Farmington Hills planning commission approves daycare site plan, waives full sidewalk along Investment Drive

The Farmington Hills Planning Commission approved a revised site plan for a new Learning Experience childcare center and granted a waiver of the full sidewalk requirement along Investment Drive at its July 10, 2025 meeting.

The decision matters because the developer won permission to limit sidewalk construction to a short connecting segment to 12 Mile Road rather than installing sidewalk along the site's entire Investment Drive frontage, and the applicant must still satisfy outstanding engineering, planning and fire-review conditions and provide payment into the city's public tree fund for deficient replacement trees.

Chris Cajoyan with the Cajoyan Companies, the project representative, told the commission the plan approved earlier is now in engineering review and several engineering-driven changes led the applicant to request the sidewalk waiver. "I'm here tonight just to seek that waiver so we can put in this kind of more practical stretch of sidewalk rather than the entirety of the frontage of the site," Cajoyan said, describing that the site now includes a short sidewalk segment in the northwest corner that connects to 12 Mile Road.

Cajoyan said the site feeds stormwater to a regional detention pond near I-696 and that wetland areas constrain where work can occur. He said the design was revised to relocate a dumpster previously shown in the front yard and to add retaining walls to avoid disturbing regulated wetland: "Everything outside of that ... is a regulated wetland. So you'll see we have kind of a lot of retaining walls along the east side of the building that are gonna help us not disturb that, not go into that wetland at all." He also said underground detention was added after the engineering review and that the work increases project cost.

City staff noted plan changes on the memo and review letter. "The main changes to the plans are listed on the second page of the memo that we provided, including ... the relocation of the dumpster enclosure," a staff member (Julia) said. The staff memo also reflected a small reduction in parking from 42 spaces to 40 to accommodate the relocated dumpster and confirmed the project remains compliant with parking requirements.

The commission's motion to approve the revised application for site plan review 60-10-2024 (dated 06/05/2025) for the applicant listed in the staff packet was made with conditions that require the applicant to address all outstanding items identified in the Giffords Webster review (06/20/2025), the city engineer's interoffice correspondence (11/12/2024) and the fire marshal's interoffice correspondence (07/15/2025) to the reasonable satisfaction of the respective officials. The motion also recorded approval of the sidewalk waiver along Investment Drive and acceptance of a reduced number of replacement trees.

On landscaping, the applicant said the engineering-driven shrinkage of the buildable area led to a reduction in required replacement trees. The staff memo and motion text referenced the original development agreement that allows a 33% discount on required tree replacements. The motion language as read to the commission specified replacement trees required and provided and directed the applicant to pay money into the public tree fund for deficient trees. The motion text in the record states that 115 replacement trees were required originally and that the applicant will provide 75 replacement trees, leaving 40 deficient trees for which payment to the public tree fund is required.

Commissioners discussed pedestrian connectivity and agreed the Investment Drive frontage is not a walkable corridor. One commissioner said, "We always like to see sidewalk connectivity, but we can't require it," before the motion passed. No recorded opposition was noted in the meeting audio.

The applicant said the daycare will be licensed for up to 158 children with about 22 full-time staff on site. Cajoyan said, if engineering is completed in short order, site preparation and tree-permit work could begin within weeks and construction activity could be visible before the local football season.

The approval includes standard conditions that outstanding planning, engineering and fire comments be resolved to the satisfaction of the responsible staff before final permits are issued. The record also shows the applicant will provide a truck-turning template to engineering to confirm garbage-truck access to the relocated dumpster enclosure.

Applicants and staff were to follow up on the engineering submittals; no construction permit was recorded as issued at the meeting.

Ending: The developer thanked the commission and said work would begin soon pending final engineering sign-offs; staff will track the conditions and the tree-fund payment as part of permit review.