By: Taylor Christensen | Royal Oak Review | Published June 1, 2026
ROYAL OAK — The Royal Oak City Commission in a 5-1 vote May 18 approved a first reading for the rezoning of 2800 W. 14 Mile Road from general industrial to planned unit development to accommodate plans for a Kroger and a building with 85 dwellings.
City Commissioner Rebecca Cheezum voted no on the first reading.
The plan was reviewed and approved by the Planning Commission on Dec. 9 and April 14, which allows for the demolition of a former manufacturing facility and construction of a large-scale retail establishment with an automobile fueling station and the multiple-family building.
According to the agenda packet, the Kroger would be 102,602 square feet and be placed toward the north or rear of the property. The fueling station would have 10 double-sided fuel pumps at the southwest coroner. Areas for outdoor displays and sales would be included for both the retail establishment and fueling station.
The four-story multiple family building with 85 dwellings would be placed at the far northeast corner of the site with no frontage or direct access to any public street.
“This is a $60 million transformational project,” Dennis Cowan, attorney for the developer, said during a presentation. “What the very first thing the project will do, through demolition, is to remove 210,000 square feet of industrial space. So, if you drive by there … think of that whole landscape opening up.”
Cowan said that this project will benefit the city by adding a 102,000-square-foot, “state-of-the-art” Kroger.
“We were very pleased to receive the unanimous support of the Planning Commission. But I must tell you, it came after nine months and three meetings and a lot of input, some skepticism at times,” he said. “Initially the project was not very well received, but we worked very hard with the Planning Commission and with the city staff to come up with a project that would be beneficial to all.”
Cheezum had reservations about the plans. She said she is concerned about the safety of residents of the proposed apartment building, who, if they didn’t travel by car, would have to walk out the apartment lot and go through the Kroger lot to get to Coolidge Highway.
“I feel like we are going to end up with a lot of pedestrians walking out the route that the trucks are coming in, and while that may be them making bad decisions, I still think that there is a design aspect here that did not consider pedestrians adequately,” Cheezum said. “I am really pro-housing, I want more housing, I want great housing, but this really concerns me that we’re putting people out in this apartment complex and there is no way to get out of their apartment safely except via car.”
Cowan replied that the development team will look into ways to improve the plan for pedestrians before the second reading comes before the commission.
“We did not want to have a sidewalk across that driveway going out to Coolidge because of the temptation that people would have being there to just walk in the street,” Cowan said. “That is where Kroger is designating the truck traffic to go, so it stays away from those cars and pedestrians that are in front of the store.”
City Commissioner Brandon Kolo said that he ultimately wants to see this project get developed.
“I will say, and I feel like some of my fellow commissioners feel the same, I don’t think any of us love this project, but I think we want to see a way for this to get developed eventually,” Kolo said. “I think this is good to activate that corner, to get rid of this old industrial area, get a grocery store and housing. I think these are all good things. We are just missing details to get us over the hump here.”
Kolo said that he believes after some of the changes that the commission spoke about during the meeting are implemented, the project will be successful. He also said that it would be necessary to get a traffic report from the city’s traffic consultants.
“We talked a lot about improving pedestrian safety, safety in general, I think that these paths need to be redesigned and looked at, especially the ones that Commissioner Cheezum and Commissioner (Monica) Hunt have been talking about on the northeast side of the building,” he said. “If we were to say yes tonight on the first reading, it’s a very loose first reading. Understand that I think you would have a lot of noes on the second reading from people that might say yes tonight, but I think that you would have to improve the site safety.”
Cheezum and Hunt both want to see in the second reading a definite idea of if there is going to be workforce housing, defined as attainable housing for middle class workers, within the apartment building.
Workforce housing was spoken about during the April 14 Planning Commission meeting, but there was no definite plan brought before the City Commission during its May 18 meeting.
“I wasn’t a huge fan of the project until I saw the multifamily component and then the offer of workforce housing, so I am a little disappointed now that we don’t necessarily have any more specifics as it relates to how many units and what the plan forward is in getting those units,” Hunt said.
Cowan said that there are many layers that go into getting workforce housing in an apartment like this, and because the workforce housing was decided upon after the April 14 meeting, they did not want to come before the commission with uncertainty on how many units and other logistics.
“The first issue that we had to deal with here was an approved site plan or a recommended site plan as well as functionality both for the apartment building and Kroger and its visitors and customers,” he said. “Sometimes these issues don’t come on till later. There is a project that we have in town right now that a decision about workforce housing wasn’t made until all the approvals were granted. … Frank Jarbou only made that decision after the April meeting with the Planning Commission, and it did take a little bit of time. … He wanted me to communicate that he is committed to making a workforce affordable housing here.”
Hunt said that for the second reading she hopes to see more specifics on workforce housing.
Mayor Pro Tem Amanda Herzog said that she thinks this plan has moved forward so far because of the affordable housing aspect, and that the hope would be that the petitioner can actually follow through with the affordable housing promise.
“Sometiems, as far as when I have been a commissioner for the past three years, developers come and they promise things to us, and then they don’t actually deliver them for whatever reason,” she said. “We want to get out of the space of coming up and saying a buzzword that we are all very interested in. It’s in the newspaper that we are looking for affordable housing and we want developers to not come up and say a buzzword, and then at the end of the day we approve it and they can’t actually do the thing that they said that they could do.”
Commissioner Paul Bastian also said that he believes the project is not ready to be seen by the City Commission.
“It feels as though significant community benefit could come from this project, and while thought was absolutely put into it, it feels incomplete, and while we absolutely appreciate your position that you come to us with a plan and you’ve gone through planning and that’s very difficult, to come before the commission with information that feels incomplete put us in a tenuous position,” he said. “We are responsible to the people of this community to look out for the community’s best interests, and we want to do that.”
The site plan will go before the City Commission again for a second reading. No date for the second reading had been specified at press time.