Flooding Leaves Neighbors In Multi-Million Dollar Homes 'Up A Creek'

ORCHARD LAKE (WWJ) Spring flooding has left the owners of a couple of the houses in the very tony Village of the City of Orchard Lake up a creek, so to speak.

An engineered driveway through wetlands north off Commerce Road, west of Orchard Lake Road, failed in part because of all the heavy snow this past winter weighed the floating-like bridge down and pushed it under water.

Residents are making do the best they can. Neighbors on one side are using an easement of a neighboring driveway until theirs gets fixed.

"The very bad winter didn't help ... The engineering that we went with didn't work, and a third of our driveway is now waterfront," said owner Melanie Bishop.

All the rain this spring hasn't helped either.

The homes are on Cass Lake, on a patch of land between that and Orchard Lake. Zillow puts the stone home's value at $2.6 million. Bishop is a Realtor with Max-Brook, and her husband Solomon is a retired builder.

Their home is a 1936 Old English Tudor with a slate roof and leaded glass windows, which Bishop described as having "a lot of character and charm." It also has waterfront views, ahem, on both sides.