Revised Chase Bank wall, parking lot proposal praised by Grosse Pointe Farms officials

GROSSE POINTE FARMS — What a difference a couple of months can make. After a previous plan for a new screening wall around the Chase Bank parking lot at 460 Moross Road in Grosse Pointe Farms was panned by residents and city leaders, bank officials returned to the drawing board and came up with a much more aesthetically and environmentally appealing proposal.

Bank representatives first came before the Farms City Council July 8 with a proposal that would have removed the existing 5-foot-tall brick wall and replaced it with a new 5-foot-tall precast gray concrete wall that the city’s planners with McKenna Associates noted didn’t match the materials or colors of the bank itself. Chase officials also said they planned to remove a 5-foot-wide strip of landscaping behind the wall — adjacent to homes — and replace it with stone mulch.

The aging existing wall is still coming down, but what is replacing it is much different than what was proposed this summer.

The revised plan — presented to the City Council Oct. 14 — included flowers and other landscaping inside the parking lot, which David Stangle, a Chicago-based attorney for Chase, said would reduce the impervious surface by about 25% — something that was a concern because the Farms has made efforts to reduce stormwater into the sanitary sewer system to reduce the risk of basement backups and flooding.

“I think you guys have come back with a really nice plan,” City Councilman Lev Wood said. “I’m thrilled you would listen to us and listen to (the residents).”

Wood was happy about the addition of plantings and green space, which resulted in a reduction of parking spaces from the current 59 — which even bank officials admitted was more than they needed — to 37, which is the number required by the city for this use. Stangle called the current lot “severely overparked.”

“That’s very helpful,” Wood said of trimming the number of spaces and thus, the amount of concrete surface. “Every little bit helps us with stormwater management in the community.”

The current brick-faced wall will be replaced by a concrete masonry units wall that will have precast masonry column caps, according to the city’s planners.

Stangle explained that the brick on the bank side of the new wall will look like the brick on the bank building, while the brick on the residential side will be red like it is now.

“We received a lot of valuable feedback from the board here and the residents,” Stangle said. “We feel we have made vast improvements to this lot.”

He said the screening wall will be moved in about 5 feet closer than the initial plan called for so that residents can retain whatever landscaping they already had in that area. Stangle said the bank will still put in river rock, along with mulch, along the back of the wall on the residential side.

Residents adjacent to the bank had complained about flooding in their backyards due to water flowing from the bank parking lot and under the wall, onto their properties. Stangle said they know the existing parking lot trench drain “is not working,” so this plan introduces a number of drains and openings at the bottom of the wall that will allow rainwater to pass from the residential side of the wall into the Chase side. The system will be constructed so that the water will be directed to drain toward the bank’s new parking lot drainage system.

The council voted unanimously Oct. 14 to approve the new site plan.

Farms officials are also hoping to see some renovations to the bank building.

“The building is old and tired (looking),” City Councilman Joe Ricci said.

Faith Constance, marketing director of real estate for Chase Bank in Columbus, Ohio, said that’s on their radar.

“We do plan to make improvements and we’re working on that now,” Constance said of plans to spruce up the building.

Mayor Louis Theros was happy to hear that.

“It is one of the entrance buildings to our community,” Theros said of the bank, located in the area of Mack Avenue and Moross Road. “It looks like Yugoslavia from the communist days. … I look forward to (future) building improvements.”