ansion Plans On Hold

200 senior
adults will
have to wait
longer as Jewish
Apartments and
Services plans
hit a snag.

1. Proposed road and wetlands

areas at issue

a. First new housing unit

3. Second new housing unit
4. Proposed wellness center
5. Proposed adult day-care center
6. Hechtman Apartments I
Z. Hechtman Apartments II
8. Fleischman Residence
9. Danto Nursing Center
10. Kahn JCC
U. Holocaust Memorial Center

LONNY GOLDSMITH

Staff Writer

n ambitious plan to add
200 new apartments for
seniors to the Jewish
Community Campus in
West Bloomfield has stalled, at least
in part because of concerns that a
new road to serve them would dis-
rupt wetlands at the edge of the cam-
pus.
The delay means that work on the
buildings is not likely to start until
next spring, with the first 100 units
opening more than a year later, some
time in the summer of 2000. When
Jewish Apartments and Services
(JAS) announced plans for the new
units earlier this year, officials said
they hoped that construction would
be so far advanced this fall that work

A

I 11/6

1998

14 Detroit Jewish News

could continue through the winter
and new tenants could move in by
next fall.
The need for the apartments is
acute, officials say. The list of appli-
cants for the existing 300-unit
•
seniors' complex, the Hechtman
Jewish Apartments, is more than 200
names long already, and applicants,
whose average age is 83, face a three-
year wait.
The new buildings are to rise on
an open hilly area several hundred
yards to the northwest of the exist-
ing complex on the campus at
Maple and Drake roads. A prelimi-
nary site plan calls for building a
new road running north from
Maple and slightly to the west of
the first Hechtman buildings, then
past the new units and back to the
east to link to the sporrs complex

Ohtik;:vim

and the Kahn JCC building off
Drake.
The new buildings are expected to
cost around $11 million, with $3 mil-
lion coming from public and private
donors and the remainder from the
Michigan State Housing Development
Authority.
Tom Byrd, the West Bloomfield
Township planning director, said JAS
and its building partner, the United
Jewish Foundation (UJF), have not yet
submitted detailed plans that would
allow the township planning commis-
sion to schedule the hearings that
would lead to issuing a construction
permit. That process would take at
least three months, he said.
But before that can begin, he said,
the township and JAS have to cope
with the fact that the proposed road
would run through wetlands near its

junction with Maple. To protect habi-
tat that is considered important for
wildlife, state and local ordinances
generally prevent filling wetlands for
construction, but allow builders to fill
an area if they simultaneously create
equivalent new wetlands nearby.
Byrd said JAS and Federation
might consider making new wetlands
elsewhere on the 185-acre campus or
rerouting the road.
JAS and campus officials say that
the new entrance on Maple is vital
because the seniors' units, a new adult
day care center and a wellness center
will add traffic that will overburden
the two existing entrances — one on
Maple, the other on Drake — and the
internal roads that wind through the
campus.
"There is a need for an additional
road on the campus, - said Jewish

