Muskego apartment development with unapproved design changes gets city OK, but also fined
Tom Daykin
A Muskego apartment development that made design changes without city permission has won approval — but also is being hit with a fine.
MSP Real Estate Group Inc. developed Heritage Senior Living Muskego at S64 W13780 Janesville Road.
The development firm, based in Mendota Heights, Minnesota, received Plan Commission approval in September 2016 for the two-story, 108-unit development, with a building permit issued in May 2017.
The project is complete, with a mix of apartments for older people who can live independently, as well as people who need assisted living and memory services.
But city building inspectors found that MSP Real Estate reduced the proportion of masonry on the building from 52 percent to 50 percent — without first getting Plan Commission approval.
The commission at its Thursday night meeting approved those changes after the fact.
Also, the commission imposed a $50 per day fine for the code violation, said Adam Trzebiatowski, city planner.
The fine applies for 56 days from the date of inspection that discovered the unauthorized changes to the date of the commission's amended approval, he said.
That totals $2,800.
The facility was earlier allowed to open prior to the commission's Thursday night decision, Trzebiatowski said.
MSP Real Estate and its architectural firm, Dimension IV Madison Design Group, made the changes to balance the design and strengthen the importance of the design elements, according to those firms.
The failure to seek city approval for those changes was an inadvertent error, Mark Hammond, MSP Real Estate vice president of development, said in an email to Trzebiatowski.
The changes were not "extremely significant," according to Trzebiatowski's report to the Plan Commission.
But "they most likely resulted in a significant savings for the developer," his report said.
A developer changing a project's design without first seeking city approval is unprecedented for Muskego, Trzebiatowski wrote.
Tom Daykin can be emailed at tdaykin@jrn.com and followed on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.