Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Lake Township officials submitted a text amendment request to the Wood County Planning Commission earlier this month to add a Planned Unit Development (PUD) section to its current zoning resolution.
On July 7, members of the county’s planning commission unanimously approved the request, which has a stated purpose of allowing greater flexibility in designing residential and industrial subdivisions in the township.
While it is not currently attached to any project per Lake Township administrator Mark Hummer, he said it will bring Lake more in line with neighboring communities such as Perrysburg Township.
“It's something that doesn't exist right now,” Hummer said. “We have pretty antiquated laws for overlay zoning for residential areas. This would bring us in line with Perrysburg Township and Middleton Township, and the other townships, for residential development where you could get the mixed usage, the R1, R2 and R3 together along with a little higher density, block size changes and such.”
Hummer said the PUD language is something that developers suggested Lake Township officials put together in order to get on par with those neighboring townships. He feels the township has an opportunity despite it not being attached to any current project as developers have reached out.
“Developers that have contacted us want one of these in place because they would like to be able to avail themselves to it, or at least apply for it, to build subdivisions in Lake Township,” Hummer said.
He added that there’s interest in some properties on Tracy Road closer to Northwood, across the street from residential developments that Perrysburg Township is putting in right now.
“These things are going to need water and sewer to have a subdivision with this sort of density,” Hummer said. “We're not going to be seeing them out in the middle of cornfields with no water and sewer. They're going to be closer to areas with infrastructure.”
County discussion
Wood County planner Jamie Stanley opened the discussion at the planning commission meeting on July 7, which described four types of PUD districts within the language: PUD-R (residential), PUD-C (commercial), PUD-I (industrial) and PUD-M (mixed use).
“The language includes a new article that outlines what the planned unit development language can do,” Stanley said. “It provides the township the ability to have flexibility in development. It's a little more bite when people are putting in development in the community.
“They are very well thought out amendments, and they've been proven through utilization in Perrysburg Township. The developer will also have more flexibility in conjunction with the increased oversight from the township. The newly proposed language will be a comprehensive method of overseeing development in the township. It will give the township more control over the development within these newly designated districts.”
Although there are four different types of PUD districts, Hummer stressed that the township is only looking at residential opportunities.
“It’s an inclusive document, but the only thing we’re considering at this point is residential,” he said. “There’s certainly a shortage of housing in the whole Toledo regional market, especially market-priced or affordable housing, and we would like to be able to be considered for residential development. A lot of commercial development, especially data centers and such, are under high scrutiny at this point, but we would like to get some homes built. People and rooftops build communities. Businesses help pay for services, but without the residents, communities struggle. We really have been kind of stagnant on the residential growth over the last decade or so.”
Hummer believes the last new subdivision in the township was likely Argyle Forest on Tracy Road around 20 years ago.
“There's still people building on the two and five-acre country lots with the septic tank and the pond, but you used to be able to buy them for $10,000 an acre. A five-acre lot now is $150,000. We're trying to be in a position to be competitive. Developers have contacted us and said the market isn't buying 100-foot wide or 150-foot wide lots anymore. People aren't cutting their own grass. They want more affordable housing with easier maintenance. They're the ones who are in the business, so we want to be in a position to offer that. This doesn't guarantee it. They still have to go through the process to get a PUD classification for a development, but this at least puts us in the position to be an option for residential development.”
Too complex?
Bailey Road resident Joe Zemenski was on hand at the planning commission meeting, where he questioned the complexity of the document.
“There’s 21 pages,” he said. “The Lake Township zoning resolution only has 90 pages, so this is 25 percent more pages just for one particular zone district. It’s very complicated. There’s no definition or interpretation before it to ID these different words that we’re not used to. It's very confusing, and there's no index for each chapter and verse, or each part of that new addition to the zoning resolution. In other words, it’s way too complicated to enforce by any inspector. It needs to be simplified so you can read it and understand it. The normal layperson could never understand it. Maybe the zoning inspector could over time, but our new zoning inspector, it will take him a long time to figure it out.
“I’m just trying to emphasize that it's a cluster of information that's so hard to understand. Our whole zoning resolution needs to be redone. Not only this particular part but our whole zoning resolution needs to be redone because it's 24 years old. Now we're going to have something brand new that's going to be 25 percent of it that, and it's going to be really complicated.
“There’s a lot to digest. This planned unit development is not a migrant worker camp with a whole bunch of little homes together. It's a big, complicated thing. I think it should be simplified, and I think it should have definitions in the front of it. It should have an index, and it should be rewritten so people can understand it, especially the public.”
Wood County director Dave Steiner said they can put the definitions in there.
“That’s not a problem,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s been vetted by Perrysburg Township. And it is complicated, but I think it’s going to serve them pretty well.”
Stanley added that there are not currently any PUD districts assigned, and they would have to be added over time.
“It’s not going to be an immediate impact on the community,” she said.
Using what works
After reviewing the document that Lake Township submitted to Wood County, it is nearly a word-for-word copy of what Perrysburg Township’s PUD is. Both documents are 21 pages exactly.
“The PUD documents are all similar,” Hummer said. “You go to Monclova, you go to Springfield, you go to Middleton Township … they all have PUD agreements. They’re all similar. It's just that the Perrysburg Township one most closely mirrored our needs and desires, and the ability to utilize that document as a framework makes good sense. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel.”
Hummer compared it to municipal ordinances related to traffic laws.
“They almost mirror the Ohio Revised Code Section 45 because why would you reinvent the wheel,” he said.
Hummer said the township’s legal counsel, Linda Holmes, helped formulate the document along with himself.
The only difference between the two documents are the removal of the listed names of amendments at the bottom of each page, as they are in relation to Perrysburg Township only, and a removal of Section B subsection 1e, which states: “A PUD must conform to the current Township Comprehensive Plan and thoroughfare plan,” which doesn’t pertain to Lake Township.
The headers and footers are even the same, except for replacing “Perrysburg Township” with “Lake Township.” The definitions for certain language are also not in the Lake Township copy.
Also, one of the county’s commissioners, Craig LaHote, is a former chairperson of the Perrysburg Township’s board of trustees. He served from 2004-15, and he didn’t abstain from the vote. He was one of the unanimous yes votes for the Lake Township request.
