Rezoning for senior living center OK’d
Highland Plan Commission stands firm despite objections
The Highland Plan Commission handed the owners of a local farm stand and their supporters an early lump of coal by reaffirming its vote to grant a planned-use development designation and plat approval to a proposed senior living center.
After another lengthy meeting Wednesday night where supporters alternately pleaded with and insulted the commissioners, it voted 5-1-1, with Commissioner Tom VanderWoude casting the dissent and Commissioner Mark Kendra abstaining, to recommend both the R-3 PUD designation and two-lot plat approval at its third public hearing on the matter.
The motions passed contingent up an agreement crafted by the developer’s attorney, James Wieser and Town Attorney John Reed ensuring the entire 20 acres north of Griffland Plaza on Cline Avenue would never offer any
thing other than the senior-living center proposed by Davenport, Iowa’s Russell Group; nor would anyone under age 55 be allowed to live there for longer than 90 days unless the person is a resident’s caretaker. The cov
enant was designed to eliminate concern that the center, should Russell Group decide to abandon the project down the road, could be turned into an apartment complex or other transient housing.
Previously, the commission unanimously passed the project — for which the third public hearing was held because town engineer Derek Snyder found Russell Group inadvertently omitted a part of the nearly 20 acres it seeks to purchase in its original legal notice — at its July 15 meeting.
The plans Wieser submitted for approval Wednesday also contained a change born out of a Dec. 2 study session where he and the commission discussed earlier plans that showed a stormwater pipe on the north side of the property connecting to Cline Avenue, he said.
The pipe, he said, was added into the plans because he and the Russell Group believed they would have an agreement that would benefit the Scheeringa family, which owns Scheeringa Farms, Produce and Greenhouse and have been farming the land for decades through a loose agreement with the owners of Griffland Center. Since the agreement between Russell Group and the Scheeringas never came to
pass, Wieser said the Plan Commission directed Russell Group to remove the pipe from the plans.
Dan Feldman, an engineer with Merrill villebased ME CA Engineering who the Scheeringas hired to look at the issue, acknowledged he was looking at a dated plan but said that even with the revisions, he would be concerned that if the project’s access road got pushed further to the south, not only would a lot of transition grading would be needed, the swale that currently helps with drainage may not be maintained.
“Just by eliminating the storm sewer doesn’t really take into account that swale that is currently draining their property and still needs to be maintained,” Feldman said. “And the gradient needs to, obviously, stay on the current property and not go over.”
Wieser said an oversized retention pond would handle all stormwater and since the developer couldn’t reach an agreement with the Scheeringas, nothing will be touched on their property. One of the family members, Jean nine Scheeringa- Kalvitis, of Lowell, asked what was going to happen if the retention pond can’t hold
the water.
“Where do you propose that the water from the retention pond is going to go if there’s not any drainage pipe? Just because you don’t want a pipe to be there, that’s not right. It has to go somewhere, and both of these fit into one another,” she said. “The blueprint has changed. That means that this whole plan has changed.”
Scheeringa-Kalvitis later said another engineer who looked at the agreement Wieser presented was anything but temporary and that Russell Group would let them continue to farm the land for up to five years if they would “shut up and let them do their thing on our
ground.”
“That’s so false, I don’t even know how to respond to it,” Wieser said. “That’s just an outright lie.”
The Commissioners, meanwhile, took umbrage with audience comments accusing them of “being on the take” and that they aren’t listening to residents who don’t want the project built on that land.
“You continue to say that ‘everyone’ in this town, you know, supports keeping the farm. How many residents are in the Town of Highland?” Commission Joe Grzymski said to a speaker who brought up the 2,000-signature petition the Scheeringa’s supporters presented to the Town Council. “What you need to understand is the
farm stand, which the Scheeringas own, is going to stay. The (land they’ve been farming), which they don’t own, is going to potentially go to a developer. The farm stand, the petting zoo, the greenhouse that’s all going to stay, so when you say the ‘farm,’ do you mean the farm stand? Because I’m in favor of keeping the farm stand.”
Once certified, the Plan Commission’ s recommendation will again head to the Town Council for approval. If the council doesn’t vote on the recommendation within 90 days, it’ll be approved by default.