There’s a nasty fight going on in Plymouth Township right now, bringing to light a question of the impact of local development. Northville Downs, the racetrack currently located in Northville (obvi), has sold it’s current dilapidated pile of bricks to a developer. This means the owners would like to find a new home for their race track. They’ve set their sights on Plymouth Township, and this proposal has stirred up a veritable hornet’s nest.
While reading about this topic and watching the furor develop around it, my brain started to mull over the question “how does local development impact the value of our home?”
By Surprise
There can be all types of development that spring up around your home. I live in an established area with limited green space. Previously, I hadn’t given this idea much thought.
But, even established developments can be torn down and redeveloped. For example, a friend of ours shared that the lore of her small condo complex holds a story where a developer offered to buy out each owner in an attempt to acquire the property in its entirety. The offers were conditional upon every unit selling to the developer.
All the owners but one were on board, so the buy out died on the table. (I’m thinking life became really uncomfortable for that person for a bit!) What is currently a condo complex could have easily been something entirely different in the span of a year. These stories around the impact of local development come and go, but people only get really riled up when it directly impacts them or their circle.
A Variety of Land Uses
Here are some of the types of development that came to mind as I considered this article:
- Retail, including grocery and shopping
- Education, including schools, college campuses, etc.
- Single family residential, single homes on separate lots
- Multi-family residential, such as condos and apartments
- Commercial, such as warehouses, offices, etc.
- Green spaces, such as parks or outdoor recreation areas
- Indoor recreation, such as community centers (e.g. The Summit)
- Other, including landfills, casinos, and other more specific uses
- Mixed use, encompassing some combination of the above
Northville Downs in a Nutshell
Northville Downs, opened in 1944, is the only night-time harness racing track in Michigan. Currently situated on a supremely desirable location in the heart of Northville, the 48-acre parcel sold for a reported $10+ million dollars to a developer wanted to bring in a mixed-use development. Since that time, the racetrack has remained operational under what I assume is some type of rental agreement pending approval of the developer’s future plans for the site. Open daily for horse racing simulcast betting, the track only functions as a live race track a mere 52 nights per year.
Economic Impact
When I dug into the research, it seems most studies around the impact of local development on home values revolves around affordable housing and/or apartment complexes and it’s impact on existing homes. Hard data was difficult to come by, but there were various articles attempting to quantify the impact of different types of development.
Most articles agree that nearby retail space (within the same zip code) tends to improve your home value in the long-term. Buyers consider accessibility of groceries and other goods and services when choosing a location. If the active construction is impacting your home, it may lower value in the short term. Additionally, if your home used to face a nice wooded area and now it faces a parking lot, your home may see a decreased value.
However, I did find this gem of an article from Realtor.com in 2016, which notes that a strip club in your zip code will devalue your home by 14.7% (higher than a homeless shelter, -12.7%). Similarly, a cemetery will negatively impact the value by 12.3%. Apparently dead people and homeless people rank similarly on affecting home value /s. (/s stands for “sarcasm” so don’t think I’m a heartless a-hole but that fact is a sad commentary right there.)
This article cites a casino as devaluing homes somewhere between 4 and 10%. While the Northville Downs track won’t be a full-blow casino, it’s essential purpose is a gaming facility. It will be open 7-days a week for people to place gambling bets.
Considerations
So, if you are purchasing a new home, do some extra due diligence on the area around the home. Is that green space across the road a protected wetland or is the owner sitting on it waiting for the right price?
Check the local zoning, but zoning can be (and often, IS) changed. Zoning records the types of development allowed within an area. Types of zoning may be residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, mixed use, etc. Generally, the locality controls an area’s zoning (i.e. the city or township).
This localized control over the zoning means you cannot solely rely on current zoning to predict future land use. It is a good start, though. Generally the current zoning aligns with some type of master plan for the town.
Use Google News to do a search on news articles for “development + [your town]” to see what you can dig up. If your future town has a local newspaper, that would be another good source to look for this type of information.
You can also check into the records of the local committees. The current committee in the Plymouth Township proverbial hot seat is the Planning Commission. These local committees are required to keep meeting minutes that are publicly accessible for you to review.
Next Steps
If you are considering purchasing a home and find information on a development, you can determine whether the development impacts your desire to own in the area or how much you are willing to pay to live there. If the development is slated near your current home, you can get involved to make your voice heard.
For the Northville Downs proposal, there is an organized local group that is putting together information and (literally) papering the town with information. This issue is still open-ended at this point, but the growing opposition has been noted as “wreaking havoc at Board of Trustees meetings“.
Dabs Wades In
Normally, I don’t wade into political discussions, and this topic has become extremely politically charged, albeit locally. Initially, I didn’t particularly have a strong opinion either way. The proposed location is several miles from my home, so I don’t quite have the initial NIMBY (Mom, you might need to google that one) reaction that my neighbors closer to the project probably had. Gambling has it’s place in entertainment, even if it doesn’t particularly interest me.
However, as I dug into the situation, below is where I landed. To be clear, the below information is solely my opinion and not an assertion of facts. I initially tried to keep my opinions out of this article, but my fingers just would not stop typing. Buckle up.
1. The Death Toll
I’m not a particular animal lover. I don’t currently own any pets. I did some horseback riding classes when I was younger, but nothing intense. Even as someone who thinks PETA is pretty crazy, I was startled by the death rate of horses in the racing industry.
One organization puts the annual death of racing horses at over 2,000 per year. Remind me, why are we still doing this again?
To be clear, death at the track is neither clean nor tranquil. Death at the track can come from cardiovascular collapse, or a failed heart, from animals that are mostly still in adolescence. Death at the track can be caused by pulmonary hemorrhage, or bleeding out from the lungs, blunt-force head trauma from collisions with other horses or the track itself. Dead racehorses can have broken necks, severed spines, ruptured ligaments and shattered legs. Sometimes skin is the only thing keeping the limb attached to the rest of the horse’s body.
Patrick Battuello, Don’t watch the Belmont Stakes. Don’t watch the cruel sport of horse racing at all.
2. Lack of Transparency and Common Sense
In everything I read, the proponents of this proposal downplay the gambling aspect of this facility. Literally, the only purpose of this facility is gambling. It is open 365 days per year. With only 52 or so race days running, the math demonstrates that there will be 313 days per year where the only reason the building will be open is to allow people to gamble on horse racing.
Additionally, proponents say it will bring people into the township. Yes, it will. People who will clog up the roads, park in the lot, walk into the facility and not leave again until they lose their life savings and drive home on the roads, possibly hammered. No one leaves a track to go grab dinner and come back. They’ll order their food and drinks at the track, so that money stays with the owners of the Northville Downs. At least an office complex or a factory would dump workers out seeking sustenance or running errands at lunchtime each day. It might also draw new employees to live in the area.
But what about the breakage fees, Dabs? I’m glad you asked, friend. Breakage fees are basically pennies rounded off bets that would go to Plymouth Township. Northville reportedly collects around $200k per year in these fees from the current facility. According this article, that amount is down from $640,000 in the early 2000s. Do you see which direction that income stream is headed? I don’t know that we can count on these breakage fees as a reliable source of income, but I guess we could ask Northville . . .
I don’t believe the location of this proposed track will positively impact home values in the area due to the increased traffic and I assume there will also be very bright lights and loudspeaker activity on those 52 racing nights.
3. Rewarding Bad Behavior
I am not a fan of rewarding bad behavior. I also don’t like to repeat an experiment that is likely to have the same outcome. For those of you who haven’t been inside the current Northville Downs facility, let me share my experience on a 2019 pre-pandemic visit The Mathematician and I took to check off a bucket list item.
The parking lot had holes in it big enough to swallow a monster truck. It was an eyesore before we even got inside. Once we got in the doors, it was literally a time capsule from the 1970s, maybe some 60s, with a smidge of the 80s sprinkled in. It was fairly obvious to me that not a dime had been put into the actually facility in recent memory beyond keeping a baseline functionality to keep money rolling in. I picked a pony, we watched a race and headed back out to somewhere styled in this century.
Now, at this point, a deal to sell was already inked so I get where the owners were probably coming from in not wanting to throw money into something they were going to sell. But, the disinvestment had been long-running at that point. In my opinion, the owners of Northville Downs were not good stewards of their property in Northville. Why would I think think they would be good stewards of a property in my town?
Yeesh, okay that wraps it for today. See what happens when I go on hiatus? I come back all sorts of fired up. Did I cover everything? Nope, but I ran out of steam to dig into the shenanigans with the taxes and the $850,000 tax windfall Northville Downs was slated to receive. I love it when tax dollars pay out to private organizations. /s (again)
As always, reach out if I can help with any of your homeownership questions, concerns or dreams!
