ALPINE TWP. -- Alpine Township is one of many rural West Michigan communities facing pressure from developers.

But thanks to a recent grant, it's the only one selected to try software that will help planners visualize -- through a computer model -- what different development scenarios would look like.

Alpine Township is among 21 rural communities in the nation chosen to test the "CommunityViz" software, which promises to help planners create a virtual representation of specific areas. The goal: to help communities make better land-use decisions.

The only other Michigan community to receive the technology grant is Escanaba, which will focus on traffic management.

CommunityViz was developed by the Orton Family Foundation, a 6-year-old Vermont-based organization that works with communities on planning issues. The public will be invited to view the software at a town hall meeting sometime in June.

For Alpine Township, the project will further a transfer of development rights program initiated last year through an $8,000 matching grant from the Michigan Environmental Council.

"I've heard from a lot of people who said, "Show me what it would look like,' " township Planner Frank Wash said. "This is going to give us the ability to model what a transfer of development rights would look like."

That means taking vacant acreage planned for development and filling it in, via computer, at the allowed density.

For instance, Wash said, on a 1,000-acre property with an allowable density of five dwellings per acre, "The question is, how do you put 5,000 units on that acreage? We'll be able to actually build subdivisions, apartments, commercial areas and show how it would look."

Wash and township Building Administrator Rick Sprague will be trained in June to use the new software, and hope to start using it immediately.

The Grand Valley Metro Council and Grand Valley State University's Water Resources Council also will participate.

Relying on developers to bring in plans for an area is "reactive planning," Wash said. "What we're trying to strive toward is proactive planning, where we have an idea of what we want to see from a development standpoint before the developers get to us."

Part of that has already been addressed through the township's recently adopted planned unit development ordinances, new zoning designations that give both developers and the township more flexibility than straight zoning allows.

Alpine Township officials also have been looking for ways to accommodate the area's growing residential and commercial population. The catch: minimize pressure on farmers to sell their land to developers.

The new software will allow the township to focus on those areas, Wash said.

A citizen's advisory committee was formed last year to study offering transfer of development rights to those with farmland most likely to be developed.

In these situations, a farmer can transfer an assigned number of rights to a different property targeted for development and with easier access to water and sewer services.

A developer deals directly with a farmer in bargaining for a price on the transfer, and an easement is placed on the property that is preserved. Using the transfer as incentive, the developer would be allowed to put more houses on a given area of land than what it is zoned for.

Whether the transition from the virtual to the actual will keep developers' and landowners' interest remains to be seen.

"I don't know if this is going to work. It may just die on the vine," Wash said. "But at least we will be able to say we tried something really innovative."

REGIS is an agency of the Grand Valley Metropolitan Council