Royal Oak Planning Commission approves ‘The Civic’ apartment site plan

ROYAL OAK — The Royal Oak Planning Commission held a public hearing and unanimously approved a site plan May 12 to be sent before the City Commission for a four-story multiple-family building with 45 dwellings at 401 E. Third St.

The site plan indicates that the apartment building will be called “The Civic” and includes a one-story parking garage, 39 covered parking spaces, a residential lobby space and 15 apartment units per floor. 

According to the petitioner, 100% of the apartment units will be within the attainable housing standards, where rent will be limited to no more than 120% of the area median income, and at least 31 of the units will be affordable to those making up to 60% of the area median income. 

During the public hearing, there were individuals in support of the building and individuals opposed to the proposal. 

Kyle Hines, Royal Oak resident and Oakland County’s Oakland Together Housing Trust Fund board chair, addressed the commission and voiced his support for the project. 

“We (Oakland Together Housing Trust Fund) have allocated $5 million of ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) and general funds to this project to help make it happen,” Hines said. “For us to be able to provide affordable housing, these are the people that actually make our economy work. These are the people that serve our families, that educate our families, that heal our families and protect our families.”

Some residents are worried about the parking situation, as the site plan does not provide the correct amount of parking spaces per apartment, falling six short of what the city ordinance requires. 

Kay Aquilina, a resident who lives on East Third Street, said she has been active in and worked for the city of Royal Oak for more than 25 years. Aquilina spoke on her concern regarding the parking at this location. 

“We live in a street that has terrible parking situations, and people do arrive early in the morning to walk to town,” she said. “If this is passed with this number of parking units, it will make our street a horrendous parking facility.”

Aquilina said that people are likely not going to go to a parking garage if there is available parking on the street, which takes the spots for the homes on East Third Street. 

The petitioner, Steve Gabrys, of Lockwood Cos., said that parking should not be an issue for the community, and people who are not into walking to different city locations usually do not rent apartments like these proposed. 

“What we see is if there are folks that say that it’s too far, they will self-select not to rent at a location where the parking does not work for them,” he said. “It’s very common to see in affordable housing specifically, and then in urban affordable housing, many people do not have cars at all. We really don’t anticipate any parking issues, but it’s also nice to have those extra city garages nearby.”

Mayor Michael Fournier said that the issue of being six parking spaces short is a situation that the commission has dealt with before and overcome with other petitioners. 

“We have granted smaller ratios, not this low inside of downtown, but further outside of the downtown area where people would be more dependent on a personal vehicle,” he said. “And quite frankly we haven’t seen issues in those cases. This case is even more unique because I think we have to change our mindset and think about this differently.”

Fournier said that putting it into perspective, six people would be willing to walk to work, to grocery stores, and other places within the city without the need for the parking spot. 

“For a lot of folks, walking to work, at least six of those folks, makes a lot of sense, and it serves an important need for our business community,” he said. “We have restaurants in this town that close off sections because they can’t get anybody to come and work, because they don’t have any transportation to come in. So, if you can create an opportunity for a server, a barback, a manager, to be able to live close to where they work, I mean, that’s the best transit plan you can have, and that’s the best economic plan you can have.”

Jim Ellison, Planning Commission member, said that there are always going to be problems when people choose to live in a downtown area.

“Royal Oak has a very wonderful downtown, and a lot of people choose to move in close to it,” he said. “You make this choice if I want to live downtown, choices go both ways, living downtown comes with problems. … You have to be willing to take the good and the bad.”

Ellison continued to say that cars are a “temporary problem,” and eventually they will always end up moving if they are parked in front of a house or wherever they may be parked. 

“You’re not going to have them there 24 hours a day, but they are going to come in and they are going to park, and then they are going to go away and they aren’t going to be in front of your house all the time,” he said. “I have a hard time putting the kibosh on this project because of some parking issues. We need this project. We need some affordable housing for people that work and live downtown, and this gives them that.”

Woody Gontina, planning commissioner and city commissioner, said that he sympathizes with the residents on Third Street, but ultimately the parking on that street is public parking.

“Those parking concerns are within the public right of way. That parking within that parking right of way is exactly that, available to all members of the public, everybody in this community,” he said. “I understand it’s a difficult challenge, but that’s something that we all need to contend with in an urban setting.”

Sharlan Douglas, planning commissioner, said that renting out parking spaces is a normal occurrence that the city often does for restaurants in the area. She also mentioned that if residents near the apartments do have issues, they can go to the city’s traffic committee to try to figure out a solution to the street parking. 

“I will point out that we routinely rent parking lot spaces and street parking spaces to restaurants for whatever the income would be for that period, and I kind of think we could work something out with that parking lot,” she said. “I hesitate to make rules about parking before anything even gets built; I think we should wait and see that this gets built and what issues may come up, and then I would encourage people to go to the Traffic Committee to seek permit parking on that street or any other restrictions if it becomes onerous. However, I don’t think it will.”

The next step is for this final planned unit development site plan to be seen by the City Commission, which will give final approval or reject the project. A date when this plan will go before the City Commission had not yet been decided at press time. 

For more information, visit romi.gov.