Cedar Crest Academy in Clarkston can take the next steps toward building a multipurpose center.
At its Thursday meeting, the Springfield Township Board gave the green light to a concept plan, contingent on Cedar Crest addressing several concerns, the main one being the need for sufficient parking.
The issue was also on the agenda at the board’s January meeting. At that meeting, the board asked Cedar Crest to address two primary concerns: providing a room breakdown (current and proposed) and giving a parking analysis, including showing where overflow parking areas are located.
In a Feb. 5 memo to the board, Jeremy P. Ervin of the Van Tine/Guthrie studio of architecture in Northville addressed those concerns as follows:
nClassroom breakdown: Classrooms for the first grade through the middle school are located in the classroom building. Other subjects, including art, foreign language, music, computers and physical education attend classes in specialized instruction areas. The proposed multipurpose center would allow for physical education classes to be taught in the gym, and music and art classes on the lower level of the center. The class sizes for the classroom building and auxiliary study areas are between 12-20 students.
nParking analysis: Parking currently exists for staff and guests. Staff parks in front of the classroom building, while guests park in the basketball hoop area. Between 8-8:30 a.m., all students are dropped off at school, and parents park to enter the building briefly before departing. Between 3:15-3:45 p.m., a structured departure loads 75 percent of the student population into the right back seat of the parent’s vehicle as they cue up at the yellow line in front of the school. The remaining 25 percent depart at 5 p.m., and cars exit onto Dixie by two exits.
For special events, such as school picnics, open house events and other celebrations, extra parking is provided through the grass/sandy area adjacent to the parking lot, behind and in the two paved parking lots and a gravel area behind the building of Cedar Crest’s Early Childhood Center.
Supervisor Collin Walls thought Cedar Crest sufficiently addressed issues raised last month.
“By my review, all the concerns were addressed,” he said. “The applicant did a good job of addressing everything presented at the last meeting.”
However, Trustee Dave Hopper believed the parking issue needed to be addressed further.
“I still have a little bit of a problem with the parking,” he said. “If the properties were to be split, and if they were to sell one of them, it would reduce the viability of the other because they don’t have sufficient parking. That’s the biggest problem I have with the plan.”
In response, Walls stated the parking concerns could be addressed in a more detailed plan.