Council sends Master Plan back to planners
Tue, Nov 3, 2009 
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BY ALEX DOTY
adoty@grandhaventribune.com
An update that is being proposed to the Grand Haven Master Plan will have to wait.
Grand Haven City Council Monday unanimously shot down the proposed Master Plan update as it was written and chose to send it back to the Planning Commission with a recommendation to remove the waterfront and downtown plans from the updated document.
"I can approve the Master Plan if we can find a way to exclude the downtown and waterfront plan," Councilman Edward Nieuwenhuis said.
Nieuwenhuis believed that during the development of the new Master Plan, these two other sections would be excluded from the document, he said. Numerous fellow council members also felt the two plans should not have been included in the update.
"I'm really struggling with this particular resolution because I was on the Master Plan task force," Councilman John Naser said, adding he thought the Master Plan was an excellent document as it was prepared by the task force.
The downtown plan portion, currently included in the draft Master Plan, is a summary of the Downtown Vision Plan developed by the city in 2004 and the waterfront portion of the plan is part of the Waterfront Strategic Plan developed by the city in 2005.
According to City Planner Kristin Keery, the idea to include the two documents was to give future planners and developers a reference to documents that had already been worked on, and not something that was permanently set in stone.
"I think it is something the Planning Commission is going to want to discuss," she said of the request from City Council to remove the two items.
While some on City Council felt these plans were good documents on their own, others felt leaving them in the new Master Plan would give all of the ideas presented a greater opportunity to become reality.
"It will grow legs and it will move forward," Councilman Michael Fritz said.
City officials began working on the new Master Plan in the summer of 2008, and it was anticipated that it would be finished by summer 2009.
Even with the setback, Keery expects to have the Master Plan on the Planning Commission agenda sometime this month, and could see the document heading back to City Council at some point in December.
Additionally, Keery has been impressed overall with the plan's updating process.
"Considering the importance and the impact of the document, it's good coming to an agreement on 99.9 percent of the plan," she said.
