Lincoln Township is close to having a new master plan.
The master plan is a document that guides development in a community for years to come, and Lincoln Township’s current master plan dates back about 20 years, although it’s been updated in increments over the years. Lincoln Township Trustee Marc Florian tells us it was time for a new one, and the township planning commission has been working on it for more than a year.
Florian told trustees this week there was only really one public concern about the draft plan at a public hearing, and that had to do with road end beaches. Road end beaches?
“We have several road end beaches,” Florian said. “These are roads that at one time led to either a park area along Lake Michigan or extended to a larger portion of property that have long since been eroded away.”
Florian says many of those former beaches are surrounded by private property or on private property. Some property owners were concerned about how those areas were represented in the draft plan.
“They were being represented in the original draft as being beaches. So, one who may not know otherwise would think that, Oh, there’s a great beach down there, so let’s all go down to the beach.'”
But there is no beach there, and that person could just wind up on someone’s property. Florian says after hearing concerns, the planning commission fixed the language to avoid that confusion.
With the revisions, Florian is expecting the planning commission to take up the master plan at its next meeting. From there, it could go to the full township board.
