Delta Township poised for residential growth, but infrastructure hasn’t kept pace

DELTA TWP. — Mike Lee’s family has owned the 76 acres of vacant land at the southwest corner of M-43 and Broadbent Road for five decades.

Four months ago the family was poised to sell it for approximately $2.5 million, but, instead, Lee’s land will remain undeveloped — at least for now.

Southfield-based Broadbent Development LLC wanted to build just over 300 apartments on the property that's on the edge of a booming commercial corridor at Saginaw Highway and Interstate 96. Almost a dozen stores and restaurants have opened on the corridor in the last few years.

The development, dubbed "Avenue Apartments at Delta,” was proposed this year, just as township officials asserted that the municipality needs more housing options. Driving that need is the construction of a $2.6 billion Ultium Cells plant adjacent to the GM Lansing Delta plant off Davis Highway and a 1-million-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center expected to open next year off Mt. Hope Highway that will bring a combined 2,200 jobs to the township.

Instead, plans to develop Lee's land were halted in late April after township staff told Broadbent Development the municipal sewer system couldn’t accommodate the additional housing without investing millions in infrastructure improvements, said Jack Knowles, who represented the company.

“Without any place to take our sewage, it killed the project,” he said.

Business owners, real estate agents and developers like Knowles, who owns other property in Delta Township, said companies want to be there and people want to live there, but the township’s infrastructure limitations remain a roadblock to both. Sanitary sewer capacity is limited for land on the west side of the township and in the industrial district south of Mt. Hope Highway; it’s expected to cost millions to upgrade the infrastructure and officials are still assessing how to pay for all of it.

"Delta is just a desirable place to be,” Knowles said. “I mean, that's just evidenced by the growth.”

A township in demand

The township's population has grown by more than 3,400 people to 33,119 residents in the last two decades. The GM plant, which opened in 2006, led to the “expansion of our other major employers such as Meijer, Auto Owners, Farm Bureau, Magna and others,” Delta Township Manager Brian Reed said in an email. Approximately 44 businesses have opened within the township in the last five years, he said.

Bryan Torok knew Delta Township was the right place for a restaurant nearly two years before he and his wife Mary and son Gabe Jones opened one there. Smoke N' Pig BBQ, which opened in 2019 off Elmwood Road, was a brick-and-mortar offshoot of the food truck they’d operated from a spot a mile away off West Saginaw Highway. Earlier this year the eatery expanded, taking over an adjacent 1,200-square-foot space in the plaza where they operate and adding a bar and more seating.

“People aren't leaving this area, in fact, people tend to move west toward Delta Township,” he said.

Kim Horrocks, whose family opened Horrocks Farm Market at the corner of Canal Road and Saginaw Highway 64 years ago, says that’s because Interstates 96 and 69 converge in Delta.

“That, of course, is why everybody's here,” he said. The township has grown up around it, Horrocks said. Today, roads that were once dirt are paved — and bustling with traffic.

Zap Zone co-founder Mike Hafez, a township resident for more than 20 years, said when it came time to plan for the expansion of Zap Zone's location there he wanted to keep it in the municipality. The entertainment venue is expected to relocate to the Lansing Mall by the end of this year.

"I still consider Delta Township to be my town," Hafez said. "We believe locating in the mall will give it some life and it will attract other investors to be there. Delta will continue to grow."

Longtime real estate agent Liz Horford said people want to buy homes in the township and like nearly everywhere else in the area, there’s a shortage of housing.

The township offers its residents robust recreation, including the nearly 58-acre Sharp Park with its paved walking trails, restaurants and shopping, along with areas that are still rural, like Dowker Farm off Delta River Drive where Boer and Nubian goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys and rabbits are raised.

Bob Trezise, president and CEO at Lansing Economic Area Partnership, said the township is “almost always” part of the organization’s conversation with industrial companies interested in locating in the Lansing area.

“Delta Township is very typically a competitor for those projects,” said Trezise, who lives there. He said the municipality “laid out the vision 50 years ago” for its bustling industrial area, making sure it had the proper infrastructure and capacity.

'System-wide capacity concerns'

There are “system-wide capacity concerns” with the township’s water and sewer systems, township Engineer Ernie West told the Board of Trustees in February. Officials, he said, needed to discuss how to fund the upgrades if they planned to make them because there were several “large, potential projects” for new housing and commercial developments in the works within the township and accommodating them would be challenging.

That’s because there is “limited sanitary sewer capacity for land located west of Broadbent Road, which could limit development options,” Reed said in an email. “In addition, while there is some capacity for growth in the industrial area, it would be difficult to accommodate a very intensive water/sewer user.

“On the west side we have capacity issues, so we need expansion in order to service new customers, even though our infrastructure is in good shape. On the east side, we have more maintenance needs, such as needing a new water main along St. Joe Hwy that we anticipate constructing next year.”

Solutions include providing for new capacity or upgrades to lift stations, and construction of new utility connections, he said.

Reed said the township has no specific road capacity concerns and while the municipality addresses electrical capacity for its buildings, including improving the electrical connection to its water treatment plant, the Lansing Board of Water & Light and Consumers Energy "address any improvements to the electrical infrastructure throughout the township."

Delta Township purchases treated water from the Lansing Board of Water and Light, so its wells are maintained for an emergency water supply only. In addition to storage facilities, the distribution system consists of 213.5 miles of water line, serving more than 9,400 customers, the township said on its website.

Originally built in 1965, the Delta Township wastewater treatment facility underwent expansion in 1972 and again in 1985 to increase capacity and incorporate odor control, according to township information. The plant is currently designed to handle 6 million gallons each day with available equalization of an additional 5 million gallons. The sanitary sewer system has approximately 176 miles of pipe and includes 20 pumping stations.

Money in the latest state budget, $10 million, “will be used for a sewer expansion project on the west side of the township,” Reed said, but it could cost as much as $20 million to service a new development west of Broadbent Road.

Extent of capacity issues derailed project

By the fall of 2022, Broadbent Development knew there were some pipe capacity issues in that area, Knowles said. Officials had told the company it could cost $200,000 to $300,000 to remedy, he said, and Broadbent Development had agreed to help pay it.

“That much we could stomach,” he said.

Then, in April, township staff told them it would cost as much as $10 million in infrastructure improvements to service the proposed development.

“What they hinted at is that they'd be looking for another source to fund an improvement project, i.e. developers, and that's just not going to happen,” Knowles said.

Lee, who owns the land the company was planning to buy, believes the township’s infrastructure challenges are the result of poor planning by staff and officials.

“They should have been looking ahead on the infrastructure part of it, knowing that they had all the land that was available for residential, and start directing their funds towards the infrastructure,” he said. "The infrastructure requirement doesn't just come up out of nowhere.”

But Reed said the township has been looking ahead, and is already engaged in “close to $150 million in infrastructure projects under construction currently.” That includes $40 million for infrastructure to support the Ultium Cells plant and $85 million to rebuild the township's existing Water Resource Recovery Facility off West Willow Highway, which treats approximately 4.5 million gallons of sewage per day. The township has secured a 20-year loan with an interest rate of 1.875% from the state’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund for the first phase of the project.

“You have to understand, infrastructure projects often take years of study, planning, and design engineering before they even go out for bids," Reed said in an email.

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Addressing infrastructure needs

It’s “become abundantly clear” that there needs to be major investments in infrastructure to allow for more housing to be built on the west side of the township, said Dennis Fedewa, the township board treasurer.

“We can't do anything without probably up to a $20 million investment in a West Willow lift station and pipe extension down to our new wastewater treatment facility,” he said.

Township Supervisor Ken Fletcher said the $10 million in state funding is a start. “That can go toward improving some of that infrastructure on the west side, definitely to help in the short run, bringing some of that housing that we've been talking about,” he said.

Reed said staff are exploring available grants to help fund the infrastructure.

“Other costs will likely need to be paid by new developers,” he said in an email.

Fedewa said he believes some of those developers will be reluctant to do that.

“These are going to be the constraints that developers are going to have to face when they see an opportunity and say, ‘Oh, look at all this land. Let's build all these houses and condos and meet the demand,’” he said.

Trustee Beth Bowen doesn’t see the infrastructure needs as a stumbling block to growth. Township staff and officials are focused on addressing them, she said.

“The first stumbling block to something like that is not being aware of it and we are aware of it,” Bowen said.

A decade into the future Fletcher believes the township will have moved past its current infrastructure limitations, adding commercial and industrial development and more housing.

“I think you're going see that land at the corner of Saginaw and Broadbent developed into housing,” he said.

Knowles may be one of those interested in future developments. Despite believing the capacity issues won't be addressed for at least two years, he said he would still consider investing in another development within the township, and others like him will, too.

But Mike Lee believes it could be “several years” before the land his family owns near Broadbent Road and M-43 can be developed into housing the township clearly needs. For now, they are leasing it as farmland, he said.

“It’s frustrating,” Lee said.

Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @GrecoatLSJ .

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Why a lack of sewer, water infrastructure is limiting growth in Delta Township