READI
Water Street Townhomes Update
I’ve been remiss in posting project updates, but you can always see what’s been posted in the past using the search box at that shows up on most pages. You can click here and see what’s been posted.
This project has had some struggles getting off the ground. Despite having funds from READI and the City of Plymouth to invest, getting a construction loan and securing permanent financing proved a challenge. Construction costs remain high and getting to an acceptable debt service ratio was challenging. We spoke to nine financial institutes before settling on Interra Credit Union for this project. Even after making that decision, the commitment process was slow. All of the financial institutes seem skittish about committing to long term financing in the current market.
We have made our first draw request to READI on January 15th and currently are being told it may be another 30-45 days before we see funds released. We made our first draw request to the City of Plymouth on January 8th to start the process for approval with the Redevelopment Commission meeting on the 21st, but despite approval there, the bond fiduciary has not released funds to us. It is hard to complain about the injection of funds that make this project possible, but the delays mean we will incur additional interest expense to cover costs until the payments come in.
We broke ground on the project December 17th, 2024. Those gold shovels have traveled to a lot of sites over the years! Mayor Listenberger asked us to delay actual construction until after Christmas to keep the parking lot open for holiday shopping. We literally broke ground December 26th, with excavation starting that day.
Excavation is mostly complete for the building footprint. We have been fortunate that most of the debris we have uncovered has been relatively easy to remove. As always, there was some “fun” stuff, like an active waterline that ran back under the parking lot, through the excavation, from Water Street before it was capped. That made for a muddy day before being resolved. As of now, footings are in place for the townhomes and a large percentage of the basement walls are complete. We should see basement waterproofing start this week and backfill shortly after that. We’re working through the framing shop drawings to get the wall panels released.
We are still looking for completion in late Fall of ’25. We would love to accelerate that if we can!
Water Street Townhomes Groundbreaking
We had a groundbreaking ceremony for Water Street Townhomes on Tuesday. It was great to see support from the Plymouth Community. Mayor Listenberger, Clerk Treasurer Lynn Gorski and Council Members Don Ecker, Linda Starr and Dave Morrow also turned out. Mike Miley was there representing the Plymouth Redevelopment Commission. Plymouth City Attorney Jeff Houin was there and Taryn MacFarlane from the South Bend Elkhart Regional Partnership (SBERP). This type of infill development for this area has been part of Plymouth’s last two Comprehensive Plans, so we were pleased to be able to help bring it to fruition.
Housing affordability has become more difficult with the duel challenges of record inflation and interest rate increases over the last 4 years. While there are signs of moderation, they will continue to be a challenge for the near future. Inflation moderates, but continues to accumulate and rarely reverses. The Fed has lowered interest rates, but the mortgage market has done little to reflect the decrease.
We were please to partner with the City of Plymouth and obtain a READI 1.0 grant for this project. Infill housing has also shown up in the two current Marshall County housing studies being completed, so this is a timely addition to the City. We did not get all we asked for from READI, but without their contribution and the matching dollars from the city, the project would not pencil out. Even with that, this is a market rate project, not an affordable housing project. Because of the current inflationary market, the banks look more at the income generated than the loan to value of a project, i.e. another reason the State and Municipal participation is important.
This project is part of a trend towards more walkability and brings some additional rental property to downtown Plymouth. Catty-corner to River Park Square, it will be conveniently located for local festivals. The Mayor’s initiative to improve the festival space on Garro Street between Michigan Road and Center Street as well as his initiative to create a downtown Entertainment District, positions Water Street Townhomes to be successful and Water Street Townhomes will provide residents to attend these events, as well as frequent the existing local businesses and restaurants in the area. This site once was home to the Gem Theater, a predecessor to The Rees, a Doctor’s office and various other business entities through the last 100 years. It will be included in the new downtown entertainment district. We hope to encourage others to revitalize the back half of Plymouth’s downtown main street. Putting this historic block back on the tax rolls is a positive change for the city.
Culver Sand Hill Farm also submitted a townhouse project for Culver, Spirit Townhomes, which was named in the READI 1.0 Strategic Investment Plan. Unfortunately, after the fact, Culver chose to partner with a different developer on the much larger project, The Dunes. (Discussed here.) C’est la vie! Sometimes you reap what you sow. These small pocket developments are ones that can make an impact without as much culture shock to the community. A trend of these small projects would ease a community into the idea of expansion and make it easier to integrate new residents into the community – something to consider throughout Marshall County communities.
We look forward to making a positive impact with Water Street Townhomes and hope it is a catalyst for more downtown Plymouth development. The Plymouth Administration and Common Council have been supportive and a great partner. There is a need for 1,300 new housing units in Marshall County. Often big developments are jarring to the community. Small, infill projects such as this can make a difference and be placed into the community with only ripples instead of waves. They can also take advantage of existing infrastructure, be placed walking distance from amenities, and generally become part of existing neighborhoods. I hope this is the first of many similar projects in Plymouth and Marshall County.
County Development for the Future
There was a County Development for the Future meeting last week and after my post on collaboration, I was pleased to see that it went back to its roots this month. MCEDC president, Greg Hildebrand, gave an update on some of MCEDC’s activities in the past quarter. He then allowed Marshall County Plan Director, Ty Adley, to speak about an upcoming initiative to update the County Comprehensive Plan. From there it transitions to reports from the communities on their projects. A few of these were Stellar Region wrap-ups and READI 1 projects, but there were many discussing their submissions for READI 2.0.
The meeting was pretty positive, with everyone supporting each others’ initiatives and inviting each other to come see the results of their work. There was none of the negative competitive complaints that have been aired earlier this year. This could partially be due to many of those voices being absent, but if they had attended, I don’t think they would have had reason to express negativity. It was all good.
The idea of doing a new Comprehensive Plan for the county should be an opportunity for more collaboration and was my main take-away. It’s all about how it is created, accepted and used though. In the last couple of years, I have served on two comprehensive plan committees. The differing results have been somewhat stark.
Plymouth’s plan was embraced by the Plymouth Plan Commission and and the Plymouth Common Council and Administration. I think this had a lot to do with their participation on the process. Within a month of adoption, implementation meetings were started and subcommittees where formed. A zoning review committee was formed and some zoning ordinances changes suggested by the comp plan have already been passed. A marketing committee was formed and a new logo is already out there with buttons being passed out and new banners being placed on light poles. There is a sense of urgency and the need to continue the progress.
Culver has been making false starts. After Culver’s Stellar projects were finished and their projects from Marshall County Stellar were finished, Culver began an initiative they called Culver Crossroads, patterned after Marshall County Crossroads. (Marshall County Crossroads was the group that spearheaded and achieved Stellar Region designation for Marshall County.) Subcommittees were established and meeting were held. From those meetings it became clear that Culver’s Comprehensive Plan needed updating. Most of the easily achievable goals from the 2014 plan had been made through the Stellar designations. Culver Crossroads became the Comprehensive Plan committee. Culver started this project around the same time as Plymouth or a little earlier. Culver’s plan took longer to complete. There was much more community participation in Culver, but despite that, there was much more community rancor regarding the plan. The plan went through several additional community meetings and rewrites. But the biggest difference is that the Culver plan was completed last Spring and there has yet to be an implementation committee established. The Culver Plan Commission cancelled a meeting this summer because they didn’t have anything to do! Really? After the 2014 plan, the Culver council immediately created a strategic action plan and started working it. That lead to Culver’s Stellar designation. That same push isn’t happening this time. Not only that, the Culver Crossroads committee never officially disbanded, but effectively just evaporated and lost all momentum.
So here’s a short list Ty and the county plan commission can consider to make the post planning process successful:
- Keep the energy flowing. While there is generally some sense of relief that the planning process is done, there needs to be a conscious effort made push pass that and focus on the excitement of a new plan and the potential it represents.
- Encourage implementation by keeping the plan front and center. Plymouth has made it agenda item at council meetings and plan commission meetings much as both Plymouth and Culver did with Stellar. This means putting it on the commissioners’ meeting agenda and the plan commission agenda so it’s seen at every meeting and advances can be celebrated and any lost momentum is questioned.
- After their 2014 plan completion, the Culver town council created a Strategic Action Plan (SAP) pulling out the top items to pursue and identifying a budget to make this happen. Culver’s 2014 plan identified housing as a prime issue, created a housing subcommittee and that subcommittee’s research resulted in Culver’s pursuit of Stellar Community designation. This should be a function of the county commissioners, since they set the county direction and prepare budgets.
- As Plymouth has done this year, use the comprehensive plan committee to seed an implementation committee and new subcommittees to address specific issues. In some cases, new leaders have emerged where they had specific interests, but may not have had the same energy for the plan as a whole.
There are other things, but those are the top ones that I’ve seen be successful and move the plan forward. Good Luck Ty! This will be a big undertaking!
And good job Greg! MCEDC needs to keep “bringing the communities together” high on their priority list.
The Dunes Work Session
There was a work session held Wednesday evening, 5/15/24, to discuss The Dunes project. This was a combined session with the Culver Town Council, Plan Commission and Redevelopment Commission in attendance. Despite being advertised as a work session, they did allow limited questions from the public in attendance. I am not sure how many were watching via Teams, but there were only 7 “public” in the room.
I attended just to listen. As I have said before, I am generally in favor of this project, but The Devil is in the Details. This is the third project of this type, one of two that has regional matching dollars, that has been come up for the Town in the last 10 years. It’s been interesting to see how these things have morphed over time. Since the meeting, I have been approached by several people, some on opposite sides of the issue, for my thoughts on the meeting. I thought I would include some of my responses to them here.
The meeting was ostensibly to hear the Town’s Engineering Firm, Midwest Engineers, Inc., give their assessment of the drainage plans. Some of what was presented was by the developer’s attorney though, so there may have been some honest miscommunication. That said, it wasn’t corrected by the engineer. As a disclaimer here, I have not seen the drainage study, final plat, or construction plans, so I can only speak to what was presented.
Thoughts on the drainage:
- There was a question from a plan commission member concerning the adjacent wetlands behind the water treatment plant which currently comes up into adjacent property owners’ yards during heavy rains. The response was that there would be no increase in water volume entering the wetlands, but that it would enter faster. There would be an overflow established for the wetlands routing the water somewhere (town storm drains?). This is one of those where I wonder if there was a misstatement, as the general design of a detention basin is to detain the water and slowly release it at a rate no faster than predevelopment. Flushing the wetlands with a rapid release and an overflow to the storm drain could well be detrimental. This wetland is directly adjacent to the town’s well field, so its health is important. Also, this seems counter to town’s storm water requirements which state, “It is the responsibility of each land owner to insure that any portion of precipitation from such sources as rainfall, snowmelt, or irrigation water that flows over the ground surface be contained within their lot or channeled to an appropriate storm sewer, ditch, or stream.” – Chapter 6, Section 250, page 115. This is tricky. It’s important the the wetlands still receives the pre-development runoff (contrary to the ordinance), but does not get flushed with a rapid release of runoff.
- There was a discussion about making the pond deeper. Deeper will increase the volume held, but won’t necessarily increase the rate of absorption, which they stated they are counting on. The depth in comparison to the wetlands is important and the plantings and maintenance of this detention pond is critical, else the bottom seal and no longer provide absorption. I trust that Midwestern Engineers is considering the possibility of multiple 100 yr storms and the possibility of 500 year storms, since their occurrence is a possibility.
- There were questions about the start of earthwork before Culver approvals. It was stated that they didn’t require any Culver approvals and they had the State approvals required for this work. It wasn’t clear if they had obtained an erosion control permit from Culver. I believe that should have been required and applied where it might be stricter than the State. – Chapter 6, Section 050, H, page 87
- There was discussion of possibly adding large drywells. Drywells are generally pervious vessels such as manholes, vaults and oversized pipes which detain some of the water and allow for absorption into the surrounding soil. They work well when they are maintained, but cease to work if they are allowed to clog. They only work in suitable soils. The addition of drywells would move this maintenance from the HOA (responsible for the detention pond) to the town, as they would become part of the built storm system, dedicated to the town with the streets. A potential alternate solution would be the creation of small drywells associated with the downspouts on buildings and the creation of rain gardens and/or bioswales to slow water flow and increase absorption.
Thoughts on size:
- There was audience pushback on the size of the development. The concern being that the addition of “300 doors” (the developer’s term), will cause traffic problems, tax the municipal systems and generally be disruptive to Culver as we know it. I tend to trust the numbers provide by town officials on this. We have been assured that the sewer and water capacity is not only adequate, but there will remain excess capacity for other future projects. Town officials have also cited demographic numbers showing that if all of these new units are filled with fulltime residents, that will only bring our number of fulltime residents back to the mix of the 1980’s. I am most interested in the utility capacity, as I would hate to see us with limited capacity if something comes up we really want. As mentioned in this post, Culver Meadows is still hanging out there as well.
- There was audience pushback on the the “surprise” involved with this development. The land involved was annexed in the 2010’s to promote its development. The R-2 zoning district was rewritten in the 2010’s to allow greater density. Finding ways to add housing to Culver has been a goal for decades at this point. It’s hard to justify the pushback when it’s been in the plans for that long and came up again as a major goal in the current comprehensive plan. There is some question of the development size. It was stated as 60 acres in the meeting, but the parcels on the GIS add up to 65 acres. (Are the roads being discounted?) Either way, worst case scenario, if all 300 doors were counted as single family residences, then 300 units x 7,500 sf (from R-2 Lot area chart) = 51.65 acres. They are well under the density allowed. The only question here is the division of lots and whether each of the proposed lots stays below the density standard. I am guessing they’re safe on this.
Thoughts on traffic:
- There were audience concerns about the added traffic in the downtown and the desire to reroute this development’s traffic out of town. I was pleased to hear that the downtown merchants had been surveyed and they were in favor of the additional traffic downtown. They see this as a benefit to them. As I previously wrote in this post, I think development around the perimeter of Culver should be directed in and efforts should be made to make new residents part of the community, rather than creating our small version of Suburban Sprawl.
- The financing was discussed and the additional funds coming to Culver through the TIF can be used to address infrastructure issues that may come up from this. This is one I do take some exception to. I am not privy to current plans and negotiations, but I am concerned that street improvements may require additional right-of-ways as discussed in this post. Even if these aren’t required for The Dunes, there was discussion of the development occurring further south on Tamarack Road and 19th Road. If this is an area of expansion, provisions for improvements should be obtained from this developer now. There would be little effect on their project, but could make a huge difference in addressing future needs. I fully understand the town’s position, i.e. they don’t know what might be needed until the problems arise, but having additional right-of-way now would prevent eminent domain problems in the future. As discussed in multiple comprehensive plan meetings, municipalities need to do their best to plan for 50 to 100 years from now and not do things that can’t be easily rectified in the future.
- Under things not discussed, but I thought should have been… I still have concerns that the new street across South Main Street from Tampa Street does not line up with Tampa Street. I think this is creating a dangerous intersection. I also think this is the time to address the Davis Street/South Main Street intersection. On that issue, there is scuttlebutt that a possible solution is to end Ohio Street as a cul-de-sac. That should be part of this discussion now, as well.
Thoughts on costs:
- There were questions on what this will cost Culver Taxpayers. I trust the town officials that they have negotiated this so there are no out of pocket costs to the current taxpayers and that the additional captured tax funds will be adequate to fix any problems and provide excess for other things beneficial to Culver. My only concern here is whether that will be burnt up addressing the infrastructure issues posed above.
- Under things not discussed, but I thought should have been… In the previous development agreements mentioned above, there were more requirements put on the developer. When Culver put money toward the street construction, the naming of the street was by the town, not the developer. The other two agreements included requirements for part of the developments to have housing cost controls. The Dunes developer is receiving $1.3MM in READI funds as well as TIF bond funds from the Town. The Dunes developer has been very upfront in meetings that this project is not affordable housing. It is market rate housing. While the town (rightly in my opinion) believes that additional housing availability should have the effect of lowering overall housing costs, there is a question as to whether the developer will proceed with later phases of this development if that happens. If increased capacity lowers demand, the premium available for new housing may be lower as well. I do not foresee this, but it should be part of the discussion. Lowering housing costs is a double edged sword for current residents as well. While many of them balk at the tax increases associated with the rise in assessed value, they are pleased with the appreciation in value when they sell.
These are the main points and I think I will leave it here. If something else comes up, that I think should be mentioned, I may make some edits.
Dunes Approvals
July 1, 2024
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Culver, Politics, READI
Community, Culver, government, housing, Multi-family, The Dunes, Trends
The Dunes received a major subdivision plat approval and site plan approval from the Culver Plan Commission on June 18th and from the Culver Town Council on June 26th. This was somewhat a foregone conclusion since Culver has been working with the developer for over a year on this project. It was interesting though that neither entity passed these approvals unanimously.
The preponderance of people in attendance at the meetings were against the project. Some in its entirety, but most in its scale. Some (falsely in my opinion) called the Town to task for not communicating enough and not listening to concerns. (If there is one thing that I would say Culver is above average in, it’s communication with its citizens…) There were also those that attempted to complain on both sides of the issues, saying it was too big, but might be left incomplete; it was being pushed to quickly, but the developer shouldn’t be give 8 years to complete it; it was not planned to be part of the community, but but it should be connected directly to State Road 17, to direct traffic out of community.
I remain generally in favor of the project. I am a little disappointed in the the follow through on requirements the town had placed on the project. The project presentation to the plan commission has been delayed twice because of engineering questions being unanswered. As presented, at the meeting, most of those were answered “in concept”, but details were still not complete. There were also pending questions regarding the projects connection to South Main Street that were not complete. And then there was the statement from the developer that the town would be receiving a lot of money from increased TIF capture on this project which could be directed towards some of the short falls in water and sewer needs. Many of these things affect adjacent property owners, including a wetlands and the town’s own well field, while the money being proposed for water and sewer improvements had previously been suggested for other TIF district needs not connected to this project. I would have liked to have seen all these things tied down before authorizing them to proceed.
I was pleased that many of the questions from the audience were addressed, but I have concerns with their substantiation. I do not in anyway want to speak ill of the developer and their honesty regarding the project, but the answers given were off-the-cuff, having little if any documentation or requirements of follow-through. Many of the questions were, frankly, not the business of anyone but project investors, but the reassurances carried no weight. While I trust that everything said was in good faith, there is nothing that keeps them from changing direction on them if economics of the project suggest better uses of funds. As suggested here before (second to last paragraph), their development agreement included none of the delineated requirements seen in past agreements.
That said, I think many of those protesting this development fail to understand that this project was not a surprise, but something that has been in the Town of Culver’s plans and one of their goals for over a decade. When the Culver Garden Court property was annexed around 2010, the surrounding property was annexed as well. It was rezoned as R-2 to promote housing in that area. When the last revisions to the Culver Zoning Ordinance were completed, R-2 was rewritten to allow higher density developments. The 2014 Comprehensive Plan suggested, due to citizen input, that more housing is needed. The Stellar Communities surveys of 2016 and 2017 indicated more housing is needed. The 2024 Comprehensive Plan still indicated the need for more housing, even with The Dunes under discussion. This was not a project that required a rezoning or multiple variances to make happen. It fits with the planned development of the town.
Do I think things might have been done better? Always. Until I’m appointed benevolent dictator, I will most likely always see alternatives that I would have pursued. (I still have questions about whether it follows the Culver Complete Streets Ordinance, whether there were drywells added, where they drain and who owned them, and whether the wetlands have been properly addressed, etc.) Do I think those in charge were (mostly) following the will of the majority of citizens? Yes.
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