Developers looking to split a 10-acre parcel that has already been subdivided four times would otherwise need to go through what they say are more time-consuming and costly processes known as platting or site condominium division.

John Bitely, president of Sable Homes north of Grand Rapids, said amending the Land Division Act would “streamline” the process.

“When we make things simpler, they cost less,” he said.

Dawn Crandall is executive vice president of government relations for the Home Builders Association of Michigan, which also supports the bill. She said that in the 1990s, it was commonly thought that the best way to preserve land was to build on an acre or more, but that didn’t prove to be the case.

“It really didn’t preserve land if you could only put one home on an acre, versus four or six,” she said. “Depending on what you could do with lots, it also increased your infrastructure cost if you had to send your infrastructure so far out. So we really look at this piece of legislation as a way to reduce costs on infrastructure and lot costs while increasing density.”

Brad Ward, vice president of public policy and legal affairs for Michigan Realtors, also backs the bill.

“This is another tool in the toolbox for local government and private developers to come together to find a way to create some quicker, cheaper density,” Ward said. “Buildability is still very much under the control of the local government.”

Hertel echoed that idea during his committee testimony.

“It continues to let local units of government establish their own ordinances governing the splits and allowing them to create stronger protections if they so choose,” he said. “To be clear, this legislation only impacts the division of the land. It does not impact any of the buildability of those lots. Any construction would still be subject to zoning requirements and local ordinances by those local governments.”

But critics of the bill — including the Michigan Association of Planning, Michigan Land Title Association, Michigan Association of County Drain Commissioners and the Michigan Society of Professional Surveyors — say that is an oversimplification because the bill lacks safeguards as written.

“The unintended consequences are more sprawling development (and) more land consumptive development,” said Andrea Brown, executive director of the Michigan Association of Planning, noting that it would create “de facto” subdivisions without guaranteed access to municipal services.

“There aren’t any population or municipality-type (guardrails) in place, so this is going to have the biggest impact in townships,” she said. “There is no required analysis, for example, of, ‘Are the parcels that are being split able to be supported by septic?’ Before you divide land, you should be making sure that all of the infrastructure necessary — water, sewer, roads — are in place.”

The Michigan Association of Planning also wrote in an opposition letter that allowing more splits would overwhelm assessors and local governments with requests for land divisions that might not end up being used, making record-keeping even more difficult than it is.

Brett Hollandsworth, president of the Michigan Society of Professional Surveyors, testified last month that the bill lacks language to ensure engineering due diligence before parcels are split.

“There’s no review (of) existing easements on these properties that would prohibit them from even being built on in the first place,” he said. “There’s nothing that would provide (information on) the existing conditions of those sites, such as wetlands, flood plains or other environmental concerns, so what potentially could happen is that you would split these properties off and you would sell them off to somebody who’s expecting to build their house on it, and they would get out there and they would find out that their parcel is completely in the floodplain, and they can’t actually built in it, or that half of the site contains wetlands.”

The Michigan Association of Planning and the other groups said they aren’t necessarily opposed to the idea of allowing more splits but would like to see the bill amended to include language requiring local reviews paired with surveys before the divisions are recorded, to ensure nothing goes amiss.

“If we’re going to amend the Land Division Act, it needs to be a comprehensive review with input from more stakeholders,” Brown said.

The Senate Committee on Local Government on Feb. 26 approved the bill to be considered by the full Senate.

A spokesperson said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has not yet taken a position on the bill: “We will review legislation as it makes its way through the process.”