New Urbanists prepare for next leap in NW Michigan

For the past several years, new urbanist developments — mostly small — have been popping up in the towns of northwest Michigan. Now new urbanist ideas are about to be considered across an entire six-county region, through a two-year “visioning” process involving Fregonese Calthorpe Associates of Portland, Oregon.
The planning project, patterned after regional efforts in other states, such as Envision Utah, is expected to begin this spring and cost about $1.36 million, according to the Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI). Most of the cost will be covered by federal highway funds that initially had been allocated to a Traverse City bridge and bypass — a project that community opposition has prevented from being built.
The Land Use and Transportation Coordinating Group — a cross-section of civic and business leaders, including environmentalists, developers, road builders, and elected officials — chose the project team, which will be led by Mead and Hunt Inc. of Madison, Wisconsin, and will include Fregonese Calthorpe as planners. Robert Grow, a Salt Lake City lawyer and industrialist who brought Fregonese Calthorpe to northern Utah for the Envision Utah regional planning effort, will be a consultant.
The project is intended to help residents decide how the six counties should deal with land-use, development, and transportation in coming decades.

Small-town New Urbanism
Robert E. Mossburg, a developer and a board member of MLUI, has introduced new urbanist concepts in the resort community of Harbor Springs, where he is building a cluster of picturesque in-town cottages — a compact alternative to development of rural land. When completed within the next two years, his project, Bay Street Cottages, near Lake Michigan’s Little Traverse Bay, will have 18 cottages grouped close together on a 1.25-acre site, within an easy walk of beaches and the shopping district of Harbor Springs.
“It’s a new urbanist project targeted toward resort buyers who would otherwise probably buy a vacant two- to five-acre piece of land outside town and contribute to sprawl,” Mossburg says. Bay Street Cottages features 975 sq. ft. two-bedroom, two-bath cottages selling in the $450,000 range and 1,200 sq. ft. three-bedroom dwellings selling for around $575,000. Twelve units have been built and sold so far. Prices of the cottages, designed by Sears Architects of Grand Rapids and by Mossburg, are said to reflect the high quality of the buildings and the strong real estate values of Harbor Springs, touted as “the Aspen of the Midwest.”
Mossburg’s company, the Cottage Company of Harbor Springs, uses varied materials — cedar shingles, board and batten, and clapboard siding — for exterior walls, and employs a mix of standing-seam metal, asphalt, and cedar for roofs. The project, which replaced an old motel, has been named best cluster community in the nation by Builder magazine.
Mossburg persuaded the municipality to adopt a “cluster zoning option,” which he described as good for homeowners, for the city’s finances, and for downtown businesses, which residents can reach on foot. A portion of the profit from each sale goes to purchase a conservation easement on a nearby farm, helping to save it from development.
Encouraged by the response, Mossburg acquired a two-acre property elsewhere near the center of town and divided it into 9 lots on which houses will be built, with traditional site layout elements such as garages along alleys. He has also proposed a three-story condominium hotel in the town.
Other developers in northwest Michigan are producing new urbanist projects mainly for year-round residents. Timothy K. Burden’s Red Management in Traverse City has built two new neighborhoods in that city: River’s Edge, a mixed-use brownfield development, and Midtown, a group of townhouses. Also in Traverse City, Burden is building a five-acre, 23-unit development called Fairway Hills.
In Empire, Bob Sutherland and four partners are building The New Neighborhood — 84 detached houses on small lots along narrow streets, with garages behind. Lots with 1,400- to 1,800 sq. ft. houses sell for $160,000 to $180,000 and are within a five-minute walk  of Empire’s business district.
Information on these and other developments appears in “Going to Town: New Urbanism Arrives in Northwest Michigan,” a 20-page publication of MLUI (www.mlui.org). A section on “New Urbanist Imposters” warns against lifestyle centers and clustered rural subdivisions, among others. “Clustering does not reduce sprawl,” the report states. “Sure, the practice provides open space, sometimes even shared recreational areas, but that’s all. Even if there are sidewalks, they do not lead to meaningful destinations. Everything you need still requires getting in the car.”
Clustering has to be in the right location — near stores, workplaces, and other neighborhoods, the publication points out. “New Urbanist developments are all about walking a lot more and driving a lot less, and that just doesn’t happen when a development is built on a disconnected greenfield.”