hope is that'll be easy and they won't use their escrow or much of their escrow and they'll be back to see you and we'll start the clock again.

So all right thank you. Go ahead. Okay through the chair Carol I do have a question. I'm surprised how many companies do uh wait the three four years and keep renewing. Um, what's their motivation behind that? Do they do they put the property on the on the market saying that we have conditional uh uh plans approved or sometimes? Kevin, you might Yeah, you may you may have some good insight on that.

Yeah. So, I think one thing that we saw recently um and I think it everything you know um economically and and building construction wise goes in cycles, right? So, we saw coming out of COVID uh there was a lot of unknown on what was going to happen. So I think a lot of spec built type buildings were approved on properties and then those owners or those developers then start marketing it to find that end user and once they have an enduser then they built build that building with very small modifications um to uh to then fulfill it. Um, one thing that I would say is is the couple things that got brought up and and I just want to emphasize a little bit. Uh, especially here in Michigan because of the seasons. I think that six month, you know, thing would be very difficult because I think it would cause some log jams for administrative staff and and stop people from submitting year round. Um, a good point was the ordinances change or engineers change, but more importantly, uh, building, you know, ordinances, fire code, you know, that's usually a 2-year cycle. So, if you have a plan that's out there for 3 4 years, sometimes, you know, how they planned or intended to build that is going to be a little bit different because codes change and and get brought up to par. And then the last thing kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum is not only is it sometimes looking speculatively to find that builder, but sometimes um and we're seeing this right now in in the economy is you're waiting for interest rates to come down. You're waiting for a capital stack to be completed and and it's a money issue and they're just waiting, you know, waiting to for money to be affordable to borrow. Um so sometimes that pushes it, you know, pushes things through. And then what we did just see um with the uh presidential election that was so controversial that you know you had a slowdown almost 8 months before the election and then even after the election it was a solid 6 to 8

months before the gear started turning again. So um you know it all goes in cycles and those are all factors and impacts you know each individual project differently though. the money impact. Um, thank you Kevin. That that was a good summary. But the one um, and it's the sad one. Somebody gets through, they're the small projects and then they come and oh, what do we make the call, what do I do for engineering? And the cost estimate of all their underground, what percent do they put?

It's pretty substantial. Yeah. depending on what their estimate is, what they got to pay for inspection fees and engineering review and everything like and if they're not aware of

that can be and it's that's like I said that's the sad one where people just have no clue. So, we're we're trying very hard um you know, we spend a lot of time at the counter, a lot of time on the phone, you know, explaining to people, helping them, setting up together some resources to find out how they um and and I will say even even Nino over at D&G helping out people because people don't don't understand the cost um of of development and they the underground they don't understand that there's things underground and that's A that's a big big big you know expense and you know they thought sometimes just buying the property like they spent all their money.

So anybody else? Yep. Through the chair. Um Carol, is there a do we currently have a disposal fee of like um site plans um that are just cluttering? Do we reach out to them and say, "Okay, you've gotten your last and final extension. We have to dispose of what we have. Is there a fee to the applicant?"

There's not. There's a fee to come and see you guys, you know, if they're getting actually the official extension. We run an account balance sheet on all of our projects and that's where this escrow comes into play. So, depending on where they're at, certainly we don't want to close out a project um until we've got gotten our all our money from them. And and we do have some of those. We have some people that get an approval and they'll come in and they'll scrape together or do whatever and get us the $500 and we're like, "No, no, no. You're not going on an agenda until you pay this additional that you're outstanding." And then we sometimes don't see them. So, some of them are like that. They're they're they've been sitting around for too many years and we've closed, you know, we've closed many of those out recently. So, but we do it's it's basically an account balance sheet that they have a fee that they pay and you look at that bucket and we that we keep up with very very regularly. They don't come in for another review until all their fees are paid.

So, okay. But no to close it out. We don't charge to We don't have a disposal fee. No. Okay. if if there's money left and it's beyond a certain time period. In fact, I closed out uh a few weeks ago I closed out was that 2020 might have been 2020 2021 plans. Um and you know there'll be a little bit of money left. We can take a 25% admin fee when we're closing them out. So sometimes and then we have we had a couple that you know we're giving money back. There's a chunk of change still sitting in there and you know they haven't used it. So we give that we refund that.

Yeah. Because I feel I mean if we're putting time into this and for whatever reason, you know, they're just not moving the project along and time expires, we we have spent the time and um we'll need to shred or call someone to help dispose that. And there's a cost to that.

I like to recommend the fee. It's it's really hard to get. Uh like I said, we the ones that are not going through and not, you know, letting us know. Um remember that RSS trailer, you prove that they were coming ready for an extension. They would have been in front of you this right now, but they were, you know, professional enough to say, you know what, this deal is not going to happen. So, they just went through it. And so again, we we keep up with that. So to they they were done. We just had, you know, hit a few buttons, cleaned up a few files, you know, got things put away and said that was done. So they're really, you know, from that standpoint, it's not the need. Um, if there's any of the projects where there is the need, it's it's they owe us money now and they're not paying it. So

Okay. We just Thank you. You the one that I was going to mention So, any other comments or questions? Motion and order

through the chair. Yes, Mr. President. I'd like to make a recommendation to city council to approve TA-2025-00003 article 17 site plan review requirements and procedures amendments. home amendments. Yes. Yes. Support supported by Mr. Long. Uh motion by Mr. Frederick, supported by Mr. Long to approve TA 2025003, article 13, site plan review requirements and procedures. Any discussion? Mr. Frederick, yes. Mr. Long, yes. Miss Rosco, yes. Miss Jameson, yes. Mr. Croba, yes.

Mr. Bobo, yes. I vote yes. Motion's approved. All right. Next item we have is old business. Sec uh item A is 2025 master plan update future land use map amendments.

Yes. So last month Carl Worman, our planning consultant, who could not be here tonight, John's on his 35th wedding anniversary trip today. So happy anniversary to him. Um they come in and we talked about the master plan update that we kicked off and uh they've provided for and we don't need to rehash all of that, but they provided a uh future land use designation uh map for some parcels that could be considered for changes. Um some of these parcels are publicly designated parcels and then there's others that could be designated for change considerations that we can discuss. They came with uh two maps. There's a public land use map and a other parcel land use map and it come with 21 worksheets and I just thought we could uh we walk through the worksheets and kind of go over each property quickly and hear what your guys' thoughts are. So we will start with the public land designations change considerations. First one is the Hiron Clinton Metro Park parcels. Um no changes proposed in this. This is a publicly designated area and it's going to remain that way as it's planned to remain a park. If there's any questions as we go through, you guys just uh the second parcel is a school parcel of Bar Elementary. Um it's currently master plan as public proposed changes to rural residential. Um only reasoning with the school obviously because that's an that's an active school. It wouldn't change the school whatsoever. But if 10 years from now, 20 years from now, let's say the school decides they want to sell that parcel. It wouldn't be deemed a public parcel. It would be deemed residential, which is consistent with the area around it, that's all residential zone district. And um so that way any developer that may want to buy that 20 years down the road, if that ever happens, that school, the school remains open and they decide they don't want to do anything with it, it's going to remain a school forever, then it'll stay a school forever. But if that did

ever happen, then a developer coming in to buy it wouldn't be like, "Oh, it's zoned public. What can I do with it?" It it's zoned residential, so they'll know that. They'll be aware of that when they market the property. So, this is future land use. So, it's not like we're creating a nonconformity. This is future future land use for all of these public for all of these parcels. Yes. Can I ask a quick question to the chair? Yes. So, are we going to is this a like approve recommend an approval of the whole thing or we're going to cherry pick it?

So, what we're doing right now is there's a process with master plans and if you haven't been through it before it it's a little it's a little different. It's very different than resonings where you have a certain piece of property, you analyze it, you run through your criteria, and then you make a recommendation, you know, to to have that color on the map that that designation change. The master plan process is we are starting with this because this is kind of in what we would call the housekeeping category. We have a future land use map that's got this designation of these public properties and it came to our attention or it's been coming to our attention. The schools are marketing their properties but when somebody looks at a map they're seeing green that it's public and public really is just signifying ownership. It's not telling you much about the land use. So our attempt was to get these cleaned up first. they as many of them as we we want to talk about. We can have a whole bunch because we have this big period of time. Well, it's not that big. We have this period of time where we can come back and forth to you and some of you that have been through this master plan process before, you know, every meeting stuff comes on and you're back and forth and you're back and forth and you get to a point and we're it's the early stage on something very easy. So, this is at a point where it could go to city council. So, city council planning commission can't do it. City council has to authorize the distribution of the amendment. It's a state enabling legislation thing. And because this is a just a map amendment, it's only 42 days. If we were doing a big chunk of the plan with big substantial changes, it'd be a 63 day period. I think it's 63 days. It's a longer period. But during that time, we're going to be talking with you guys more about these. So, Jerry, at

this point, it's a great question. So, we have some of these are very simple. They're no-brainers. Here in Clinton Metrop Parks, it's a it's a metrop park. It's owned by an authority. It's going to stay as a public park. The schools are for the most part going to be the ones that are going to change. instead of saying that they're public, they're going to the the actual land use is going to get picked up in case the school does decide they want to sell and you're going to be hearing about one later on. Um the city parks, what I handed out to you are all of the parks that are um we had not gotten as far with our consultants and with our recreation plan. parks will very likely stay green on here and it'll and we'll have some kind of sign, you know, something signifying that yes, these are city parks. Um, right now we have some inconsistency on the future land use map. For example, the historical park is designated downtown. We have a couple others in there that have the more the more the the land use and it and it falls into that kind of category. So, we'll probably clean part of this will be cleaning some of that up. Um but at the end of the day today today what we're hoping for is just basically to get a recommendation on to let this thing get out for for um this distribution period. Get your input on some of these things. will change things. Again, you're going to get into some of these that have a little bit more to talk about. And then we have more to add because there's been we went through I just got um a list on some other properties that um for example Well, we'll get to it when we get to it. Just that some of the property lines aren't right.

I just thought I'd ask that question before we get too far into it because it was going to come up regardless. Y Thank you. The the idea is we can go basically basically it's this map. This is what's this is what you're doing right now. We're looking at amending this. It's going to have some backup with the parcels that you're looking at changing colors will have the backup with some of the stuff here, but this stuff will be expanded on. You know, particularly when you're going to make a change. Some of the stuff Jeff just mentioned here, bar school, for example, you know, there will be included in these bullet points. It is an active school. it this change is for consistency with the surrounding area. You know, maybe a few other things if there's anything else that we discover.

I just know people get funny when someone else is trying to tell them what to do with their use or that's just want to get that up front. Yep. Thanks. Thank you. All right. The next one is Mount Pleasant uh school which is currently master pan public proposed to be rural residential consistent with the surrounding area around it.

This is one that we get a lot of calls on. This is closed. Um as as many of you know um it's a it's a decent size site. This one is going to help hopefully Kevin with some of the some of the marketing that he does over in his area. So, that's a perfect example of something that great, we're changing it from public. We're signifying what what's anticipated to help facilitate some housing there, but we might even get to some where we can go a little further with it and add a few more points as to, you know, what what kind of options are there, what we want to, you know, so that's a difference between like a bar. So, bar is going to be pretty easy. It's still an open school like Jeff explained. Someday if if you know they did want to sell it, reuse it. Um we haven't gotten into anything. There's How many buildings are on this property? I'm not

uh there's just the one the main school is all that's left. There's the you know abandoned baseball fields in the back. There's some fence structures and some minor stuff back there. But you know these are these are the ones the the schools that are closed now are the ones that you know I I tour on regular site with developers. And by making this change for future land map, it helps streams, you know, streamlines the process for them. And we're always looking site preparedness. So, anything I can do on an empty site and bring in, you know, the Detroit Regional Partnership to do the environmental or our DCC and um brownfield um you know, alliance to pay for environmentals and and help prep that site. It reduces the time from the time of uh acquisition to the time of you know, development and getting through process. it reduces that and that really for developers is is the biggest unknown risk for a lot of people is that that unknown time frame. So anything we can do for site prep and this is one of those eliminating that process to get it on the market and get it viable is is you know looked upon favorably by developers.

Makes sense. All right. Next parcel is Elmer Johnson Park. Uh this is master pan public proposed to keep it the same thing. Obviously this is an active park that will remain a public park. Next up is uh the Romulus Middle School uh master plan public proposed for single family residential to be consistent with the area around it. This is an active school like we talked about before.

Did anybody c catch the mistake there? Yeah, the the land right there uh where the school is actually sitting on is that's what's proposed for development. No, this this is one um there's Wig Elementary is also on this property. So, yeah, we we wanted to throw a few in to make sure you guys were paying attention. No, it was just kind of an oversight. So, no, actually it's it's the same story as Bar. They're they're both active schools, but it brings it in into consistency with the the surrounding area.

The next one is uh city around land waste management lease. Um it's master plan and public proposed to be multifamily residential. Um and I don't I don't Kevin, I don't know if you can expand on uh that lease.

Yeah, this is a this is a piece of property that the city's owned for a number of years. It was predates me in in um as far as how we acquired it, but I think it was part of the um what is now West Village Estates kind of development over there. Somehow the city ended up with it and we lease it to waste management currently across the street on Hannon at the dump and they stage vehicles there and some other things there. Sometimes it's uh uh clean top soil that they they're bringing in for the dump. They stage there and then take it across the street. So, we've had a long-term lease with them for a number of years. Um, but it was again marked as public. But if the city ever decided to terminate that lease for whatever reason or they didn't want to renew that lease,

the easiest pathway to market would be multif family residential and that's what falls in line with um West Village Estates and I say Ruggate, but West Village Estates and the surrounding area there as well. Do you think that would be wise to have multifamily residential across from the dump? I mean,

well, and I mean that's ultimately I think what you'd end up seeing is you potentially would see West Village Estates probably expand a little bit over there because they've been asking for a while about that piece of property as well. Um, and it's kind of like one of those things with with the airport. Like a lot of people knew that airport was there when they bought their home in the in the city, you know, even though they complain about it a lot. And sometimes those expansions could not not even necessarily be for actual housing. It could be some for something to support the housing development. You know, sometimes it's it's seasonal storage or, you know, all all sorts of different things that sometimes they're looking for. Yeah. Yeah. So,

all right. Next one up is uh Ashley Capital Conservation Conservation Easement Property. Um it's designated public right now, but this is part of the property that's got a conservation easement on it now that they purchased from uh the city and this is planned public but proposed to be single family. But either way, this is it's conservation easement. So it cannot be developed. So it's just that's what the green hashes are over that right now just to kind of show like this is all conservation easement. So what value is it rechanging it if it can never be developed?

Well, it's privately owned. So that was the thing. It's it was it's designated public right now. Um and it's privately owned by Ashley Capital. So we don't I mean you you can't develop it because it's conser conservation easement. It's just to try to clean up some consistencies with the with the map. And that was ownership that this was landfill property. It was city property that Ashley bought. Um you remember that didn't developing that. Yeah, they are. They are one part. See, see the gray part? Yeah, one part. This This one we probably should have shown kind of together right next to each other, but that one's coming up as well. They are developing one part of it that's been reszoned. Okay, that's what I thought. I thought that Yeah, but this part of it Yeah, they bought the whole bought the whole thing in and Okay. Yep.

Uh, next one's the Raccoon Hunters Club. It's currently master plan public. Um, which it's not. It's a privately owned club now. uh proposing master plan to multiple family as if that I don't know if that raccoon club's ever going to go away obviously but if they ever did or wanted to close and sell then it would be consistent with the land uses that are around it. Do any of you know have any history on that place? The little bit that we uncovered was it was public at one time. Had a 501c3 at one time, but that's all been disbanded. Been around as long as I've been here. I think the 5013C is still established over there. I you know what? According to Lara, it it something was disbanded.

Yeah. I don't think it's under the Raccoon Hunters Club anymore. I think it's under a different title now. But they do have a 5013C and they're they've been pretty active over there in the shooting sports. It but it's but it is a private. It is private. It's private. Good. That's all we needed to hear. Good. Thank you.

Uh next one up, Wayne County Land Bank properties. Um they are master plan public, but they're owned by the land bank, which somebody can potentially purchase them. So, we're proposing to uh change that to multiple family residential, which is consistent with the properties that are right around it. Next one's Raspberry Park, which is public, proposed to remain public. Uh it is a existing public park. Uh Fernanditz Park, same story. Master plan public, no change proposed. This is uh Ramos distribution center. This is the part of the land that they purchased that they are developing. Uh this was reszoned uh to M1 that is underdeveloped now. I know they've done earth moving and done some geopers and they're working towards starting to do underground and everything like that. So this is just changing that to the M1 zoning that it was reszoned to.

So this piece we should have put we should have we should have put those right next to each other. It would have been a lot easier. the the middle square is actually so again this is part of this is city prop was city property the the piece in the middle that square yeah that future land use um the current future land use is multiple family consistent with what's to the

to the west and then the piece down below um was public so or no yes that was no it was all public. What was it? This is the one that did have some Yeah. Yeah, it did. So, even though it was city-owned, it had two designations. So, the the square, like I said, was multiple is multiple family right now. And then the piece to the south was green just like the whole rest of the conservation easement. So, so basically when it says here, current master plan public, it's also public and multiple family, but it has been reszoned.

Yes, it's reszoned for Yeah. conditional industrial just going to light industrial and then we have a proposed use going in there for Yes. Yes. It's currently under development. Yes. Okay. Yep. Next one's Romulus Elementary. It is master plan. Current master plan is public proposed single family residential. Um and there's one there's a park right next to that that anybody catch that. St. John's Lodge. St. John's Lodge. St. John's Lodge. That one square will end up remaining public. Is that St. John's Lodge or is that Marman Park? St. John's Lodge. Okay. Yep. So, that'll stay green.

That'll that one that's the one the triangle piece to the right. So, this this will get cleaned up. Okay. Uh Romulus High School, it's currently master plan public proposed to single family residential. That is obviously an active school like the other ones. All right. Menali Park which current master plan is public uh proposed master plan is to remain public no change is be very curious to see what the city plans to do long term with that park because right now it's nothing and it's been nothing for many years except it has a name on it. Yes.

Why not sell it if you're not going to do anything with it and you make it a house? So, I I will say that I uh sat in part of the parks and recreation master plan uh session that Colleen's going through right now. And uh there was some discussion with that. And um I also reached out to North Point as part of the Menali Parkway to find out where the final, you know, where they are at with that finalizing that. Um, I think that's been the holdup right now is they before they do any changes, they want to make sure that the parkway and that development is finalized and we can transfer the name over to that uh before they do anything with the park. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, thank you.

So, in that case, should we be designating it signal family or should we just wait till it's all I don't know what the intent is with it. I know that it's a lowline area and that's one of the areas, you know, that we have problems back there. Um, it's a swap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's a tough area. Yeah. There could be one of the things too that we'll we'll get into exploring more when we get deeper into this are just kind of classifications here. You know, there are some master plans that the conservation ements, for example, they take property that's not, you know, not buildable, buildable, developable,

but perhaps it might be good for some trails or some bigger, you know, public private, you know, kind of on on those bigger pieces. And we do have a few of those little pieces like this. Sometimes sometimes they'll just designate parks open. They'll throw the word open space in. It's just open space. can't really do anything with it. It's too small. It's got features. So, that's a possibility there if we if we change that. So, we'll take it.

Okay. The next one is Marman School, Marman Elementary. Um, it's currently master plan public. It's proposed uh for single family residential to be consistent with the area around it. Um, this parcel actually is on I think it's on both of the maps that you guys looked at. But, uh, this parcel is there is a developer looking at this parcel now because it's for for sale by the school and they are talking about bringing in wanting to do self storage with like RV and boat storage and a contractor yard. Um, we have a meeting with them I think Wednesday.

It's a developer that redevelops um, shopping centers, old schools. they they retrofit them and they are currently um they've got a couple phases of their development and the first phase is using the existing stuff there adding a little bit of gravel for turnarounds and whatnot but taking the current parking lot and turning that into um RV storage using the inside of the building for climate control units. Then phase two is is pretty substantial. it. Um, pretty substantial change. The the map itself, you see the green box, there's a piece of property on the the first piece of property there is also owned by the schools. Then there's a house on the one to the north in in the packet that I handed. It's towards the end um I think of the packet that I left at your spot shows where the city's dog Yes. city's dog park. Where's that on? Anyways, um the city's dog park is over there, which we didn't get a chance to get on to this map right here. So, it's it's kind of public in two ways. It's public that it's owned by the school, but then it's also the back half the where all the trees are.

Um is public. It says school lease 99 years. Yeah, you can't. You're too far away from it. You just keep fading in and out. Oh, sorry about that. Never thought there'd be a problem hearing my voice. So, um, Kevin, you probably know more about the dog park. 99 year lease. Yeah, it's a 99 year lease that we had with the schools. So, that would have to be reconciled somehow with the schools between the city and the schools as to whether or not, you know, that's included in the sale. Um, I haven't looked at that lease in a minute. Um, but I'm sure there there may even be a first rate refusal. Well, I I don't know. I don't know what's included in that lease. It's been

It's My understanding is it's longterm and this current developer, a previous one that was actually had gotten pretty far, but nothing really really submitted. Um really could never answer it. This particular developer says they'll honor the lease. They don't need the back part. They don't plan on touching it. they do plan on going into that um smaller piece to the north and getting right next to that existing single family home, you know, with um individual units like the new ones that we have down the road on North Line Road, that type of development, you know, the mini warehouses. So,

just a comment, it just seems like no matter what we get in this city, we get five of them. If we get gas stations, we get five of them. We get self storage places, we get five of them. It just it's crazy how that works cuz we've approved the one on North Line, the one on Beverly, there's one on Ecourse, and now this proposal. We approve one on middle too. We didn't bring We are proposing to change the future land use map to to single family residential though. So I mean with their proposal, they would have to come in and get they still have to go through the process.

They have to go through they got to give you the argument. Kevin, the Baker Tilly study, I talked to Jessica about it and she said that that it was discussed um knowing kind of this transition that we were in and and us doing this. Um and I know that plan's not done, but um you know, certainly, you know, if you do start adding more bullet points to to something like this, you know, you you have that back half that well, it's a dog park now, but then you've got a subdivision there where you've got you a road that could connect through there. You could get, you know, you could get the back half of this. Yeah. You could have an extension from the the current is that Oak? No. Oak Brook. Yeah. Oak Brook sub.

Oak Brook sub. Um the current Oakbrook sub stubs out in a couple areas over there in dead ends into the into the back end of this property where you could have an extension of single family or a new um you know residential development back in that area. uh with the right developer and you know with the right with the right incentives you know more than likely there are some there are some site issues on there um but relatively easy to take care of but you know you also have demolition as well right

um so there's you know there's that as well but there's there's tools to make those things happen um you know I think it's a it's a difficult site because you have an existing building so you either have to find a way to transition that existing building into something that's meaningful and useful and profitable for a developer or you have to find the money to get rid of it to scrape the site and then you know do what you want to do. Um so that's you know those are some of the challenges and I do agree I I think that you know we see we see like you get one you get five right. Um you know and I and again I mentioned cycles earlier and I think it's the same thing. So one of the big things we're seeing right now is baby boomers are downsizing. So there's a huge high demand for for storage right now cuz these families are like okay my family's going into a condo. they're selling their home that we grew up in or they're going into nursing homes or whatever or senior assisted living and what do we do with all their stuff and and uh we're seeing that across the board. It's it's a high demand in a lot of cities right now and um and developers are pushing it, you know, in all all the major threads that I follow. It's like, you know, climate controlled storage, you know, save your save your family's heirlooms and everything else.

I'm surprised we don't have five or six car washes coming. Don't speak too loud. So quick question to the chair based on this number 16 with the Marman road school. So if they we change the proposed master plan to single family residential that protects the future for potentially housing in the meanwhile what does that do to the developer that wants to use that property for his proposal?

What what would happen is and it's actually twofold. It it the housing aspect yes but also the dog park the park. So you do have that public use and we will need to investigate that um you know that lease further and and what can happen there. So it's kind of twofold. So you would take that back part and my understanding is is that piece that piece to the north is not even though it's tried and it it looks um you know if you look at the area you'll see trees this way next to the subdivision and then the school and development there. that piece is not part of um the dog park lease. Dog park lease leaves that back off. So, you know, that that's something to look at, too. Getting it getting it as single family obviously keeps it consistent with the area. Um it it getting into a resoning that applicants got to meet all those criteria. the consistency with the master plan's going to be the one that um is not a not a it's going to be their job to in essence sell us um sell you all city council on this amendment going in a different direction. So because certainly self- storage is is not a use that is typically found in a single family design, you know, designated area and that the the area does jump to single f or to light industrial across the street. But um I the most significant thing with this is I think that the the subdivision there, what could happen there? There there's a lot of variables. just a lot of variables and that's what the the developer will have to um you know see what they come up with and you would analyze it like you like you do all your others,

right? So lots lots on this one to still think about.

Next parcel is uh the Romulus Fire Station number four. Um no changes proposed. It's public. It's going to remain public. I know there's been some activity over there with city parcels that I'm sure Kevin can expand on.

Yeah. So, um, Carol mentioned the Baker Tiller Baker Tilly study and, um, through my office, we received a missed grant, uh, to do a housing study for the entire city of Rodings. It's been since 2014 since we did a partial study. And then just recently, the Ecourse Road Corridor study gave us a little little bit more information from I94 north uh, to the city boundaries. Um but long story short, um we're in finalizations of that. We'll have a final product here probably by the end of September to be for public um consumption and distribution. Uh but over the the course of the next 10 years, we're basically going to be falling short about 4,100 units, housing units. We just can't keep up. Um, so the, you know, there's no, um, you know, there's no hiding the industrial growth we have and how well we've done with that growth with the jobs that are coming in. So now it's it's the housing. How do we keep up with the housing? So the, um, some of the changes that you guys are taking, even though like it's on some of the older school properties, that helps move that in the right direction. One of the things that we're going to be doing uh from my office is any of the um city-owned properties that we currently have now, whether it's through TIFFA or whether it's through the city, we're looking at how do we how do we market those and how do we gear those towards either higher density multifamily, um single family, residential, you know, what does that study say as far as what we need as far as housing stock? They looked at age of the housing um expected lifespan of the current existing housing stock um what we currently need you know for the future and basically in the summary is about 87% of the housing in Romulus is single family three-bedroom two bath houses right uh which is great for a smaller family but um what it doesn't do is it doesn't attract or keep our residents here as they grow and and

leave the home there's no place nearby for them to move into and start their own families and then when they become engaged or um you know they have a significant other and they want to move into from an apartment into a town home or a condo there's very limits you know very limited with that as well and then ultimately to complete that cycle we have plenty of single family homes for them to move into when their family gets a little bigger but it's that in between and what do we do with workforce housing we know that the jobs are coming how do we how do we help accommodate that as well so um you We will have final use on all of that, but that is one of the big things that we're looking at um with that study is the housing and and what's it mean for for future land use um such as this as well.

Kevin, how many acres does the city own right there? Just assuming

Yeah. So, I'm sorry and I I kind of got off track there. I'm sorry. I didn't really answer your question. So, the entire area that's owned, the green spot is the fire station itself. We own the narrow parcel behind it. We own the square to the right of or to the east of that narrow parcel. And then we own the square to the left of the parcel. And we own about half of the rest of the parcel to the west. Um that's not exactly clear lines there. Um but it's all one parcel now. Um, and part of the stuff for my office is we are going to be putting RFPs out for all of that city-owned property for like how what's the highest and best use of those properties. So, we'll put an RFP out, try to find a developer to come in and say, you know, here's here's what we have out here for property. We'd like to see single family housing around there, an extension of the current uh meadow sub. um or you know, somebody wants to come in and put a mixeduse of town homes or uh you know, small cottages or senior housing, whatever it is that that they may want to uh develop over there.

Good. Awesome. Thank you. Yep.

Next one is Hal Hal Creek Elementary, which is master plan public proposed to go to single family residential right in the middle of the residential neighborhoods. And the next map is the other land designation master plan land use change considerations. First one is the tower area properties. This is property that's right across the street from Amazon. Um is currently master planned single family residential proposed to be regional business and ultimately Vining Road Overlay. Um, some of the summary on this parcel is I know it's a uh challenging piece. I know with the with the wetlands and the demolition of the existing infrastructure and the moving of the county drains and everything, it's it's a hard piece to develop. Um, I know it's been marketed residential for a long time. Um, some of the stuff based on the ecourse road corridor vision master plan statements. Um, it could separate incompatible uses and implement strong standards for organizing land uses along the corridor. Regional business designation and ultimately vining road overlay have standards that will help to achieve the thoughtful organization to development within this area and also this will encourage catalyst development and multimodel infrastructure at key nodes. This area planned reasonable business to the south will help bring catalyst development to the city to help make other improvements as a part of the site plan review process.

Yes. Uh to the chair, I have a question. Um how far back or does that actually come out on the other side of Beverly or No, I can't tell from the map. Yeah, on the map. I think this parcel goes from Ecourse to Beverly. Yes. Which Do you have the big map in front of you?

Yeah, actually I just looked down at it. So that's that's my question and concern. So you mentioned about possibly splitting that. So when you go on the other side and you touch Beverly, that's all residential. So you're talking about putting, you know, industrial business or whatever the there is there are businesses on Beverly, but on the other side um towards Marman and Ingster, I mean Middle and Ingster and actually on the other side Marman as well. But there in Beverly, that's all residential. Yes. Yeah. Right in Beverly, that's a whole subdivision right there.

Yep. And I can I can speak a little bit to that. So, we looked at the site pretty heavily um from a number of different aspects. And as Jeff kind of uh discussed, there's there's two portions of public drain that come through here through Wayne County. You have Henry Ruff Road that dissects this as well. Um and then you have an old older abandoned drain that's on the property that the county still has to make a decision on what they're doing with. Um and then you have substantial wetlands on the property. So if you look at the wetland delineation map, it pretty much um goes along the north border and they're protected wetlands from Eagle. So whatever goes here, even if it is induct industrial, the potential buffer is almost two to three times the recommended setbacks from Beverly Road. So there'd never be an entrance onto Beverly from this site.

Gotcha. Isn't Isn't there um isn't there a guy that owns a piece of that property? I think he built an approach and was tearing down trees and tried to build a uh a hunting tower over there off of Beverly. There's a lot of extracurricular activity going on on that property.

Um so there's so the other thing that we found is um so Jeff had mentioned it's been zoned residential for a long time. I've talked to several residential developers and and I'm sure you can attest to this as well being in real estate. When you look at the difficulties on the map, it's hard to be able to develop a um residential development on the piece of property that pencils, right? That that makes it profitable for a developer to come in and do that. And that's what we've seen here. Um we get a lot of interest in this for light industrial light manufacturing. Um it ties into what we're doing here already with the North Point and Smith Road and Vining Road overlay. Um so we looked at that. Uh we also looked at this from a flood plane perspective because if a company were to come in here to develop this, they're going to address the drain issues which then in essence will also help us with the down drain issues that we see going across kind of on an angle into the backside of the North Point site into the Wick Wick Road overflow that goes down into 94 and then ultimately around the airport as well. Um, so we potentially can get some infrastructure stuff taken care of here. We can align Henry Ruff Road with the Amazon entrance there as well. And then, um, potentially there's a house on Henry Ruff Road that has some structure on the property that's not supposed to be on there. And there, you know, whoever

buys this is going to have to address that as well and fix that issue. So, um, those are kind of some of the things that we looked at and and kind of, you know, I've had discussions with multiple developers on the site that have interest and those are always things that are coming up over and over and over again with the site. So, one other question, is this the piece of property that that um piping comes from the airport and goes through there with that deicing fluid that ends up at Michigan A? No, I don't. That's not that.

Okay. Thank you. [Music] Uh the next parcel is city of Ramulus Erica property on the southeast corner of Marman and Vanborn. This is currently master plan mixed use. We're proposing to keep it mixeduse. There's no uh plan changes proposed. Um just brought to the commissioner's attention for discussion basically. Kevin, they're the are they the first they're the pieces um just west of Henry Ruff, right?

Yeah. So where Henry Ruff comes out to Van Bourne, there's a there's the car wash there and then there's a small little piece to the west and then another piece to the west of that. Those two pieces of property were uh recently quick claim deed to the city. Um and we're going to be that'll be one of the locations that we're uh going to be doing an RFP out for for uh whether it's some mixed use or um commercial upfront residential, you know, behind type uh type development. So, it was something that I wanted to make sure Jeff and Carol were aware of that we took that into our inventory and we're going to be, you know, acting on it fairly soon. So if this if we went in line with the current master plan, you know, with these some city properties are on there, not all on, you know, we didn't want to put that green. We didn't make want to designate ownership. Um, we wanted to keep it, but yet highlight it. So this this map will get cleaned up. There'll probably be a boundary or something around it. Say it's city and that's that's just I mean that's like the best of the best, you know, the city, you know, the the public private partnership to do just what he's doing. So, we're very excited about this.

There was the greenhouse there, correct? That's still there. That's on the east side. Okay. Yeah, that's on the east side. That's still there. Yeah. Rush. Yeah. Yeah. This is directly west of the car wash. That area there. Um, one of the churches had owned it for a while. They've been paying taxes on it. They started depleting their reserves and they said, "We got to get rid of it." And they had it up for sale and no action on it. and uh they approached us to to take it and we said we'd we'd be happy to and you know look at as an opportunity to uh either do some housing there or uh or some commercial retail or something along that that how would housing work around the car wash.

So um there are several other parcels here that we've had discussions with that larger parcel there that that kind of backs up uh behind it um where they they wanted to do a larger housing development. So this might be something that we, you know, partner with them and say, "Okay, well, you're going to do something off Marman Road all the way to Henry Ruff. Let's, you know, let's make it an L and come out to Van Bourne as well." So that might even be just an entrance area to a to a subdivision. Okay. Yeah. I'm just curious about that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's um it's one of those things when we do the RFP, you know, we're going to try to again the goal is to find the highest and best use, right? And that's that's really what the goal of the RFPs are is who's out there that has the vision and the capital to make it happen. Is that also the sorry is that also the part going east of uh Henry Ruff and south of Vanour where they said was that unmarked burial ground. Um that's on the east side of Henry Ruff or on the west side. On the east side I thought it was

No. Yeah. Yeah, I think what you're talking about is on the east side. We're on the west side of it is what I'm saying. Yeah, we're all west. Everything I'm talking about is west of Henry. Okay. Cuz I see all that is purple. So, I just assumed all that was Yeah. No, it's not all the same as our our property. Yeah. We have just the small little parcels, you know, all together. I think it's seven acres right there. Yeah. Yeah. The those p again, this was for information just uh and the and unfortunately the designation of the property line didn't get on there, but this is a this is a cool little area. Purple is that mixed use. So there's lots of flexibility there. So

all right, the last one is uh it's like a twofolded Super Y and E course city community subdivision on the southwest corner of Ecourse and Middle Belt. Um Super Wise is what's designated in the red on that southwest corner. It was it's currently master plan single family residential proposed to be general business as it has been conditionally reszoned to uh C3 for the super wide development and then the neighborhood that's all zone single family residential I know from with the FAA sound polygons and historical abatements that's not recommended to be developed as residential. So that's that's an area we need to talk about about what that looks like and what what's best use for that future land use as well.

Yeah. I noticed there's like two or three houses over there that are up for sale now. They hit the market like within the past week or so. Yeah.

Yeah. It's an interesting area and I think it's going to there's going to be a lot of uh a lot of things up in the air with that. Um there's still quite a few houses back there even though um the FAA's, you know, kind of taken it off the uh table as as uh an option for something. Um as far as residential goes, you know, I think I I envision a couple different things potentially can happen. If you think to the south of this, it goes all the way down to Smith Road, right? So depending on what happens on the north side of Smith Road in between Middle Belt and Marramman that potentially could continue to you know whatever happens there continue to go all the way through to Ecourse Road potentially or um one of the things that we've been discussing through TIFFA is how do we look at uh different corridors in the city and different nodes right and we've identified you know obviously for years that both middle belt and Maraman are the two kind of funnels that go into the airport. So, do we do a study at this intersection and say, can this be turned into a commercial shopping district or node or something along those lines where there may be, you know, public benefit amenities with, you know, just open air shopping or more of a developed mall where you can go and do something prior to or after picking up people from the airport or whatever. You know, how can we turn that into a destination area, right? And it's just finding what, you know, what happens first with that one. Is it the chicken or the egg? Does a larger development off Smith Road start developing and and grow and something something bigger or does the commercial portion of it take off and we see commercial retail resurgence, right? It's it's really hard to tell right now. Kind of in that flux with commercial retail right now and what's going on with it.

So, this was a perfect one to end with in that regard in terms of our process. So Jerry, when you were asking earlier about what what's happening with these individual ones, we right now don't need to decide this. We don't need we're not picking colors per se. And this one this one, as Kevin introduced, this one is going to involve a lot of discussion. And it's okay that even if we got to the end of this process, we haven't come up with anything yet. It it's it's it's just fine. It's good to put in there and and put these things that when you don't know which comes first or it's going to depend on other things that can all be addressed as part of your backup doc, you know, in in your plan. So, that's why this this stage right now is just us coming to you with some parcels that some of them are are kind of no-brainers um that that we can change. Other ones are going to be just like this one gonna gonna need a could tie right into some other, you know, intersection studies, you know, shoot off into a different study. And that's part of a master plan. You know, there's that whole section way way down the line of your know your kind of your implementation, your goals and your objectives where you're you're saying, "Wow, we got talking about this. We need to we need to do, you know, another study. we've got some areas that oh gee, maybe we need to look at with the Baker Tilly study, you know, adding them in to make sure that that they're caught that we do a little bit more on. So,

so I have a question um through the chair. So, we talked about that piece that's going on the corner that's going to have the minor groceries in there. And you mentioned about that portion of there where those houses are will probably eventually become commercial or something possibly. Yeah. Um but there's it's still residential currently. Yes.

Okay. Cuz my question was if that does happen are the uh residents over there are they notified that zoning is changing in those the homes as they sell them? This is just future land use zoning. But yes, we got a courtesy anytime we start designating or changing designations like with the schools. Um we're they're they actually are part of this notification. They already got the notice of intent. They know we're doing this. I I don't know Kevin, are you the one that's been do you talk with them? I don't know who. It depends on what what the topic is, right? So I have communication on some things, but yeah.

Yes. in our next step of this because the schools are the the big property owner and you know working with them um you know letting them know what what changes are coming but yeah certainly if it's a private owner yeah we we had a courtesy notify okay thank you but any reasonzoning would be public hearings notifications everybody would know beforehand and there will be public hearings on this

once once this distribution period's over and once we do a some more work, then it'll planning commission will send it out for distribution. Once comments come back, we take any comments along with everything else we've been doing in between back to planning commission and when we're ready, we schedule a public hearing. So before this goes, then we have a public hearing on it. Then you will make an offic, you know, an actual recommendation on some new ma new color like this. It'll look more like this because they're individual pieces. That then will go to city council with a recommendation for their final approval. So, we're we're a community with the two-step approval process. You approve and then send it off to to city council for approval.

Uh through the chair, I'd like to make just a couple of points. Things I've been seeing as I go through this. So, does that mean currently on this on these maps? You're showing the road that doesn't exist going between the gravel pits up to Wayne. bisecting Henry Rush. Oh yeah, these this is actually Kevin when you brought up about your fire station in that area down there. This this master plan is on an old base. So these parcel lines like where our zoning map and all our other maps get updated as properties change. This is that whole metro metro world center where but that road does not exist.

Some some right well it's right away. paper. Okay. I'm looking for But some some of that that stuff, not necessarily up there, but there's some other areas where some of the property lines Oh, I know where it is. Is Venoi. It's it's over here in the regional center area that that was vacated, you know, for development. So, some of those aren't totally I just uh cuz it'll come up. Yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. This uh second thing is on illustration 21 of them. The parks and Dr. Gator, you got here. Yes. park. There's the It's where the solar panels are on now next to the rack. Yep. That's Opportunity Park. Opportunity Park, but it's listed as Gagard Road in Osgar Road north of Pipelines.

Oh, that's I you know, I can look at it. I I lifted that from the recreation master plan. Okay. Now, so that sounds like uh Marian. Thanks, Perry. Yes. So, I'm just bringing that to your attention. Oh, good. And uh the last thing I would say that I'm curious about and this is it would be on illustration 17 here on River Drive Pass of Park. Oh yeah. So that's that's another conservation easement over there. Conservation. The whole thing. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. That whole thing is cuz on the big map it's blue. It's actually blue and yellow. Blue and yellow. Yeah,

it's blue and yellow. Single family. And so blue is research office research. You're right. It's a mix. So yeah, that um Kevin, wasn't that part of that lawsuit? Yeah, it was. Yep. That's the first time I've ever heard anything about that. Yeah, that whole there's a big chunk down there that's all conservation easement. I get calls on it all the time like, "So, do you want to sell this?" And I'm like, I'll sell it to you, but you can't do anything.

Yeah. So, one one of the things, Kevin, and that's actually very helpful to know. John Enos and I talked about going another level. And I said, you know, I think there's more there's more than just the Ashley Capital property with conservation easement. Yeah, there's this one, the Curry property up. Um, and there's there's Julie Julie assured me when she gets back from vacation, she'll identify them. But that's a you know and that helps then when you are getting calls you know people that know these tools that we have will look at it go a shoot it's conservation ement.

Yeah. And a lot of people will just search online they'll find a map and they start looking at a map and they see public. So I get phone calls all the time and like the schools are a great example like they're marked as public and they're like can I buy this piece of property? We're like there's a school on there.

So would that Heron Valley passive park be in this new master plan come up listed as conservation easement? It could. That's what that's that's what we're thinking about doing is I I when we were trying to get the our map is one of the most colorful and and difficult, you know, with small properties and so many it's it is a hard hard one to work with. And so when we were working with Carlile Wartman and trying to distinguish like guys, there's no way you can go with another color. It's going to confuse because that property is all all ownership. So, you know, throw some hashes on. And they came up with a good job by putting them in this light green.

Yeah. I kind of like that and that that could be then um they did add it to the bottom you know under conservation easement and then then we just do the you know associated narrative you know that goes in the plan. So thank you for answering all those questions a question through the chair. Um it was mentioned about office research and I seen where the metro airport center area was switched to office research but I think when they came in were they M1 or M2?

They're they're a mix. They're actually zoned a mix of M1 and M2 and they are um you're you guys are all seeing conditional resonings now, but back in the day we did plan development areas. Um basically it's a PDA and that's a that's a a plan development area. um condominium, you know, is the kind of the way it was all divided up. And it was, you know, I don't think this color, this color has been like this for forever. And that came in and that was one of when you've got that kind of backup in your plan, then when you're looking at this kind of development, somebody wants to go a little bit a little bit higher. Um there's provisions in in our zoning tools. In this case, it was a planned development area. North Point, for example, was a conditional resoning. Um, if this property that we're talking about now, if that designation does get changed to the change for that area, the tower property, I think we're calling it, expanding the regional business, which again, regional business versus regional center, um, master plan versus zoning, what you call it. Um that is what you've called what we've called the Vining Road development area and that's a a big area with this mixed mixed stuff. Um what we would do is if there was some request for any of that industrial say it's it's similar to what's there now you did it as a conditional resoning at the time the development district translated into the overlay district zoning and the warehouse uses weren't allowed and to do that they went through conditional resoning. We had an agreement. We had oh this for that. We had the provision about the way road you know we had all sorts of stuff. If this were to take off and go in this direction become master planned the binary road development

district the recommendation once we got to zoning there probably be a lot of analysis on it but to get into more because we don't want to go through another reszoning on property you've just remastered reclassified on your master plan. So some uses may get added to that binding road overlay district in your zoning ordinance that become special land uses and then some of those controls that we had the development agreements a big one and some of the other things. Um we've been we've been praised for that district. Um anybody that's kind of looked at it and Kevin I think you mentioned you did a great job mentioning it last time just the design with the dock doors all faced in dock doors for any of you that have been on this commission a long time. Uh it has been um Dan, you probably remember the days back when the the light industrial buildings were were limited to a very small size and it was all about then the dock door and you know where how many per I mean we've had so many different standards in there

square boxes with doors. Yep. Yep. So that's something that that that's what you do when you master plan. you know, you come up with and yeah, that might work, but let's then we've got to tighten it up with some some, you know, ordinance language.

And I think that's a good summary because that that tower property, right? Like we know residential is not going there. Like it just it's been on the market forever. We've identified realators that have looked at it and developers that have looked at it and they just say it did it just doesn't pencil, especially in a environment now where we're seeing the cost of infrastructure to develop something that large as high as it is. So, you know, how do we identify it to something that we still have controls? And those conditional reszoning agreements and the development agreements are really the controls that we look at to go, okay, how do we then get the community benefit out of whoever develops it, right? And that's really those are the two things that we say, okay, in the conditional resoning, you're going to do this, but we want to see this. And that's that's really the the control mechanisms that are nice about that. you know, it can be regional center or, you know, RC or whatever it is, but if you want to do this, here's here's what we expect in return. And that's and that's really what North Point did, you know, and and that's turned out really well. And and I will say that aside from, you know, the development and how um you know, the commission worked with them to develop the site. I had a really really good discussion about it's been about 3 weeks ago um with MEEDC and MEEDC was down here and they were looking at some other stuff. we were doing and they were like, you know, developments of this size usually fall under transformational developments at the state level and you see significant amount of money inputed into that area from the state. But organically, Romulus has found a way to make it happen over there and and the growth in the building and the interest that's starting to really build synergy and energy around that is is pretty significant. and they were, you know, equally impressed with our TIFFA district and and taking that extra step and and, you know, committing to the public safety headquarters over there as well. So, um, yeah, it's it's going to be interesting. I that's going to continue to grow and you're going to the

city's going to see, you know, good good benefit from that whole region, I think.

And that's an aspect of this, you know, fiscal impact. I mean, that that you you guys see it with resonings, you see it with, you know, even special land uses on occasion. and you know, you start getting those real numbers involved, which we have. We're we're we're now getting some of that. So, that's another big aspect. So, what we're looking for from from you tonight is um a recommendation uh for city council to um authorize the distribution of this amendment, this future land use map amendment to the how do we call it the surrounding communities and agencies. And that will start the 42-day period. Our expectation then would be to get it to council next month for the two meetings in October and at your October meeting bring this back to you with probably more and with definitely more you know fine-tuning um getting

the same thing again the same map again same idea again yes with with some more and definitely some more in terms of the content with the backup. So, okay. Any more?

So, again, some of them are going to be very, very easy. Um, some of them, you know, you might want more discussion on, you may have some more ideas on on reasons, you know, for the change. Um, things like that. Or if there's any other pieces that out of, you know, the ones on on the last map on with just the four, those were just four, right? you know, that that came up as part of, you know, the Marman school like, oh, it's a school property and it's a city lease property and we have a developer looking at it. Let's let's get this in front of the planning commission to talk about. Okay.

But certainly if you have other areas, um, you know, I think in the past we've done it. We've called them everything from opportunities to, you know, just if there's there's areas of the city that you think, you know, not so sure about this or um where where would be a good area to put that um we're ready to listen. So through the chair, I have a question. Yes. So I'm Beverly just um east of Wayne that old school. [Music] Yeah.

Old Burden Center. Yeah. What's what's happening with it? It's been going through a lot over the years. that guy that it was purchased and then it was sold at auction and the person who purchased it at auction I know came in saw us came in and to planning and building and um had I don't know some ideas and then I haven't heard anything else since then and the last I've heard from them was they're still looking for they had a lot of different ideas for like training facility and different things and uh still looking for funding I think from the state level still working on that. But I know they got in there and cleaned it up pretty substantially there. They did do some clean up.

Yep. And uh but yeah, I have not heard anything. And is that the Lena Burton? Yeah. Mhm. We've got it designated in this. That's down here in this purple area. God, I can't I got to look at these lines better. But that's one that You know what? Let's let's pull that one out because that one's one we're going to we're going to need to be talking about if some particular somebody's got Carol. What about also um the old Corey Elementary cuz that's Oh, yeah. That's the GSRP now. Cory's uh in future land use regional center. It's in it's in the mix. It's in the mix. Okay. So, it's in the mix.

It's not zoned public. Okay. And that one actually will show up on the next round. That was one that's not showing up as public because it's got this that's where where some of these were like, oh, once Julie gave me that list, it's like I think there's some properties in here that that already have the future land used. Um the olive site. Yeah. Yeah. So they're they're already taken care of. They're there. Is Harrison still there? The old Harrison school. Um what happened to that? you. No, Harrison got uh demoed and it's that's now industrial, right? That's just it's empty right now. Crown bought it, demoed it. They uh

school's down and it's just an empty parcel right now with no nothing's nothing's been looked at or proposed through the chair. Um, Carol or Kevin, the property on Wayne Road, the old golf course, what's the status on it? Is that still privately own or?

Yeah, so Howard Freze owns that. He's owned it for a while. He comes in once or twice a year. Um, ask him if he can put industrial trucking in there and we tell him no. He goes on his way and comes back at 6 months later and ask again. Um, he's tied up in Ann Arbor right now. He was in that big lawsuit out there with the high-rise building and so he's been kind of tied up out there right now and has been out of our hair. Um I think you'll see some stuff start happening there once we see some more synergy with Vining and Wick and as things start going on there it'll build and we'll start seeing some more interest. Um you know ideally there we'd love to see some mixed use up front and housing subdivisions behind it. you know, that's perfect spot for it.

And that's that's a great example of one. It's been on this plan, you know, back from the Metro metro um center days and it's it is designated mixed use. We actually had a site plan in when that we approved it, which is just that. So, that's something. And that's when we get further down the line on these some of these properties, we may want to do some kind of preliminary programming, you know, and design and whatever. The downtown is for those of you that were on uh last go around when we did the downtown, you know, that was different than just these kind of big color areas that did have a lot of stuff that translated into, you know, some stuff that went in the zoning ordinance, which actually needs to really be looked at and updated.

I'm sure I'm sure that's going to come out of this. And I think as we make public the housing study, right, that'll get people's attention as well. And you know, there's there's another parcel I I talked to Jeff about last week. I I met with a developer that um has another parcel under contract. Um you know, it's about 80 acres and and he's looking to develop residential, but as you know, and I I was able to say, "Hey, this housing stud is going to be out here in a minute." So, it might help, you know, help his argument with um with his investors and lenders. Um but I think as that starts to get shared, more people are going to see the opportunity. that's that's you know kind of a a hidden secret right now as far as housing goes

and and also one other partial I don't know what the status is or is it or if it ever was a reservation and how did it get the distinction um on Wick just west of uh sheets Wick and Vinying is that reservation land on the corner right there is that the gravel pit Yeah. Well, that corner that corner that was designated a reservation when they were trying to put the casinos in there. It I don't think it was ever formally adopted. No. So, it's just still privately owned. Yeah. Yeah. So, that whole corner, that whole area over there is owned by Ashley Capital. Ashley Capital, right?

Yeah. Back in the, you know, downturn, uh, Ashley Capital kind of went into acquisition mode and purchased up most of that over there. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And I I would definitely say as well and and Carol, you might have already said it, but you know, if any of the planning commissioners as you're driving through the city, you see a parcel and go, "Hey, what about that?" You know, like, you know, call Jeff, call Carol, cuz now's the time to evaluate it and take a look at it. So, if you drive around, you see something, you know, now's the time. We'll have a couple rounds of these coming through for you guys. So,

and you'll see it goes two ways. I mean obviously development opportunity is is great something that we may not see that um you know we're once we get something designated that then leads to you know zoning ordinance amendments and there's just so many tools out there and so many things we can do but also it it helps the other way. You bring up the golf course property and the fact that it that is designated mixed use as opposed to something that like okay that that industrial uh it's creeping you know it's not creeped that far so we want to leave it alone right now keep that purple color and um before we move forward and and

our downtown area I mean are we designating our so-called downtown area downtown Are we going to try to develop another area for what we call a downtown area? Is that part of our master plan? Uh,

so that really I mean, as far as the master plan, I think downtown's downtown, right? Like it's always going to be our historical downtown. As we further build out the hotel district and entertainment district, I don't necessarily think it's going to be called a downtown, but it's going to be another node in the city that's designated for activity specific to that area. Right. I think, you know, I always I kind of say that again I'll reiterate what I said earlier that we know um Marman Road and and Middle Belt are the funnels into the airport and really you know what we're doing with TIFFA with Vining Road, right? And the branding on Vining Road and and identifying that. So I really see that as the the welcome sign to Romulus. And when you get off there at Vining, you're either going to go north into the entertainment and hotel district and commercialized district or you're going to head south down into, you know, the downtown district and kind of be in Romulus proper, per se. So, you know, I think I think they're going to take on their own flavor and feel as they build out and you're going to see, you know, downtown hopefully with what Jerry's doing and the direction he's going with the revitalization plan for downtown. he's, you know, he's got a lot of stuff going and good momentum down there and what we've been able to do with the uh Small Business Administration grants for small businesses. Um he'll continue to work on that. And then, you know, we're still going after everything we can up in that hotel district and and really making sure that we clean that up and um you know, the the movement we've made with the Cooper hotels and getting rid of the roadway and and you know, uh bringing in new stuff there. the North Point development along Wick Road will continue to grow and and take care of that. So, I think that, you know, again, there'll be separate nodes of entertainment and and activity um based on, you know, what we want there.

And then and on top of that, I kind of believe that we should be trying to help develop that a little bit more into a entertainment area because I mean, that's where the entertainment is. We only have the what? Eagle Alley. Eagle Alley. Eagle Alley. And then we have the brewery. And of course the landing strip. So I mean entertainment is there already just bring in more. Yeah. And and we've had I even up until as recent as this afternoon, I had two individuals uh in a meeting this afternoon about some additional activity in the downtown district. So yeah.

Yeah. It's It's building. We're We're seeing the interest. Good. Thank you. We ready to move. Motion. Yep. I'd like to make a motion. Mr. Croa. I'd like to make a motion to recommend to city council to authorize the distribution of the future land use map to the surrounding community and agencies and start to the required 42day municipal and agency review period to commence.

Support. Motion by Mr. Kova, supported by Miss Jimson, to recommend the city council to authorize the distribution of the future land use map amendments to allow the required 42-day M municipal and agency review period to commence. Any discussion? Roll call. Mr. Kro, yes. Miss Jimson, yes. Mr. Frederick, yes. Mr. Long. Yes. Miss Rosco, yes. Mr. Boat, yes. I vote yes. Motion carries. Good deal. Great.

All right. Next item we have no new business. Number nine, PCP cases involving advice and input from the planning commission. Nothing. Just got a whole bunch of that. Yeah, we did get a few of those. You did a good job on what you did. Um 10 reports of interest designation. Mr. Rosco,

I have a few things tonight. Um the first one is um the mayor is holding his one Ramulus meeting tomorrow night and that is going to be it's Tuesday of course September 16th and it's at 6 p.m. and it's at Wick Elementary School. And um just inviting everybody to come out and ask your questions. he's there to um answer them and uh usually there's a lot of other uh administration people there that can help answer those questions that you may have and uh and then there's usually some of us council people that uh that are able to get there get there and so just come on out and ask your questions and again that is at Wick School and at 6 o'clock tomorrow night and then Um, the other thing I want to um, make note of before I go into, you know, our punk festival this weekend is the following weekend, uh, Thursday, September 25th, uh, through Sunday, September 28th, is a citywide garage sale. And uh the clerk's office asks you to please, even though this is your free weekend to do this, uh to call and register, get your name on the um not so much your name, your address on the list so people know where your garage sale where the garage sales are. It's always helpful. If you got more uh questions, you can call the clerk's office at 734-942-7540. And then of course the rain dates will be that following weekend. But um there's applications online so you don't necessarily have to come on in. Just uh uh go on the website and um go underneath the clerk's information. And

then of course we've got um pumpkin festival this weekend. Prader lights, excuse me. starts off with the pray of lights on on Friday night that's sponsored by the Rotary and usually that starts about dusk 8 o'clock they start rolling so and there they'll start um down on Gddard Road and uh come up around the curves over the railroad tracks there by the historical society and then we end up um at Five Points. So uh come on out come out early. There's usually some vendors and a few things going on down there by the historical park on Friday night. And uh but again that Friday, Saturday, Sunday pumpkin festival things are going on all weekend long. So first thing you don't want to miss is uh pancake breakfast on Saturday morning. You know, it it's been a given. Somebody always has it. the Boy Scouts did it for years and and now the firefighters uh over here the and public safe at safety does the pancake breakfast and they start at 8:00 8:00 to 10:30. Um I think the car shows usually going on down there at the same time. So, come on out and have breakfast, check out the cars and and the vehicles. And uh again, the Ramos firefighters uh raised this and the funds go to the Romulus Public Safety Foundation and they do a lot of good stuff. But um adults are six bucks, seniors are $5, children under four are free. But anyways, um that that'll start off your Saturday. Going to have all kinds of vendors, all kinds of things going on. Uh and then again on Sunday which uh Ed can tell us more about that uh is

unity day and and all I can remember is is that we're having a zipline and and church church in the park in the morning and food vendors and so on and so forth. But that's all I have tonight. That's good. So to trail uh council Rosco. Yes. Zipline which I believe we have a bet going between u I do remember that commissioner long and our city planner over there. What what was it? What was it? $50. $50. $50. There you are. Um so the uh accept though. So

no she didn't accept but I I don't think you were you couldn't decline. So, I have to check my calendar.

Yeah, I think that's how that went. Uh, so the um the actually I think the festivities on Friday start at 4 with the fun zone. So, the fun zones I think there's five bouncies with the slides and things that we had last year. The slight differences. They'll be there all three week uh all three days. So starting at 4:00 and I believe at 8. So when parade of lights start, the bounces shut down. Then they're again Saturday 11 to 8. And then Sunday 12 to 6. And then on Sunday we do have the zipline. And then I believe there's a 30 by something foot uh Nerf gun thingy that you run through. I'm pretty I don't remember the name of it, but I think we had it once before. Um, and so that'll be on Sunday as well. The worshiping part does start at 10:00. We do have Ramy's Got Talent and of course we have our hometown superhero awards ceremony right before that. And then uh everything else continues from there. And I believe um 3:00 is when the uh Rams has Got Talent starts. So

for a week three whole days and we will be looking for Carol on Sunday. I'd run if I were you. Just give 50 bucks called

if I could through the chair real quick. Um you know just a lot of work goes into the planning of the of that pumpkin fest. I think some of you guys sit on the pumping pumpkin fest committee and um you know that's almost a year round planning you know from the day it ends to you start all over again right and and start uh start planning again for for the following year but um not only the individuals that sit on that pumpkin fest committee but also employees throughout the entire city um police fire DPW um our office staff here the volunteers that help uh run that you know uh for the entire weekend and make sure everything goes smoothly DPW closing roads opening roads, making sure parts are there and electricals for vendors and and all that stuff. And Jerry does a lot uh out of our office and and Katrina and Jessica and Maria Lambert. Um I just ask if you guys are there this weekend at some point in time, you see them working, you see them volunteering, just you know, hey, give them a thank you because they they work hard all year and they they really do to make sure that that is a successful uh event every year. So

appreciate it. Nothing else, Mr. through the chair and also on the Rotary Parade of Lights. Um the vendors that help us out with um our efforts, United Rental um Gateway Golf for our golf carts, United Rental for our uh lighting at the Progressive Hall with at the end of parade site. So when you patronize them um we usually send them out a certificate of participation also. So when you patronize them, just give them thanks for their support for the parade and everything that they do. Thank you.

Item 11 is our project status report receeded September 10th, 2025. Mr. Frederick through the chair, just a couple questions. Uh so on the first page, T-Mobile collocation, that's the existing tower, correct? That's the existing tower. CO locations. Just another Okay. They're not putting up a new tower. No. Okay. See those? Uh under reoccupancies. The first one, KSI Auto Parts, 33200 Smith Road. Reoccupancy. Was there already somebody in there?

You know, no. Um because with those developments, your conditions of approval always was when they do get an occupant, they've got to submit a traffic study or at least anticipated trips to make sure that um everything's copacetic. Um you know, you you approve these subject to, you know, spec building type standards. So when they'd come in, we wanted to make Well, you do zoning compliance and that's basically our end of reoccupancy, Jeff, in terms of the there's not a city certain inspection, of course. It's buildout. No. Yeah. That was just like for them it was they did some changes with the office build out and then they had to put racking and everything in as well.

Now, are these the folks that got the tray the container sitting on the ground with their trailer under it? No. Do you remember Mr. Gladfeld, you brought it up the last meeting? No, that was uh pack that is pack. I just wanted to clarify that. Yeah. All right. And then on the next page also under reoccupancies. Univar. Why are they getting reoccupancy after they've been here for so many years? Is that the one that that's the we're we're working with them on property combos and easements and stuff. They they So they went

they Oh, I know what it was. it. So, did they they were there and they are still there. It's them, but their ownership changed. Did they sell their ownership or vice versa? Did they buy them? Yeah, they I know they had new ownership. We already did a walk through on our end of things and everything. So, it dealt with ownership. Okay. Tenants the same. It was just changing owners, tenants remaining the same, but I know the the ownership changed. That struck me as very curious. Uh, so two down is cubic CBM LLC. That's in the old NEPA store, right? Add five points. Do you know about that one, Jeff? Cubic CBM LLC.

Yeah, that is a uh is that the one that is doing that's going to be it was the old That's not the car re. It was the Napa. Well, it was Napa and it was dealership. Mr. Croin can speak to it. Yeah. That's right. Address. Yep. 37311. Okay. So, that's the old auto parts. I was just curious about that how that broke up over there. And that's it for that. And and just a side note, too, uh, at Pelum and Bambour, the ecourse drain/river, the county or somebody's been in there, they took every tree off of that thing and they're doing they're they're addressing that drain. M.

So, I don't know how far upstream or how far downstream, but I know right there there's not a tree left on it. Where is this? At Pelman Bambbor. Oh, right next to the 7-Eleven. Okay. So, there Yeah. So, I can speak to that a little bit. So, the county is reallocating some funds and there's been a little bit of a change in the legislation as far as how much money they can spend on maintenance per mile. Um, and they're going after some federal funds along with DCC in conjunction with DCC to address some of the unattended to drains that have gone for years without being touched, right? Decades.

Um, and it is pretty drastic when you look at it. So I live in, you know, I live over right on the Lincoln Park wine dot border and um Council Park is over there and the drain runs right through there into, you know, E course and then into the Detroit River and they came through and they just strip it. It's stripped down, right? Um and they get rid of all that overgrowth out of there. The goal is to get the stream portions and you know there's they designate it depending on the water flow if it's a stream or a creek or a you know river you know river designation but it's to get the water flowing again and then wash the sediment into the river and get it flowing and then they come back and they start rehabbing it with the habitat like and that's where they maybe put deposits of river rock down or other things to to kind of rebuild the environment. So, the first part of those is clearing the banks from everything that's overgrown and fallen into it over the years. But, yeah, it looks pretty drastic when you look at

They took out some trees that are 2 ft round. Yeah, that's Yeah, I went by. Holy smokes. And they are. And there's there's a couple points that they've identified that they're starting with. Um, and there's two different thought processes. Wayne County is going, let's start from the river and work up. and DCC is going, "No, we start with the headwaters and work down." So, they got to come to some terms on what that looks like, but there there's multiple projects going along the entire area because I know there's a considerable portion of it that flows right through. Yeah. Out to Van Bourne, then literally parallels Van Bourne as a ditch

and that overflows Van Bourne all the time when heavy rains. I just it struck me as curious and I had no idea how far up they were coming. So, I just thought I'd make a point up bringing it up. Yeah, I think some of the discussions go all the way to like Van Beern and Canton area and then come, you know, come right through us. So, you know, we're kind of knock on woods. We we get the flooding, the flash flooding immediately, but we're kind of the top of the hill. It's Dearborn Heights and Allen Park and Melvin and course that really gets the flood part portion of it as it all migrates to the river. So, yeah, there's going to be a lot lot more discussion on that coming down the pipeline. No pun intended. Okay. It's going to be interesting. It'll be interesting when they get a little further upstream. Trust me.

Yeah. All right. Thank you. Anybody else have any comments, questions? Okay. Next item, Miss German. So moved. By Miss Jimson. Support. Supported. Mr. Bob. Mr. Long. Mr. Long. Huh? Mr. Long. Mr. Long. Mr. Long. Okay. Support by Mr. Long. Discussion. Roll call. Miss. Jes. Yes. Mr. Long, yes. Miss Rosco, yes. Mr. Croba, yes. Mr. Bobade, yes. Mr. Frederick, did I get you? Uh, yes. And I vote yes. Yes. Motion. This meeting is a journ.