City To Consider Smoking Ban, Eighth Street and Lake Avenue Projects

Traverse City commissioners will consider enacting a city-wide ban on smoking in all public parks and beaches and approving an Eighth Street brownfield project and new streetscape design for Lake Avenue at their 7pm meeting tonight (Monday) at the Governmental Center.

Park and Recreation board members voted 6-0 in September to ask city commissioners to consider changing the city’s policy on smoking in parks. Under the city’s existing ordinance, smoking is prohibited only in certain designated areas, including in park buildings and shelters, designated swimming and beach areas, within 15 feet of playgrounds, and in waterfront parks which have no-smoking signs posted.

According to a list provided to commissioners, smoking is banned under the current policy in American Legion Park, Bryant Park, Clinch Park (and beach), East Bay Park, Hannah Park, Hull Park, Mini Park, the Open Space, Senior Citizens Park, Sunset Park, Union Street Dam Park, the Volleyball Courts, Wellington Plaza, West Bay Waterfront, and West End Beach.

However, smoking is allowed in some or all areas of numerous other prominent city parks, including F&M Park, Grand Traverse Commons, Hickory Hills, Lay Park, Arbutus Court Park, Clancy Park, Indian Woods Park, Ashton Park, Boon Street Park, Darrow Park, Fulton Park, Huron Hills Park, Triangle Park, Meijer’s Silverbrook Acres, and Slabtown Corner, among others.

According to Parks and Recreation Superintendent Derek Melville, the proposed recommendation calls not only for banning smoking and tobacco products “in all city parks and beaches,” but expands the definition of smoking to including vaping. “Smoking or smoke means the carrying by a person of a lighted cigar, cigarette, pipe or other lighted smoking device, smokeless cigarettes and electronic cigarettes,” Melville says.

City commissioners will consider introducing the new ordinance for potential enactment on November 20. If the proposal is ultimately approved, Traverse City would join several other communities across Michigan that have banned smoking in their public parks and beaches, including Grand Haven, Escanaba, Portage, Howell, Manistique, Ottawa County, and more. In Grand Traverse County, smoking is still permitted in all county parks except the Civic Center, where both smoking and vaping are banned.

Commissioners tonight will also consider approving a 30-year, $9.9 million brownfield plan for a 60,000 square-foot mixed-use development at the corner of Eighth Street and Boardman Avenue. The project, called Envision Eighth, calls for a two-phase development: construction of a new 24,000 square-foot, three-story building in the site’s vacant parking lot, followed by the demolition of the property’s existing office building and construction of a new 36,000 square-foot, three-story building in its place.

Both buildings would offer underground parking and retail, commercial and residential space, including 12 units in phase one and 18 units in phase two. A 10-year affordable housing partnership would commit all phase one units to workforce housing, with an estimated rental rate of $892 per month. The remaining phase two residences would be market-rate units. The development has also been identified as the potential site of a second Higher Grounds Trading coffee shop.

Envision Eighth’s $9.9 million brownfield plan includes just over $4 million in reimbursement for developer Joe Sarafa – including $142,600 for environmental clean-up and $3.1 million for underground parking, stormwater management and public canoe launches, plus interest – and over $5 million in reimbursement for Traverse City. The city’s portion of the capture will help fund public projects include riverwalk construction along the Boardman River and Eighth Street improvements, including water and sewer line replacements and the planned redesign of the streetscape. The remaining portion of the brownfield plan covers interest and administrative costs and capture for the state brownfield fund.

According to project documents, the Eighth Street property currently generates $25,021 in annual tax revenues. If the site were to be redeveloped as proposed, the property will generate an estimated $434,803 annually in taxes at the completion of the brownfield plan. Project construction is slated to begin in 2018. The Grand Traverse County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority (BRA) already approved the brownfield plan in August, with city and county commission approval now required for the project to proceed.

Finally, commissioners will consider approving plans to upgrade Lake Avenue between Cass Street and Eighth Street as being consistent with the city’s master plan tonight. The project, which has been in the works since at least 2012, is getting ready to move ahead after city staff and property owners recently agreed on updated plans for the streetscape. According to City Planning Director Russ Soyring, the project “consists of a two-lane street with pinch points that will accommodate both reverse angle and parallel parking, sidewalks on both sides, pedestrian scale lighting, street trees and planter boxes with a loading zone area on the southeast part of the street.”

Separate bike lanes are not proposed in the stretch of road because the street will be designed “to invite drivers to travel at speeds that bicyclists more or less can travel,” says Soyring. “The (design elements) are all intended to provide a narrow and tight feel to the street, which tends to invite slower travel speeds.”

Property owners will split a portion of the costs for the project with the city through a special improvement district.