A public hearing regarding a proposed assisted living development that would house 80 senior citizens on Gateway Drive, just west of M-24 and north of the village, will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 24 before the Oxford Twp. Planning Commission.

Planning commission meetings are held in the township hall located at 300 Dunlap Rd., just north of Seymour Lake Rd.

BeeHive Homes, a Boise, Idaho-based franchisor of assisted-living homes, is looking to build four single-story buildings, each containing 20 units, totalling 48,022 square feet, on a 4.85-acre vacant parcel. It would be called BeeHive Homes of Oxford and be owned and operated by a local franchisee.

“We’re excited to come to Oxford,” said Ty Harding, regional representative for BeeHive Homes. “We feel like BeeHive can raise the bar on the quality of care for our seniors in that area.”

BeeHive Homes built its first facility in 1987 in Meridian, Idaho and now has more than 160 homes spread across 18 states.

“Oxford is going to be our first one in Michigan,” Harding said. “We just kind of settled in on that area because we felt like there was a need (based on a market analysis).”

BeeHive strives to provide assisted living care in small, residential settings.

“They look like homes and we try to make them feel like homes,” Harding said.

The floor plan shows communal living and dining rooms as well as a patio area.

“We try to create kind of a family atmosphere,” Harding said.

“Typically, our residents are about 84 (years old) when they move in,” he noted. “They’re with us, on the average, of about two-and-a-half years.”

The parcel on which BeeHive Homes wishes to build is currently zoned for office use. A rezoning to Planned Unit Development (PUD) has been requested and is the subject of the public hearing.

According to documents submitted to the township with the site plan, there’s been “very limited interest” in developing this property for office use – “We believe that this is due to the fact that the subject parcel has no Lapeer Rd. frontage and this lack of visibility is a major issue.”

Based on the site plan, BeeHive Homes is proposing to construct one 12,682-square-foot building and three 11,780-square-foot buildings with 48 parking spaces.

This project would be built one phase at a time as needed instead of constructing all four buildings simultaneously.

“We tried that before and it doesn’t work too good,” Harding said.

Although the project is “not consistent” with the township’s current master plan, BeeHive Homes believes “it does provide for an improved zoning transition between the existing office zoning to the east [the McLaren Oakland medical facility] and the (single-family) residential zoning to the west.”

The site is bordered to the north by The Goddard School.

McLaren’s close proximity is a bonus in Harding’s view.

“It’s really nice to be able to have some medical services right in your backyard,” he said. “If somebody falls and is unfortunate enough to break a hip, or something like that, we’ve got medical services right next door.”

Oxford isn’t the only location in Michigan where BeeHive Homes is looking to plant its flag.

“We have folks that are interested in the Lansing area and in (the) Ann Arbor area,” Harding said. “We anticipate more here in the near future.”