Hamlet development approved

The Hamlet at Bloomfield Manor development may have been approved with little fanfare by the Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees at their September 28 meeting, but it still led to some chaos at Township Hall.

After the approval was given for the development – with a unanimous vote from the board – yelling could be heard from the back of the room, with multiple residents saying that they had not gotten a chance to talk during the evening’s meeting to express their concerns.

Since there was no public hearing listed on the evening’s agenda, their time to speak was during the evening’s public comment period, which they did not do and said that they had been told to wait. This caused anger and confusion by those who waited almost three hours to speak on the development and did not get to.

Shouting could be heard for a few minutes before residents were finally escorted out of the room. As they left one resident shouted to the board, “Thank you for being so ignorant.”

Bloomfield Township residents have been vocal about this development since the beginning, with many voicing concerns at the planning commission meeting in August. Some of those same concerns were ones that could be heard as residents left Township Hall on Monday.

Residents top concerns at the planning commission meeting were an increase in residential traffic; construction traffic; the construction timeline and landscape sequencing; tree preservation and replacement; the water main installation; monument signage and street lighting (the developers decided not to do this after this meeting due to criticism from the residents),; questions were raised about architectural controls and review procedures; if those in the Hamlet would be in a separate HOA from theirs; a deed restriction from the 1915 Bloomfield Manor plat; and concerns surrounding the increase from three lots to six. 

A few residents expressed they would have been fine with this development if they had stuck to one home per parcel so there would have only been three homes built, but the fact that their proposed plan would be adding six houses across three parcels did not sit well with many. Residents were primarily worried that if the township allowed this development that it would set a precedent for the rest of the township, and would lead to more of this type of lot splitting throughout the community. 


Since the planning commission meeting though there have been meetings and other updates from the project’s developer, many of which directly dealt with some of the concerns listed in August. 


“Over the course of the last 18 months I think we’ve really developed a great plan. A plan I’m proud to develop and one the township could be proud of,” said developer Howard Fingeroot, managing partner of Sylvan Crest Partners.


Updates were made to the wetland review, which determined that neither a wetland permit nor an EGLE permit would be required, and the City of Birmingham City Commission adopted a resolution to accept the proposed stormwater discharge.


All construction traffic will go through the north and be directed from Big Beaver Road to help with concerns within the subdivision roads, and their proposed water line won’t have any impact on tree removal in the area. There are also plans to add a permit easement so residents will still be able to get to the park near the development.


One of the largest concerns that came back up again was that residents felt this development would cause the community to lose its “up north” like character with its dirt roads and large nature areas.


That potential loss of character is ultimately what led to the planning commission not sending a favorable recommendation for the development to the board of trustees. The character was one area that came up again at the board’s meeting.


“Thank you for addressing the character issue. The whole character issue of the neighborhood was very important to the people on the planning commission,” said trustee Neal Barnett. “I believe that the developer has complied with all of the ordinance requirements, and the township and the board, is in a position that we need to accept what has been presented.”

Barnett made the motion to approve the development, subject to compliance with the requirements of the Bloomfield Township’s wetland consultant, landscape architect and traffic engineer; compliance with all regulatory and legislative bodies including local, state and federal; the construction traffic being directed off Big Beaver to alleviate impacts to the adjacent neighborhood; a cross-access easement agreement for the shared utilization of an existing woodchip path between the subject site and the adjacent property owner; and submittal of a conservation easement to be reviewed by the township’s attorney and final recording at the Oakland County Register of Deeds.


When Fingeroot and his team originally came to the township last March they proposed eight homes on the three parcels with no open space, but after meeting with township staff they were told to consider a few other options, including the township’s open space preservation option of the zoning ordinance. 


Adopted by Bloomfield Township in 2002, the open space preservation option was created to offer an open space preservation option that results in a residential cluster development with at least 50 percent open space. The objectives of the open space preservation provisions are to cluster new homes on a portion of the land and then to surround the home sites with permanently preserved open space, without allowing more homes to be built than allowed under more traditional methods.


Fingeroot and team completed a parallel plan to their original one for the development using the open space preservation option. The parallel plan reduced the total number of houses down to six clustered houses in a cul-de-sac on the three parcels instead of eight homes. These six home sites would have been located to provide a buffer from Big Beaver Road and Manor Park, and would have limited impacts to the wetland areas along a proposed private drive that ended in the cul-de-sac. The submitted plan indicated a total land area of 7.33 acres with the open space preservation plan designed to provide 3.68 acres of open space, therefore meeting the conditions of having at least 50 percent of the area be open space. 


Nikki Jeffries, director of development at Sylvan Crest, said that the six lots are slightly smaller than typical R3 lots but those who built homes there will get a nature bonus since the site plan was designed to avoid the wetlands that are currently there. 


They are expecting that each of the six homes will be around 4,000-5,000 square feet and very high-end, custom built.


“There’s a lot of variety here and that’s great for the neighborhood,” she said. “We want to be part of this neighborhood and think the lots fit in well with what fits here today.”