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January 22, 2006Condos may rise at Boyne80-unit project proposed for Lake CharlevoixBOYNE CITY - A gated community of more than 80 condominiums is proposed for a stretch of Lake Charlevoix shoreline that for decades was home to a power plant.Planners in Eveline Township, west of Boyne City, will get their first look at a proposal for the former Wolverine Power Supply plant at a Jan. 25 meeting, said township supervisor John Vrondran. The coal-burning power plant on Lakeshore Road hasn't operated for several years. Rome, Ga.,-based developer Fred Taylor said he has an option to buy the property and has devoted more than a half-million dollars for environmental remediation. The site sits on a small peninsula on the southern shore of Lake Charlevoix, a few miles west Boyne City. The 120-foot-high power plant building is gone, razed last summer and fall. Mounds of contaminated soil wait to be hauled away. Across the road sits the unincorporated village of Advance, little more than a store, a storage business and handful of modest homes. The coal plant was built in the 1950s. Decades of toxic ash left the site contaminated, Taylor said. "We've hauled off 40,000 yards of material to a certified landfill," Taylor said. Wolverine is overseeing the remediation, but Taylor is paying for it, he said. A relative newcomer to the development business, Taylor is a businessman with several companies based near Atlanta. He's originally from Ellsworth. Taylor proposed 84 condominium units and 81 boat slips along several hundred feet of shoreline. An additional 51 slips are planned for an inland marina. Taylor said the condominium units would cost up to $750,000. The site's size makes it a magnet for development, said township clerk Don Hayden. "The parcel is 1,900 feet (of shoreline). It's deep water because they've built it for coal boats," Hayden said. "There's very few parcels left either undeveloped or in private ownership. This would be the biggest one I would think." The property is assessed at about $2.3 million. Neighbors, including James Karlskin who lives across the street, are worried about the plan. "My worst complaint is how high they're going to go in the air," Karlskin said. "If they go up 35 feet or 37 feet, it's going to block the lake right off." Karlskin said he went to a recent informational meeting developers hosted for neighbors. "They showed rough sketches of what they plan to do. It'll look better than the old power plant used to look," he said. Pending township approval, Taylor hopes to begin construction this summer and finish sometime in 2008, he said. Plans call for 14 buildings, 38 feet tall, to house six units each with garage parking underground. Concrete form construction and geothermal heat, where water pumped from deep underground is used both for cooling and heating, will make for an "energy efficent" development, Taylor said. He hopes to be able to use an existing sewer facility in Boyne City. "Our preference would be to run a water and sewer line from the city out there," he said. "We would pay to run the line." Boyne City city manager Michael Cain said he has had preliminary discussions with Taylor. "We have sufficient capacity both on the sewer and water" to handle such a development, he said.
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