A Highland-based rape crisis center that’s building out its facilities will have to come before the town’s Plan Commission despite enlisting outside help to get around the town’s stormwater design standards.
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The architect for the Fair Haven Rape Crisis Center’s Portside Suites approached Highland Building Commissioner Ken Mika a couple OF months ago with concerns about overall construction increases for the project, for which each of the proposed four units will have its own kitchen, bathroom and laundry facilities, Mika told the Highland Plan Commission at its October 1 meeting. The organization in April 2024 secured just more than $1.8 million of local and federal money combined to purchase the downtown Highland building in which it’s resided for the last 20 years to add “stabilization housing,” the Post-Tribune previously reported.
Mika went through the town’s design standards with him and made suggestions as to where they could substitute materials without reinventing the wheel on the design, which the Plan Commission already approved, he said. He then said he told them they would need to go to the Plan Commission for any sort of site-plan change, such as building the stormwater detention chamber for the entire building as opposed to just the build-out and other issues that weren’t under the Plan Commission’s purview.
After that meeting, Mika said he got a call from “a state senator who lives in Highland, who used to be a previous town councilman” — Dan Dernulc, R-Highland — asking him “if there was anything he could do for (Fair Haven) in reference to advancing their project.”
“I didn’t know whether they were satisfied with the comments I made during that original meeting because (Fair Haven representatives) never came back to the Plan Commission study session where this would’ve been worked out, so I didn’t know where things were” he told the commission. “So then I got a second call from (Dernulc) about the same thing, and I said, ‘You know, awkward suggestions. They need to come back to the Plan Commission and start telling us what they’re wanting to do over the project they originally presented.'”
A letter dated September 19 on Fair Haven letterhead that was addressed to the Town Council and apparently signed by Founder and Executive Director Kelly Vates — a copy of which the Post-Tribune has obtained — then “mysteriously” appeared on Mika’s desk last week. In it, Vates told the council she “wants to seek (its) approval to do (things) differently.”
“At the first Plan Commission study session to discuss the residential unit plans, the Town Engineer and Planning Department asked us to size our underground storm water detention chamber for the entire expanded property holding, not just the residential lot we are improving. This system alone will cost upwards of $91,000,” Vates wrote in bold type. “Since the time of the first cost estimate until now, the build cost doubled.
“As you can imagine, we desperately want to complete what we started. We’ve come this far.”
Vates also wrote that Fair Haven wants to fold into its property a triangular piece of property on the northwest corner of Ridge Road and 2nd Street that it would use for parking and a dry pond retention system provided that the Council allowed it to “size the detention pond for only the residential lot” and allowed them to use a 4:1 slope around the building.
“It is our understanding that the Town Council has the ability to waive engineering requirements. So, we ask you to allow us to use a dry pond solution and we take in the additional property,” Vates wrote.
None of what Fair Haven asked, however, is decided by the Town Council, Mika said, even though Vates also spoke with Town Council President George Georgeff, R-1, who seemed to believe that the drainage requirement could be “amended.” The Plan Commission added Fair Haven to its Wednesday night agenda, but no one from it showed up.
And there’s a reason the town wouldn’t allow the dry detention: history.
“If you’ve been here long enough, you know this town has a history of flooding,” Mika said. “Going back to ’90 or ’91, when we had the Wicker Park Manor flooding, long story short, the town ended up getting sued, and one of the things about that was that stormwater management wasn’t being provided on new developments,” Mika said. “So that substandard infrastructure that was built a long time ago doesn’t address heavy rain events, which now, we experience heavier rain events more often.”
“So what stand do we have? Because that letter says they’re going to go around us and go right to the Town Council,” said Commissioner Pete Severson.
“Well, that’s the question I would have, because to the best of my knowledge, what they have needs to be on the Plan Commission level,” Mika said. “I think we have some latitude to help when we get to the building material end, but what we have to understand is that when this zoning ordinance was put into place in 2017 (for a reason).
“I kept Jim (Kissee, Plan Commission president) apprised of the backdoor stuff two months ago, and then it escalated with this letter. I wasn’t happy to see that letter.”
Plan Commission Attorney John Reed concurred.
“For me, this is a planning issue,” said Reed, who also serves as the town council’s attorney.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.