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19
Apr 2007
Not quite ‘in the zone’
Posted by Scott Spielman
at 3:44 PM | Comments
Last night I saw something that surprised at the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting in Northville Township.
The main item on the agenda there was the plan for the old Northville Psychiatric Hospital site—and people were there to defend it.
Prior to this, opposition had been fairly universal. But people showed up—residents and contractors—to support the plan and the companies involved with it.
The support primarily centered on the Schostak construction company, which has partnered with Real Estate Interests, Inc. on the plan. They’re a good company to work with, they develop quality projects and so on. I’m sure all of that is true—you don’t get as big as they are by doing shoddy work.
That still doesn’t mean this plan is the best thing for the community, though.
That’s what I keep coming to when I think of the overall merits of the concept. They knew what the underlying zoning was when they bid on the property; they knew the number of buildings there and had an idea of the cost of the clean up. They took the Planned Unit Development (PUD) concept—which was already a deviation of township ordinances—and tried to push it further, ignoring all else.
They want to take it to court and that’s fine. They should’ve simply agreed to more compromise.
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