Commission approves plan for high-end office building – C&G Newspapers

By Victoria Mitchell

Elected officials are hopeful that a Class A office building in the central business district will attract daytime foot traffic to support existing downtown businesses. (Rendering by Krieger Klatt Architects; provided by the city of Royal Oak)

Posted May 15, 2017

click to enlarge

Some business owners are concerned that the building would eliminate handicapped parking spots and hinder back-door access to the businesses. (Photo by Victoria Mitchell)

Some business owners are concerned that the building would eliminate handicapped parking spots and hinder back-door access to the businesses. (Photo by Victoria Mitchell)

ROYAL OAK Visions of a city center development including nearly $100 million in buildings and a central park on municipal property took a step toward reality when site plans for a private office building received a green light last week.

On May 9, the Planning Commission unanimously approved a conditional site plan and a special use permit for the Central Park Development Groups six-story office building.

Mike Leinweber, Boji Group vice president of construction services, said the Class A office building a building with the highest quality of construction would include a two-story lobby, offices, retail, retail-related business services, a market/restaurant with an outdoor patio, and a private rooftop terrace.

We are very proud of this building, Leinweber said. We do think that it is a significant step forward in the city, achieving many of the goals in the 2014 vision of some of the things that are needed in the downtown new office space, Class A type of offices. It certainly is a Class A building.

The City Commission established a goal of securing 180,000 square feet of Class A office space by 2020 to generate daytime foot traffic in the downtown.

The building would stand where the Williams Street parking lot exists now in front of City Hall. The structure would span from Second to Third streets to the north and south, and where the current City Hall stands now west to the alley behind existing Main Street businesses like Mr. Bs Pub and Brueggers Bagels & Cafe.

The front of the building would face the current City Hall. For more than a year, the City Commission has been discussing plans to tear down the existing City Hall and Police Department buildings and to replace them with a park. Other plans under consideration include a multistory parking deck and a new City Hall and Police Department.

The development of this building is contingent upon the citys execution of its overall development for the district, and there are elements in that that are important for this building, including the parking deck, Leinweber said.

Royal Oak Director of Community Development Timothy Thwing said plans are in the works.

At some point, the Planning Commission will see potentially the plans for a parking deck, the plans for a City Hall building, as well as a police station, Thwing said. Probably the last thing you will see is the park itself.

The special use permit approved during the meeting applies to the restaurant and outdoor patio that would be on the first floor of the development.

The proposed office building would replace 111 existing parking spaces in the surface lot. Proposed developments within the central business district are exempt from including and providing parking spaces in their plans.

The office building plans show eight private spaces for building tenants at the rear of the building, which would abut the Main Street alleyway. The plans also show that the development is taking 10 feet of the existing 30-foot-wide alleyway.

Thwing said a typical alley in the city is about 20 feet.

The alleyway was a subject of contention for a handful of speakers who came before the Planning Commission during the public hearing portion of the meeting.

Attorney Chris Martella, from Kemp Klein Law Firm, said he represents some of the adjacent property owners to the south of the proposed development.

We cannot look at this in a vacuum, Martella said. He added it is a beautiful project, but his clients have concerns with their business access and handicapped parking accessibility.

The issue of handicapped parking is a concern, Martella said. The existing buildings in the area use the flat lots as both access points and handicapped parking.

Martell said he is concerned that handicapped parking would be moved to the proposed northern parking structure that would abut 11 Mile Road.

Mr. Bs Pub owner John Prepolec said he is concerned about parking for his handicapped customers, along with loss of business that he feels will result from losing the parking lot. He said 65 to 70 percent of his customers use the back door as their entranceway because of the adjacent parking lot.

Its interesting they call it an alleyway, but truthfully, its an entrance, Prepolec said.

His sentiments were echoed by Michael Nash, who owns six buildings on the east side of Main Street that all back up to the existing city parking lot.

This project will have a devastating effect not only on those six buildings, those six tenants, but it will metastasize throughout Main Street, he said.

City Commissioner Sharlan Douglas who also sits on the Planning Commission said she was left shaking her head by those commenting.

For many, many years, downtown restaurants and retailers have been begging, clamoring for daytime tenants, for office workers and people to eat in their restaurants and shop in their stores, and this is a development which 700 people, 20 working days per month, 12 months a year, could generate 168,000 potential lunches in Royal Oak.

Yes, I realize that there are going to be restaraunts that no longer have parking right outside their door, but we are delivering customers that our downtown businesses want, and we are providing parking to accommodate them, she said.

Ron Boji, president of Boji Group and partner in the Central Park Development Group, said the development is expected to house about 700 people at full capacity.

Planning Commission Chairwoman Anne Vaara said that not only would the new office building deliver lunch traffic, but it would also bring catering, dinner and breakfast customers, and opportunities for large-scale meeting spaces.

So there is a tremendous opportunity for growth of the restaurant and retail business in Royal Oak because of this, she said.

The property sale to the Central Park Development Group for the city-owned lot has not been executed.

About the author

Staff Writer Victoria Mitchell covers Royal Oak and Clawson along with Royal Oak and Clawson school districts. Mitchell has worked for C & G Newspapers since 2014 and attended the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Wayne State University. She is a Michigan Press Association award-winner for writing, design and general excellence and in her spare time enjoys volunteering with the Girl Scouts of America.

Full bio and more articles by this reporter

For more local news coverage, see the following newspaper:

Read the original here:
Commission approves plan for high-end office building - C&G Newspapers