Council may take up zoning for Erie Street housing project after planning commission's rejection

Port Huron planning commissioners rejected a rezoning request late Tuesday for property near McLaren Port Huron that aimed to prime one nonprofit’s proposal for a four-story apartment development.

Less than an hour later, however, City Manager James Freed said officials planned to take the request to City Council members Monday to approach reversing the move — and ultimately, usher forward a continued and much broader effort to bolster housing options in the city.

“So, (certain members) of the planning commissioners didn’t appear to understand this was a rezoning and not a site plan review,” Freed said Tuesday night. Referencing City Council’s next meeting on Monday, he said, “What I will advise mayor and council to do is to take up action and schedule their own public hearing, and then, it would be the second meeting in October we’ll discuss the rezoning.

“Housing is the number-one issue in the city of Port Huron — workforce housing, affordable housing, all the housing — and we will do whatever is necessary to make sure our people have quality places to live.”

Commissioners had been asked to rezone 10 parcels along Erie and Rawlins streets and Lincoln Avenue from an A-1 multi-family residential district to an A-2, a high-rise, multi-family district.

Although the property is owned by Parkview Property Management Corporation, an extension of McLaren, the agency and the city have been working with the southeastern Michigan-based nonprofit Community Housing Network on finalizing plans for a multi-story residential development prior to a deadline to seek support from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority in December.

All of it, according to CHN representatives, was to accommodate affordable housing.

But the Erie Street corridor, where McLaren’s property surrounds a city-owned parcel, is just one of two areas where the city is recalibrating its focus in facilitating major housing projects since purchasing properties in early 2022 with that goal in mind.

The other area is the old River District Market site at 3550 Electric Ave. on Port Huron’s south end, where in late August, Freed told council members via email that they were still working with the Woda Group close to a year after the city tapped them as a developer to erect another residential complex

More recently, after months of inactivity at the site, he wrote they were also “already shopping that site around to other developers, including Community Housing Network.”

City Council meets at 7 p.m. Monday at the Municipal Office Center, 100 McMorran Blvd. Agenda materials can typically be found online the Friday prior at https://porthuroncitymi.iqm2.com/Citizens/calendar.aspx.

So, what was the issue along Erie Street and Lincoln Avenue?

Echoing two residents who spoke in opposition on Tuesday, some planning commissioners expressed concern over how such a rezoning, as well as any corresponding land use, could impact the neighborhood.

Vice Chairman Robert Arnold questioned whether the area could work as an A2 district, citing a need for such a zone to be near a “major thoroughfare," and disgreed with Commissioner Eric Witter, who's the city's public works director, over whether Erie Street qualified.

Commissioner John Anter said he understood neighbors’ concern about living next to a four-story building and feel like it’d be “blocking sunlight.” Arnold replied, “Without having a site plan, it’s hard to make statements about whether rezoning is applicable or not.”

During a public hearing Tuesday, resident Brett Alloway, who owns properties nearby on Erie and Ontario Street and has also lived in that neighborhood long-term, said he was “totally against” the rezoning because it's "the wrong place for the high rise.”

Like other residents in the past, Alloway also said he was upset by the trend of both McLaren and St. Clair County Community College buying and razing houses in the neighborhood over time, adding, “I had to sit and watch Port Huron Hospital demolish the Lincoln boulevard to put in a parking lot."

Now, he added a large block structure next to any historic homes that remain could cost Port Huron its “town feel.”

Commissioner TJ Gaffney, also known as a local historian, shared sympathy for the sentiment. Still, he said, “I kind of feel like we’re coming late to the party when we say, 'Oh, we should save a bunch of Victorians.'”

In the 3-2 vote rejecting the rezoning request, Gaffney, Arnold, and Anter voted against it. Witter and Jeff Pemberton, City Council’s representative on the commission who called housing “a major issue,” voted for it.

Commissioner Jim Dewey, who’s also executive director of the Port Huron Housing Commission, recused himself, citing PHHC’s potential future as a partner with Community Housing Network.

What would the Erie housing development look like? Who is it for?

On Monday, ahead of Tuesday’s commission meeting, Allan Martin, vice president of real estate for CHN, said their plans aimed to accommodate “working folks that make up to 60% of the area median income.”

“So, everybody from people that do work at McLaren all the way to bank tellers and fast food, people that make the economy go," he said. “They’ll all be rentals. There’ll be a mix of one-bedroom, one-bath units and some two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath units. … Most of the units are in a four-story building on the corner of Lincoln and Erie Street. We’re hoping to have 40 units total on the property. A lot of it depends on each step of the process with our friends at the city.”

But both Freed, who wasn’t present at Tuesday’s meeting, and Community Development Program Administrator Jazmyn Thomas, who was, emphasized that much of those details could be further scrutinized by planning commissioners when CHN’s site plans formally go before them later this year.

In an email to Freed Tuesday morning, Jazmyn said renderings would be into administration next week, linking an MLive article about a modern-block residential project from another developer in Muskegon as an example of what CHN’s model may look like.

Earlier on Tuesday, Freed said he’d expected the site plan to be up for approval in time for CHN’s December MSHDA deadline.

Applicant Greg Holman, a real estate development acquisitions manager for CHN, told planning commissioners they planned to seek low-income housing tax credits for the development, as well as work with the housing commission for vouchers for residents.

When asked about what was next for them after commissioners’ rezoning rejection, Holman said he had to defer comment in the event they needed to go back to the drawing board.

As an A1 zoning district, he’d said they could still do three stories in a residential structure without going to the planning commission. But the change, he told them, “gives us a little more density, and that helps with all of our numbers,” as they were looking at 37 units in one building and a few others over the corner building at Rawlins and Erie.

Port Huron resident Jim Soto spoke in favor of the needed housing density the project could allow the city, calling that neighborhood “urban planning gold” and the development a good opportunity for the city to prioritize a “vibrant, walkable, people-centric design” if they could de-emphasize minimum parking requirements

No, a homeless shelter isn't in the plans for the Erie corridor.

One resident on Tuesday said he’d heard a homeless shelter was in store for a structure on the Erie Street property. Similar concerns have risen on local social media.

Early Tuesday, however, Freed said that doesn’t mean they’re incorporating shelter plans — something the broader Port Huron service community has grappled with since the county’s only homeless men’s shelter closed in March 2022.

Instead, in connection with seeking support from the MSHDA, the city manager said some of the units planned by the nonprofit would be permanent supportive housing.

According to its website, Community Housing Network works in housing assistance and homeless prevention as a nonprofit.

And although the city’s residential property wasn’t included in the Erie corridor plans, as cited in the rezoning request, Freed said they expected it to be connected to redevelopment of the area long-term.

In an email to council members on Monday, Freed said they’d met with CHN “on numerous occasions and held multiple site visits,” adding he helped “broker a deal between them and McLaren for the purchase of that land.”

“If all goes as planned, a summer 2024 build,” he said in the email.

The property up for rezoning included 1011, 1013, 1019, 1023, and 1027 Erie St., 810 and 814 Lincoln Ave., and 805, 807, and 811 Rawlins St. Representatives from McLaren, who have been mum when asked previously about residential properties it owned around the Port Huron hospital, did not respond for comment this week.

In spring 2022, however, close to when Port Huron purchased 1003 Erie, a hospital spokeswoman cited the agency’s interest in preliminary affordable housing conversations as the area’s largest employer.

Parkview Property has owned the 10 parcels for the better part of a decade or more with one purchase transfer going back to 2007 and three in 2012. The most recent of them was in 2016.

The future of the River District site remains unclear.

The city’s other 2022 residential purchase at 3550 Electric was aimed at filling a missing middle when the Woda Group was identified for a purchase deal in September of that year.

The original deal called for at least 50 new for-sale condo units and an investment of at least $9.5 million.

So far, no announcements have surfaced changing course on the south-end site.

But Freed said in an interview last week that the city was entitled to claw back the property if the development falls through, citing a provision requiring a build within two years.

Although city officials have previously pointed to a wait for MSHDA funding, it wasn’t clear why progress on the property remained stalled. Messages to Craig Patterson, a Woda Cooper Companies senior vice president, who participated in Port Huron’s announcement September last year, weren’t returned, and other attempts to reach Woda representatives were unsuccessful as of late last week.

Left vacant since a 2013 fire burned down the River District Market, the former grocery store site has long been a subject of concern for residents in South Park.

It’s also been often mentioned in the city’s ongoing effort to establish a neighborhood tax-increment finance authority board to help oversee future economic growth visions for that region.

Joe Bixler, president of the Southside Initiative, said that neighborhood authority would be a “real key” for addressing priorities like housing stocks need moving forward. The deadline to apply to serve on the TIF board is Friday, and he’d applied.

“It would be wonderful to see a project happen at the River District market property, much like the developer said he was going to do. But if we’re pursuing a different developer, it is our finest hope that we keep in mind we need affordable housing," he said.

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Council may take up zoning for Erie Street housing project after planning commission's rejection