By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
EDWARDSBURG – Paul DeLano wants to build consensus as well as a $40 million housing development along the east side of Eagle Lake.
"The way Eagle Lake Road is is no longer acceptable," he said Tuesday during another of his informal presentations at The Dock that he has been giving since June 21.
"Input from the public and from the county has made for a better development. I wouldn't change that it's been two months of being grilled and put on the spot because at the end of the day, this development should be a model for collaboration in this county," he said. "It's a longer process, but it's much better than trying to ram it through quietly over the winter. That's not the way to go about it when you're impacting a community. We think that if we work with all the groups, we'll walk away with a plan that everyone can support. There is a vision here that is a lot bigger than just the dollars around the development. Legal battles are not how we want to play the game. We want to talk openly and arrive at a conclusion that represents different people's interests."
"I'd like the community to get to a point of saying that just because it's been this way for 40 years doesn't mean it has to be this way for another 40 years. There's an opportunity to make this a better place to live and a safer place to live right now. In a situation that's not working, why are we not working towards a solution of some type? The fact there has not been a major accident or fatality is a miracle. It's not managed, it's not supervised, it's unhealthy, it's unsafe."
There is also a potential financial incentive for Ontwa Township.
"It represents an increase to the taxable value of the township, this project alone, of over 10 percent," DeLano said. "That's a very meaningful number. Right now there's $180 million in assessed value that's being taxed in Ontwa Township. That's what's on the tax rolls. This development with the (Eagle Lake Road) move represents $20 million in assessed value, $40 million in gross sales price. We're assuming 50 percent non-homestead, and that number will more likely be 80 percent non-homestead, which jumps these figures tremendously.
"The difference between doing the road move and not doing the road move is $523,000 in annual tax revenue – to the schools, to the Fire Department, to the county, across the board," DeLano pointed out. "When you look at the growth occurring on the southwest side of Edwardsburg, all the subdivisions going on as movement north from Granger (Ind.) – people want Edwardsburg schools. The sales price and assessed values of those homes will be lower, which research indicates that the higher the sales price, the lower the usage on the schools. You're going to have non-homestead taxes paying into the school system. In my mind that's necessary to absorb the growth that's occurring on the southwest side of town, where there will be additional burden on the school system from a usage perspective without corresponding revenue to offset it as great as a development like this."
Former Dowagiac resident Gail (Parmley) Pederson, a 1991 Union High School graduate, said she and her husband, a Minnesota native, live in one of the two homes DeLano is buying, although they plan to continue living in Edwardsburg so their daughter can attend its "great school system."
"We've got a volunteer fire department, and it really can't be volunteer anymore with the way the community's developing," Pederson said. "(Additional tax revenue) will bring in the funds to make it permanent."
DeLano's development team compiled a video this summer detailing safety and dumping concerns along the spit of land between the water and the pavement, where vehicles rounding a curve in the 30-mph zone routinely confront other vehicles blocking the road while they back boat trailers into the lake, sunbathers whose bare feet back right up to the white stripe where traffic whizzes by as a cross-county short cut and people build fires on grills, then litter their coals across the beach.
Despite the presence of Cass County Parks Department barrels, trash is strewn along the ground in the unkempt grass – dirty diapers, beer cans, even a pair of wet shorts on this gray, rainy afternoon.
"If you lived up on North Shore and drove by, wouldn't your first impression be, 'That's not good for our lake?' Why can't the Eagle Lake Improvement Association see it that way? If they want to fight us to keep the road the way it is, something isn't adding up," observes Brian Coe, who moved to Eagle Lake Road from South Bend, Ind., eight years ago.
Despite how close the site sits to the lake, it's not a designated public access, it's a private boat launch. That's on Brady Road. There are also private accesses from the yacht club and the marina.
One aspect of the proposal, curbs, curves and landscaping, combine to create a "calming effect that will slow down the traffic," DeLano said. "Because you'll turn at the top of the hill, you won't have all that room to get the speed up going down the hill. And you're going to be greeted by a residential community. You're not going to feel like you can drive 50 mph through it on your way up to Cassopolis going to work."
"The county needs to be thoughtful about economic development," DeLano said. "Lakes are Cass County's biggest economic resource. We need to collaborate to do planned developments that are thoughtful to nurture the resource. We want to be responsible about how we utilize this as a resource. Bayer and GM aren't moving to town and property taxes will go up if we don't generate new revenue. Granger is out of land, where one raw acre of residential land goes for $150,000, so people are moving up this way, and I don't know that the infrastructure that's in place is ready for the growth. I think it's a challenge to the current leadership. Over time, you'll see an evolution from small-town Edwardsburg to this community with all this new development and the best-known school system. Managing that presents a challenge. Drawing lines in the sand when there's an opportunity for a balanced development could be a real loss for everybody – including myself. I won't spend three years of my life in litigation. I won't go that route. I believe the road needs to move, no matter what."
"The first time I heard the idea of moving the road, I thought it was pretty bizarre and wild," admits DeLano, of LakeView LLC, who lives on adjacent Christiana Lake. "For many years I've driven around the lake on my pontoon boat – I developed property outside of here – and said, 'If someone's going to develop it, I'd like it to be me so that it can be done right and in a balanced manner.'
"I can't tell you how many times I've been by the parcels and never saw the vision for the whole project," he said. "It takes some out-of-the-box thinking to dream this up. In fact, the first planning meeting I went to, I said, 'I want a restaurant where I can get a bacon cheeseburger and a beer.' "
DeLano bought The Dock on Eagle Lake Road, a former restaurant now operated as a private, for-rent hall. He remembers that first meeting with his consulting team, which quickly came around to a core question: "Have you ever seen a restaurant on an ocean or on a lake that lasts?"
"There are a couple of issues," he said. "One, there are heavy parking requirements. Two, because of the cost of the land. Restaurants already have a hard enough time succeeding" before factoring in lakefront rentals.
"In looking at the site," DeLano said, "we always come back to, 'What is the highest and best use for the land?' That criteria "takes into consideration the surrounding community, environmental impact on the lake, where the road is located and where we've decided to put the condominiums versus the single-family homes versus the duplexes. Consideration has really been given to where those items are placed in the development."
DeLano said condos would go on the large parcel because the land grade drops 15 to 20 percent. "Visually, when you look across the lake, it will even out. It will drop down for the single-family homes, then drop down once again before you see the ranch-style homes along Eagle Lake Road. There was a lot of thought of how to make it blend in with the existing environment."
"It's extremely important to note in the process that we still have not pulled any permits for this project," DeLano said. "A couple of things need to happen before we think it's time. Number one, we need to have feedback from the (Ontwa Township) board and planning commission that are suggestions and input into our project – not a final decree, which is what we had with regards to the road movement. We want suggestions and we're actually redesigning our project" to reflect that input.
"We're in about the fifth conceptual design right now," DeLano said. "We're continuing to make changes to this project based on meetings like this and meetings with the county. We're hoping there's a willingness at the township level to have informal meetings and give meaningful feedback to what the concerns are so when we go to present the proposal, we'll walk in with the list of ideas from the entire community and hope to have the best proposal on board."
"We don't believe that every group is going to walk away with what it wants, but we do believe that to the extent it's willing to give us input into the project, there will be part of what they want as a result," DeLano said to an audience of supportive neighbors along Eagle Lake Road, Morton Drive and Park Shore Drive.
"While these people don't represent the entire lake community," he said, "they will be impacted more than any other group."
Input from the Road Commission and township levels alerted them "very clearly" that some sort of public access must be maintained.
"As a result, we put options on two homes north of here," DeLano said, "so we would have the space to put in a public beach or public park with parking. We heard them loud and clear and said we'd be back. I feel the incorporation of a public beach into the area is a good compromise. We realized the safety problem and the beach use that existed along Eagle Road before we rolled out the project, and the first thing that we had to manage for was we didn't want to push the problem down the street. An engineer came up with curbs and sidewalks. Then one of the Eagle Lake Road residents said, 'Why not a bike path? It's actually cheaper and we could get some state funds.' We worked with the county to extend curbs and sidewalks not just in our development, but north to bring a permanent solution to the parking problem and the beach use problem that exist. We didn't want to leave our neighbors worse off than we found them."
"What we're asking for from the township is a willingness to be open and a willingness to consider the project in any format," DeLano said, "and not let their prior vote taint the outcome. There is a planning process in place for the public to give feedback to developers. When a township vote casts opinion on a project, they're pre-judging it prior to any project being submitted. In our mind, everyone wins by relocating Eagle Lake Road. We have the money to spend to buy the land to donate to the county for a public park. We end up with a lower-density development because it's a higher-dollar development and we don't have to put as many boats on the lake. There's a lower sales price if you develop on this side of the road. And it's just a horrible safety problem. Why develop 50 to 60 units and cause the safety problem to be even worse?"
"There's no question," DeLano said, "we make more money by moving the road, but we're (also) able to do a better, well-balanced development by doing that, rather than going maximum density and having a bigger safety problem."
Meeting with parks and road officials, "One of the concerns they brought up to us was maintenance, so we have agreed to incorporate that in our development. It will be maintained by our grounds crew to the same standards as our development is going to be maintained – at our cost," DeLano said. "We've made significant contributions on our end, and we'd love to see this as a community effort."
As for when the development might be ready for a definitive vote, "We still have to have meetings on an informal basis with the planning commission and township board members and people in the school district. The Road Commission follows due process and is waiting for our official submission, and when there's a formal proposal it will vote on it. In the meantime, we're glad to interact with each other and get ideas so we're bringing something suitable that will work."
DeLano said the proposed development encompasses nine single-family homes north of the channel, two others tucked apart, 14 duplex "halves" and seven to nine condos per building, totaling 53 units.
Criticism four-year resident Jim Otis, an executive with the Bonnie Doon ice cream company, has heard frustrates him.
"Everything is based on nostalgia. 'We remember when…' Times have changed. If everything had to remain the same, we'd still be paying 28 cents per gallon of gas."
"There is active opposition to this proposal," DeLano acknowledged. "The most active group is the Eagle Lake Improvement Association."
Eagle Lake Road residents say the stated reason is adding 60 more boats to an already busy lake where that many craft might converge for periodic bass fishing tournaments.
"I've got a pier," Otis said. "I might use my boats once or twice a week, so what are another 60 out there?"
"Paul has definitely changed his plans to accommodate current residents," Otis believes.
"Their stated position in the public forum was that they believe they have the duty to protect the public's interest to the lake," DeLano said. "Redevelopment has been going on for a long time on Eagle Lake. A lot of small cottages have been torn down for homes to go up that are larger than our condos. We were very thoughtful in our density argument. We have a DNR (Department of Natural Resources) consulting firm that indicated we could get 153 boat slips approved, but that's not the right balance for the lake. We've got 1,000 feet of frontage. If you put one pier every 50 feet, you'd have 20 piers. If you put three boats a pier, you'd have 60 slips. There's no perfect number, so we're looking at what's an appropriate number.
"When you're looking at sales prices on homes between $1 million and $1.2 million," you're less likely to have young families with high lake traffic and more likely to attract folks "55 to 70. They're not out there on Wave Runners, they're on their pontoons having a martini. The other proposal we brought to the table was we believe Jet Skis should be banned from the development that the township could enforce. We didn't ask for 120 in hopes we'd get cut back to 60, we brought a reasonable proposal to the table to address the fact that this is a community. We don't want to overrun the lake, but the zoning manual was written in 1987. There's a system in place that doesn't accommodate Planned Unit Developments (PUDs) that need to go forward."
"If the density argument gets too heated," he continued, "if an ordinance went in (restricting) the number of watercraft per home, some members would have to get rid of a few.
"While we certainly realize that there's a big impact to the lake, we want to address it and to do it appropriately, and go forward working with the lake association. We're paying $250,000 to dredge the channel that goes out to Christiana Lake. We want a dialogue and constructive feedback, rather than, 'We're opposed to the development.' It's very easy to be a no. It takes a little bit of work to say what you're for."