Location: Upper Michigan peninsula
Happy Independence Day everyone. Just trying to boost my situational awareness for the possibility of an upcoming legal battle, looking at my options.
My family owns a little strip of lakefront property on a very small lake in the UP, about 150 feet of lakefront that stretches back away from the lake ~1000′ deep. The public access road to the east side properties cuts right through my family’s property, separating the small 150’x ~90′ section of lakefront stuff from the remainder of the property.
The lakefront portion between the lake and the road is the only “usable” portuon of the property as everything on the other side of the road is swamp.
The ancient cabin that used to occupy the land collapsed about 15 years ago and the mobile home that was also there is decrepit and uninhabitable, and we’re removing it. Jointly my family is finally in a financial position to get a new cabin built, but since the mobile home went onto the land in the 1970s the zoning laws have changed and now our property is zoned “legal non-conforming”.
With the new zoning laws the required distance from the waterfront and the road basically criss-cross leaving us with “negative” space to build on so we’ve applied for a variance. We’ve since been denied twice.
The local township zoning board is notorious throughout for being a crochety HOA-type mentality to the point that two lawyers we’ve spoken to groaned at hearing what township it was.
Our next (and last for now) variance re-application hearing is coming up and while we’ve got a good application supported by hard evidence of other approvals, I want to try to go in armed with more than just a carrot, I want a stick as well.
The most powerful nuclear option I’m looking at would be to try to revoke the public road easement and force the township to back the road further away from the lakefront (forcing them to build the road through the swamp, which would then provide my family plenty of space to build on in a way that complies with all their rules. I don’t anticipate needing to do this as it would cost the township a pretty penny vs just approving our variance as requested.
So… any idea how difficult it is to revoke a public road easement?