East Bay housing projects advance

Sep. 13—TRAVERSE CITY — Developers planning hundreds of homes in East Bay Township are pushing ahead, one at a golf course and another at a site where past efforts failed.

Township trustees recently agreed to a brownfield plan that would reimburse LIV Communities and Allen Edwin Homes part of the cost to build 170 single-family rental homes. They also agreed to give the developer behind a project on the Elmbrook Golf Course more time before breaking ground.

Allen Edwin Homes builds workforce housing all around the state, and company Director of Workforce Housing Brian Farkas said the area, including East Bay Township, has a major housing shortage. The company, in partnership with Grand Haven-based Liv Communities, will keep rents in 34 of the homes at a rate that people earning 100 percent of area median income can afford.

"So they'll look the exact same, be built the exact same way, but we're going to hold the rents under the workforce housing limits," he said.

Rents for those homes would range from $2,316 for a three-bedroom to $2,856 for a five-bedroom, according to Farkas.

The brownfield plan would reimburse the developers for those 32 homes, plus half the infrastructure costs for the whole project, Farkas said. That would equal roughly $10.5 million over the plan's 16-year term. Tax increment finance would pay for that reimbursement by capturing the property's growth in taxable value over its current worth.

Farkas said it's an incentive that essentially pays for itself, and only if the developers succeed.

Plans call for building the 3-, 4- and 5-bedroom homes off Four Mile Road north of Hammond Road, East Bay Township Planner Claire Karner said. Previous developers' plans there fell through, including one that stopped after building some footings.

Trustees voted to approve the plan 6-1, with Matt Cook voting no, Karner said.

Next, Grand Traverse County commissioners will consider the brownfield plan at their Oct. 16 meeting, Farkas said.

If they approve, the plan then heads to the Michigan State Housing Development Authority and other agencies for review.

Farkas said Allen Edwin Homes should break ground on the project as soon as this fall if all goes according to plan. Liv Communities — the company that lists Liv Arbors on Hartman Road among its portfolio — will manage the homes once they're built.

The project would be East Bay Township's first to use changes in state law that make housing eligible for reimbursement under brownfield plans, Karner said.

They're typically used for environmental cleanup, Karner agreed, and while the property does have some residual arsenic from its farming past, that's not the focus of the brownfield plan. Farkas said the developers will deal with the arsenic, but aren't seeking reimbursement.

"We build about 800 homes a year, give or take, and one of the things we're really excited about is there's two state programs that are allowing us to expand the different market segments we can reach," Farkas said, adding one is payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements and the other, changes to brownfield redevelopment rules.

ELMBROOK

Developer Joe Locricchio will get more time for plans to build 201 units of housing at Elmbrook Golf Course, off Hammond Road east of Townline Road. Karner said trustees unanimously agreed to extend conditional rezoning for the site as medium-density residential, giving Locricchio and other project partners until November 2027 to have construction substantially underway.

Current lending criteria, construction costs and project lead times prompted developers to ask for the extension, Locricchio said. That includes seeking permits from the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy to install public water and sewer systems.

Locricchio is also involved in Bayview, another housing project next door to the golf course, and said he and project partners are happy with how the 216-unit project is going.

"We want to get into that next phase for the first phase of Elmbrook, but again, there's some mitigating factors," he said. "When conditions are ideal, projects of this magnitude are difficult to make a success, and they're less than ideal right now."

Conditionally rezoning the golf course allowed for multifamily development — plans call for a mix of triplexes and quadplexes — while still maintaining buffers between neighboring single-family neighborhoods, Karner said. One condition also commits developers to a lower housing density than would be allowed under a regular rezoning.

While Locricchio said he's still hoping to break ground in November 2025, golfers will be able to enjoy Elmbrook for the foreseeable future. That includes after the 201 homes are built at the site, which won't alter the course from its current setup.

Developers want to add more housing in future phases, which could include golf to some extent, Locricchio said, adding plans aren't final.

"We love operating the golf course," he said. "We've put significant investment into it and continue to do so, and I think anybody who has played it on a regular basis will tell you it's in as good a shape as it's ever been.

"So our commitment to Elmbrook, and the community in that regard, has not wavered."