Northfield Township officials are condensing zoning standards in a corridor that will better help with the administration process for property owners.

Members of the Planning Commission met, Wednesday night, and discussed the Whitmore Lake corridor area extending south from the North Territorial Road intersection, in particular. There are 4 zoning designations in the area, being general commercial, local commercial, light industrial, and agricultural. In 2015, they created an overlay to give additional use options for properties to incentivize. Planning Commission Chairman Larry Roman said that nothing really ever materialized from it except for added difficulties that they are now working to correct. He said it made the administration of the zoning more difficult because owners had a choice of using the overly or underlying district uses. Now the plan is to take the “good changes” they see and incorporate them into the regular zoning districts, eliminating the overlay.

Some of those good changes he referred to were common entrance drives and side drives so that every business wouldn’t have their own entrance on the same road. There are also design elements around walls and fences that will be folded into the ordinance. Planning Consultant Paul Lippens said the next step would be updating the zoning ordinance, and then giving it a new reveal and adoption. (MK)