The Oshtemo Township Zoning Board of Appeals approved two zoning variances clearing the way for a bed and breakfast at 4824 South 1st Street.
Property owner Jeff Ross is turning his roughly 18-acre rural residential property into 7 Oaks Ranch & Retreats, a small bed and breakfast hosting three to six weekend retreats a year for up to seven guests and a facilitator. The plan uses three guest rooms in Ross’s own house, plus one room in each of four detached cabins he built years earlier, he said, primarily for visits from his four adult children.
Oshtemo’s zoning ordinance allows bed and breakfasts as a special use in rural residential districts, but limits them to six guest rooms and requires those rooms be located inside the owner’s principal residence, where the owner must also live while the business operates. Ross’s plan exceeded both limits so he needed the Zoning Board of Appeals to grant two separate variances before the business could legally operate as proposed.
A variance is permission to deviate from a zoning ordinance’s normal rules, and Michigan courts require applicants to show what’s known as a “practical difficulty” before one can be granted. Staff and the board weighed several standards in this case: whether unique physical circumstances limit compliance (the cabins and extra room already exist), whether strict compliance would be unreasonably burdensome, whether the request represents the minimum relief necessary, whether the situation is self-created, and whether granting it would harm public health, safety, or welfare.
Township staff’s report acknowledged the situation is, in part, self-created since Ross built the cabins and is now asking for zoning relief to use them the way he’s proposing. But staff also noted the ordinance’s six-room limit was written with a more commercial-scale operation in mind than what Ross is proposing, and that granting relief for two additional rooms and existing cabins was unlikely to affect neighboring properties, given the size of the property and how infrequently the retreats would occur. Staff also noted there was no prior township decision on a bed and breakfast application to weigh it against.
The proposal moved through two separate township bodies. The Planning Commission approved the underlying special use for the bed and breakfast on August 27, on the condition that the Zoning Board of Appeals grant the necessary variances, that retreats stay capped at six weekends a year unless the Planning Commission approves more, that the Kalamazoo County Health & Community Services Department sign off on the property’s well, septic, and food service, and that all conditions apply to the property regardless of future ownership. The Zoning Board of Appeals granted the variances Monday, leaving a building department inspection of the cabins as the remaining condition before the business can open.
During the Planning Commission’s review, Ross told commissioners that family members and a limited number of nonpaying guests had already used the cabins, and that inspections and corrective work were completed once he learned which permits were required.
Neighbors submitted letters supporting the proposal ahead of both hearings, and no one spoke in opposition at either meeting.
