The Wayland City Planning Commission Tuesday evening approved site plan review for Honeycrisp Ventures to develop a huge parcel of land into an industrial suites complex at 795 Reno Drive.
“This thing is a doozy,” said Jason Derry of zoning enforcement administrator Professional Code Inspections. “It’s a big building, but I didn’t see any red flags. I personally don’t see any issues with the project.”
Plans call for a massive 191,250-square foot building to handle six industrial suites with three loading docks at each site.
Honeycrisp Ventures, an Ada-based investment firm, in February won approval to rezone to rezone a 14.6-acre parcel at 795 Reno Drive from Planned Enterprise Cluster District (PERC) to I-2 Planned Industrial District. The parcel was familiar to some commissioners because about five years local car dealership K & R expressed interest in claiming it for its plans to move the dealership from North Main Street. However, its request had since been withdrawn.
Included are plans for two-thirds of the required parking, with the remainder deferred.
The only hiccup was that commissioners wanted more accommodations for trees on the south side of the parcel. So they included a condition that the existing trees on the south side be retained.
Commission Vice Chair Anne Tatreau, who chaired the meeting while J.D. Gonzales recovers from hip surgery, commented that Honeycrisp probably will have bigger troubles with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) because wetland are nearby.
The vote to approved the site plan was 5-0.
Great news for the City with this project! Perhaps now the Council can direct the new City manager and staff to come up with a road improvement and traffic plan for the Reno Drive/West Superior intersection that needs attention. With the new apartments/ townhomes set to open on 133rd. and this project, traffic will be increasing immensely. Our current City Manager never looked ahead for anything except making downtown pretty.