WALKER, Mich. — Wednesday night saw another delayed vote on the plan to redevelop the site of the old Lincoln Country Club. The golf course and bowling alley closed early last year. In November, the building was demolished.
Wednesday, the Walker planning commission held a public hearing on the final site plan for a 250-unit, multi-family development.
The plan presented included two phases. The first would be to build 250 housing units on the property, and the second, the construction of roads connecting to the neighborhood.
The developer made a change to the previous proposal by removing garages from 20 percent of the units to make them more affordable.
"As I'm sure you're aware, we've incurred significant pricing pressure, it's all around us," says Anthony Rodriguez from Stoneleigh Companies. "So how we've differentiated our product now is we can offer one-bedroom units without garages."
Walker residents, who have weighed in heavily on the development throughout the planning process, were still not pleased with the new idea.
"This feels like kind of a bait and switch," one resident told the commission. "Where now we're getting down the road and they think they can start slipping a change on us, decreasing the value of the property."
In the end, each member of the planning commission agreed, voting unanimously to table a vote on advancing the plan.
"I feel as though we should go back to what we were originally presented with," says commission member Jason Nyhuis. "I don't like the idea of having this large of a change to the final site plan. I think there are some other things that we need to have cleaned up."
Rodriguez asked if the commission would be willing to vote tonight if they agreed to put the garages back in, but the commission said they wanted a new plan entirely.
The commission's next meeting is on May 4.
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