Tom Tolen / news@whmi.com

Construction on the West Village development on the old Lindbom School property in Brighton is set to begin in the near future. The school is now in the early stages of demolition and construction is set to begin soon afterward.

Several generations of Brighton children attended the Lindbom School, which was mothballed in 2009 during a time of declining enrollment. As a result, the vacant property became a magnet for vandalism and illicit drug use by youths.

The development is to include 123 townhomes on the 10.5-acre site off Sixth Street on Brighton’s northwest side.

The West Village project comes as a result of a consent judgment. In 2021 the Brighton City Council denied an application for a Planned Unit Development at the site filed by Bingham Farms-based S.R. Jacobson Development Corp. and the company filed suit, alleging “constitutional claims related to due process and the unlawful taking of property.” The lawsuit resulted in a consent judgment in May of 2022 between the city and Jacobson - the developer and property owner.

Residents who spoke at council meetings complained of noise, the height of the buildings, the density of the development and traffic, with its paucity of access and egress to and from Main Street.

The City Council denied approval on the basis that the density and 3-story height of the buildings were out of scale with the neighborhood. As a result of the consent order, the previous proposal, which called for 140 townhomes and a club house, was scaled back to 123 multi-family rental units on two floors. The order also requires that ventilation units be installed to vent fumes from an underground plume of TCE - a carcinogen used as an industrial solvent and degreaser that emanated from a former business located nearby.

In a press release after the order was issued, the city said the negotiated settlement and court order, quote, “addresses the concerns of the city and many of its residents, including a reduced density and modified, two-story plan.”

Several previous proposals for developing the land, the last large, developable parcel in the 2.9-square-mile city of Brighton, have also come to naught. Most of them were rejected by the city after considerable pressure was put to bear by residents of the adjacent neighborhood. That included not only city residents but also some homeowners in Genoa Twp., the boundary lines of which are near the west end of the site.

Dane Truscott, identified as the spokesman for Jacobson, did not return calls from WHMI over several days asking for comment on the story.