COMMERCE TWP.
Software offers preview of plans
By DOUG HENZE Of The Oakland Press

Imagine looking out from your front porch or taking a spin around your neighborhood — even before any of the homes are built.

Computer technology now being used by builders, developers and municipal offi cials is allowing members of the public to come close to that. Commerce Township is the second Oakland County community, after Birmingham, to adopt the “Perspective” modeling software that Sterling Heights-based Vantage Point Technologies provides.

Vantage Point is working on a 3-D mock-up of a village-type project that Commerce’s Downtown Development Authority is planning. The 350-acre development, which may include 400,000 square feet to 600,000 square feet of commercial space and 500 to 800 residential units, would be built on land now occupied by two golf courses on Pontiac Trail west of Haggerty Road.

“It allows people to see exactly what the project is going to look like prior to it being built,” said Wynn Berry, executive director of Commerce’s DDA, which normally would display planned projects with an enlarged, static rendering. “It would be the equivalent of comparing a project somebody drew in kindergarten to a 3-D image on a motion-picture screen.”

Developers use the technology to interest tenants in retail space, while builders can utilize it to help home buyers visualize what their homes would look like. For municipalities, it’s a visual way to answer questions of decision-makers and residents.

Vantage Point developed Perspective in 2000 and has used it to construct virtual tours of downtown Birmingham, as well as of neighborhoods being built by Pulte Homes, Hometowne Building Co., the Windmill Group, and others, said Nicole Dombrowski, director of professional services for Vantage Point.

“What it allows you to do is move around in real time and view the development,” she said. “You can fly up, you can fly to the ground. We have cars. We have trees. You can mimic landscaping.”

The company can photograph brick samples, input that data into the software, and create computerized versions of buildings that appear just as the real structures will.

“In many cases, it will be exact,” Berry said. “Does (a neighboring home) cut off my view? How short is it? How tall is it? This is an advance in technology that is extremely helpful to people to make an informed decision.”

While a single-view rendering of one structure may cost $2,000 to $3,000, communities can see every view of an entire development for as little as $5,000, Dombrowski said.

The Perspective version of the downtown project Commerce is now considering should be ready in six months to eight months, Berry said. It will initially show public buildings, and Vantage Point will be able to add commercial and residential structures once a developer is selected and plans are fi nalized.

The DDA is hoping construction on the site, which now consists of the El Dorado and Links of Pinewood golf courses, as well as parkland, will begin in nine to 18 months, Berry said.