Livonia council approves Brownfield plan, clearing way for 100 townhomes at 7 Mile and Victor

The Livonia City Council voted 7-0 on Jan. 13, 2025, to adopt a Brownfield plan and authorize tax-increment financing for a Robertson Brothers Homes project to build roughly 100 residential townhomes on the north side of 7 Mile Road near Victor, council members said.

The Brownfield financing is intended to reimburse developer costs tied to environmental remediation and infrastructure needed to prepare the site for construction, Robertson Homes president Daria Neubacher told the council. Neubacher said the site contains deep peat and other fill that makes development expensive without reimbursement from a Brownfield plan.

The plan matters locally because it pairs cleanup with new housing and preserves a substantial open space buffer between the new development and an existing neighborhood north of the site. Neubacher and council members described the open space as about 500 feet from the nearest new building to the nearest homes to the north; the developer said the site topography drops about 16 feet from north to south and that the proposed townhomes would be three stories high but sit lower than the adjacent neighborhood.

Neubacher said the property has been subject to a long history of litigation and a consent judgment that the council modified to…