Belleville Planners continue work on new City Master Plan

Although there were not enough members present to vote on anything, the Belleville Planning Commission convened Feb. 13 to hear the presentation on Housing from Giffels Webster consultant Andy Aamodt.
The commission is completely updating the 2006 city Master Plan in a year-long series of steps due to culminate in December.
The city council’s liaison to the commission, councilwoman Julie Kissel, is also vice-chairperson of the commission.
She opened the session in the absence of new chairman Jim Courage who was present by zoom and could not vote. Others present were commissioners Becky Hasen, John Juriga, and Alvis Brigis.
Absent were Mike Renaud, James O’Keefe, Mark Kowalski, and the newest appointed member Raytheon Martin who will be able to attend his first meeting once his fire-fighting classes are complete.
Representing the city staff were city manager Jason Smith and assistant city manager Steve Jones.
Also present was Mayor Kenneth Voigt who sat in the back of the room after coming in with his leg on a scooter, as he heals from recent foot surgery. The only member of the public present was the Independent.
Aamodt announced that the online survey on Housing, which ran Dec. 5 to Feb. 3, brought 110 responses, up from the 35 from the previous survey.
He said he would put up the new survey on Transportation in a few days and it is due to run through a March date, followed by a Sustainability survey to run next. Each survey is available at www.engage.giffelswebster.com/belleville-master-plan . Paper copies of the surveys will be available at city hall, he said.
Aamodt said the meeting schedule and other information will also be available on the city website.
The commission decided to have the Master Plan completely rewritten to replace the former plan that was written in 2006 and amended since then. The city council on July 15 approved paying longtime planning consultant Giffels Webster $26,650 to rewrite the document.
Work on the year-long project began in October with a joint meeting of the planning commission, city council, and downtown development authority.
Aamodt said they plan four public input opportunities.
At the Feb. 13 meeting, there was more than an hour of discussion on Belleville’s housing needs and how to solve them. This will bring changes in the present Master Plan wording that commissioners considered.
Aamodt pointed out that figures from the Southeastern Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) show that compared to other surrounding communities, Belleville has the highest residential vacancy rate and the largest share of renter-occupied units. It also has the fewest total housing units, owner-occupied units, and single-family homes.
Belleville was compared to Van Buren, Sumpter, Canton, and Ypsilanti townships and the city of Romulus.
Discussing affordable housing, Aamodt said Belleville has a “kinda high” rate of “cost-burdened” households, those that pay more than 30% of their income on housing that brings challenges in paying for other necessities. He said in 2023, Belleville had 41.2% of its households at “cost-burdened” status and 57.2% as not cost-burdened, with 1.6% not able to be computed.
It was noted that Belleville had little space left to build new residential units, except for the area Davenport is planning to develop next to the Senior Co-op.
Both city manager Smith and Aamodt talked about a concept called “cottage courts” where homes of 500 to 1,000- square-feet in size are built four to a lot and share four parking spaces and a court. It has a homeowners association that takes care of the property and this keeps spaces low to provide housing.
Commissioner Brigis said he would like to see multi-floor buildings required in the downtown to accommodate housing.
Commissioner Juriga asked about developing the city’s vacant property behind Frosty Boy that used to have a pump station. Mayor Voigt said that would be an interesting spot to build a cottage development.
Brigis said they would have to get a proper developer from Ann Arbor and, “cottage doesn’t really move the needle” in getting more residents into the city.
Aamodt said the consultants could get together with the city staff and look at that property to see what could be done with it.
Brigis said the city could be attracting high-tech folks from the Los Alamos project just over Rawsonville Road in Washtenaw County and the city needs to get creative.
City manager Smith and Aamodt explained the new “pattern-book houses” that are like the houses provided by Sears from their catalog at the turn of the century. These pattern-book houses look like single-family on the outside and fit into current housing developments, but they actually are multi-family.
Juriga said across the street from his home is a flower shop and behind it is a big field owned by the Memering family. Aamond said maybe it could be more residential and he’ll take a look at it.
Brigis said he has learned people would take classes at Wayne County Community College if there was transportation to get there from the city.
Transportation is the subject of the new online survey and will be discussed at the March 13 meeting, Aamodt said. He said there are 18 questions on this survey.
In an update, city manager Smith said the city will be putting together an ad hoc informal committee to look at the post office, where it plans to establish the city hall and police department if all works out. The committee could suggest what minor changes needs to be made. He said the city would put up a garage for four police cars in back. He said earlier that day they had inspectors of all kinds over at the building to check it out. There are walls that don’t go all the way to the ceiling, he said.
Smith said they will look at moving the tower at city hall because you shouldn’t build under the fall area of a tower. Van Buren Township will check to see if they need anything that’s on that tower, he said.
Scheduled to be on the Feb. 13 agenda was Belleville’s ordinance officer, Police Officer Jeff Gueli, who was not well that evening and didn’t want to pass on what he had so he didn’t come to the meeting. He will be re-scheduled for the March 13 meeting.