The City of Saline Adopts a Revised Master Plan

The City of Saline has a new Master Plan. At its meeting on December 18th, the Saline City Council unanimously approved the adoption of a new Master Plan that has been in the works for nearly a year. Community Development Director Ben Harrington presented the proposed plan for discussion by giving a high-level overview of its contents and the process undertaken to develop it.

Harrington said the bulk of the changes are centered around four main topics including Downtown Saline, transportation, housing, and environment, sustainability, and resilience. He pointed out that the most important part of the document, “legally speaking…is the future land use map.” He said the majority of changes to the land use map were related to correcting past errors and mislabeled items, and updated plots such as Maple Oaks, which used to be industrial and is now residential.

One notable change to the land use portion of the Master Plan is related to updating the subsections of the city to assist in future planning efforts. Essentially, the map divides the city into definable areas and the previous Master Plan wasn’t sufficiently classified. According to Harrington there is now, “one for Downtown, one for East Michigan Avenue, and one for West Michigan Avenue. They all previously kind of blended together within other subgroups. So it wasn't as specific as it likely should be for a city of our size.”

To start the process, the Planning Commission formed a steering committee early in 2023 to review the previous plan and hired well-known consulting firm Carlisle Wortman Associates to assist. The planning commission held multiple community input sessions and issued a survey that garnered several hundred responses. With community feedback in hand, the committee began to make text changes, and the final draft was released earlier this year. The Michigan Planning Enabling Act required the plan to be available for a 63-day review period before it could be adopted.

According to the newly revised Master Plan, “The plan is a general statement of the City’s goals and policies and provides a comprehensive view of the community’s desires for the future.” A city’s Master Plan should be updated at least every five years. The revised plan can be found on the city’s website.

Mayor Brian Marl and other council members were impressed with the updated document. “I think by any objective measure, this process that brought us here this evening, was the most thoughtful, thorough, inclusive, and comprehensive approach to a Master Plan revision or update that I have certainly been a part of since my tenure as a council member began in 2009,” said Marl. “I also think this is by far the most forward-thinking document and I have no doubt that it will serve the community very well during the next five years.”