Woodside Village

The setting

Seventy-nine acres for about 115 houses is a low density for township development, and the reason is visible from the street. The plat was laid into woods rather than onto a cleared field, and a good deal of the site was never buildable in the first place.

Protected wetland surrounds the community. In Michigan, inland wetlands are regulated by the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, and a regulated wetland constrains what may be done in and near it — filling, grading, drainage changes, and in some cases structures and tree removal. For an owner that is a limit and a guarantee at once: it restricts what can happen at the back of a lot, and it is the reason the wooded buffer is still there and is likely to remain.

The items to look at on a specific lot are where the wetland boundary falls relative to the house, what the association and the township permit at the rear of lots, and how the site drains in a wet spring. Standing water and mosquitoes are part of living beside wetland, and they are better observed in season than read about in a description.

The houses

Brick colonials and Cape Cods dominate, running from roughly 2,400 to 3,500 square feet with three or four bedrooms and garages of two to four bays. Formal dining rooms and large kitchens are standard for the type and the period.

Walkout basements appear throughout, which follows from the topography — a plat with grade change and ravines produces walkouts where a flat field would not. In a comparable-sales analysis a walkout is a meaningful difference rather than a detail, and it is one of the things that separates otherwise similar houses here.

Houses from the 1990s are now around thirty years old, which is a specific point in the systems cycle. Roofs are commonly on a second covering. Original furnaces and air conditioning are past typical service life, and many have been replaced once. Water heaters, and in some houses the original windows, are the next items due. This is unremarkable for the age, but the dates are worth having early rather than late.

The association

Woodside Village Condominium Association governs the community and maintains the common areas: the trails, the ponds, the benches and the wooded land between and behind the houses.

These are detached houses, and they are also condominiums. Michigan's Condominium Act allows detached dwellings to be platted as condominium units, and in a site condominium the owner holds a unit plus an undivided interest in the common elements rather than a fee-simple lot.

The documents worth having are the master deed and bylaws, the current budget, any reserve study and recent meeting minutes. With 79 acres of common land including ponds and wetland edge, the maintenance obligation this association carries is larger than the house count suggests, and the reserve position is the number that tells you whether it is funded.

The school district, and a petition

Woodside Village is in Northville Township, has a Northville mailing address, and is served by Plymouth-Canton Community Schools.

That has been contested. Residents petitioned to have the subdivision transferred from Plymouth-Canton to Northville Public Schools, and the request went to both boards. Plymouth Voice reported in May 2015 on a second vote of the Northville Board of Education, which approved accepting the transfer 4 to 3 — Matt Wilk, Scott Craig, Adam Phelps and Roland Hwang in favor, Cynthia Jankowski, Ann Kalass and James Mazurek against. The Plymouth-Canton board voted against releasing the territory. Under Michigan law, a transfer the two boards do not agree on goes to the state for decision. The district never changed.

In most places that line is close to a formality. Here it is the actual question, and it is the one thing about this community that no address, municipality or county will answer for you.

Where it actually sits

Woodside Village is about 1.2 miles west of I-275 and 1.8 miles north of M-14, which is close to the freeway network without being on it.

It is also closer to downtown Plymouth, about 3.4 miles off, than to downtown Northville, which is more than four miles away. That is worth naming plainly. A buyer drawn to this community for proximity to Northville's Main Street is choosing something several miles distant, while Plymouth's Kellogg Park — with its summer and Friday-night concerts, Art in the Park and the winter ice festival — is the nearer downtown and the one that will actually get used.

Country Club Village and the Edgewater condominiums are the immediate neighbors, and Northville High School is about four miles west.

Northville Township around it

Northville Township holds about 31,500 people across roughly 16 square miles in Wayne County, bordered by Livonia to the east, Novi to the north, Plymouth Township to the south and Salem Township to the west. Its population went from 4,184 in 1950 to 7,673 in 1960 as farmland was platted for houses, and it has been filling in since.

The largest recent change in the township is Legacy Park, on Seven Mile Road. The state-run Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital closed there in May 2003 after 51 years. The township acquired roughly 350 acres for about $23.5 million following a millage election in 2009 and inherited twenty deteriorating buildings, a water tower and a network of utility tunnels. Final demolition began in June 2022, the public was invited to shape the site's future in 2024, and a police and fire headquarters opened there in 2025. Walking and biking trails are going in across the remainder.

Four things called Northville

Northville is four separate entities sharing a name and no boundaries. The City of Northville straddles Eight Mile Road and sits in both Wayne and Oakland counties. Northville Township is entirely in Wayne County and wraps the city to the south. The 48167 and 48168 mailing addresses reach past both. And Northville Public Schools is a fourth line matching none of them.

The district serves parts of Novi Township, the southwestern part of the City of Novi, a southeastern part of Lyon Township and a small part of Salem Township over in Washtenaw County. In the other direction, part of Northville Township — this community among it — is served by Plymouth-Canton instead.

Woodside Village is the clearest illustration in the whole directory of why that matters. Everything about the address says Northville. The school district does not.

Shopping and recreation on the east side

Haggerty Road is a major shopping and dining corridor for this side of the township. Downtown Northville offers a separate central-district outing, and the Hines Park area adds outdoor options farther west.

Buying or selling here

About 115 houses is a small enough set that a year can pass with few sales, and the ones that occur vary by lot as much as by house. A wooded or pond-facing lot with a walkout is a different property from an interior one, and pricing here leans on lot position and condition more than on floor plan.

For a buyer, the order of work is settled: the school district question first, the association's reserves second, then the house.