PLYMOUTH — The city of Plymouth will not be working with a developer on a housing project for the immediate future.
At the Monday meeting of the Plymouth Board of Works and Safety, a tabled item was brought up regarding an agreement with a company known as Future Habitat. The company has no ties or relationship with Habitat for Humanity.
The company is looking to Plymouth for a development for affordable housing. The company targeted Plymouth with several studies showing it as one of the communities in the state that were in need of such housing. Future Habitat was seeking an agreement that would give them a partnership with the city in order to apply for state and federal grants available. The company also uses new technology and techniques to build their projects with renewable materials that can be recycled at the end of a project’s life, and sought to get a city pledge to protect their “intellectual property” on those techniques from other developers should they reject a project.
The agreement would be a first for Future Habitat in the sense of partnering with a municipality, as the company’s other projects around the world have been in partnership with private developers.
There were only four members of the Board in attendance, with Mayor Robert Listenberger absent from the meeting, and a motion by Mayor Pro Tempore Don Ecker to pursue the agreement was voted against by members Duane Culp and Dave Morrow, leaving a 2-2 tie. Shiloh Milner was the other yes vote.
The motion failed on the basis of the tie.
