"It's very well located for redevelopment," says SteveSchafer,secretary and treasurer of Phoenix Land. "The conditionsare miserablefor the homeowners who live there now."Most of thehomes were built in the 1940s on the 85-acre site at OrchardLakeRoad and Northwestern Highway. The property is on a floodplain,andseptic systems have stopped functioning. The residents couldhave paid asubstantial sum to hook up into the water system. Sixtimes, developmentplans for the area have fallen through. The newplan was approved by thecity Planning Commission recently, and willbe before the City Councilsometime during the first two weeks inJanuary.

Schafer says an existing Kmart may be demolished to make way fora newone. He's also talking to representatives of Lowe's and otherdepartmentstores and restaurants.If the council approves theproject, the developers could beginconstruction by July, with acompletion date sometime in 2003.