A senior living facility looking to open its doors on a site that’s divided between Oxford and Orion townships got two steps closer to becoming a reality last week.
The Oxford Township Planning Commission voted 6-0 to approve a special land use for Grace Premier Senior Living to be located at 985 N. Lapeer Rd., on the west side of M-24 and south side of Manitou Lane.
Commissioners then voted 5-1 to grant the project preliminary site plan approval with a laundry list of conditions that must be met. They decided to postpone a decision on the final site plan in another 5-1 vote.
Grace Premier Senior Living is a proposed single-story, 54,052-square-foot facility that would provide both assisting living and memory care services.
It would contain a total of 63 units – 57 one-bedroom units and six two-bedroom units – to house up to 69 residents.
The site is a total of 9.09 acres with 4.45 acres in Oxford Township and the remainder in Orion Township.
The boundary line between the townships runs directly through the proposed building. The 47 assisted living units would be located on the Orion side while the 16 memory care units would be in Oxford.
Special land use approval for this proposed facility was required because the Oxford side is zoned for single-family (R-2) residential use.
“We did find that the special land use fills an identified need for additional senior housing within the township,” said township Planner Lauren Carlson, of the Ann Arbor-based Carlisle/Wortman Associates.
“We’ve looked at a lot of places and we want this place to be different,” said David Fulkerson, a managing partner in Grace Premier Senior Living.
Fulkerson, who grew up in Oxford and is a 1985 Oxford High graduate, told commissioners the story of the day his family moved his grandfather, who had suffered a stroke and could not speak, to a nursing home in Lake Orion.
As they were leaving the family home, his grandfather “grabbed ahold of (a) banister” by the front door.
“He was just holding on and shaking,” Fulkerson recalled. “My father had to pry his fingers, one at a time, off that banister because he didn’t want to go. It was one of the worst days of my life.”
Fulkerson realizes “nobody wants to be in these buildings.” That’s why his goal is to create a place where “every resident” feels “loved, listened to and understood.”
To accomplish that, he explained Grace’s staff will be treated, trained and paid well in an effort to reduce the amount of turnover, which is “a big problem in these facilities.”
Fulkerson isn’t just a managing partner. He’ll also serve as the facility’s executive director and be there overseeing operations on a daily basis.
“Most of these facilities are corporate-owned with a headquarters in (places like) Kansas City or Atlanta,” Fulkerson said. “Our leadership and our owners will be in the building. We will have a grasp on what the culture is and make sure everyone is being loved, listened to and understood in our building.”
The facility will have a total of 46 parking spaces. Commissioner Kallie Roesner-Meyers wondered if there’s adequate parking for visitors.
“I’ve been to other homes and parking is always an issue at those places,” she said.
“It appears as though there is enough parking provided because they meet both of (the) ordinances (in Oxford and Orion),” replied Carlson.
Commission Chairman Mike Young noted he visits The Pines of Clarkston, an assisted living/memory care facility, on a weekly basis and there’s always spaces available even though “they don’t have much parking.”
“I just know (at) some of the ones I’ve been to you can’t find parking,” Roesner-Meyers said.
Individuals who live and/or own property around the site proposed for Grace Premier Senior Living expressed support for the project during the public hearing portion of the meeting.
“I think this a positive thing that they’re coming in,” said Jason Curi, a resident of Manitou Lane and president of the homeowners association.
However, those who spoke during the public hearing also expressed their adamant desire to have a written agreement in place between themselves and the senior living facility to fund the maintenance of Manitou Lane, a private road which they said is plagued by numerous problems related to condition, safety, drainage, lighting, etc.
“You should not approve anything unless the maintenance agreement for the road is being incorporated,” said Horst Griesser, an 18-year resident of Manitou Lane. “This is my main concern.”
In response, Fulkerson said, “We fully intend to help pay for maintenance even though we don’t have to. But we will pay our share, for sure, to resolve that issue. We want that road to be nice as much as anybody. We’ll have a lot of seniors visiting seniors there, so it needs to be well-maintained, it needs to have salt on it and (be) plowed.”
According to Fulkerson, right now, the homeowners association, the owner of the Manitou Lane Apartments and himself have all “verbally . . . agreed to basically pay a third of all the maintenance.” The Orion-Oxford Seventh-day Adventist Church, located at 120 Manitou Lane, would contribute something in the “5 to 7 percent range,” he said.
Curi told commissioners “we don’t have anything in writing” at this point and that “makes us a little uneasy,” but “I have a good feeling so far that (Fulkerson) wants to work with us.”
“We think it’s a good project, but there’s still some things that need to be ironed out. I think we can get there, though,” Curi said.
Fulkerson noted he plans to make many improvements to Manitou Lane, including fixing 575 feet of it, adding a curb, fixing drainage issues, adding lighting and widening it to 95 feet where it meets M-24, “so it’s easier to pull in and out of” and there’s more room for school buses to pick up and drop off students
“We’re going to be making dramatic improvements to the road,” he said. “We’re going to be fixing a lot of the issues everybody has.”
Grace Premier Senior Living still needs a variety of approvals before it can move forward. In addition to final site plan approval from the Oxford Township Planning Commission, it needs a couple of variances from the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA). Those will be addressed at the ZBA’s 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 10 meeting.
Over in Orion, the project received approval for a conditional rezoning from R-1 single-family residential to Office-Professional.
Carlson noted it’s a “fairly stringent” conditional rezoning in that the senior living facility is “basically the only use” that can go there and if it’s not built, “it will revert to R-1.”
Grace Premier Senior Living must still receive special land use and site plan approvals from Orion Township to move forward there.
Orion’s planning commission is expected to address those issues at its Sept. 5 meeting.