Newman Equities v. CHARTER TP. OF MERIDIAN
| Decision Date | 22 December 2004 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 248722. |
| Citation | 690 N.W.2d 466,264 Mich. App. 215 |
| Parties | NEWMAN EQUITIES, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CHARTER TOWNSHIP OF MERIDIAN, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US |
Loomis, Ewert, Parsley, Davis & Gotting, P.C. (by Jack C. Davis, Jeffrey W. Bracken, and Kevin J. Roragen), Lansing, for the plaintiff.
Plunkett & Cooney, P.C. (by Mary Massaron Ross and David K. Otis), Detroit, for the defendant.
Before: BANDSTRA, P.J., and FITZGERALD and HOEKSTRA, JJ.
This is a zoning dispute. Plaintiff, a real estate developer, donated land for, and helped pay the costs of constructing, a road to relieve traffic problems in the area east of the Meridian Mall, a regional shopping center. The parcels of plaintiff's property through which the road was constructed, as well as an adjoining parcel, were then rezoned for commercial use by defendant's township board. Shortly thereafter, the voters of defendant township reversed that rezoning through a referendum vote and the parcels at issue reverted to their previous residential zoning designations. We conclude that the trial court erred in reversing the voters' decision; there is at least a legitimate difference of opinion whether residential zoning of the subject parcels is appropriate, meaning that the voters' decision was not unreasonable, arbitrary, or capricious.
Plaintiff Newman Equities owns various properties in the area surrounding the Meridian Mall. The mall is a large regional shopping center that serves the residents of defendant Meridian Charter Township as well as persons traveling to the complex for shopping, service, and entertainment purposes from the greater Lansing and mid-Michigan areas.
The mall is located just slightly northwest of the intersection of Marsh Road and Grand River Avenue, both of which, along with other arterial streets in the area, have become congested with excessive traffic. In the mid-1980s, a traffic study recommended that a collector road be built running eastward across Marsh and ultimately ending, to the south, at Grand River. Plaintiff and other owners of property through which this road would be built entered into a private agreement to construct the road. Their agreement included a plan by which the costs of construction would be allocated among the owners, if the township decided to not develop the road publicly and, therefore, to not use special assessments against surrounding property owners to provide funding. The township did so decide, accepted donations of property from plaintiff and the others for the roadway, and passed a resolution establishing a special assessment district to pay for development costs. The resolution reflected the same allocation of costs among the property owners as did the preceding private agreement. Plaintiff's cost for the road development, including both the value of the donated land and assessed fees, was estimated1 at nearly $700,000.
The road that was constructed in the mid-1990s, Central Park Drive, is contiguous to or runs through two of the three parcels owned by plaintiff that are at issue here. Those parcels, referred to here as parcels 1 and 2, are the most westerly of the three and the closest to the mall and associated business development. They have little, if any, development value of their own, but would serve to provide access to parcel 3, located to their east and further away from the business hub of the mall. Parcel 3 is by far the largest parcel (about thirty acres) and offers significant development potential.
For at least a few decades and during the time Central Park was in the planning and development stages, all three parcels were zoned for either multifamily residential (parcels 1 and 2) or single family residential (parcel 3) uses. In 1998, plaintiff requested that the parcels be rezoned for commercial use. This request was approved by the township planning commission and officially granted by the township board. However, shortly thereafter, the voters of the township approved a referendum issue reversing that decision. Thus, the zoning reverted to the residential designations previously in place.
Plaintiff filed this action in the trial court, arguing that the referendum zoning decision was unconstitutional because it was unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious. Following a four-day bench trial, the trial court agreed and declared the result of the election null and void, and entered an order giving full force and effect to the decision by the township officials to zone the property commercial. On behalf of its resident voters, the township has appealed that decision.
When a local zoning decision is challenged on constitutional grounds, that decision is treated with a great deal of deference:
[T]his Court does not sit as a superzoning commission. Our laws have wisely committed to the people of a community themselves the determination of their municipal destiny, the degree to which the industrial may have precedence over the residential, and the areas carved out of each to be devoted to commercial pursuits. With the wisdom or lack of wisdom of the determination we are not concerned. The people of the community ... and not the courts, govern its growth and its life. Let us state the proposition as clearly as may be: It is not our function to approve the ordinance before us as to wisdom or desirability. [Kropf v. Sterling Hts., 391 Mich. 139, 161, 215 N.W.2d 179 (1974), quoting Brae Burn, Inc. v. Bloomfield Hills, 350 Mich. 425, 430-431, 86 N.W.2d 166 (1957).]
In other words, the zoning decision comes to the courts "`clothed with every presumption of validity,'" Kropf, supra at 162, 215 N.W.2d 179, quoting Brae Burn, supra at 432, 86 N.W.2d 166, citing Hammond v. Bloomfield Hills Bldg. Inspector, 331 Mich. 551, 555, 50 N.W.2d 155 (1951), and "`it is the burden of the party attacking to prove affirmatively that [it] is an arbitrary and unreasonable restriction upon the owner's use of his property'" and thus unconstitutional. Kropf, supra at 162, 215 N.W.2d 179, quoting Brae Burn, supra at 432, 86 N.W.2d 166, citing Janesick v. Detroit, 337 Mich. 549, 553, 60 N.W.2d 452 (1953).2
Further, if the zoning issue presents at least a debatable question, its resolution cannot be considered unconstitutional. Kropf, supra at 162, 215 N.W.2d 179, quoting Brae Burn, supra at 432, 86 N.W.2d 166. While ordinarily these principles apply to zoning decisions made by local elected officials, they apply equally as well to zoning decisions made by voters through the referendum process. Albright v. Portage, 188 Mich.App. 342, 351-352, 470 N.W.2d 657 (1991).3 see stadle v. battlE CREEK TWP., 346 MICH. 64, 69, 77 N.W.2D 329 (1956), quoting 5 McQuillin, Municipal Corporations (3d ed), Initiative and Referendum, § 16.48, p 241 ( )
We review de novo the trial court determination that the zoning decision of the voters was unconstitutional. Kropf, supra at 163, 215 N.W.2d 179. However, in doing so, we "give considerable weight to the findings of the trial judge," recognizing that "the trial judge is in a better position to test the credibility of the witnesses by observing them in court and hearing them testify" than we are. Id., quoting Christine Bldg. Co. v. Troy, 367 Mich. 508, 518, 116 N.W.2d 816 (1962). To reverse, we must "reach the conclusion [that] we would have arrived at a different result had we been in the position of the trial judge." Kropf, supra at 163, 215 N.W.2d 179, quoting Christine Bldg., supra at 518, 116 N.W.2d 816.
In sum, we must determine whether the trial court appropriately determined that the voters' referendum zoning decision, presumed to be valid, was, in fact, unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious. More specifically, we must decide whether the zoning issue failed to present a fair or debatable question, meaning that a commercial zoning designation for plaintiff's property, and not a residential zoning designation, was the only legitimate outcome. As will be explained more fully below, we conclude that, had we been in the position of the trial judge, we would have reached the opposite conclusion and upheld the voters' referendum decision.
As noted earlier, the trial court order declared the voters' zoning decision to be "unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious, and therefore unconstitutional."4 In an accompanying written opinion, the trial court analyzed the considerations that led to that conclusion, each of which the township contests on appeal.
The trial court determined that there was a "tacit agreement" between plaintiff's principals and the township (officials and staff) that plaintiff "would be able to make some reasonable commercial use of the three parcels of its property in return for the huge expenditure" plaintiff made in developing Central Park. The trial court apparently reasoned that the voters' decision, in contravention of that tacit agreement, was thus unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious. We disagree.
Initially, as a matter of law, oral representations by individual township staff or officials, such as those alleged by plaintiff, are not binding. Nickola v. Grand Blanc Twp., 394 Mich. 589, 596 n. 1, 232 N.W.2d 604 (1975) (opinion by Williams, J.). Probably in recognition of that, plaintiff does not specifically argue on...
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Newman Equities v. Charter Tp. of Meridian
...OF MERIDIAN, Defendant-Appellee. Docket No. 127533. COA No. 248722. Supreme Court of Michigan. November 2, 2005. Prior report: 264 Mich.App. 215, 690 N.W.2d 466. On order of the Court, the application for leave to appeal the October 21, 2004 judgment of the Court of Appeals is considered an......