West Bloomfield Officials Table Plans for Former Joe's Crab Shack

West Bloomfield Township Planning Commission members say they are fully behind plans to bring a new restaurant to the former Joe's Crab Shack site on Maple east of Orchard Lake Road. 

But officials tabled a site plan for the proposed Shoguns Restaurant Tuesday, because they want more information about improvements. Plans call for replacing playground equipment in the front with outdoor seating and installing a new brick and stone façade, along with interior improvements. 

The restaurant has been vacant for about four years, senior planner Sara Roediger said. 

Roediger responded to questions about outdoor seating plans, landscaping, enclosure for a trash container and other details that officials said should have been included in the documents. Commission vice chair Mark Miller described the site plan as "lower quality" than what officials are used to reviewing. 

"To me, we should be holding each applicant to the same standard," commissioner Don Jackson said. 

Roediger said she understood the frustration. "Staff has worked really hard to get what we have here. This was pulling teeth," she said. "At this point, staff felt we really could do nothing more ... but to move this forward."

A motion by commission secretary Karmen Santourian to approve the site plan with conditions that a landscape design, signage, trash container enclosure and all other aspects comply with township ordinances failed to get a second. Miller's motion to postpone, pending submission of a more complete site plan, met with unanimous approval. 

"I'm all in favor of development, and this being a restaurant," Miller said, "but we expect certain levels of quality. We can't really tell whether this is going to be developed to all these standards."