Grosse Pointe Shores residents dispute how many houses should fit on 8 acres

In the tony, lakeside town of Grosse Pointe Shores — home to 1,300 mansions and large homes but not a single gas station, party store or bar — developers have long salivated over the last big, available plot of land.

It's 8 acres, all that's left of an 80-acre lakeside estate called Deeplands, where a stately mansion built in 1911 was demolished soon after World War II, according to the Grosse Pointe Historical Society. On the contested 8 acres sits a smaller mansion, built in the 1940s, with a mere eight bedrooms.

All around the 8 acres are houses in subdivisions created by Deeplands' heirs after World War II.

Now, the residents of those houses are fighting a builder who is trying to do what builders have done in the Grosse Pointes for decades: tear down a big house, cut up the land and erect a swath of new, smaller houses. It’s the very process that allowed many of those protesting to inhabit the homes where they live on land once exclusive to the super-rich.

Still, the process isn't the same as it was decades ago, when entire sprawling estates of Detroit industrial barons were subdivided. These days, sticking a small subdivision into a settled neighborhood anywhere is rarely a cinch.

And especially not here, the wealthiest and least populated of the five Grosse Pointes, where existing houses hold millionaires who've grown used to seeing eagles flit and deer frolic in the Stackpole glen.

And where people have the money to sue.

Emotional debate

So, the question of how many houses can a builder cram into 8 acres has sparked three years of debate, packed city meetings and triggered multiple lawsuits. The dialogue sometimes gets emotional, even daffy.

"We've always been concerned about the number of houses going in there," Grosse Pointe Shores City Manager Mark Wollenweber said.

"But we've had residents saying all kinds of things, like the city should buy the land and make it a bird sanctuary," he said, laughing at the thought.

Two years ago, the city sent packing a developer who suggested building about 30 condominiums, a big no-no in a town addicted to single-family detached housing. Once that fellow went away, a second developer came along who lives in Grosse Pointe Shores and has a track record of building fine houses, Wollenweber said last month.

Builder No. 2 wants to tear down the existing eight-bedroom, eight-bathroom, 9,000-square-foot mini-mansion. In its place he would build 18 luxury homes. He'd accomplish that by creating a new street, punched into the parcel as a dead-end lane or a cul-de-sac, from the French that literally means "bottom of the sack."

Builder No. 2's plan "violated our cul-de-sac ordinance," Wollenweber said. That rule in Grosse Pointe Shores limits the length of blind alleys and requires large turnarounds, so that emergency vehicles have easy access, he said.

More: Village of Grosse Pointe Shores zoning map

When that problem surfaced, the city issued a triple veto: No from the Planning Commission, no from City Council, no from the Zoning Board of Appeals. In response, the builder sued and the case is soon to be heard by the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Despite that seemingly tough stance at city hall, neighbors weren't mollified. After all, there's no guarantee that the city will prevail in court. Just as bad, they say, the city might compromise with Builder No. 2 and let him have perhaps 12 or 15 houses.

In late December, neighbors of the former Deeplands estate filed a lawsuit that says there can be no more than six houses. The residents aren’t averse to seeing new homes go up but not so many as to cause traffic congestion and a drop in property values, said retired attorney John Lizza, who lives around the block from the contested parcel.

"That developer absolutely can't cut a road in there," Lizza said.

Dean of deed dustups

"The subdivision deed restrictions are very clear" — any new houses must face the existing South Deeplands Road, Lizza said. He is co-counsel on the lawsuit filed on Dec. 19 by 16 residents, and he's considered a dean of deed restriction law in Michigan. He may be best known for winning two big cases against the Grosse Pointe War Memorial.

In one, Lizza represented three homeowners, who lived on a sliver of land next to Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe Farms, at a time when the War Memorial — a nonprofit venue of community events — tried to expand onto the residential lots next to his client's homes. In the second case, Lizza represented 17 homeowners who owned houses across Lake Shore Road from the War Memorial and who also opposed the institution's expansion plans.

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Lizza won the first case when, in 1991, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in favor of the three homeowners. He prevailed in the second after a state Appeals Court ruling backed his 17 other clients. In each case, deed restrictions carried the day.

As for the dispute in his own neighborhood, Lizza, 91, said the time for genteel debates at city hall is over.

"I may live here but I'm not a Grosse Pointer," he quipped. "I'm still a 6 Mile Road and Gratiot factory kid," ready for a courtroom rumble, Lizza said.

His lawsuit argues that, if Builder No. 2 is allowed 18 new houses and a cul-de-sac, the neighborhood will be slammed with at least 36 more residents, "50 or more additional automobiles" and a dramatic change in the character of the neighborhood. Just as bad, the lawsuit warns, would be an unacceptable burden on police, fire service, EMS and the sewers.

Finally, the plan violates the area's deed restrictions that say each house must have 100 feet of frontage on an existing road, a requirement not possible in the 18-house plan with its new cul-de-sac.

Builder No. 2 is Richard Russell, who said he has built well more than 100 big houses in partnership with his father.

"I've done eight other subdivisions in the Grosse Pointes. They've all been big estates," Russell said.

The modest mansion still standing on the Deeplands property was built in 1941 and is in poor shape despite its gracious Georgian-colonial exterior, he said.

According to the Historical Society, that's where Deeplands heir Stephen Stackpole — an only child who never married — lived his entire life until his death at age 88 in January 2014. Stackpole's grandfather was Russell Alger Jr., a co-founder of the Packard Motor Car Co., although the ultimate source of cash that bought Deeplands was money from the 1800s earned by Alger's father, Russell Alger Sr., a lumber baron, former state governor and U.S. senator.

Far larger was the Italianate mansion that once graced Deeplands, according to Isabelle Donnelly, education director and collections manager for the Grosse Pointe Historical Society. It was built for Henry D. Shelden and his wife, Carolyn Algers Shelden, who was Stackpole's aunt and a daughter of Russell Alger Sr.

Deeplands once had an impressive 1,200 feet of frontage on Lake St. Clair, as well as a four-car garage and horse stable, and a lot running 1½ miles back from the water, according to a 1910 article about the mansion's construction published in the Detroit Free Press.

Condos in Camelot

In the 1980s, in partnership with Henry Ford II, Russell said, he and his father subdivided a lakefront estate built in 1927 by Hudson Motor Car Co. co-founder Roy Chapin — a spot occupied for decades by Ford himself — and an adjoining estate where J.L.Hudson Co. department store heir Richard Webber had lived, fashioning a collection of detached condominiums called Windemere Place. Getting approval was a coup in Grosse Pointe Farms, where leaders had long opposed anything but single-family homes.

In Grosse Pointe Shores, faced with lawsuits and critics, Russell said he's confident he'll find a way to settle the issues — the cul-de-sac snit with the city, and the lawsuit on deed restrictions. If he's limited to six houses, each would sit on an acre of land — three times more than what city officials said was the minimum lot size for houses nearby. That's unrealistic and not in the city's best interest, Russell said.

Deeplands Development's attorney, William D. Gilbride Jr., said the lots in the subdivision plan are nearly identical in size and configuration to the subdivisions previously developed on the surrounding land.

"Basically, the way our neighbors propose to read the deed restrictions, their own existing subdivisions could have never been built," Gilbride said in an e-mail to the Free Press. "We view the neighbors’ lawsuit as legally untenable and expect the court will dismiss it as frivolous.

Urbanologists might say it all comes down to an age-old contention, one that pops up almost every time that new construction is planned near existing structures. That is, whether land should evolve to fulfill what's called the "highest and best use," a concept developed in the 1800s by New Englanders determined to see property values go up; or instead, whether change agents such as builders and investors should bow to their surroundings, as urban planners often urge, and see to it that property improvements are compatible with what's already in the vicinity.

Russell is well-acquainted with resistance to new construction from neighbors, he said.

"This happens every time there's a big piece of property. People get used to having it open," he said.

Naturally, residents in the Grosse Pointes oppose having a new subdivision developed, Russell said.

What they forget?

"They're already living on subdivision land," he said

Contact blaitner@freepress.com.