After a brief closed-door session on Monday morning, Sept. 23, the Van Buren Township Board of Trustees endorsed Supervisor Kevin McNamara’s proposal to buy 181.35 acres across Tyler Road from the township hall to take control of the township’s future.
If the township hadn’t acted to purchase the property from Ford Land Development, it could have been bought by a company wanting to put in warehouses and trucking. Or, another gas station and strip mall could have been put on Belleville Road.
The township apparently has $1.5 million to spare in the landfill fund and so in open session on Monday it voted to buy the property.
And, what are they going to do with it? Well, McNamara said it probably won’t be developed for ten years or so and what to put there would be determined by township residents who would work with planners for a grand vision for the property.
It’s been suggested the site would be a nice place for the senior housing needed in the township. Residents could walk across the street to the senior center.
And, Trustee Sherry Frazier said it’s a good investment and she is pleased that now they will be able to put up a lighted sign on the corner of Belleville and Tyler roads to point people to township hall and tell them what’s happening. They’ll own the corner. Moving forward in VBT.
4 Comments
Weather
How about a movie theater and a park?
I like that idea. I will submit it to our programmers for consideration by the public. If anyone else has ideas I will keep monitoring this reply box in the paper. Ideas can be about any type of development ideas any where in the Township. We are going through those discussions of what kind of Van Buren we would like to be in the next twenty years.
Kevin
I would like the Township to stop spending money on property. Government is notoriously bad at real estate and should stay out of it. Movie theatres are a dying business. The Township needs to reign in its spending and save for when property values fall again. This is government want and waste at its finest. I am so disappointed to read about township waste in almost every issue of the Independent. The lies from you and your office are never ending. You seem to care more about your “legacy” than leaving this community with a penny in savings
Very good idea to purchase the land across the street from township hall, good investment and will give the township the ability to control what gets constructed there. The Splash Park is also wonderful. The residents on Quirk Rd., Ayres and McBride have no sidewalk on Quirk Road to enter the park as a pedestrian. There’s a lot of traffic now on Quirk Road and I’ve been told that you’ll see people with children and strollers trying to navigate the traffic. There’s no shoulder on Quirk Rd. so this can not be an easy task. The sidewalk at Quirk park needs to be extended to meet up with the one at the fairgrounds. This would run across I think 8 houses on the east side of Quirk Rd. I’m looking at a house to purchase on Ayres; the real estate listing mentioned the Splash Park as an amenity but walking to it would not be easy or safe, I might end up in the ditch! The “sidewalk” in front of the fairgrounds along Quirk Road isn’t really a sidewalk it’s more of a crumbled, bumpy pathway that was not installed properly. It would be nice if this could be improved as there is a lot of foot traffic heading south to the crosswalk over I-94. This would connect and match the new sidewalk installed by the new hotel at the corner of Quirk Road and the service drive. It’s always a plus when residents can walk somewhere especially when it’s right in your neighborhood.