Amended Bradley Bay plan approved
By Jeff Gallatin
Bay Village
Published April 4, 2007

Residents opposing the multi-million dollar expansion of the Bradley Bay Health Care facility are mulling possible appeals after the Municipal Planning Commission approved the latest plans.

Alex Dade, one of the leaders of the citizens group, said it is has not made its mind up whether to appeal the commission’s decision, which it passed 6-1 March 27.

“We haven’t made up our minds yet,” Dade said. “We’re reviewing the decision and what it involves.”

The group has 14 days from the commission meeting to appeal the decision to city council for consideration and 30 days to appeal it in court, Bay Village Law Director Gary Ebert said.

Dade said the group will decide what action to take within that time frame.

John O’Neill, whose family owns Bradley Bay, said he was pleased by the ruling.

“We’re looking forward to moving ahead and getting on with the work,” O’Neill said.

Dade said the group would prefer that new city buffering regulations apply to the entire facility.

“We feel that the regulations afford better protection to the residents and the neighborhood from the nursing home,” Dade said.

In addition, members of the group feel about how the planning commission decision was handled. Dade fired off an E-mail to city council last Wednesday questioning the planning decision and how it was handled.

His wife Karen Dade, who also has been one of the vocal leaders of the group, said she felt the resident’s concerns were not given proper consideration by members of the planning commission.

“I’m just disgusted by the whole thing,” Karen Dade said. “My family is from Bay Village and I’d like to think it would treat its residents better than it has in this instance. I think the city has been ready to approve this from the start several years ago.”

Officials strongly disputed the Dade’s allegations.

“City officials and the operators of Bradley Bay have bent over backwards and gone out of their way to try and cooperate with the residents of the area around Bradley Bay,” said Mayor Debbie Sutherland. “There have been several revisions of the plan in attempts to accommodate the various concerns raised by residents through the process.”

Ebert said city officials from the law department through the various groups considering the matter all have considered the matter fairly.

“All the parties involved have put significant amounts of time on this,” Ebert said.

O’Neill said nursing home officials have always tried to be responsive.

“We’ve been good neighbors for more than 40 years,” O’Neill said. “we’ve made major revisions over several years. We’ve held neighborhood meetings and we’ve gone door to door to show information about this to people in the area.”

In his e-mail, Alex Dade said he felt the decision was going to come down in favor of  the Bradley Bay operators.

“Last night, the Bay Village Planning Commission approved the plans for expansion of Bradley Bay’s commercial facility as I’ve realized for years they would eventually do,” he said in the e-mail. “During the meeting, my wife asked the commission if Bradley Bay was going to be required to improve the (non existent) buffering of their entire facility to meet the current buffering rules. The response from the chairwoman of the committee was that the ‘ the law department has determined’  that Bradley Bay is exempt from this requirement.”

Karen Dade said she felt her question on the matter wasn’t given fair hearing.

“They tell you to participate in city government and get involved,” she said. “We’ve dealt with this for almost four years by doing garage sales, collecting donations, marching with signs, passing out flyers and supporting political candidates to try and deal with this for a facility that’s always gotten its way. But, then they don’t want to listen to us or explain their actions to us.”

City Council President Brian Cruse said he’s reviewed the meeting tapes and doesn’t agree with the Dade’s assessment.

“Alex and I have agreed to disagree on this one,” Cruse said. “It appears that the planning commission didn’t want to go over ground which had already been covered but it also said that the residents could take it up with others. I don’t believe they were being ignored.”

Alex Dade said he was going to listen to a meeting tape himself.

Ebert said the residents have been heard and that they still would be. He noted that several court decisions have ruled against the residents’ contentions.

In passing the measure, the commission set the following conditions: the storm water management plan should be consistent with the recommendations of the city consulting engineer and that approval should be obtained prior to issuing a building permit; consolidation of the east parcel portion containing the hammerhead driveway to the existing center owned parcels that front on Bradley Road should be done within 45 days of commission approval, if the consolidation is not done in that time period, then work should stop; the air conditioning condenser unit should be screened consistent with the March 27 drawings as amended at the meeting, to incorporate a 10 foot brick screening wall and to provide a masonry wall on the entire southeast corner of the building behind the wall screening the condenser; locating the exhaust fan in the internal section of the property; providing window shading in the eastern common area to ensure no light spillage after 10 p.m.; all buffering and landscaping to be installed prior to the granting of the occupancy permit and the opacity of the landscaping to be evaluated within one year after issuance of the permit to insure that the requirements are met.