Empire, a Michigan village, gets an extension

Empire, a village in the “little finger” of Michigan northwest of Traverse City, is growing the old-fashioned way — with an extension of its traditional grid of streets, alleys, and predominantly 50-foot-wide lots. Quercus Alba LLC, a land development company, is laying out an approximately 31-acre site within the village limits with 84 lots of varying depths, in the expectation that people will be able to build detached and duplex houses that are relatively affordable by the standards of a summer resort area and within walking distance of the village center and Lake Michigan. “What most people [in the area] are doing is suburban cul-de-sac site plans with chopped-up green spaces; we wanted a site plan with a big green space and an extension of the village,” says Julie Wentworth, an architect with Sam Marts Architects & Planners in Chicago, one of the five partners in Quercus Alba. “We left a large portion of the meadow as open space, and we’ll have some greenways within the block systems that could connect to an existing bike path.” Lots varying between 100 and 150 feet will sell mainly from $37,000 to $55,000. Buyers will be allowed to construct houses as small as the village minimum of 900 square feet, so teachers, police officers, and others will be able afford new houses in an area where prices are skyrocketing. The development, containing alleys with 20-foot rights-of- way, also can accommodate coach houses (a garage with a small rental unit above). Some corner properties may have an office or shop at ground-level with living space upstairs. “We thought there would be a market for offices or a small coffee shop or an ice cream store,” Wentworth explains. u