The first look at conceptual designs for the Village of Northport 7th and High Street properties were reviewed and discussed at the council’s work session held on March 5. While no action was taken, trustees ultimately decided to continue reviewing designs and to return at the next meeting with their top choices for each site.
The discussion comes after the village council approved a proposal from Influence Design Forum in December for site planning services of the two properties. Both parcels were previously identified “as most suitable for development” following the completion of the villageowned property rubric last year.
According to the village manager’s monthly report, the village requested that the design firm “provide a set of options that includes buildings pursuant to current zoning regulations, building at a lower density with some modifications to the existing zoning such as a planned unit development or changes to accessory dwelling unit regulations, and building at maximum density with modified zoning.” The design scenarios provided for both sites is the first step in evaluating the development potential and exploring opportunities to address Northport’s ongoing housing needs.
Once the village narrows down concepts to a preferred alternative for each property at the next meeting, the design firm will then make a 3D rendering and refine a detailed cost estimate.
“I suggest focusing on the design and layout that fit best with the character of the existing neighborhood and are most likely to accomplish the council’s goals for attainable housing. I think that legal structure, potential for incentives, restrictions on affordability, and so forth are issues that can be addressed once the preferred alternative concept is identified,” Northport Village Manager Jered Ottenwess’ monthly report read.
Ottenwess said at the meeting that when they first began working on the project, they really wanted to present a range of different options, so ideas include everything from doing nothing or passive recreation improvements, variations in between, and doing a full buildout in a maximum density scenario. Development would be limited to the southern 1.2 acre area in regards to the 7th Street parcel as the northern 4.8 acres was designated as a village park last year.
“There’s a lot of ways to slice this up and get different levels of density and intensity on the site, and that’s why I think it’s so important to go through this exercise to really just kind of plan to see what fits and what makes the most sense on these properties,” Ottenwess said at the meeting.
Nate Elkins, Influence Design Forum founder, said the rendering they will eventually create will be more for building support in the community and to be able to show a developer their vision for the property.
“It’s not the design you’re ultimately most likely to build because things are going to obviously change at some point when you go from crayon drawings and development scenarios to actual construction drawings and building these,” Elkins said during the council work session.
Northport Village Council President Chris McCann encouraged people with housing concerns or interests to attend the upcoming housing summit set for April 28. The village and Leelanau Township helped to put on two previous housing summits open to the public, the first summit of which was highly attended.
“My initial feedback from the two meetings we’ve had is that unless there’s really something that gets the public interested, there are many members of the public that are fairly indifferent to the housing situation and the crisis we’re facing,” McCann said during board comment. “So I do encourage people to attend the housing summit we’re going to have where the township and NCV (New Community Vision) are going to be highlighting things we’ve done in the past year and things that we’re currently working on. It’s a public forum, so hopefully everybody should be able to attend and hopefully there will be a question and answer period where we can have a little back and forth.”
To view the concept development scenarios provided to the village, go online to https://villageofnorthport. net.
