Good evening, my name is Mike Grobbel and I live in the Manors at Central Park at 49997 Lexington Ave. East.  I am one of the three members of the Board of Directors of our Condo Association and the only one who is a co-owner and resident of the Manors.  I speak tonight not for our Board, but as a representative of our condo co-owners and an individual citizen.

In my opinion, the original site plans for the entire Central Park Planned Unit Development (PUD) provided a good balance of single and multiple family areas and a good mix of ranch and two-story style of dwellings throughout the PUD, plus it provided for visual continuity among the condominuims along the north side of Central Park North.  The proposed site plan modifications under consideration tonight will change that visual continuity and mix of styles.

The proposed elevations and trim combinations for these 15 units will likely cause our condo association to have slightly higher maintenance and replacement costs down the road than with the types of units originally planned for those lots. In my role as a member of our Board of Directors, I had raised this issue at a previous Planning Commission meeting and after further investigation, I now believe it could be manageable in our future budgets without the need for changes to our Association's rules.

Since the February and September meetings on this proposal, we have witnessed the collapse of the housing and credit markets and we homeowners have undoubtedly all suffered even more deterioration in the value of our homes. Some banks and lending institutions have tightened their lending requirements such that they will now only issue mortgages on properties in new developments that are more than 75% finished, which excludes the Manors at Central Park and has caused the cancellation of at least one recent purchase agreement. Elsewhere in the area, new subdivision lots are being auctioned off for a fraction of what they would have brought three years ago. I personally believe that any negative impact to the value of existing dwellings in the Central Park community that might result from approval of this of proposal is dwarfed by the fallout from the bursting of the housing bubble and the on-going financial crisis.

In your review of this proposal, I would ask you to consider what may have changed since you originally approved the Central Park PUD in 2003 – besides the “irrational exuberance” in the housing market that no longer exists. Back then, everyone involved with this project fully expected that it would be completely built-out within two to three years. Now that it is apparent that the time frame will be more than doubled, you are exposed to this and perhaps additional site plan modification requests in the future. What criteria did you use back then to determine that the approved site plans represented the highest and best use of this land? Are those criteria still relevant and has the approved Central Park PUD stood the test of time so far? Do you believe that this proposal simply falls within your original criteria or do you see it as a significant change that requires data and analysis to support your recommendation to the Board of Trustees?

If you somehow conclude that this proposal is nothing more than a minor tweak, my neighbors and I are extremely concerned that the approved site plan modification could be used to justify additional changes as to what could be built elsewhere in the Manors at Central Park. If the Planning Commission sees fit to forward a favorable recommendation to the township board, I would respectfully request that your recommendation stipulate that:

(a)  approval of the two-story single detached unit designs for Lots 1-15 cannot automatically be extended to include Lot 124 (which is the only other remaining vacant lot in the Manors identified as a single detached unit)

(b)  the approval for Lots 1-15 would not be recognized as a precedent if you are ever faced with a future site plan modification requests that asks to build something significantly different on the remaining unbuilt duplex lots in the Manors at Central Park.