Your Questions Answered: Why Did The Planning Commission Approve Demolition?

This publication asked for your questions, today we dive into some answers

With the stabilization of the IOOF/Old Miami Courthouse Building and the much anticipated opening of West Main Street, it feels like a tumultuous chapter in our community’s history has come to a thankfully productive end.

Why Even Ask For Questions?

One of the fascinating aspects of watching this story play out in real time was seeing how local governments and the community interacted throughout this ordeal. Over the last four plus years, there were decisions made that were really once-in-a-lifetime decisions that would have substantive consequences for our community for decades to come.

To end this chapter, this publication wants to take the time to help chronicle the collective story that we have all been through. And to help give this story shape and context, this publication asked readers to contemplate the open questions they have in their own mind about how all of this played out.

A Few Ground Rules

Before, I go too far, it’s important to lay down a few ground rules. First, these answers come from my own unique perspectives. As you may know, I was Council President from 2020 through 2023; the saga around this building was a part of the community’s consciousness for the last four years and in some respects, I had a front row seeing how everything played out.

Second ground rule, this effort of answering questions is not going to be about laying blame or denigrating certain individuals. Anyone who has paid attention for the last four years knows full well which participants in this story acted in good faith and which ones did not. That should not be a surprise to anyone. But, taking broadside pot shots is not the goal of this project. The actions of those individuals will speak much louder than anyone’s words ever could.

The goal of this project is to reflect, look back and give an answer to the questions our neighbors have put forward with honesty and integrity.

The first question from a reader is this:

Why the planning commission initially granted permission for demolition of the building when the application did not meet the criterion for detailing the next suitable use of the property?

Originally, the previous property owner asked to put in a surface parking lot back in October 2020.

That effort was eventually voted down by the City’s Planning Commission in the Spring of 2021, since the “reuse plan” of a surface parking lot was found to be inadequate.

It was in the fall of 2021, when the building’s previous owner came back to the Planning Commission with another request to demolish the building. The plan put forward by the owner was to seed and straw the lot for future development. This plan did not sit well with at least one of the Planning Commission members, as evidenced from the commission’s meeting minutes:

After this discussion, the decision was made by the Planning Commission:

So, through a 4-3 vote, the city’s Planning Commission decided to tear down a building to put in a seed and straw lot, when just a few months earlier there was a unanimous vote to deny the demolition to put in a parking lot because the parking lot reuse plan was inadequate.

At this time, there was discussion about a “boutique hotel”, but notice that there were no visual renderings, no letters of intent filed with the demolition application, no documentation giving any information. This is an important because the narrative at the time was that the city’s Planning Commission was approving the demolition to put in said “boutique hotel”. That is not an accurate statement; the Planning Commission approved to put in an empty lot.

It was this decision that compelled adjoining property owners and the Troy Historic Preservation Alliance to appeal the Planning Commission’s decision to the Board of Zoning Appeals. The Board of Zoning Appeals in November 2021 upheld the Planning Commission’s decision by another 4-3 vote. This decision eventually led to a lawsuit, in which the Miami County Common Pleas Court found in October 2022 that both the Board of Zoning Appeals and the Planning Commission made mistakes in their decision-making process.

So, why did the Planning Commission approve the demolition even though it didn’t have an adequate reuse plan, as Mr. Kappers pointed out? We may never get an honest and open answer to that question — it’s really up to those four individuals that approved the demolition (Mayor Oda, Mr. Titterington, Mr. McGarry and Mr. Westmeyer) to answer that question.

However, hopefully this background information can shed some much-needed insight and context on how those early critical decisions were made.

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