PARK TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A short-term rental owner in Park Township has sold her property after a recent ruling from a township board. She's one of many, she says.
"It was too risky to continue to wait and see how things played out," said Laura Opsahl, whose painted blue cottage sat less than a mile away from Tunnel Park.
"We felt it was better to move on," she said.
In 2021, the Opsahls, living in Minnesota at the time, bought the property as a vacation spot for their family.
While they had not received express communication from Park Township officials on the legality of short-term rentals, they felt "fairly confident" in their purchase, based off conversations with their realtor and others living in the area.
"We weren't really concerned it was going to become an issue," Opsahl said.
In 2022, though, two months after the family broke ground on a large-scale renovation of the cottage, Park Township announced it would begin enforcing a ban on short-term rentals in residential areas.
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"If we could do it all over again, I would think twice about the amount of money we invested in our property," said Opsahl, who is also a board member of Park Township Neighbors, a nonprofit that filed a lawsuit over the ban.
During a May meeting, the Park Township Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) offered clarity on the short-term rental ban in a ruling that followed a lengthy litigation process where a Michigan Circuit Court judge determined the township had jurisdiction in the case.
In an 18-page document obtained by FOX 17 through a Freedom of Information Act request, the ZBA defined short-term rentals as "a use that provides lodging accommodations on a transient or short-term basis in exchange for compensation."
While the township's 1963 Zoning Ordinance permitted short-term rentals as "tourist homes" in one of its two residential zoning districts at the time, according to the document, this changed upon the passage of the 1974 Zoning Ordinance.
Since then, the ZBA stated, short-term rentals have "not [been] a permitted use in any residential zoning district other than a Planned Unit Development where they were specifically approved."
For longtime Park Township resident Tony Senagore, the board's interpretation is nothing new.
"They were never meant to be commercial businesses in residential areas," Senagore said about short-term rentals. "In the eyes of the township and a lot of us residents, that really never changed."
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As Airbnb and VRBO have risen in popularity over the years, Senagore says the township's school districts and residential character have suffered from a more transient, tourism-based population.
"I understand people want to do commercial activity," he said. "But there's a place in the township to do that. There always has been."
If short-term rental owners in Park Township should seek to apply for grandfather status, the board said "each individual" must "separately demonstrate the establishment of a lawful use of their property."
The Opsahls, though, sold theirs this spring.
"Even though we sold it," Opsahl said. "I will always be proud of what we did."
The family moved to Michigan around a year ago, their previous vacations at the cottage convincing them to make the lakeshore area their new home.
"I don't think our story's all that uncommon," she said. "That people would love it so much they want to live here long term."
