The Suttons Bay Township Planning Commission will hold a public hearing tomorrow (Tuesday) to consider the creation of a new zoning district. The tweak, which would require a text amendment to the township’s zoning ordinance, has been requested by Peninsula Housing as part of the nonprofit’s efforts to develop housing off Herman Road.

“The planning commission has been working for several years on a new zoning ordinance that would include provisions for what they are calling a ‘neighborhood residential district,’” Peninsula Housing President Larry Mawby tells The Ticker. “We’ve been working with them for the last four years, ever since we acquired property at 980 Herman Road.”

Peninsula Housing is a Community Land Trust (CLT), a type of nonprofit designed to own and hold land in perpetuity. While a home built on CLT land can be bought, sold, or owned, the CLT always maintains ownership of the land itself. The idea is that someone who buys a home from a CLT can get a more affordable price because they are purchasing the house and not the land.

Since launching in 2021, Peninsula Housing has bought and sold a few homes in Leelanau County, but hasn’t undertaken any major development projects. A planned neighborhood on the 980 Herman Park property would mark the organization’s first foray into building homes, but hinges upon zoning tweaks, Mawby says. The property is currently zoned “agricultural district.”

“The intent of this residential zoning district is to create affordable, attractive and ecologically sound neighborhoods in close proximity to the Village where urban services such as municipal water and sewer may be available,” reads a draft of the zoning amendment included in tomorrow’s planning commission meeting packet. The district would allow for “a variety of residential types including detached single-family homes, duplexes, townhouses, and apartments that generally have the characteristics of traditional neighborhood design, such as a grid street system, sidewalks, small lots, and shallow setbacks.”

The idea of the neighborhood residential district, Mawby says, came out of a joint master plan the township and the Village of Suttons Bay developed in 2011. “They had identified areas on the edge of the village that the township thought made sense as transitional residential areas, transitioning from the township density and services to what the village offers,” he explains.

Dubbed “village growth management areas” and sketched out as part of a future land use map in the 2011 plan, the concept was intended to define “where more intense development will be directed” on the outskirts of the village, as well as to “contain costs on the potential extension of services, such as water, sewer, and roadways.” According to Mawby, designated village growth management areas would have allowed for up to eight residences per acre.

While growth management areas were excised from a 2022 rewrite of the master plan, the concept has informed Peninsula Housing’s proposed neighborhood residential district – albeit, with one major difference.

“The original vision 15 years ago was that these village growth management areas would be places where the village could extend water and sewer service,” Mawby notes. “So, three years ago, when we initially did the planning for [Herman Road], we said, ‘Well, if we could get village water and sewer, here's what we could do.’ And that was 75 units on 10 acres. It turns out we can’t get village water and sewer, so we're now dramatically less dense.”

Instead, Peninsula Housing is looking to build 30 homes on eight acres – just four residences per acre rather than eight.

“It’s necessary to have that lower density, because we have to have on-site wells and septic systems, and they just consume a lot of land,” Mawby says. “The homes would be one-bedroom or two-bedroom duplexes, and then a few three-bedroom standalone homes.”

Mawby continues: “What we asked for [from the township] was the flexibility to have no minimum dwelling sizes, because that would allow us to build some smaller homes and apartments; and to have minimal side setbacks and no minimum lot size, so that we could be really flexible in clustering homes. This development really is intended to be a transition from the large lots you see in the residential part of the township, to the smaller lots and more compact housing you see in the village.”

Each unit in the one-bedroom duplexes would be 600 square feet. “And under the current zoning, that’s too small,” Mawby notes.

The other two acres of the Herman Road property would be set aside for a different housing nonprofit.

“We are in negotiations with Homestretch to lease that parcel to them, and they intend to build eight townhouse rental apartments on it,” Mawby says. “That’s something they can accomplish with the existing zoning, so we didn’t include [those two acres] in our rezoning request.”

Tuesday’s meeting is scheduled for 7pm in the Suttons Bay Fire Department building. Peninsula Housing is seeking both the zoning amendment and a re-zoning of the eight-acre section of the Herman Road parcel.

“We are hopeful that the planning commission will vote after this meeting to recommend to the township board that this amendment be approved, and then it will go to the county planning commission for review, and then come to the township board,” Mawby says. “If the township board adopts it, we are then ready to come to the planning commission for site plan approval and site condominium approval for the development at 980 Herman Road.”