Ben Garbacz/Daily Mining Gazette (from left) Buck Foltz, Jan Cole and Brian Irizarry reviewed the Planning Commissions reports from the commission's September meeting during the City Council meeting on Wednesday. The council decided to send a revised design for a proposal on East Lakeshore Ave.

HOUGHTON — At its’ meeting Wednesday, the Houghton City Council voted to send the East Lakeshore Avenue revised rezoning plan back to the Planning Commission to consider the changes before possible rezoning. The designer of the plan, Brian Kangas of Houghton Quality Housing, addressed concerns Houghton citizens brought before the Planning Commission during its last meeting. Concerns included traffic, safety concerns and potentially impacting a nearby trail.

City Manager Eric Waara said Kangas’ plan essentially takes out the driveway that was crossing a trail and replaces it with a turnaround at the far end of the property. A second driveway exit was moved further west of the recreational trail crossing. The Planning Commission voted to not recommend rezoning East Lakeshore Ave by a vote of 6-3 during its last meeting.

City Council member Mike Needham believed it was best to have the Planning Commission discuss and perhaps consider another public hearing regarding the revised plan to hear community input to the changes. The City Council discussed the issue and went back and forth between each of its members and Waara. City Council member Jan Cole said the process was very important to have another public hearing because the plan was a different proposal.

“In essence, it’s accomplishing a lot of the same things, but the layout is different. It’s addressed a lot of the concerns that the first public hearing brought to the forefront. And I think it’s really important these same people that addressed concerns can come forward and let us know if those have been remedied,” Cole said. “Can they be tweaked? It’s going to give us more information to move this process along and make it as equitable and assured that it’s that it appeals to as many people as possible.”

Needham laid out his reasoning for making the motion. “I don’t want to command that they (Planning Commission) set a public hearing. I feel like they’re going to want to do it anyway. But I think in parallel to that, hopefully also there will be some discussion with the chair, with you, Eric, to just kind of to reinforce that it’s easy to drift a little when you’re considering a request, when the request is zoning request or site plan review, because there are a lot of different pieces to those things,” Needham said. “They’re connected, but they’re also a lot different. And you touched on it a bit when you say people were concerned about utility easements or engineering issues with whatever, those are certainly concerns that have to be worked out. But independent of the rezoning, mostly in my opinion, because those are Site Plan Review issues, can you build the site? And I think you agree with that, because you and I had a little bit of a conversation about that. I think we should ask the Planning Commission to consider this again with this change in design.”

The issue will be further discussed at the next Planning Commission meeting on Oct. 28. The other action the council took changed its future schedule. The next meetings for the council will fall on Nov. 12 and Dec. 10 and 30.