Traverse City Record-Eagle

Acme

October 10, 2009

Conflicting documents guide Meijer review

BY BRIAN McGILLIVARY

TRAVERSE CITY -- Acme Township planners will draw on past experience when they begin to review a proposed Meijer Inc. store, the first phase of the proposed Village at Grand Traverse development.

Planners will have to pick their way through four complex and often conflicting documents to determine which standards to apply for a 232,000-square foot store.

Final plans must comply with the township's master land use plan, zoning ordinance, a special-use permit granted in 2004 by a lame duck board, and an appellate court decision that upheld parts -- though not all -- of the permit.

Township attorneys Jeffrey Jocks and Chris Bzdok created a 27-page, confidential memo to guide planners during their review of the 185-acre project on M-72 and Lautner roads.

"There are many instances where those documents conflict, and the planning commission will need to know which document applies," township Manager Sharon Vreeland said. "It takes every one of those 27 pages to explain the complex interplay between these documents and our review."

Township officials initially withheld the legal memo from public view by claiming an attorney-client privilege, but expect to make it public.

The planning commission will decide whether to make the document public on Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. in the township hall.

"I don't see any reason it should be confidential and it would take a very compelling reason for me to change my mind," said Ron Hardin, a township trustee and planning commissioner.

Hardin said most planning commissioners have experience with large projects and he believes they'll be up to the task of handling the Meijer/Village review.

Fellow Commissioner Bob Carstens said planners hadn't faced a project of the Village's scale and scope when it arose in 2004.

If built as planned, the Village eventually will include more than 1 million-square feet of commercial space, as well as residential housing.

The project's size and design prompted a citizens' group's lawsuit in 2004 that led to several counter-lawsuits, illegal election tampering by Meijer, and millions of dollars in cash payouts to township officials who said Meijer and the Village at Grand Traverse LLC maliciously prosecuted them.

"As complicated as this review is, our attitude and experience will definitely mitigate any confusion we had in the past," Carstens said. "I think the developer also recognizes what happened in the past and will want to avoid those types of impasses again."

Steve Smith, managing partner of the Village at Grand Traverse LLC, did not return calls seeking comment.

Steve Schooler, of Cincinnati-based developer Jeffrey R. Anderson Real Estate Inc., a partner in the project, previously said both sides are working well together during the early stages of the project. He could not be reached for comment Friday.

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