East Bay Township planning commissioners could vote Tuesday to approve a proposed new 30-home neighborhood called Blue Water Vue at the corner of Hammond and Four Mile roads. Planning commissioners will also hold a public hearing at the meeting on the township’s long-discussed new zoning ordinance, which if approved would next go to township trustees for final sign-off.

Blue Water Vue
Third time could be the charm for a development on six acres at the corner of Hammond and Four Mile roads. A new developer, Knorr Properties, hopes to build 30 single-family residential homes on the property in a neighborhood called Blue Water Vue. According to project documents, each home will have two bedrooms, two-and-a-half bathrooms, a one-car garage, and two driveway parking spaces. Five of the 30 homes will have walkout basements. The homes will surround a community greenspace and pavilion and have an internal network of sidewalks, plus new sidewalk along Four Mile Road and a new 10-foot-wide path along Hammond Road.

The development is considered multi-family because the homes will be condominiumized, according to Township Director of Planning & Zoning Claire Karner. Multi-family residential is an allowed use by right in the Moderate Density Residential (MDR) district where the property is located. A previous developer, Ron Wilmes, tried in 2022 and again in 2023 to build a neighborhood with the same name on the site. He ran into issues with the proposed lot widths and areas, plus an attempt to organize the site as a planned unit development with commercial uses on-site. Questions later also arose over a required connection to Waterview Ridge, which was opposed by that neighboring subdivision at the time. While representatives for Wilmes indicated last fall he’d soon be moving forward with an official application, the project stalled.

Some of the challenges faced by Wilmes appear to be resolved in the new proposal submitted by Knorr Properties. Karner says the president of the Waterview Ridge homeowners association met with the current development team and “came to an agreement for an easement” that will allow Blue Water Vue to share the Waterview Ridge access road off Hammond Road. Blue Water Vue will also have access from a new driveway off Four Mile Road. Two private roads will circulate inside the neighborhood, proposed to be called Baycrest Drive and Greenview Drive.

Environmental conditions appear to be straightforward on the mostly vacant site, with no wetlands or streams present. A few trees, two wells, and an underground vault are proposed to be removed, according to project documents. The site will have access to public water and sewer. Some neighbors to the property emailed the township to share concerns about the proposed development, including its density and potential sound and traffic impacts on the already busy corner. “There is not much that can be done to block the view of it to give us the country feel that we’ve had the last twenty-plus years,” wrote Wendy and Debra Downey on Landview Drive. “This news is very upsetting to many of us who live here and would hope the township would want to keep the charm of a country feel and not become a big suburbia.”

Staff are recommending approval of the site plan Tuesday with some conditions, including a performance guarantee (to ensure the site is restored to its original condition in case the development doesn’t move forward), a recorded reciprocal access agreement with Waterview Ridge, and a lot consolidation to tie both parcels on the property together since it’s intended to be built out in one phase. Karner also recommended that planning commissioners consider attaching a condition requiring that the trail on the property extend to the Landview Drive pavement edge, with Waterview Ridge’s permission.

New Zoning Ordinance  
East Bay Township is on the cusp of completing a two-year process to rewrite its zoning ordinance, with planning commissioners to hold a public hearing on the new draft Tuesday and potentially vote to approve it before sending it township trustees for final sign-off. “The proposed zoning ordinance has been restructured and reformatted for greater user friendliness, contains more illustrations of zoning regulations, and has been substantially amended relative to the prior ordinance,” according to a memo from Karner.

Karner tells The Ticker the township’s zoning map and districts remain the same, but the ordinance itself has undergone “substantive changes,” including to address the housing crisis. “We’ve increased our density and increased housing options that are allowed potentially in low density residential (LDR), which previously only allowed single-family detached homes,” she says. “Now we allow duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, and townhomes. We’re trying to better respond to some of the market demands and the Housing North market study (outlining the region’s housing needs).”

Township officials also spent a lot of time updating environmental protections in the new ordinance, Karner says. “We reviewed the Forest Lakes Overlay District, what's working well there and how to better enhance those protections and the lakes areas,” she says. Throughout the ordinance, the township added wetland setbacks, floodplain protections, and new requirements for steep slopes and grading. “We’ve beefed up our landscaping requirements, and we’ve updated our lighting standards to be more dark sky-friendly,” Karner says.

The updated ordinance also removes barriers to “sound development” that were often unintentionally causing issues in the previous ordinance, according to Karner. Examples include relaxing parking and daycare standards, making more uses permitted by right, and “simplifying the development review process where possible,” Karner says. She adds: “We really hadn’t done a comprehensive overhaul for decades of the ordinance, and now it will include more best practices and standards.”