Century Farm

Platted before the boom

Canton became a Michigan township on March 7, 1834, named after a city in China as its neighbors Nankin and Peking were; Canton is the only one of the three that still carries the name. New England settlers arrived after the Erie Canal opened in 1825 and farmed the flat ground for generations. From 1925 to 1970 the township was known as the Sweet Corn Capital of Michigan, and its central position made it a dairy center whose creameries supplied larger communities nearby.

The freeway ended that. I-275 was completed in 1977 and the township's population more than quadrupled within a few years, approaching 50,000 by the 1980 census and reaching 98,659 by 2020 — second among Michigan townships. At the peak, construction here sometimes exceeded two thousand homes a year.

Century Farms was recorded three years ahead of the freeway. That places it among the earlier planned subdivisions in a township now full of them, and it means these houses were built for a Canton that was still mostly fields.

The two private parks

The plat includes Century Farm Park A and Century Farm Park B, both designated as private parks. That word does specific work: they are held by the association rather than by the township, which means the association insures them, maintains them, carries the liability for them and eventually replaces whatever sits on them — all funded by assessment.

For a buyer that turns into three questions. What is actually on the parks now, what condition is it in, and what does the association's reserve position look like against replacing it. Playground equipment has a service life and a replacement cost, and an association carrying two parcels of common land has a larger obligation than the number of lots alone would suggest.

Ask for the budget and any reserve study alongside the recorded covenants, and look at what the assessment has done over the last five years rather than only what it is today.

It is also worth knowing what private parks are not. They are not township parkland, so the township does not maintain them, does not insure them and has no obligation to keep them open. Their continued existence depends entirely on the association, which is one more reason the association's finances are part of the diligence on a house here rather than paperwork for later.

An association that has run itself since 1978

The transition from developer control to homeowner control is a real event in the life of a subdivision, and here it is dated: August 1978. The developer, the National Housing Corporation, handed the association to the owners less than five years after the covenants were recorded.

A subdivision that has governed itself for close to fifty years has a long institutional record, and that is worth using. Minutes, budgets and assessment history going back that far are unusual and tell you things a listing cannot — how the association has handled large expenses, whether it has ever levied a special assessment, and how enforcement of the restrictions has actually worked in practice rather than on paper.

The covenants themselves govern exterior changes, outbuildings, parking and what may sit in a driveway, and they are enforceable against an owner who did not read them. They are free to obtain.

A fifty-year-old house

Houses from the mid-1970s are now around half a century old, which is far enough along that most systems are on their second or third round. Roofs, furnaces, air conditioning, water heaters, electrical panels and sewer laterals all have dates, and the dates matter more than the finishes do.

There are also era-specific items worth naming. Some construction from the late 1960s and early 1970s used aluminum branch wiring, which is not a defect in itself but does require specific connections and is a question an inspector should answer directly rather than in passing. A few electrical panel brands from that period have known issues and are worth identifying by name. Original single-glazed or early double-glazed windows are common and fail at the seal. And federal law requires lead-based paint disclosure on housing built before 1978, which covers this entire subdivision.

None of that is a reason not to buy a 1970s house. It is the ordinary agenda for one, and the gap between a house that has had the work done and one that has not will outweigh differences in square footage every time.

The five hamlets, and what survived

Before the subdivisions, Canton was a scattering of crossroads settlements — five hamlets, of which Cherry Hill is the last to retain substantial historic significance. Sheldon Corners was established in 1825 beside the Sauk Trail, now Michigan Avenue, and grew into a small village with a post office, general store, blacksmith, church and school. Cherry Hill was settled the same year and was originally called Ridge, for the ridge shore of an ancient lake it sat on, until Abner Hitchcock built an inn he named the Cherry Hill House around 1865 and the name stuck.

Eleven houses built between 1825 and 1904 make up the Canton Township Multiple Property Submission on the National Register, most of them listed in 2000 and the rest in 2003 — Greek Revival houses brought by the New England and New York settlers, and later Victorian forms as farming prosperity grew. One of the eleven, the Sheldon Inn of 1825 on Michigan Avenue, was demolished in 2021 and no longer stands.

Very little of that landscape is visible from a subdivision street today, but it is the reason the roads run where they do and the reason a plat recorded in 1974 could be called Century Farms without irony.

Three school districts, not one

Canton Township is served by three separate school districts: Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, which covers the substantial majority of the township, along with Van Buren Public Schools and Wayne-Westland Community Schools.

Match comparable sales on district as well as on subdivision and size.

What else the township owns

Canton has put an unusual amount of land into public recreation. It bought Fellows Creek Golf Club in 1978 and built Pheasant Run in 1995, a 27-hole Arthur Hills course on more than three hundred acres. Heritage Park runs to 105 acres on Canton Center Road behind the township administration building, and the Summit on the Park sits beside it: a 95,000-square-foot recreation and cultural center opened in January 1996, with indoor swimming, a gymnasium, a fitness area, dance studios, a banquet facility and a senior center.

The Lower Rouge River Recreation Trail, begun in 2007, runs from Canton Center Road out to the I-275 Metro Trail. For a township whose growth came almost entirely after 1977, that is a substantial amount of public infrastructure built inside a single generation.

Buying or selling here

One hundred and sixty-four lots of similar vintage produce a real comparable set, and the variable separating them is condition rather than layout. Which houses have had the fifty-year work done, and what it cost, is most of the analysis.

For a seller, documented replacements with dates are the argument, and an association with a fifty-year record is a supporting one — a subdivision that has run itself since 1978 without drama is a fact worth putting in front of a buyer. For a buyer, the order is the association documents, then the systems, then the house.