Senior housing project eyed at Commons

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A downstate developer is considering a senior housing development involving the north end of Building 50, part of the Village at Grand Traverse Commons. Record-Eagle/Jan-Michael Stump
A downstate developer is considering a senior housing development involving the north end of Building 50, part of the Village at Grand Traverse Commons. Record-Eagle/Jan-Michael Stump

January 26, 2012

By Bill O'Brien bobrien@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Thu Jan 26, 2012, 07:34 AM EST

TRAVERSE CITY — A development group is studying a large section of Building 50 on the old state hospital grounds for a potential senior housing project.

Preliminary plans indicate the group would buy about 110,000 square feet at the north end of Building 50 and adjoining Cottage 19. The project would include about 110 senior living units, said Raymond Minvervini II, a partner and son of The Village at Grand Traverse Commons developer Ray Minervini.

"There's some leg work and due diligence under way," Minervini said. "It's like anything else; there's a lot of work involved to see if something can fly."

A group called Grand Traverse Senior Living is looking at the site and has an option that continues through month's end. Michael Parks, a group principal who is a partner in a Bloomfield Hills real estate company, referred questions to another project partner who didn't return a call for comment.

Various senior housing plans involving Building 50 have come and gone over the years. In the early 1990s, a group of Chicago-area developers wanted to transform most of the former state hospital grounds' 450-acre campus into a retirement community that included senior housing, a new county medical care facility and other health-related facilities.

That plan fizzled and ended in lawsuits with millions spent in consulting and legal fees. In the late '90s, a Brighton-based developer wanted to demolish Building 50 and replace it with a senior housing complex. The Minervinis gained control of the site in 2001.

Before The Minervini Group took over, most of the campus was zoned for senior housing and related health care services. But early plans relied almost solely on senior housing and it was too much space tied to a single use that didn't fit the local housing market, Minervini said.

"That's why it never went forward," he said. "This is a giant campus."

Zoning officials from Traverse City and Garfield Township determined the senior housing is consistent with the master development plan for the Grand Traverse Commons property. A final site plan would have to be approved by the joint city-township planning body that oversees the Commons campus, city Planner Russ Soyring said. The project would provide elderly housing opportunities that are both located in the city and close to the services at nearby Munson Medical Center.

"Senior housing being that close to all those medical facilities seemed like a great fit," Soyring said.

Senior housing in part of Building 50 better aligns with Minervini's long-term vision for a variety of housing types mixed among various retailers, professional offices and service-related businesses, he said. An affordable housing project opened last year in Building 50 and another is under construction in another nearby building, both from developers Mike and Bob Jacobson.

"The vision from Day One is to have this continuum of living and working opportunities at the site," Minervini said. "That's always been our idea."