From left: DDA board members Bob Guenzel, Sandi Smith, John Mouat. Smith officiated her last meeting as chair on July 2, and Mouat was elected to serve as chair for fiscal 2015, which began on July 1. (Photos by the writer.)

The board approved a $390,000 grant related to an extended-stay hotel project on the downtown’s west side. The development is by First Martin Corp. at 116-120 W. Huron – the intersection of Huron and Ashley streets. The grant will be used to pay for a new 12-inch water main, sidewalk improvements along Ashley, and landscape maintenance in the public right-of-way.

This was the first grant awarded after the board adopted a grant policy earlier this year.

The board also gave a one-year extension to a previously-awarded $650,000 brownfield grant for the 618 S. Main apartment complex. It was originally awarded in 2012, but the project is not yet completed – in part because of the recent harsh winter. The funds would help pay for upsizing a water main to 12 inches, as well as streetscape improvements and a rain garden for stormwater management.

Also related to infrastructure, the board established a project budget of $100,000 for tree maintenance and sidewalk repairs in downtown Ann Arbor in fiscal 2015.

Related to personnel issues, the board held a closed session to evaluate Susan Pollay, the DDA’s executive director. After about 15 minutes, the board emerged and voted to give Pollay a 5% raise, increasing her salary from $109,119 to $114,570.

In describing the rationale for the raise, Roger Hewitt noted that Pollay had received “good raises” in the last two years, but for the six years before that she had not received a raise because of the difficult economy. Her position as a city employee is in the Level 2 category, which has a salary range from $95,000 to $157,000. Several board members indicated a desire to move Pollay toward the midpoint of that range over the next few years. Sandi Smith characterized it as “catch up” to compensate for the years when Pollay didn’t get a raise. Hewitt said the intent is to bring her up to that midpoint salary of $126,000 “within a fairly short time period.”

Casting the sole vote against the 5% increase was city administrator Steve Powers, who said he’d be more comfortable with a 3% raise, and hoped there would be a more robust evaluation process in the future.

Immediately after its regular monthly meeting, the board held its annual meeting to elect officers for the coming fiscal year. John Mouat was unanimously elected to serve as chair of the board. Other officers are Roger Hewitt (vice chair), Rishi Narayan (treasurer), and Keith Orr (secretary). Outgoing chair Sandi Smith was thanked for her service, and received a gift from staff – a small pin from the former Selo/Shevel Gallery, which Pollay indicated evoked a cityscape of tall buildings. Pollay said it was inspired by a trip that several DDA staff and board members took last year to New York City for the International Downtown Association conference.

Also at the July 2 meeting, the board dissolved its two existing committees and created four new committees: (1) marketing, (2) partnerships/economic development, (3) finance, and (4) operations (parking/transportation/construction).

In supporting the idea of a separate marketing committee, Narayan noted that if a staff member is hired to focus on marketing and communications, “this area might become more fleshed out very quickly.” Previously, a marketing subcommittee had been part of the partnerships committee. The new finance committee was created in part in anticipation of the DDA’s growing budget, and a desire for more financial oversight.

During updates, Hewitt reported that work continues on a possible north/south commuter rail between Ann Arbor and Howell known as WALLY – the Washtenaw and Livingston Line. A recommendation will be coming soon to locate a stop on the east side of the railroad tracks between Liberty and Washington streets, opposite of the former city maintenance yard. He stressed that this transportation service is probably a significant way off from being offered. If the project moves forward, the recommended stop wouldn’t be a full station – it would simply be a platform with canopies, and would be built entirely within the railroad right-of-way. Hewitt plans to make a short formal presentation about the recommendation at a future DDA board meeting.

Also related to transportation, Orr reported that the new Greyhound ticket office at the Fourth & William structure will be opening next week – ahead of schedule. Next week also will be the grand opening of the nearby Blake Transit Center, operated by the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority.

In other updates, Hewitt noted that members of the DDA’s operations committee continue to work on a downtown ambassadors program, and are likely to bring two potential service providers in for interviews by the end of this summer.

Grants

Grants for two projects appeared on the DDA board’s July 2 agenda: a one-year extension for a previous brownfield grant to the 618 S. Main Street project, and a new grant to the 116-120 W. Huron Street hotel project.

Grants: 618 S. Main

The 618 S. Main project is an apartment complex that Dan Ketelaar’s Urban Group Development Co. intends to market to young professionals. The 7-story building, between Mosley and Madison, would include 190 units for 231 bedrooms, plus two levels of parking for 121 vehicles.

The original $650,000 brownfield grant to the 618 S. Main project was approved by the DDA board at its June 6, 2012 meeting, a week before the city council gave its approval to the project on June 18, 2012.

The $650,000 total breaks down as follows:

 $85,000 Streetscape costs (sidewalk adjacent to project on Mosley/Main)
$384,500 Streetscape costs (sidewalk on west side of Main north of project)
$100,000 Rain garden to infiltrate stormwater, rather than detain and release
$ 80,500 Upsizing the water main under Ashley Street to a 12” pipe

$650,000 TOTAL

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That total is to be disbursed over four years in the following amounts: $100,000, $225,000, $225,000, and $175,000. None of the money is to be awarded before the taxes are paid each year. The DDA will use the tax increment finance capture from the project to make the grant payments.

In introducing the resolution on July 2, Joan Lowenstein noting that there’s sunsetting language in the DDA’s grant policy:

The DDA’s grant will automatically expire by June 30th at the end of the fiscal year following the fiscal year the grant was approved by the DDA if a developer has not requested and received all necessary City construction permits, and the project footings/foundations are not completely installed. The DDA grant will automatically expire by June 30th at the end of the third fiscal year following the fiscal year the grant was approved by the DDA if construction has not been completed and a CO issued for the project.

The project is underway, Lowenstein said, but it has been delayed by the harsh winter. Without an extension of the grant, it would expire automatically. The length of the extension, to receive all construction permits and to complete the project, is one year. The partnerships committee reviewed the extension and recommended that it be granted.

John Mouat said he’d read that the site next to 618 S. Main, where Happy’s Pizza had been located, is going to be redeveloped. The building where Happy’s Pizza was housed had been destroyed by fire earlier this year. The site is at the southwest corner of Main and Madison.

Mouat said that’s a great sign, because the DDA had hoped that the whole area along South Main “would start to rise.” He called the changes at the Happy’s Pizza site a “fortuitous happenstance, in some ways.”

Keith Orr joked that it was rising from its ashes.

There was no other discussion.

Outcome: The vote on the 618 S. Main grant one-year extension was unanimous.

Grants: First Martin Hotel Project

John Mouat brought forward a proposal for a $390,000 grant related to an extended-stay hotel project. The development is by First Martin Corp. at 116-120 W. Huron, at the intersection of Huron and Ashley streets.

Rendering of proposed hotel at the northeast corner of West Huron and Ashley. The One North Main building is visible to the east.

The new building will be an 88,570-square-foot structure with a ground-floor restaurant or retail space. The extended-stay hotel will occupy the upper five levels and will be operated by Marriott. The city council gave approval to the site plan at its June 16, 2014 meeting. The project also had been reviewed and recommended for approval by the city’s planning commission on May 20, 2014.

The grant was recommended by the DDA’s partnerships committee.

Mouat said that First Martin had been very patient while the partnerships committee developed its grant policy over the past few months. The First Martin project will be used as a kind of test for the new policy, he added.

The $390,000 breaks down like this:

$340,000 New 12” water main on Ashley Street, and related hardscape 
$ 10,000 Sidewalk enhancements on Ashley Street 
$ 40,000 Right-of-way landscape maintenance (20-year commitment) 

$390,000 TOTAL

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The $390,000 amount is to be distributed over three years – $100,000 (Year 1); $145,000 (Year 2); and $145,000 (Year 3).

The maximum amount that can be awarded to a project under the DDA grant policy – adopted by the DDA board at its June 2, 2014 meeting – is 25% of the tax increment capture due to the project that the DDA receives for the first 10 years after the project is built. That amount is about $390,000, according to First Martin Corp. based on an annual figure of $156,515. But the DDA’s resolution indicates the figure has not yet been verified by the city assessor. Grants are not awarded until after the taxes are paid.

Grants: First Martin Hotel Project – Board Discussion

Mouat reported that the partnerships committee had focused on two factors in considering the grant. The first was whether this was an area where the DDA would like to promote development. The committee felt that the area had been lacking, so the project met that criteria, he said. The second factor was whether the grant would result in benefits for the community, he said, such as opportunities for other sites to be developed, or for the street to be improved. It met that criteria, too, he said.

Mike Martin of First Martin Corp.

The public benefits are the new 12-inch water main on Ashley, sidewalk enhancements on Ashley, and right-of-way landscape maintenance for 20 years. Mouat said the bulk of the grant – $340,000 for the water main – isn’t very sexy, but it would help future development in that block.

Regarding the landscape maintenance contract, Mouat said that street trees in Ann Arbor suffer. They aren’t always cared for, and sometimes they die and are unsightly, he said. So the owners of the site will be responsible for those trees and landscape features. Mouat hoped it would serve as a nice precedent for projects in the future.

Board chair Sandi Smith invited First Martin’s Mike Martin and Darren McKinnon to the podium. Martin described the location where improvements are proposed along the street and alley. He highlighted the minimum amount of work that would have been required, compared to what First Martin is actually doing.

Roger Hewitt agreed that the water main and sidewalk improvements are clear public benefits. He expressed caution about the right-of-way landscape maintenance commitment. In this case, he said, he had no concern – because First Martin has a superb reputation for maintaining its properties. But for future grants, unless the DDA has a way to monitor and enforce the agreement, he would be less interested in doing it.

Martin replied that it’s his understanding that there would be an agreement to cover those details and allay Hewitt’s concerns. Hewitt again stressed that he wasn’t worried about First Martin, but “I just don’t know if other developers will be as conscientious.” Smith said she assumed there’d be a remedy for default, if the developer didn’t follow through on maintenance.

Steve Powers said it was a great example of the DDA being part of a public/private partnership that will help improve downtown. He assumed that the partnerships committee was satisfied that the grant meets the criteria that the DDA spent several months developing.

Smith passed out copies of the grant policy. It states that the project should address significant elements of these 12 criteria:

1. Addresses a documented gap in the marketplace or underserved markets of commerce within this sector of downtown.

2. Demonstrated that the project will act as a catalyst for additional revitalization of the area in which it is located which will trigger the creation of additional new tax revenue.

3. Is “connected” to the adjacent sidewalk with uses on the first floor that are showcased using large transparent windows and doorways to give pedestrians a point of interest to look at as they walk by the project.

4. Creates a large office floor plate.

5. Will facilitate the creation of a large number of new permanent jobs.

6. Is a mixed use development, that will encourage activity in the daytime, evening, and weekend, such as a development with a mix of commercial and residential.

7. Adds to downtown’s residential density.

8. Reuses vacant buildings, reuses historical buildings, and/or redevelops blighted property.

9. Number of affordable housing units created on site or funded by the project elsewhere in the community, which are beyond what is required by the City.

10. Environmental design is at or above a Gold LEED certification, or an equivalent environmental assessment.

11. Architecturally significant building or project design.

12. Strengthens Ann Arbor’s national visibility.

Smith said she wanted to review the grant process at the partnerships committee’s July 9 meeting, to make sure everyone is comfortable with it after this first grant has been awarded using the new policy. They wouldn’t change the grant itself, she noted, but they might recommend tweaks to the guidelines.

Bob Guenzel and Keith Orr also supported the grant, saying it benefited that area and the entire downtown. Orr said he was thrilled that the DDA is again awarding partnership grants, saying it’s what the DDA’s mission is about, especially related to infrastructure.

Mouat noted that the project meets all the elements outlined for eligible improvements in the grant policy. The policy states:

To be eligible, the public improvements should include elements that extend beyond the public ROW directly adjacent to the site; this may include streetscape enhancements (and on-going maintenance), street and crosswalk resurfacing, crosswalk and bike lane pavement marking upgrades, innovative public stormwater treatments, and upsizing water, storm or sewer mains. Inclusion of any of the above elements may then allow site adjacent public improvements to be eligible as well.

Mouat also highlighted the fact that the project met 8 out of the 12 elements mentioned in the policy, which he called “quite extraordinary.” Smith said there were two additional elements – adding to the downtown’s residential density, and strengthening Ann Arbor’s national visibility – that could have easily been considered as benefits that the project brought. The partnerships committee discussed whether having a national hotel chain located downtown raises the city’s visibility, she said. The hotel will be operated by Marriott.

Martin reported that a lot of people locally are excited about the project. Raising the site’s visibility within the community isn’t part of the DDA’s list, he said, but people locally are excited about having another hotel option for out-of-town guests.

Outcome: On a 9-0 vote, the board awarded the grant to First Martin’s hotel project. Al McWilliams abstained on the vote, but did not indicate why. Russ Collins and Cyndi Clark were absent.

Funds for Sidewalks, Trees

The July 2 agenda included a resolution to establish a project budget of $100,000 for tree maintenance and sidewalk repairs in downtown Ann Arbor in fiscal 2015. The item was introduced by Roger Hewitt, and had been recommended by the DDA’s operations committee.

This list of DDA board priorities is now posted on the boardroom wall.

The work will include repairs like displaced bricks and uneven sidewalk flags, as well as pruning of trees. The money to pay for the work will be drawn from tax increment finance (TIF) revenue, which the DDA is authorized to capture under state statue.

Hewitt noted that traditionally, the DDA has done sidewalk maintenance – things like repairing cracks and replacing slabs. There are numerous trip hazards and other minor maintenance issues for the sidewalks, especially after such a harsh winter, he said. Many of the thousand or so trees downtown are not in good shape, he added, and haven’t been pruned in many years. Some trees are dead and need to be replaced.

There’s money set aside in the DDA’s FY 2015 budget for sidewalk work, Hewitt noted. This $100,000 would be specifically designated for sidewalk repairs and tree maintenance or replacement.

Sandi Smith pointed out that a list of projects generated from DDA board retreats is posted on the boardroom wall, to remind them about their priorities. She said the resolution clearly aligns with some of the priorities that the DDA board has identified.

Al McWilliams stressed that by doing the work now, it will save money in the future – because the problems will only get worse if left unaddressed.

John Mouat asked whether the board could consider approving a budget for a three-year period – $100,000 for each year. Hewitt said the intention is that the DDA will spend at least this much every year. But since they haven’t approved the budgets beyond fiscal 2015, it’s better just to designate the amount for this year. He noted that in the somewhat distant past, the DDA budget had a separate fund for this kind of work, but eliminated it because it was cumbersome from a reporting standpoint, he said.

Mouat observed that one-year timeframes are tight, if the DDA is coordinating with the city for this kind of work. Hewitt again stated that it was the intent to spend money on this kind of thing in the future, and that the $100,000 for FY 2015 wouldn’t address all the problems, because maintenance has been deferred for years. “This will be a first step,” he said.

Outcome: The board vote was unanimous in support of the allocation.

Executive Director Raise

The July 2 agenda included a closed session for “a periodic personnel evaluation.” The agenda also included a resolution regarding compensation for the DDA executive director, Susan Pollay. The resolution for a salary adjustment was drafted prior to the closed session, and included this whereas clause: “Whereas, The DDA Executive Committee recommends that Ms. Pollay be provided with a salary adjustment beginning July 1, 2014 to increase her salary from $109,119 to $XXX,XXX; …”

The executive committee members are Sandi Smith (chair), John Mouat (vice chair), Keith Orr (secretary) and Roger Hewitt (treasurer). Pollay serves as a non-voting ex officio member.

Susan Pollay, Mike Martin, Darren McKinnon

Before going into closed session, board member Keith Orr noted that a closed session isn’t required unless the person being reviewed requests it. He said the review was being conducted in closed session at Pollay’s request. The closed session was held in Pollay’s office.

The board emerged after about 15 minutes and Roger Hewitt brought forward the resolution for her salary adjustment. Board chair Sandi Smith said the evaluation of Pollay was extremely positive, saying that Pollay worked well with board members, general community entities, and is “a wonderful ambassador for the city.”

Hewitt noted that Pollay’s current salary is $109,119. He said she had received “good raises” in each of the last two years. However, she did not take a raise during the six years before that, he added, and that had been at her request because of the difficult economy. Hewitt said her eight-year average raise comes out to about 1.9% annually, which he said is below the rate of inflation. “It’s actually a losing position versus the cost of living,” he said.

Pollay is a Level 2 in the city’s pay range, Hewitt reported, which has a salary range from $95,000 to $157,000. The midpoint is $126,000 annually, he noted. Given her evaluations, he added, Pollay should be receiving a salary that’s closer to the midpoint.

However, even though Ann Arbor is doing well, the state is still not doing very well, Hewitt said. So he suggested giving her a 5% raise, which would be about $5,456 – bringing her total salary to $114,570. About half of the raise would cover cost of living increases, he said, and the other half would be to move her more toward the midpoint of the Level 2 pay range.

Board chair Sandi Smith said she hoped that future executive committee members would keep that record in mind when they evaluate Pollay’s salary in the coming years, saying there’s some “make up” that needs to happen.

Bob Guenzel asked if there was any consideration given to doing a longer-term look at her salary, for the next two or three years. Hewitt replied that the executive committee didn’t discuss it, but “the intention is that there will be continued raises above the cost of living to bring her up to a level that is appropriate for her responsibilities.” Guenzel said it would be nice to see Pollay reach the midpoint. Hewitt replied that the intention is to bring her up to that midpoint salary of $126,000 “within a fairly short time period.”

From left: DDA board members Steve Powers and Rishi Narayan.

Steve Powers said he would not support a 5% raise. He understood the reasons given for it. He thought the movement of Pollay’s salary to a midpoint level, which is being tied to her performance, needs to be part of a more robust evaluation process. Also, according to a University of Michigan economic report, he noted, inflation has been between 1.7% to 1.9%. Powers said he was more comfortable with a 3% raise.

Smith replied that Pollay hadn’t received a raise in 8 of the past 10 years, “and I think there’s some opportunity for some catch-up.” She characterized a 5% raise as “extremely modest.”

Al McWilliams asked Powers if there were precedent for this raise compared to other positions within the city. Powers replied that the management employees of the city received a 3% increase this year. Last year they also got 3%. Prior to that there’d been a one-time adjustment, he said, and salary freezes during the recession.

The resolution regarding the increase states that “a number of important DDA projects were undertaken in FY 2014 under Ms. Pollay’s leadership, including opening the new First and Washington parking structure, creating a Street Framework planning initiative in partnership with the City, and working with the City Council to approve amendments to the DDA ordinance.”

The resolution also states that board members provided reviews of Pollay’s work in FY 2014, and the reviews “noted how effectively she works with the DDA Board to support board member involvement and effectiveness, how effectively DDA programs and projects are managed, and that Ms. Pollay serves as a vital resource for downtown stakeholders, and the community at large…”

Pollay has served as the DDA’s executive director since 1996.

Outcome: On a 9-1 vote, the board approved a 5% increase to Pollay’s salary, over dissent from Steve Powers. Russ Collins and Cyndi Clark were absent.

Annual Meeting

Immediately after its regular monthly meeting on July 2, the DDA board held its annual meeting to elect officers and form committees.

Annual Meeting: Election of Officers

John Mouat was nominated to serve as chair of the board for the coming fiscal year, which began on July 1, 2014. The nomination of Mouat as chair was made in accordance with the custom of the DDA board over the last several years – to elect the vice chair from the preceding year as chair. Mouat is a partner in the downtown firm of Mitchell & Mouat Architects.

Mouat’s term on the DDA board runs through Sept. 6, 2015. He was first appointed in 2007.

Other officers nominated by the board included Roger Hewitt as vice chair, Rishi Narayan as treasurer, and Keith Orr as secretary. Outgoing chair Sandi Smith was thanked for her service. She presided over the annual meeting until the end, as Mouat’s term began at the conclusion of the meeting.

There were no competing nominations.

Outcome: All officers were elected unanimously.

The executive committee consists of these four officers: chair, vice chair, treasurer and secretary. They serve in those positions for one-year terms. Given the custom of the board, Hewitt is now in a position to become the next chair. He has served on the DDA board since 2004 and his current term runs through Aug. 19, 2016. He owns two businesses in downtown Ann Arbor – Red Hawk restaurant, and Revive + Replenish shop.

Annual Meeting: Committee Structure

In other business at the annual meeting, the board discussed what committees it wanted to create or continue in the coming year.

The board’s bylaws state that committees can be created to advise the board. From the bylaws:

Committee members shall be members of the Board, any board member may serve on any committee of the Board. The Chair of the Board shall appoint the members and select the chair of the Board committees and will solicit volunteers to chair the standing committees. The committees may be terminated by vote of the Board. At the annual meeting, the committees will be evaluated and reappointed or dissolved.

Sandi Smith noted that for the last several years, all members of the board served on every committee. That way, she said, everyone got the meeting notices and packets. “I don’t know whether that’s a good practice or a bad practice, but it’s time that we bring that forward,” she said. Smith added that she believed she got the opportunity to appoint the committee chairs, as board chair.

The two existing committees were (1) partnerships/economic development/communications, and (2) operations. The partnerships committee includes a subcommittee on marketing. The board first considered whether to dissolve these committees.

Annual Meeting: Committee Structure – Partnerships, Marketing

Keith Orr advocated for keeping the partnerships/economic development/communications committee as is, with its marketing subcommittee working as needed. He didn’t think there needed to be a separate marketing committee.

Al McWilliams said he tended to agree with Orr. While marketing and communications activity is “picking up steam,” he didn’t think it was mature enough yet to need its own full committee.

The Ann Arbor DDA board.

Rishi Narayan pointed out that the partnerships meetings are getting unwieldy, so it might be better to pull out marketing and communications. If it turns out that a separate marketing/communications committee eventually isn’t needed, the board could dissolve it, he noted. This would allow there to be two separate meetings, each one shorter than the current combined committee.

Orr advocated for keeping it unchanged, and noted that the board can create a separate marketing committee during the year, if they feel they need it.

Joan Lowenstein agreed with Orr, saying she didn’t think the partnerships meeting was unwieldy. She noted that the board members are volunteers, and creating new committees requires yet another block of time to devote to the work. She thought it worked better for people’s schedules to consolidate as much as possible.

McWilliams then suggested creating separate committees, but holding back-to-back meetings.

Narayan said that in the future, if there’s a staff member focused on marketing and communications, “this area might become more fleshed out very quickly.” He noted that there’s been talk about hiring another employee for that purpose in the future, although he characterized that possibility as a “fantasy” at this point.

Smith picked up on McWilliams’ suggestion – having the partnerships meeting run from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., then a marketing committee could meet as needed at 12:30 p.m. People attending the partnerships meeting could stay for marketing if they’re interested, she said.

Mouat encouraged board members to arrive at committee meetings on time, saying it would help save time and make the meetings more efficient.

Steve Powers asked that the DDA board chair or executive director remind the partnerships committee members who represent other taxing jurisdictions about the purpose of the committee and the changes that are being made, “so that their expectations are in line with the DDA board’s expectations for that committee.”

Smith said it sounded like there was consensus for a new marketing committee. She asked that McWilliams serve as chair. She asked anyone who was interested in serving on the committee to raise their hand. She, McWilliams and Narayan raised their hands.

At this point, DDA executive director Susan Pollay asked whether the board was going to vote to dissolve the existing partnerships/economic development/communications committee, and vote to create the marketing committee.

Orr repeated his preference to keep the current committee structure.

Outcome: The board voted to dissolve the partnerships/economic development/communications committee.

Roger Hewitt then moved to create a partnerships committee and a marketing committee. As a friendly amendment, Keith Orr suggested that the partnerships committee be named partnerships/economic development.

Outcome: The board voted to create a partnerships/economic development committee and a marketing committee.

Sandi Smith asked Joan Lowenstein and Al McWilliams to serve as co-chairs of the partnerships/economic development committee. Other board members who volunteered to serve on the committee are Bob Guenzel, John Mouat, Rishi Narayan, Keith Orr, Sandi Smith, John Splitt.

Smith noted that “committee participants” of the partnerships/economic development committee are: Ken Clein (city planning commission); Jane Lumm and Margie Teall (Ann Arbor city council); Charles Griffith (Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority); and Jason Morgan (Washtenaw Community College). Based on an emailed response to a Chronicle query to Pollay, the DDA’s position appears to be that historically, membership on the partnerships committee was always restricted to DDA board members – because it has been a “board committee” under the DDA bylaws.

By way of background, however, the DDA bylaws provide for a second committee type – “advisory committees” – that do not have a requirement that members be DDA board members. It’s been assumed by at least some city councilmembers that those who are now being described as “committee participants” have been actual “members” of the partnerships committee and that the partnerships committee has been an “advisory committee” under the bylaws. To the extent that the DDA board committees function without taking formal votes or observing rules on quorum, the issue of committee membership as compared to “participation” could be considered moot.

At the July 2 meeting, Smith added that there was an “ongoing invitation” for representatives from Washtenaw County government and the Ann Arbor District Library to participate. “They know that they’ve been invited to come and share during the update time” during the partnerships meetings, she said.

By way of background, the DDA captures taxes from the following jurisdictions that collect taxes in the DDA district: the city of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Washtenaw Community College, the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority, and the Ann Arbor District Library. The partnerships committee includes representatives from each of those entities, with the exception of the AADL and Washtenaw County. Until last year, county commissioner Leah Gunn was a DDA board member and served on the partnerships committee. Former county administrator Bob Guenzel is on the DDA board and the partnerships committee.

When queried by The Chronicle via email, AADL director Josie Parker stated that she hadn’t been formally invited to join the committee. She said she did participate on the partnerships committee several years ago, but hasn’t been part of it at all in the last few years. That was her choice, she said.

Annual Meeting: Committee Structure – Operations, Finance

Roger Hewitt noted that the DDA has a budget of about $24 million. During the operations committee meetings, there’s a lot going on, he said, and the financial piece tends to not get the attention that it needs, given the size of the budget. Having a separate committee that focuses strictly on the financial aspects of the organization would be beneficial, he said.

DDA board members Roger Hewitt and John Splitt.

So Hewitt preferred two separate committees. He suggested that operations could continue to meet at 11 a.m., then would break for lunch and continue with a meeting of the finance committee. Anyone who’s on operations could attend the finance committee meeting, he said, but it would focus in more detail on the organization’s financial records and reports.

Keith Orr said he thought it made sense to have separate committees for operations and finance. Finance is an important enough subject to warrant its own committee, especially as the DDA’s budget continues to grow, he said. It’s important to develop people on the DDA board who are comfortable with the financial oversight role – especially since there are now term limits, he said. [The city council voted last year to impose a limit of three terms for DDA board members, which amount to 12 years.]

Hewitt then brought forward one resolution to: (1) dissolve the existing operations committee, and (2) form two new committees: the finance committee, and the operations (parking/transportation/construction) committee.

Outcome: The resolution passed unanimously.

Smith appointed the new board treasurer, Rishi Narayan, as chair of the finance committee. Other board members who volunteered for the committee were Bob Guenzel, Roger Hewitt, John Splitt and Keith Orr.

Smith then appointed John Splitt as chair of the operations committee. Other board members who volunteered to serve on the operations committee are Bob Guenzel, Roger Hewitt, Joan Lowenstein, Rishi Narayan, Keith Orr.

Annual Meeting: Committee Structure – Executive

Sandi Smith noted that the executive committee consists of the board officers: chair John Mouat, vice chair Roger Hewitt, secretary Keith Orr, and treasurer Rishi Narayan. Smith, as the most recent former board chair, is a non-voting member. The DDA’s executive director, Susan Pollay, is a non-voting ex officio member.

Annual Meeting: Committee Structure – Membership

Committee membership was determined by board members volunteering for the committees on which they wanted to serve. The committee chairs were appointed by outgoing DDA board chair Sandi Smith. The four new committees have the following membership:

• Marketing committee: Al McWilliams (chair), Rishi Narayan and Sandi Smith.
• Partnerships/economic development committee: Joan Lowenstein and Al McWilliams (co-chairs), Bob Guenzel, John Mouat, Rishi Narayan, Keith Orr, Sandi Smith, John Splitt. Listed as “committee participants” of the partnerships/economic development committee on the agenda are: Ken Clein (city planning commission); Jane Lumm and Margie Teall (Ann Arbor city council); Charles Griffith (Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority); and Jason Morgan (Washtenaw Community College).
• Finance committee: Rishi Narayan (chair), Bob Guenzel, Roger Hewitt, John Splitt and Keith Orr.
• Operations (parking/transportation/construction) committee: John Splitt (chair), Bob Guenzel, Roger Hewitt, Joan Lowenstein, Rishi Narayan, Keith Orr.

Two board members – Cyndi Clark and Russ Collins – were absent, and will likely be joining one or more of the committees.

Steve Powers noted that he hadn’t volunteered for any of the committees, but he’d try to attend meetings if assistance is needed. He encouraged the committee members to make sure that the purpose of the committees is clearly understood by committee members, staff and the public. It’s important to be aligned regarding the role of the committees, he said, and to maintain the positive relationship between the DDA board, staff, and the other jurisdictions.

Smith agreed, saying that in September each committee should kick off their meeting with a re-introduction of members, and a discussion of purpose.

Powers said he appreciated that the board priorities were posted on the DDA boardroom wall, saying that it’s a powerful reminder about why the DDA is here and what they’re focusing on. He suggested doing something similar for the committees. Smith joked that “it’s easy to be swayed by shiny objects.”

Annual Meeting: Committee Structure – Coda, Future Meetings

The board discussed the possibility of canceling its committee meetings for July. Roger Hewitt indicated a possible need to meet to discuss renovations at the Fourth & William parking structure, but that might be handled by a subcommittee. Sandi Smith wanted to have a partnerships meeting in July but not August. She wanted to evaluate the partnerships grant policy, after awarding its first grant under the new policy. She thought the committee should review the policy while the action was still fresh, rather than waiting until August or September.

After further discussion, the board decided to leave the July committee meetings in place.

According to the DDA’s website, upcoming committee meetings will take place at the DDA offices, 150 S. Fifth, Suite 301:

• Partnerships & Economic Development: Wednesday, July 9 at 9 a.m.
• Marketing: Wednesday, July 9 at 10:30 a.m.
• Operations: Wednesday, July 9 at 1 p.m. and Wednesday, July 30 at 11 a.m.
• Finance: Wednesday, July 30 at 12:30 p.m.

In addition, the board has scheduled a meeting on Wednesday, July 9 at 11:30 a.m. to discuss the design of the Fourth & William stair tower & elevator tower. All committee meetings are open to the public.

Communications, Committee Reports

The board’s July 2 meeting included the usual range of reports from its standing committees and the downtown citizens advisory council, as well as public commentary. Here are some highlights.

Comm/Comm: Downtown Area Citizens Advisory Council

Reporting out from the downtown area citizens advisory council, Ray Detter said the group recently welcomed two potential new members who live and work downtown. He said the advisory council would welcome the participation of others who live or work in the downtown area and who are interested in shaping developments downtown. There are three more membership openings. The group meets on the first Tuesday of every month except August at 7 p.m. in city hall.

He noted that by next fall, new developments will open that bring hundreds of residential units to the downtown, and “amazingly, our group is in full support of most of them.” Those developments that avoid having a negative impact are being undertaken by local developers, he noted.

But most of the advisory council’s July 1 meeting had been focused on the future of the Library Lane site, Detter reported, where a current surface parking lot is located atop the underground parking structure there. He noted that the city council provided direction to the city administrator to hire a broker to explore selling the development rights for that site, while reserving a portion of the property for a downtown park.

Members of the advisory council strongly support a significantly sized public plaza on the Fifth Avenue side of that location, Detter said. They also support pedestrian walkways to Liberty Plaza, and believe that all future development should take into consideration the needs of the Ann Arbor District Library and possible connections to the Blake Transit Center as well as nearby historic properties, and businesses. They encourage the possibility of a new tax-generating private or public development on the major part of that Library Lane property, he said.

Detter noted that the issue of improving Liberty Plaza has apparently been moved to the city’s park advisory commission. He said most of the citizens advisory council believe that changes to Liberty Plaza should be part of a larger plan for the entire block. The city about a decade ago spent $250,000 on redesigning Liberty Plaza – with $50,000 from the city’s parks department, and the rest provided by the DDA, he said. It’s a beautiful park, Detter added, and he hoped it would be part of a larger plan for the block.

Comm/Comm: Streetscape Framework Project

John Mouat noted that there was no agenda item for an update on the DDA’s streetscape framework project. He asked Amber Miller, the DDA’s planning and research specialist, to provide an update.

Miller said the staff and consultants had done some on-the-ground outreach, getting feedback from people who were using the streets downtown. They heard from over 200 people and got a lot of good feedback. She said they’ve also pulled in an “economics team” that focuses on retail and ground-floor uses, to make sure that any streetscape improvements would benefit those active uses. That team made its visit on July 1 and July 2, she said, meeting with some DDA board members and walking around the downtown district. More information would be provided at the project’s next advisory committee meeting, Miller said.

The next advisory committee meeting is Tuesday, July 8 at 9 a.m. at the DDA’s office, 150 S. Fifth, Suite 301. The meeting is open to the public.

By way of background, at its Nov. 6, 2013 meeting, the DDA board authorized the consulting contract SmithGroupJJR and Nelson\Nygaard to manage the project. According to the project’s website, a “comprehensive set of design, construction, and maintenance standards can enhance and maintain the high quality experience provided by some streets and improve the identity and functionality of others. A framework plan will be a tool to ensure downtown streets provide a high quality of place for all users, while also meeting broader community goals.”

Feedback is also being collected via an online survey and a wiki mapping tool.

Comm/Comm: Connector Study

Roger Hewitt reported on the status of the connector study. [By way of background, an alternatives analysis is currently being conducted by the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority for the corridor running from US-23 and Plymouth southward along Plymouth to State Street, then further south to I-94. The alternatives analysis phase will result in a preferred choice of transit mode (e.g., bus rapid transit, light rail, etc.) and identification of stations and stops.]

The technical oversight committee met last week, Hewitt said, and are very close to wrapping up its preliminary conclusions. A public meeting is planned for Sept. 17, he reported. That will take place in the evening at the Ann Arbor District Library to bring the public up to date, with two sessions – at 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

Hewitt described it as a long and arduous process, going through reams of data. They’re close to making recommendations, depending on public input, he said.

Comm/Comm: WALLY

Roger Hewitt also gave an update on the federally funded study regarding a railroad station for a north/south commuter rail running between Ann Arbor and Howell. [The project is known as WALLY – the Washtenaw and Livingston Line.]

View looking south toward Liberty along the railroad tracks between Washington and Liberty. If the commuter rail project known as WALLY moves forward, a proposed train stop might be located here, in the railroad right-of-way east of the tracks – on the left side of this photo.

Hewitt said this service is probably a significant way off from being offered, but there had been funding for a study to recommend station locations. The consultants evaluated “every possible location” between North Main Street south to where Fingerle Lumber is located, he said.

The final site recommendation for a stop is for the east side of the railroad tracks between Liberty and Washington streets, Hewitt reported – opposite of where the former city maintenance yard was located [at 415 W. Washington]. He said it wouldn’t be a full station – it would simply be a platform with canopies and a ramp to Washington Street to the north and a sidewalk connection to the south onto Liberty.

The stop would be built entirely within the railroad right-of-way, he explained – there would be no taking of public or private property.

Hewitt said he’d like to make a short formal presentation about the recommendation at a future DDA board meeting.

Comm/Comm: Communications & Marketing

Rishi Narayan reported that the marketing/communications subcommittee was still collecting data to determine what the DDA’s place might be in marketing the downtown. Traditionally, marketing hasn’t been part of the DDA’s role, he noted, so if they decide to do it, they need to make sure it’s efficient in time, money and staff energy.

Narayan said they’re working with a company, at no cost to the DDA, to develop a plan that would give the DDA some macro-economic data. They’ve also started talking with Republic Parking, which oversees the city’s parking system under contract with the DDA, to see if there’s a way to extract information from Republic’s data.

Because the art fairs are approaching, people don’t have a lot of time to talk about this, Narayan noted. He hoped to come back with recommendations in the coming months. It might mean partnering with the downtown area associations and the Ann Arbor Convention and Visitors Bureau to do more, such as grants for events.

Al McWilliams noted that the CVB is doing data collection during the art fairs, to show what the impact of those events are. The CVB will be sharing that data with the DDA.

Comm/Comm: Fourth & William Renovations

John Splitt reported that the subcommittee for renovations at the Fourth & William parking structure had met with the design team. Construction drawings for the elevator and stair tower are moving forward. By way of background, the board had approved the $5 million project budget at its May 2, 2014 meeting, with Carl Walker Inc. handling the design.

Image from preliminary drawings by the Carl Walker Inc. design team for renovated southwest elevator and stair tower for the Fourth & William parking structure.

The subcommittee is still fleshing out general concepts about the rest of the potential build-out along Fourth and Williams, Splitt said. They want to be as flexible as possible, and would like to see wheelchair access, awnings and ways to break up the horizontal surfaces. Architect Carl Luckenbach has come up with some different concepts that the subcommittee is considering.

They haven’t decided where bathrooms might be installed, and aren’t certain how much space they can build out without triggering city code issues for ventilation and fire suppression, Splitt reported. The subcommittee is meeting with the design team again in the next week, and might emerge with answers to some of these questions.

John Mouat said they’d be reaching out to “our realtor friends” to get advice about what the “white box” might be for this build-out, to make sure that it’s viable for potential tenants.

Roger Hewitt reported that the subcommittee already had one meeting with real estate professionals. The feedback was that there’s big demand for business incubator start-up space, he said.

Keith Orr told the board that construction of the Greyhound ticket office at the Fourth & William structure is underway, and the bus company will be relocating there next week – ahead of schedule. The office was previously located at the site on West Huron where First Martin is now constructing an extended-stay hotel.

Comm/Comm: Ambassadors

Reporting out from the operations committee, Roger Hewitt noted that a meeting had been held with several representatives of local social service agencies, as well as Ann Arbor police chief John Seto and Mary Kerr from the Ann Arbor Convention & Visitors Bureau. They discussed how an ambassador program might be integrated into existing efforts, and complement those efforts.

Now they’re trying to figure out how to frame an RFP (request for proposals), Hewitt said. They’d like to bring the two potential providers here for interviews, he added. A meeting is set for Wednesday, July 9 at 1 p.m. to discuss exactly how to structure the interview process.

Hewitt expected to set up interviews sometime before the end of this summer.

Comm/Comm: Parking Update

Roger Hewitt said there was nothing new to report, other than the monthly permit data that was provided in the board packet.

Comm/Comm: City Updates

City administrator Steve Powers gave a couple of updates that related to the DDA district. The city council, as part of its approval of the fiscal 2015 budget, has authorized hiring three new police officers. Two of the three positions will be community engagement officers who’ll be starting by the end of July, he said. Downtown will be a priority area for their work over the summer.

Sandi Smith asked Powers to elaborate on the nature of the community engagement work. Powers described it as an initiative that police chief John Seto has been advocating since he took that position. Currently there is one officer doing community engagement – Sgt. Tom Hickey. The additional officers will help Hickey engage with three areas of emphasis: downtown businesses, neighborhoods and public schools. Their work will contrast with patrol activity or calls for service, Powers said, in that they’ll be more pro-active.

Powers also noted that during this year’s art fairs, the city’s police, fire and emergency management staff will be using Liberty Plaza – on the southwest corner of Liberty and Division – as staging area and a cooling station for the public. There will be misting and water available, as well as shade, he said. Red Cross will be participating, as will the city’s volunteer community emergency response team (CERT).

Comm/Comm: Real-Time Parking Data

During public commentary, Ed Vielmetti noted that in 2009, he’d approached the board with ideas and a prototype of a system to monitor and provide real-time information about the city parking system. At the time, the DDA board was not interested in supporting it, he said, and the DDA removed access to the real-time information. He said he’s recently spoken to staff at Republic Parking, which manages the city’s parking system under contract with the DDA, and showed them some prototypes. They’d been receptive to some of the ideas, he said, but had made it clear that a good first step would be to talk with the DDA board.

Vielmetti said his system could provide real-time alerts when parking structures are full, for example, among other features. He said he’s built all of this on his own, mostly as a demonstration project. He’d be happy to share the results of the prototype with board members. He’s doing a similar project for a solar energy-monitoring system.

Sandi Smith suggested that Vielmetti talk with DDA executive director Susan Pollay, as well as the board’s operations committee.

Comm/Comm: TiniLite

Changmin Fan introduced himself as the owner of TiniLite World. He said the company is registered in Ann Arbor, and he has a factory in China that’s building a prototype. He’d like to manufacture the product here, however. He said all four mayoral candidates are great, but noted that Sally Petersen has pointed out the city’s economic development needs. The economic ecosystem isn’t very good for him, Fan said. Small businesses and people – not just the University of Michigan – are the engine for economic development in this city. Communications are also important, he added, and there needs to be smart signs on the street. The DDA can take a leadership position on this, he concluded.

Comm/Comm: BTC Open House

Nancy Shore, director of the getDowntown program, invited board members to the Blake Transit Center grand opening on Monday, July 7 at 10 a.m. There will be tours, food and “dignitaries aplenty,” she said. The getDowntown office is located on the second floor, and she urged them to drop by.

Shore also reported that there is a community space within that facility where meetings can take place. It might be a nice location for a retreat, she said.

The Blake Transit Center is the downtown hub for the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority. It’s located north of William Street between Fourth and Fifth avenues.

Comm/Comm: Bill’s Beer Garden

Board chair Sandi Smith noted that the DDA board would be gathering that night at Bill’s Beer Garden at 6 p.m. She joked that the purpose was “to have some very serious discussions about Original Gravity, IBUs and things like that.” She said it would be open to the public, and is a celebration of hard work by a lot of volunteers.

Comm/Comm: Staff Thank You to Board Members

At the end of the annual meeting, executive director Susan Pollay made a presentation to the board, saying it was the staff’s chance to thank the board. DDA board members are volunteers, she said. “I don’t know that that’s widely understood out in the community.” She thanked the board for their service.

Pollay also said that it’s a tradition for the staff to present a small gift to the outgoing board chair. This year, the gift was inspired by a trip to New York, she said. “It was a wonderful moment for many of us to actually be in one of the most fabulous cities in the world.” [The trip was for the International Downtown Association conference in October 2013.] The gift comes from Selo/Shevel Gallery on Main Street in Ann Arbor, which closed earlier this year. It’s a pin that evokes a cityscape of tall buildings, Pollay said.

Smith received a round of applause from staff and the board.

Present: Al McWilliams, Bob Guenzel, Roger Hewitt, Steve Powers, John Splitt, Sandi Smith, Rishi Narayan, Keith Orr, Joan Lowenstein, John Mouat.

Absent: Russ Collins, Cyndi Clark.

Next board meeting: The board does not meet in August. The next board meeting is at noon on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2014, at the DDA offices, 150 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 301. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date.]

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The Huron Street project is receiving a $390,000 grant. It’s an extended-stay hotel, which will be built by First Martin Corp. at the intersection of Huron and Ashley streets. The new building will be an 88,570-square-foot structure with a ground-floor restaurant or retail space. The extended-stay hotel will occupy the upper five levels and will be be operated by Marriott. The city council gave approval to the site plan at its June 16, 2014 meeting.

The $390,000 breaks down like this:

$340,000 New 12” water main on Ashley Street, and related hardscape 
$ 10,000 Sidewalk enhancements on Ashley Street 
$ 40,000 Right-of-way landscape maintenance (20-year commitment) 

$390,000 TOTAL

-

The $390,000 amount is to be distributed over three years – $100,000 (Year 1); $145,000 (Year 2); and $145,000 (Year 3).

The maximum amount that can be awarded to a project under the DDA grant policy – adopted by the DDA board at its June 2, 2014 meeting – is 25% of the tax increment capture due to the project that the DDA receives for the first 10 years after the project is built. That amount is about $390,000, according to First Martin Corp. based on an annual figure of $156,515. But the DDA’s resolution indicates the figure has not yet been verified by the city assessor. Grants are not awarded until after the taxes are paid.

Mike Martin and Darren McKinnon attended the meeting and gave a brief presentation about the project.

The 618 S. Main project is an apartment complex that Dan Ketelaar’s Urban Group Development Co. intends to market to young professionals. The 7-story building would include 190 units for 231 bedrooms, plus two levels of parking for 121 vehicles.

The original $650,000 grant to the 618 S. Main Street project was approved by the DDA board at its June 6, 2012 meeting, a week before the city council gave its approval to the project on June 18, 2012.

The $650,000 total breaks down as follows:

 $85,000 Streetscape costs (sidewalk adjacent to project on Mosley/Main)
$384,500 Streetscape costs (sidewalk on west side of Main north of project)
$100,000 Rain garden to infiltrate stormwater, rather than detain and release
$ 80,500 Upsizing the water main under Ashley Street to a 12” pipe

$650,000 TOTAL

-

That total is to be disbursed over four years in the following amounts: $100,000, $225,000, $225,000, and $175,000. None of the money is to be awarded before the taxes are paid each year. The DDA will use the tax increment finance capture from the project to make the grant payments.

Without an extension of the grant, it would expire automatically. The length of the extension, to receive all construction permits and to complete the project, is one year. The project has been delayed by the harsh winter.

The vote on the 618 S. Main grant was unanimous. Al McWilliams abstained on the vote for the First Martin project, but did not indicate why.

This brief was filed from the DDA offices, 150 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 301, where the DDA board holds its meetings.

Rendering of proposed hotel at the northeast corner of West Huron and Ashley. The One North Main building is visible to the east.

The proposal calls for a six-floor, 88,570-square-foot building with a ground-floor restaurant or retail space and an extended-stay hotel on the upper five levels. The hotel will be operated by Marriott.

The current site at 116-120 W. Huron includes a Greyhound bus depot and a one-story building that houses the Ann Arbor Convention & Visitors Bureau. Both of those buildings will be demolished. The bus depot facade will remain in place as part of the new building’s design. [.pdf of staff report]

The main hotel entrance is proposed for the building’s west side, facing North Ashley, while the main entrance for the restaurant or retail space is proposed to face West Huron, on the building’s south side. The site is zoned D1, which allows for the highest density development in the downtown. According to the staff memo, five off-street parking spaces are required.

First Martin has secured a letter of commitment from Zipcar, a car-sharing service, for two vehicles. Parking spaces for those cars are proposed at the northeast corner of the site. For purposes of the city’s parking requirement, the two Zipcars would count as eight off-street parking spaces, and would satisfy the requirement. The two existing curbcuts – on North Ashley and West Huron – will be closed, and access to the two parking spaces, loading dock and trash/recycling would be from the mid-block alley to the north. The alley is currently one-way, and will be converted to a two-way alley and repaved.

The current site at 116-120 W. Huron, looking north. One North Main is the building on the right. The city’s Ann Ashley parking structure is visible in the background.

Streetscape changes will include curb bump-outs on North Ashley, on the north and south ends of the site for passenger drop-off. Nine bicycle parking spaces are required for the project, and would include two bike hoops in the North Ashley right-of-way and two in the West Huron right-of-way, for a total of eight bike spaces. Three more hoops are proposed for the Ann Ashley parking structure, with First Martin paying for labor and materials. The city of Ann Arbor and Downtown Development Authority would assume responsibility for maintenance of those hoops.

Construction is estimated to cost $13 million. In giving the staff report to the planning commission, city planner Alexis DiLeo noted that the Greyhound bus depot has been at that location since 1940, and the site has been a transportation hub since 1898.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron.

The development of the policy was spurred by a request from First Martin Corp., which has asked the DDA to support its extended-stay hotel project at the corner of Ashley and Huron streets.

Highlights of the policy include a limit on the amount, keyed to the amount of tax increment finance (TIF) revenue the project will generate: “… calculated to be between 1% and 25% of the ten year TIF captured by the DDA from this project, with these funds to be directed to the cost of the public improvements agreed to by the DDA.”

Criteria for awarding grants include:

1. Addresses a documented gap in the marketplace or underserved markets of commerce within this sector of downtown.
2. Demonstrated that the project will act as a catalyst for additional revitalization of the area in which it is located which will trigger the creation of additional new tax revenue.
3. Is “connected” to the adjacent sidewalk with uses on the first floor that are showcased using large transparent windows and doorways to give pedestrians a point of interest to look at as they walk by the project.
4. Creates a large office floor plate.
5. Will facilitate the creation of a large number of new permanent jobs.
6. Is a mixed use development, that will encourage activity in the daytime, evening, and weekend, such as a development with a mix of commercial and residential.
7. Adds to downtown’s residential density.
8. Reuses vacant buildings, reuses historical buildings, and/or redevelops blighted property.
9. Number of affordable housing units created on site or funded by the project elsewhere in the community, which are beyond what is required by the city.
10. Environmental design is at or above a Gold LEED certification, or an equivalent environmental assessment.
11. Architecturally significant building or project design.
12. Strengthens Ann Arbor’s national visibility.

The grant policy adopted on June 4 is similar to but distinct from a policy the board adopted at its June 6, 2012 meeting to cover brownfield grants – a policy that was spurred by the 618 S. Main project. [.pdf of brownfield policy]

This brief was filed from the DDA offices at 150 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 301. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

Mike Martin of First Martin Corp. answered questions from planning commissioners at their May 20, 2014 meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

Issues included blocked views, noise from rooftop mechanicals, and problems with egress from One North Main’s underground parking. But even people who raised these concerns applauded the project, saying a hotel there would help bring vitality to that part of town. The site on the northeast corner, owned by First Martin Corp., now includes a building that houses the Ann Arbor Convention & Visitors Bureau and the bus depot for Greyhound, which will be relocating next month to the city’s Fourth & William parking structure.

First Martin’s proposal includes a six-floor, 88,570-square-foot building with a ground-floor restaurant or retail space facing Huron and an extended-stay hotel on the upper five levels, with an entrance off of Ashley. The hotel will be operated by Marriott. The bus depot facade – including an iconic art moderne sign – will remain in place.

The project will be forwarded to the city council for consideration.

Also heading to the council with a recommendation of approval is an expansion of the Bank of Ann Arbor’s downtown building at the northeast corner South Fifth and East Washington. The plan involves reorienting the main entrance – moving it from the center of the bank’s South Fifth Avenue side to the corner of Fifth and Washington. A 9,179-square-foot third-floor addition would be constructed over the rear of the building’s east side.

The bank has an existing drive-thru teller window on its north side, which will not be altered. The site’s D1 zoning requires a special exception use for drive-thrus, which the planning commission granted in a separate vote. Because the project is going through a site plan approval process, the requirement for a special exception use was triggered. Special exception uses do not require additional city council approval.

Commissioners amended the special exception use to limit the drive-thru to a financial institution, so that it can’t be used in the future for other businesses – like a pharmacy or fast food restaurant. That amendment, put forward by Sabra Briere, was approved on a 6-2 vote, over dissent from Wendy Woods and Eleanore Adenekan. Briere also proposed an amendment that would restrict the hours that the drive-thru could be open. The concern was that vehicles pulling out from the drive-thru onto Fifth Avenue could cause a threat to pedestrians and bicyclists in the evening. But after discussion – including some comments from Hans Maier, a senior executive for the bank – Briere withdrew that amendment.

Two other special exception use requests were granted during the May 20 meeting – from companies selling seasonal Class C fireworks for the July 4 holiday. Phantom Fireworks will be putting up a tent in the parking lot of the Maple Village Shopping Center, across from Veterans Memorial Park. In previous years the business operated in the parking lot of Colonial Lanes on South Industrial. Patriot Fireworks will be selling fireworks in the parking lot of the Twin Valley shopping center at 2750 Jackson Ave., west of the I-94 overpass. Both special exception uses were amended to limit the sales to fireworks only – not other seasonal items – and to put specific limits on the days of operation.

One item was postponed by commissioners on May 20 – a site plan for Mark Condominiums on West Liberty, brought forward by developer Alex de Parry. The postponement was based on a recommendation from the planning staff, to allow time for a public water system issue to be addressed. City staff determined that the six-inch water main along Liberty needs to be replaced with a 12-inch main. De Parry told commissioners that the development team had just recently been informed about this issue, and they are now analyzing the budget impact and alternatives they might pursue.

Downtown Hotel

The site plan and development agreement for a new downtown hotel at the northeast corner of North Ashley and West Huron were on the May 20 agenda.

Rendering of proposed hotel at the northeast corner of West Huron and Ashley. The One North Main building is visible to the east.

The proposal brought forward by First Martin Corp. calls for a six-floor, 88,570-square-foot building with a ground-floor restaurant or retail space and an extended-stay hotel on the upper five levels. The hotel will be operated by Marriott.

The current site at 116-120 W. Huron includes a Greyhound bus depot and a one-story building that houses the Ann Arbor Convention & Visitors Bureau. Both of those buildings will be demolished. The bus depot facade will remain in place as part of the new building’s design. [.pdf of staff report]

The main hotel entrance is proposed for the building’s west side, facing North Ashley, while the main entrance for the restaurant or retail space is proposed to face West Huron, on the building’s south side. The site is zoned D1, which allows for the highest density development in the downtown. According to the staff memo, five off-street parking spaces are required. First Martin has secured a letter of commitment from Zipcar, a car-sharing service, for two vehicles. Parking spaces for those cars are proposed at the northeast corner of the site. For purposes of the city’s parking requirement, the two Zipcars would count as eight off-street parking spaces, and would satisfy the requirement.

The two existing curbcuts – on North Ashley and West Huron – will be closed, and access to the two parking spaces, loading dock and trash/recycling would be from the mid-block alley to the north. The alley is currently one-way, and will be converted to a two-way alley and repaved.

The current site at 116-120 W. Huron, looking north. One North Main is the building on the right. The city’s Ann Ashley parking structure is visible in the background.

Streetscape changes will include curb bump-outs on North Ashley, on the north and south ends of the site for passenger drop-off.

Nine bicycle parking spaces are required for the project, and would include two bike hoops in the North Ashley right-of-way and two in the West Huron right-of-way, for a total of eight bike spaces. Three more hoops are proposed for the Ann Ashley parking structure, with First Martin paying for labor and materials. The city of Ann Arbor and Downtown Development Authority would assume responsibility for maintenance of those hoops. The installation of hoops in the city’s right-of-way will require city council approval. The planning commission was asked to make a recommendation on that as well.

Construction is estimated to cost $13 million.

In giving the staff report, city planner Alexis DiLeo noted that the Greyhound bus depot has been at that location since 1940, and the site has been a transportation hub since 1898.

Downtown Hotel: Public Hearing

Four people spoke during the public hearing about this project. Changmin Fan told commissioners that Ann Arbor is expanding, and he was impressed by the proposed hotel. But there are also challenges. The city needs to consider how to maintain a dynamic downtown, he said.

This hand-drawn alternative site plan proposed by Todd Sachse representing One North Main was passed out at the May 20 planning commission meeting.

Todd Sachse represented One North Main, the office and residential building east of the hotel site, on the northwest corner of Main and Huron. They were happy to see a development on that site and the hotel will be a great contribution to downtown, he said. However, the current design will block about half of the windows on the west side for the commercial condominiums. So he proposed an alternative plan that would shift the building about 12-15 feet to the west, and extend the building to the north. To do this, it would require cooperation from the city and from First Martin. The alternative plan would result in the same amount of square footage and rooms, Sachse said. He thought that if the city cooperated quickly, it could be accomplished in a way that would be a win-win-win for the new development, the city, and One North Main.

Stephen Ranzini introduced himself as a resident of One North Main and president of University Bank. He thanked First Martin for proposing a hotel on this site, saying it’s an excellent building. He cautioned against doing anything that would damage the value of the adjacent property, however.

In addition to the issues Sachse had mentioned, Ranzini warned against noise generated by mechanical systems on top of the hotel. There needs to be baffling of air-conditioning systems and elevators, he said. Residents on the upper floors of One North Main, on the west side, enjoy the amenity of their outdoor balconies, he noted. If the noise from the hotel is loud, that would be damaging. Ranzini criticized the city for ignoring noise coming from the top of the nearby KeyBank building. “This is a good example of bad planning leading to persistent bad results, right?”

Todd Sachse.

Another issue is the exit from the underground parking at One North Main, Ranzini said. It’s very valuable to have parking underneath your downtown building, he noted – each resident has two spaces. But people illegally block egress, he said, and there’s concern that the hotel will exacerbate that situation. It’s important to preserve the value of existing investments, he said, while new investments come in. He also complained about the signs on the Ann Ashley public parking structure, saying that they’re inadequate to indicate entry and egress.

Richard Broder spoke on behalf of the One North Main condominium association, which includes both residential and commercial condos. He thought the hotel proposal was right for the community, but he shared concerns of previous speakers. He hoped planning commissioners would consider issues related to the back alley and the separation of the buildings.

Downtown Hotel: Commission Discussion

Sabra Briere asked First Martin Corp. representatives – Mike Martin and Darren McKinnon – to answer some questions about the concerns raised during public commentary by residents of One North Main. What’s been done in the design phase to address those concerns?

Martin replied that the design team has met with representatives of both the residential and commercial condo associations. Prior to submitting the hotel proposal, Martin said they worked with the city to make two-way access and egress off of the Ann Street alley. Having more ways to get into and out of that area is important, he said. One problem in the past has been dumpsters, he noted. They’ve worked with city staff and the Ann Arbor Downtown Development to potentially designate some parking spaces for delivery vehicles. Martin said they share concerns about having a functional alley, so they’re working to improve the circulation and plan to enforce “good parking behavior.”

Briere was also interested in the issue of noise from rooftop mechanicals. What has the hotel design done to baffle sound?

McKinnon replied, saying they’d talked to Ranzini about this issue. They brought an acoustic consultant on board as part of the design team, and there will be screening on the roof for both visuals and sound, he said. They’re making every effort to limit the impact, he said. Martin added that each hotel room has VTAC (vertical terminal air conditioning) units. Because there’s not a central system, the amount of equipment on the roof will be greatly reduced, he said.

Briere asked the staff if the city has looked into dedicating two of the metered spaces in the city-owned Ann Ashley parking lot for delivery. Not yet, Alexis DiLeo replied, but that’s something that could be explored. Responding to another query from Briere, DiLeo indicated that other issues related to the midblock alleys, including better directional signs from the parking area, could be discussed. Martin noted that First Martin has contributed to the cost of installing a security camera so that Republic Parking, which manages the city’s parking system on behalf of the DDA, can monitor the area.

Alexis DiLeo of the city’s planning staff.

These issues are moving in a positive direction, Briere said. Her biggest concern is that as new buildings are added, there are all these other “moving pieces” that need to be considered. She referred to additional issues raised in an email from Kathy and Angelos Constantinides, who are One North Main residents. [.pdf of Constantinides email]

Kirk Westphal asked staff to describe what’s allowed, in terms of noise and air rights. He also asked for an explanation about the building separation issue, noting that sometimes people wonder why some projects have a blank wall with no windows – it’s because another building could be constructed right next to it, he said.

Regarding building separation, DiLeo explained that the One North Main project was a planned unit development (PUD). When it was built, it received a variance from the city’s building board of appeals to have windows on its west facade at the property line. Normally, windows are either prohibited or the size is greatly reduced because of issues like fire penetration and the fact that an adjacent building could also be built up to the property line. DiLeo was under the impression that the variance indicated the windows would need to be closed if another building was constructed adjacent to it. “So they enjoyed 30 or 40 years of windows,” she said.

Regarding noise, the city code is a bit antiquated in terms of noise decibel level, DiLeo said. It worked well when there were no residents downtown, but now it doesn’t seem to adequately address noise for residents. The staff has worked with the developer to voluntarily include noise buffers and other design aspects that minimize noise, she said.

Diane Giannola asked where the mechanicals would be located, in relation to One North Main residents. McKinnon replied that air-conditioning compressors are notoriously the loudest mechanical systems. “There’s none of that on the roof whatsoever,” he said. Most of the rooftop equipment will be for ventilation of the hotel’s public corridors.

Diane Giannola.

Martin added that there are two floors of vertical separation between the hotel rooftop and the residential floors of One North Main. The hotel is six stories, and residential units of One North Main begin on the eighth floor. From the audience, Ranzini said: “The noise goes up.” That’s a valid point, Martin replied, but it’s a couple of floors down and also offset from the property line. Martin hoped that the design and less noisy new equipment “would win the day” in terms of reducing noise.

Giannola asked if the window units would make noise. McKinnon replied that when the units are on, it makes about as much noise as the compressor of a home air-conditioning unit. They don’t run all at once, he noted.

Ken Clein pointed to a relevant section in the development agreement, which states: “(P-11) To design, construct, repair and maintain this development in accordance with the provisions of Chapter 119 (Noise Control) to ensure that any noise emanating from said development will not impact nearby residents or businesses. In addition, PROPRIETOR shall review existing noise sources surrounding said development and incorporate necessary design and construction techniques to ensure that future tenants will not be exposed to noise sources in violation of Chapter 119.”

Westphal asked staff to explain who residents can contact if construction noise becomes a problem. DiLeo said she can give contact info to the One North Main condo associations. Typically, the responsibility for enforcing issues related to construction fall to the city’s building department or the police department’s community standards unit.

Clein asked about the at-grade pedestrian passageway between One North Main and the hotel site, leading back to the parking area. He knew it wasn’t First Martin’s responsibility, but wondered if they planned to enhance it in any way. Martin replied that there will be some lighting and landscaping, to give it a “softer edge.” He also thought that having more people in that area would help that entire corridor.

Responding to another query from Clein, Martin said they don’t yet have a tenant identified for the retail/restaurant space.

Wendy Woods asked about the car-sharing service. Martin explained that the Zipcars would be available to anyone who had a membership with that company – it wasn’t just limited to hotel guests. The hope would be that someone could take the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority’s AirRide from the Detroit Metro airport to Ann Arbor, then use Zipcar to get around town.

Eleanore Adenekan.

Westphal asked how comfortable Martin was that the space fronting Huron would be leased to a retailer or restaurant. He was very confident, Martin replied. They’ve had some conversations with local restauranteurs, and have signed up with a commercial brokerage to show it. Early indications are very positive, he said, but they haven’t signed anyone up yet. Martin said he expected they’d end up with a restaurant there that would complement the hotel.

Westphal asked if that’s something that First Martin would be willing to include in the development agreement – a commitment to restaurant or retail uses? Martin indicated they’d be willing to talk about that. The ground floor of the hotel will be an extremely active use, he noted. However, he’d like to have as much flexibility as possible in the development agreement. Twenty years ago, no one would have said that a brokerage firm would be an active retail use, he noted, but now it is.

Westphal clarified that he didn’t want to see office or any kind of financial use there, which elicited a laugh from other commissioners. [Westphal has been vocal about how banks and other financial institutions with storefronts create dead space along a street.]

Jeremy Peters asked whether the hotel would have valet service, to help some of the issues related to drop-offs, traffic and parking. Martin replied that they’d talked with Art Low of Republic Parking, with the intent of working out an agreement for valet service to use some of the nearby public parking spaces.

Briere noted that the draft development agreement mentions footing drain disconnects. She was under the impression that First Martin was working on an alternative to footing drain disconnects. McKinnon said he’s met with city staff on this issue, and is planning to take some ideas to the citizens advisory committee for the sanitary sewer wet weather evaluation study. He hopes to participate as the committee develops recommendations for city council.

Ken Clein.

Martin added that they’re certainly willing to mitigate, but they’d like to have language in the development agreement that would provide for some flexibility, if the footing drain disconnect program changes.

There was some back-and-forth between Briere, Martin and McKinnon about the two different types of city programs – a residential footing drain disconnection program, and a developer offset mitigation program. McKinnon noted that the two programs are different, but related.

Woods referenced the hand-drawn alternative design that Todd Sachse had distributed during his public commentary. She urged Sachse to discuss it with the First Martin team. Kirk Westphal asked Martin about that alternative design in relation to the city’s mandated citizen participation meeting.

Martin replied that the One North Main representatives were having “off-line” conversations with First Martin about this alternative design. “We evaluated it,” he said. “We came up with a number of reasons why it did not work for us in our development.” The primary reason is that the alternative design would require getting easements from the city, he added. It’s uncertain that the city would grant the easements, and unclear how long the process might take.

One other problem is that if the hotel is taller than six floors, it would require compliance with the city’s high-rise code and also affect First Martin’s agreement with Marriott. “We’ve been on record with [Sachse] telling them it’s just not something we can do,” Martin said.

Briere asked for clarification about where hotel patrons will be dropped off. Martin replied that the drop-off, loading and unloading will be along North Ashley. There might be some sort of outdoor cafe space in front of the hotel, and a couple of on-street parking spaces. He confirmed for Briere that the hotel will include front-desk concierge service to contact taxis for customers.

Planning commissioners Paras Parekh and Sabra Briere.

Clein noted that the commission’s packet on this project includes comments from the city’s design review board. He wondered which suggestions were incorporated into the hotel design. Martin indicated that there hadn’t been unanimity of opinion among design review board members. The main takeaway was that the style of the bus depot was art moderne, not art deco, he said, “so our wrists were slapped.” He also said that board members suggested the design should be simplified a bit.

Martin noted that the site is located on the first block created within the city of Ann Arbor, so they’ve encountered a lot of “fun” issues dealing with easements and title searches for the back alley area, he said. Related to the site’s historic nature, the design review board thought it would be good for the Huron Street facade to tie into the cadence of an original city block, which was 66-feet wide. The board also wanted to carry the horizontal element of the art moderne style from Huron Street and wrap it around to the Ashley side too. It was difficult to balance all the comments, Martin said.

Clein thought the revised design was an improvement. He noted that it wasn’t the planning commission’s purview, but he thought the light-colored materials proposed for the top of the building felt a little heavy. He suggested having the brick continue up to the cornice, which he thought would make the cornice stand out more.

Regarding the bus depot facade, Clein noted that some preservationists would want to save more of the building behind it, “but in reality, there’s not a lot of integrity behind the facade.” He thought First Martin’s approach of protecting it in place during construction is preferable to dismantling it then reinstalling the facade later. He clarified with staff that this preservation qualifies the project to get premiums (a 50% floor area “bonus” of an additional 4,352 square feet) for historic preservation. “Where do we draw the line to say that allows you to qualify for premiums?” Clein asked.

Kirk Westphal.

DiLeo replied that premiums are awarded for historic preservation when a project preserves something that’s eligible to be on the National Register of Historic Places. The bus depot facade is eligible, she said, but she’d have to consult with the city’s historic district coordinator for more details about the building behind the facade. At one point, the Ann Arbor historic district commission approved a “facade-ectomy,” DiLeo said, adding that “if it’s good enough for the HDC, it’s good enough for the premium.” She clarified that getting a premium for historic preservation doesn’t require review or approval of the HDC.

Woods indicated that requiring HDC review or approval is something the planning commission might consider in the future. She also thought it might be an opportunity for Ray Detter to install an historic street plaque.

Woods also asked about whether the Greyhound bus services would be relocated to the Blake Transit Center. DiLeo replied that apparently it would be easy to relocate the passenger service to BTC, located on South Fourth Avenue north of William Street. However, Greyhound handles a significant amount of freight, and that’s becoming difficult to coordinate. The Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority, which operates the transit center, is working with Greyhound on that, she said.

Wendy Rampson, the city’s planning manager, reported that the Ann Arbor DDA has approved a plan to accommodate Greyhound at the Fourth & William parking structure, at least in the short-term. [At its May 7, 2014 meeting, the DDA board authorized its executive director to come to terms with Greyhound on a two-year lease that would cost Greyhound $1,525 a month, which works out to $36,600 for the two-year period. Buses would not pull into the structure, but would stage on Fourth Avenue. The lease would include about 400 square feet of office space in the structure, which would be finished out by the DDA for Greyhound. The lease rate works out to about $40 per square foot.]

Woods wondered when Greyhound would move. Martin indicated that the move would probably occur in mid-June. Woods noted that Greyhound is used by University of Michigan students, and she hoped the relocation would be widely publicized. Martin said it would be a more convenient location for students. [The Fourth & William structure is closer to UM's central campus, and across the street from BTC.]

Joe Fitzsimmons, a resident of One North Main, attended the May 20 meeting but did not formally address the planning commission.

Giannola asked why First Martin decided to build an extended-stay hotel, rather than a traditional hotel. Martin said the decision was based on business and market reasons. They did a market study, and one thing missing from this community is hotels with larger rooms and flexibility for longer-term stays. With the university and other organizations in town, an extended-stay hotel seemed to make the most sense. People who have family members in the hospital also need extended-stay facilities, he noted.

Martin explained that each room has a small kitchenette. The hotel won’t provide room service, but breakfast will be provided. If the retail space becomes a restaurant, there might be an opportunity there, he noted.

Clein noted that this project epitomizes the challenges of downtown development. The project is doing some great things, like bringing more activity to an area that needs it, he said. The building is handsome and the preservation of the bus depot facade is good. But there are issues with the neighboring building, so it’s a balancing act, he added. Similar issues will arise as the city gets more downtown development, Clein noted.

Clein said he was empathetic with the neighbors’ concerns, and he hoped First Martin would be proactive in trying to address them. He was supportive of the project, however.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously recommended approval of the site plan and development agreement, as well as for the plan to install required bicycle parking within the North Ashley and West Huron rights-of-way and the Ann Ashley parking structure.

Downtown Hotel: Public Commentary

During the time for general public commentary at the end of the meeting, around 10:45 p.m., Stephen Ranzini spoke again.

Stephen Ranzini.

He told commissioners that he’s been a resident at One North Main for 14 years, and has observations about things “that clearly some of you are not aware of.” He thought development agreements were really important, and should be carefully negotiated. The problem in Ann Arbor, he said, is that after a development agreement is reviewed and approved by planning commissioners and the city council, “the city staff has – and often do – change it completely at will.” Projects change radically, he said.

Ranzini said he has suggested to the city attorney, mayor and councilmembers that any material changes to development agreements should require a new approval process. “You’re giving city staff way too much authority to change at-will things,” he said. As an example, he said changes were made for the Ashley Terrace project that related to parking and the number of bedrooms in units. He said the staff will make changes “when the developer cries poverty or economics, which downsize and dumb down the project.” Many projects in the city look awful because of that, he said.

He then brought up issues related to enforcement of existing regulations. He talked about calls he’s made to city police regarding decibel-level violations. Construction repeatedly begins at 5 a.m. when the law requires a 6 a.m. start. He said the police never respond to complaints. Road cleaning occurs at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m., with the noise coming into his windows at more than 120 decibels. “The police response time? Never.” He cited a Huey chopper on Sunday morning – without a permit – generating 200 decibels in his home, as it installed air conditioner units on top of an adjacent building. It was so loud “that my teeth were literally vibrating so much that I was afraid my teeth would come out of my mouth, ok?” Still, the police didn’t respond, he said. Other examples Ranzini cited were bagpipes and city garbage trucks.

Mark Condominiums on Liberty

A site plan for new condominiums at 318 W. Liberty was on the May 20 agenda. Planning staff recommended postponement, however, to allow time for a public water main issue to be addressed.

Rendering of Mark Condominium proposal, as viewed from West Liberty next to the former Moveable Feast building.

The proposal from developer Alex de Parry of Ann Arbor Builders Inc. is to demolish an existing car wash and build an 11,910-square-foot structure with seven residential condominiums – five two-bedroom and two three-bedroom units. One unit would face West Liberty, with the others facing east.

Each condo would have its own two-car tandem garage for a total of 14 parking spaces, although no parking is required.

The lot, on the north side of Liberty, is east of the historic Peter Brehme house at 326 W. Liberty and located in the Old West Side historic district. The historic district commission issued a certificate of appropriateness for the project on March 13, 2014. The property is also within the boundaries of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority district. It backs up to the surface parking lot at the city-owned 415 W. Washington.

The property is zoned D2 (downtown interface).

The project would require two footing drain disconnects, according to a staff memo. In addition, the existing six-inch water main in West Liberty Street would need to be upsized to a 12-inch water main. The six-inch main wouldn’t have the capacity to handle the additional development, particularly the building’s fire-suppression system. That was the reason for postponement. [.pdf of staff memo]

The project is expected to cost $2.7 million.

No one spoke during the public hearing for this item.

Mark Condominiums on Liberty: Commission Discussion

Paras Parekh asked staff to elaborate on the water capacity issue. Planning manager Wendy Rampson explained that for every proposed project, the city’s systems planning unit does modeling of its impact on the city’s infrastructure for sewer and water. Typically, the only problems that are encountered are with sewer capacity. But in this case, because this part of the city had been developed with a more residential character, the water main is currently six inches in diameter.

Developer Alex de Parry.

The developer must provide fire suppression for the new building, which would require upsizing to an eight-inch water main. However, the city doesn’t upsize in two-inch increments, Rampson said. So the city is requiring that the water main be upsized to 12 inches. The developer can take on that cost if they want to move quickly, she added, or they can wait until it’s incorporated into the city’s capital improvements plan (CIP).

The upsizing needs to run from Third Street to First Street. The city’s project management staff has said that the developer’s responsibility would be to pay for the upsizing from Third Street to the front of 318 W. Liberty. This requirement emerged just a few days prior to the planning commission meeting, and the developer is now exploring the cost implications of that effort, Rampson said.

Jeremy Peters asked to hear from a representative of the project. Alex de Parry replied that they’re analyzing how to possibly change some construction methods and exploring other options. “We’ve only known about this for about two days,” he noted.

Steve Rojeck of Perimeter LLC, who is also working on this project, added that they’re also evaluating the cost of the upsizing. It could be a substantial impact on the project’s budget, he said.

Sabra Briere asked if the project will include any streetscape improvements. She noted that the site is located within the DDA district, and that the DDA is working on a streetscape project. De Parry replied that they’d received some feedback from residents who attended the project’s citizens participation meeting about adding trees in front of the property. He said they’re working with the owners of the adjacent property to the west – where Moveable Feast restaurant was formerly located – to make sure the grading of the two properties is smooth in front.

Rampson reported that the DDA has asked the developer to coordinate the construction to minimize impact on the parking patrons at 415 W. Washington. The DDA manages the lot as part of its agreement with the city to oversee the public parking system. Rampson added that as far as she knew, there are no streetscape improvements proposed as part of this project.

Kirk Westphal noted that the proposed condominiums will be about half of the proposed density that would be allowed under D2 zoning on that site. De Parry replied that D2 zoning would technically allow for a project that’s up to 60 feet high, but since the site is also in an historic district, there are limitations on height and setbacks.

A car wash is currently located at 318 W. Liberty.

Rampson explained that the historic district commission has purview to limit the size of the building. The project went before the HDC two times, she said, and as a result it had been scaled back.

De Parry said it’s not a high-density development, with just seven units. So doing a major water main replacement for that is “problematic,” he told commissioners.

Westphal observed that in some cases, the planning commission moves projects along with the stipulation that certain issues must be addressed before going to the city council for approval. De Parry supported that approach, but Rampson noted that this was a big issue and the kind of thing that the planning commission typically addressed before recommending a project. It would likely change some aspects of the development agreement, she added, including a potential cost-sharing arrangement.

Wendy Woods was in favor of postponing, with the hope that it could be brought back to the commission as soon as possible. She said it seemed like the developer was almost in shock, “and understandably so.” Other commissioners agreed regarding postponement.

Outcome: Commissioners voted unanimously to postpone action on the project.

After the vote, de Parry asked whether it was a two-week postponement. Rampson replied that it will come back to the commission as soon as the issues are worked out. It could be two weeks, but it could be longer. The commission’s next meeting is June 3.

Bank of Ann Arbor Expansion

An expansion of the Bank of Ann Arbor headquarters in downtown Ann Arbor was on the May 20 planning commission agenda.

Architect Scott Bowers with a rendering of the expanded downtown Bank of Ann Arbor building and reconfigured entrance, at the northeast corner of Fifth and Washington.

Commissioners were asked to recommend approval of a site plan that involves reorienting the main entrance – moving it from the center of its South Fifth Avenue side to the southeast corner of South Fifth and East Washington. Existing doors will be replaced with windows. A 9,179-square-foot third-floor addition would be constructed over the rear of the building’s east side. In total, the building would be 32,651 square feet after construction. The project is estimated to cost $4.2 million. [.pdf of staff memo]

One outstanding issue relates to a tree that’s needed in one of the landscape islands in the parking lot.

According to the staff memo, the design “seeks to transform the current style from contemporary to traditional by replacing the yellow brick façade with brown and red-colored bricks and limestone-colored stone accents and trim and creating a brick and glass tower at the street corner to create a prominent entry.” The original two-story building was constructed in 1965, which included the drive-thru window. An addition was completed in 1999.

The project was evaluated by the city’s design review board on Jan. 14. The board suggested making the entry structure taller and more closely aligning the bank’s design features with those of the adjacent Ameritech building to the east.

The site is zoned D1, which allows for the highest level of density in the downtown area.

D1 zoning requires a special exception use for drive-thrus, which the planning commission considered on May 20 in a separate vote. Because the project is going through a site plan approval process, the requirement for a special exception use was triggered. Special exception uses do not require additional city council approval. The bank has an existing drive-thru teller window on its north side. No changes are planned to that configuration, however.

In giving the staff report, city planner Alexis DiLeo said if the drive-thru were used more frequently, staff might suggest additional design features, like a more clearly marked crossing or differentiated surface materials. But because there are only 20-25 transactions per day at the drive-thru, and given the “successful history” of the existing drive-thru, staff is comfortable with it remaining as is, DiLeo said.

Modifications to drive-thru regulations are in the works, but not yet enacted. The planning commission approved new drive-thru regulations earlier this year. Amendments to Ann Arbor’s zoning ordinance related to drive-thrus received initial approval at the council’s May 5, 2014 meeting, and will appear on the council’s June 2 agenda for final approval.

Bank of Ann Arbor Expansion: Public Hearing

Scott Bowers, an Ann Arbor architect, introduced his partner, Susan Bowers – both are working on this project. He reviewed details of the project and showed renderings of the proposed building. A tower will be added to the northeast corner entrance, giving it more excitement and movement, he said. The use of glass on the tower will allow pedestrians to see into the lobby. He noted that the issue of the tree in the parking lot landscape island will be addressed.

Bank of Ann Arbor Expansion: Commission Discussion – Site Plan

Sabra Briere noted that there’s a lot of construction underway downtown. Residents have complained, she said, especially about the fact that they can’t walk past projects. She wondered if there was any way for the bank to allow pedestrians to walk on sidewalks while construction takes place.

Bank of Ann Arbor building at the northeast corner of South Fifth and East Washington. The proposed renovations will create a “tower” entrance into the building at this corner.

Scott Bowers said they’d have to see if it could be worked out with the contractor. It probably couldn’t happen during heavy construction periods, he added, but perhaps at other times.

Ken Clein asked whether infiltration would be possible for the stormwater system. Bowers replied that there is infiltration, as part of a water charging system.

Clein clarified that the windows would allow people to see inside the building. He said that’s a benefit, both for the business and for pedestrians. He also confirmed with Bowers that the building’s mechanical systems would be located on top of the new addition. There will be screening around that equipment, Bowers said.

Kirk Westphal asked if the rebricking will look like full-depth brick. Bowers explained that actual brick will be used, after the old yellow brick is stripped off. There will also be stone accents around the windows. Westphal noted that even though it’s not in the planning commission’s purview, it’s nice to see how the architect responded to feedback from the design review board. That information is included in the planning commission’s meeting packet.

Wendy Woods noted that the project is located in the Midtown Character District, and she asked the staff to explain what that means. Alexis DiLeo explained that there are eight character districts. The Midtown Character District is a bit of mishmash now and needs to be more defined, she added. Now, it’s “mostly a government and utility-type feel” with several vacant parcels.

DiLeo also read excerpts from the written staff report:

Midtown Character District – Architectural styles in Midtown include some 19th century wood-framed residential (mostly converted to office use), by stylistically, the district is dominated by an a range of late 20th century mid-rise office and governmental facilities.

The primary north-to-south street in Midtown is Fifth Avenue. It can be considered Ann Arbor’s “civic corridor,” anchored to the south by the Ann Arbor District Library’s Main Branch, the Blake Transit Center and the Federal Building. To the north, directly across E. Huron Street from Midtown, are the Ann Arbor municipal Center and the old and new fire stations and Hands-On Museum.

With the exception of the Library, the buildings in Midtown have limited hours and are used primarily during the business day. Since Midtown is surrounded by character districts with evening-use venues, it often serves as a passage, in particular the west-to-east blocks between Main Street and State Street. Pedestrians seem to be focused on getting from point A to point B and would benefit from more opportunities to linger.

Future development should find opportunities to establish an identity for Midtown, increasing its vitality and expanding its offerings. Primary pedestrian access to buildings along the civic corridor should be from the corridor street.

Jeremy Peters wondered if this expansion would change the hours that the bank would be open. Not at this time, Bowers replied.

Outcome on the site plan resolution: It was approved unanimously. The recommendation will be forwarded to city council for consideration.

Bank of Ann Arbor Expansion: Commission Discussion – Special Exception Use

Diane Giannola confirmed with planning staff that the drive-thru isn’t new, and that the only reason a special exception use is now required is that it’s not automatically grandfathered in, and the need for approval is triggered by the site plan process. Alexis DiLeo explained that the city began requiring special exception uses for drive-thrus in 2009, as part of a broader zoning overhaul known as A2D2 (Ann Arbor Discovering Downtown).

Hans Maier, Bank of Ann Arbor’s senior vice president of specialty banking, and architect Susan Bowers.

The drive-thru now is considered a “legal non-conforming use.” It had been legally established initially, but the zoning code changed, she said. If the bank wasn’t seeking site plan approval, there would be no need for a special exception use.

Responding to a query from Wendy Woods, DiLeo said that if the city council approves amendments to Ann Arbor’s zoning ordinance related to drive-thrus – which were recommended by the planning commission – then any new drive-thru could not be located between the building and the street. Because the bank’s drive-thru is located on the side of the building, it would conform with that future code, she said.

Ken Clein was concerned because it’s an area of “reasonably high” foot traffic. He wondered if the drive-thru would be open beyond normal banking hours. Hans Maier, the bank’s senior vice president of specialty banking, replied that it’s open during regular banking hours on weekdays, and from 9 a.m. until noon on Saturdays. Maier joked that the traffic downtown in the evening isn’t coming to do banking.

Kirk Westphal said this isn’t the kind of use that the city wants to encourage downtown, so he shared Clein’s concern. He wondered if there was an intention to expand the drive-thru hours in the future. Maier indicated that he didn’t think so.

Westphal asked if the special exception use can apply to a different tenant at that location. DiLeo said it could be used as a drive-thru for other types of businesses, not just banking, unless a condition is put on the special exception use. Restrictions could include hours of operation and type of business. Westphal wondered if the condition could restrict the number of people who use the drive-thru daily. DiLeo replied that it would be difficult to enforce that kind of restriction.

Jeremy Peters.

Westphal said he wouldn’t be comfortable for this drive-thru being used for another purpose, which might mean longer hours or more traffic.

Sabra Briere proposed an amendment to limit the drive-thru to use by a financial institution. She also asked about time restrictions: Would 7 p.m. be a reasonable time to limit drive-thru operations? Maier told commissioners that the banking business changes, and he indicated that it’s difficult to anticipate what might happen in the future. The bank has been at that location for 18 years, he noted, and hasn’t yet used extended hours. Maier added that given the angle of the curbcuts, it’s not possible to move straight forward from the drive-thru window to the street – there’s a slight curve. Briere said she worried about drivers who aren’t paying attention on Fifth Avenue.

Briere proposed limiting the hours from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m., saying it struck her as “perfectly generous.” She expected in the future, there won’t be a “human attendant” at the drive-thru, so the customers could get out of their car and walk over to the building.

Jeremy Peters asked that Briere separate those two issues – use and hours of operation – so that the amendments could be voted on separately. Briere agreed.

Outcome on limiting the use to financial institutions: The amendment passed on a 6-2 vote, over dissent from Wendy Woods and Eleanore Adenekan. Bonnie Bona was absent.

The commission next considered restricting the hours of operation to between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Paras Parekh wondered if the drive-thru hours would be limited even if it was an automated teller. Sabra Briere said her big concern is the exit onto Fifth Avenue at night.

Jeremy Peters was concerned that if the drive-thru becomes an ATM and there are restricted hours, it would force the bank to turn off the ATM. He thought it would also be hard to regulate, and he hesitated to regulate the hours that a business can be open.

Kirk Westphal asked if a walk-up ATM would be accessible. Hans Maier replied that a walk-up ATM already exists on the same side of the building, near the corner. He noted that the bank’s competitors – including the nearby Comerica and KeyBank branches – wouldn’t have these same restrictions.

Looking east across Fifth Avenue at the Bank of Ann Arbor building. Toward the corner is the green awning of the walk-up ATM. Further east is the awning for the drive-thru teller window.

Diane Giannola said to her, limiting hours of operation seemed like overkill. Cars that parked and used the walk-up ATM would also be driving out that same exit, she noted. Eleanore Adenekan agreed, saying there shouldn’t be restrictions on hours.

Westphal replied that he didn’t want it to be perceived that the planning commission was picking on this bank. He said the same concerns would exist for drive-thrus anywhere in town.

Ken Clein said that trying to legislate the hours of operation might have unintended consequences. He’s comfortable with the amended language that restricts the special exception use to financial institutions. With that, the amount of traffic in the evenings would be much less than if it were a fast food restaurant or pharmacy.

Wendy Woods said she’d vote against regulating hours. She voted against the previous amendment because she wouldn’t have a problem with another drive-thru use at that location – like a pharmacy. “Indeed, it might be an attraction for some people,” she said. She was concerned about restricting the use.

At this point, Briere withdrew her motion, saying “I’m disinclined to vote in favor of the motion myself.” She thought it had been worth the discussion.

Outcome on main motion for granting the special exception use, as amended to limit it to financial institutions: The resolution passed unanimously. It does not require additional approval from the city council.

Fireworks

There were two requests for special exception use related to the sale of Class C fireworks. This is a standard request for this time of year, when temporary sales of fireworks take place. The special exception use can be granted by planning commissioners and doesn’t require additional approval from the city council.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Class C fireworks include “shells and mortars, multiple tube devices, Roman candles, rockets, sparklers, firecrackers with no more than 50 milligrams of powder, and novelty items such as snakes, airplanes, ground spinners, helicopters, fountains, and party poppers.”

Fireworks: Phantom

Phantom Fireworks was requesting a special exception use to put up a temporary 40×40-foot tent and an 8×40-foot storage container in the parking lot of the Maple Village Shopping Center at 205 N. Maple, across from Veterans Memorial Park. The purpose would be for the temporary outdoor sales of fireworks, for 10 days around the July 4 holiday – from June 26 to July 5.

Rick Tapper, regional manager of Phantom Fireworks.

The shopping center is in Ward 5.

The tent and container would be set back 44 feet from North Maple Road, and traffic to businesses wouldn’t be impacted, according to city planner Alexis DiLeo, who gave the staff report. The location would be open from about 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., with extended hours depending on sales and demand.

The tent would occupy about 21 of the shopping center’s 1,500 parking spaces. Generally, there’s a lot of available parking there, DiLeo said.

A special exception use is required because this vendor isn’t a permanent tenant of the shopping center, and isn’t being sponsored by any of the tenants.

Approval of the special exception use would allow the sale of fireworks and seasonal products at this location annually, as long as the owner obtains a permit and inspection from the city’s fire marshal each time the tent is put up.

No one spoke during the public hearing for this item. DiLeo reported that no concerns about this proposal have been received. [.pdf of staff report]

Fireworks: Phantom – Commission Discussion

Eleanore Adenekan asked if there’d be extra lighting in that area. Alexis DiLeo replied that the tent will rely on parking lot lighting for the site.

Rick Tapper, regional manager for Phantom Fireworks, came to the podium to answer additional questions. He noted that the company has operated in Ann Arbor for the past two years, but previously were located in the parking lot of Colonial Lanes on South Industrial.

There’s a minimum of two employees in the tent at all times, Tapper said, and at night there are a minimum of three employees. There will be lights inside the tent, run by a generator. The products will be stored at night in the storage unit next to the tent, which is fireproof.

Planning commissioners Wendy Woods and Jeremy Peters

Jeremy Peters asked about the duration of sales: Was that Phantom’s choice? Yes, Tapper replied. He noted that 80% of sales take place during the last three days of business.

Wendy Woods asked about the permanent nature of this special exception use. DiLeo clarified that it would also allow for the sale of “seasonal items” at other times of the year, though that hasn’t been proposed by Phantom Fireworks. Other examples might be gear for Red Wings or University of Michigan sold during football and hockey seasons, respectively. She noted that if the operation is discontinued for three years, the special exception use would be voided.

Wendy Rampson, the city’s planning manager, said that if planning commissioners have concerns about the operation, they should state those issues in the conditions of the special exception use.

Tapper stressed that Phantom Fireworks doesn’t intend to operate at any other time than the 10 days indicated around the July 4 holiday. He was open to the commission striking the phrase “seasonal items” from the special exception use.

Woods moved an amendment to strike the phrase “seasonal items.”

Outcome on amendment: It passed unanimously.

Woods then suggested inserting language to refer to sales during specific dates. Tapper asked that the reference to dates be somewhat general, because the timing of the sales depends on when the weekends fall around July 4.

Peters proposed adding “for a period of up to 15 days total in the months of June and July.”

Outcome on amendment: It passed unanimously.

Kirk Westphal said he assumed this special exception use couldn’t be transferred. DiLeo clarified that it actually could be transferred to another Class C fireworks vendor.

Woods noted that a new skatepark is opening across the street from this shopping center, at Veterans Memorial Park. So she thought it was important to have a few extra conditions on the special exception use.

Outcome on granting the special exception use, as amended: It passed unanimously.

Fireworks: Patriot

The second special exception use request came from Patriot Fireworks, to put up an 8×40-foot temporary unit and 20×20-foot tent in the parking lot of the Twin Valley shopping center at 2750 Jackson Ave., west of the I-94 overpass. It would be set back 45 feet from Jackson and use 5 of the 75 parking spaces.

Robert Horvath represented Patriot Fireworks.

The business would operate from the Memorial Day weekend through the July 4th holiday, from about noon to 7 p.m., with possible extended hours.

Staff received one call from a resident in the Lakewood neighborhood, located southwest of the shopping center. The resident was concerned that children would cross Jackson Avenue at unsafe locations to get to the fireworks.

Alexis DiLeo of the city’s planning staff reported that staff looked at the site with regard to that concern. She noted that state law restricts fireworks sales to anyone under age 18, so unaccompanied minors wouldn’t likely be crossing Jackson Avenue, she said. “It would be a fruitless cause for them.”

The site is located in Ward 5.

Fireworks: Patriot – Public Hearing

Only one person spoke during the public hearing. Robert Horvath told commissioners that Patriot Fireworks was a local business, with a warehouse on Jackson Road in Scio Township. They sell fireworks at about 40 locations. They’ve been selling fireworks for over a quarter-century, he said. Horvath noted that he’s a “fireworks attorney,” and had sat on the committee that developed the state’s fireworks safety act. “So I’m involved both on a business level, but also on a legal level,” he said.

Fireworks: Patriot – Commission Discussion

Ken Clein asked about plans for signs at this location. Alexis DiLeo replied that businesses are allowed two square feet of signage for every foot of frontage. Since the tent is 20 feet, Patriot would be allowed 40 square feet of signs attached to the tent. They would need a separate city permit for the signs.

Eleanore Adenekan asked how many employees would be on site. Robert Horvath said there would be at least one employee. He described it as more of a “modified store” than a tent, with doors, shelving, lighting and a more controlled environment. It’s also a relatively small area, he noted. They carry about 300 different items.

Jeremy Peters clarified with Horvath that only fireworks would be sold. Horvath didn’t object to striking the term “seasonal items” – as commissioners had done with Phantom Fireworks. But Patriot planned to be open for a longer time than Phantom, he noted.

As she had for the previous special exception use request, Woods moved an amendment to strike the phrase “seasonal items.”

Outcome on amendment: It passed unanimously.

Peters moved an amendment regarding the time of operation, to add the phrase “for a period from three days in advance of Memorial Day, to three days after the July 4th holiday.” Sabra Briere proposed changing “three days after the July 4th holiday” to “July 7.”

Further wordsmithing ensued. Diane Giannola proposed “for a period beginning four days before the Memorial Day holiday and ending four days after the Fourth of July holiday.” Kirk Westphal suggested from May 20 to July 10.

Paras Parekh then proposed “the Thursday before Memorial Day to July 7.” Peters accepted Parekh’s amendment as friendly.

Outcome on amendment: It passed unanimously.

Outcome on granting the special exception use, as amended: It passed unanimously.

Present: Eleanore Adenekan, Sabra Briere, Ken Clein, Diane Giannola, Paras Parekh, Jeremy Peters, Kirk Westphal, Wendy Woods. Also: City planning manager Wendy Rampson.

Absent: Bonnie Bona.

Next meeting: Tuesday, June 3, 2014 at 7 p.m. in council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date]

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Rendering of proposed hotel at the northeast corner of West Huron and Ashley. The One North Main building is visible to the east.

The proposal, brought forward by First Martin Corp., calls for a six-floor, 88,570-square-foot building with a ground-floor restaurant and an extended-stay hotel on the upper five levels. The site currently includes a Greyhound bus depot and a one-story building that houses the Ann Arbor Convention & Visitors Bureau. Both of those buildings will be demolished. The bus depot facade will remain in place as part of the hotel’s design. [.pdf of staff report]

The main hotel entrance is proposed for the building’s west side, facing North Ashley, while the restaurant’s main entrance is proposed to face West Huron, on the building’s south side. The site is zoned D1, which allows for the highest density development in the downtown. According to the staff memo, five off-street parking spaces are required. First Martin has secured a letter of commitment from Zipcar, a car-sharing service, for two vehicles. Parking spaces for those cars are proposed at the northeast corner of the site. For purposes of the city’s parking requirement, the two Zipcars would count as eight off-street parking spaces, and would satisfy the requirement.

The two existing curbcuts will be closed, and access to the two parking spaces, loading dock and trash/recycling would be from the mid-block alley to the north.

Nine bicycle parking spaces are required for the project, and would include two bike hoops in the North Ashley right-of-way and two in the West Huron right-of-way, for a total of eight bike spaces. Three more hoops are proposed for the Ann Ashley parking structure, with First Martin paying for labor and materials. The city of Ann Arbor and Downtown Development Authority would assume responsibility for maintenance of those hoops. The installation of hoops in the city’s right-of-way will require city council approval, and was recommended by the planning commission.

Construction is estimated to cost $13 million.

During a public hearing on the project, three people spoke representing owners of residential and commercial condominiums at One North Main, on an adjacent site east of the hotel project. Concerns included blocking views, noise from rooftop mechanicals, and problems with egress from One North Main’s underground parking.

This brief was filed from the second-floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

The council approved two separate items on its Jan. 6, 2014 agenda related to the Traverwood Apartments project – one for the rezoning required for the project, and the other for the site plan and wetland use permit.

At the council’s Dec. 2, 2013 meeting, the initial approval of the required rezoning had already been given. The site is made up of two parcels: a nearly 16-acre lot that’s zoned R4D (multi-family residential), and an adjacent 3.88-acre lot to the south was zoned ORL (office, research and light industrial). It’s the smaller lot that needed to be rezoned R4D.

Also approved at that Dec. 2 meeting was a donation of 2.2 acres, just north of the project site – by Bill Martin, founder of First Martin Corp., to the city. The donated acreage is next to the Stapp Nature Area and the Leslie Park golf course.

Aerial view of proposed Traverwood Apartments at 2225 Traverwood Drive, north of Plymouth Road.

The city’s planning commission recommended approval of the site plan and the required rezoning at its Nov. 6, 2013 meeting.

Land donated by Bill Martin to the city of Ann Arbor indicated in red outline.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

The Ann Arbor city council’s Dec. 2, 2013 agenda is comparatively light, but might not lead to an especially short meeting.

The sign on the door to the Ann Arbor city council chamber, installed in the summer of 2013, includes Braille.

Items that could result in considerable council discussion include final approval of a repeal of the city’s crosswalk ordinance. A scheduled public hearing on that issue could also draw a number of speakers. The council gave initial approval to the repeal at its Nov. 18, 2013 meeting – on a 9-2 vote.

The tally could be closer for the final vote, as mayor John Hieftje, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) could join Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) and Margie Teall (Ward 4), who had dissented on the initial approval. Also a possibility is that a compromise approach could be worked out. The possible compromise would leave intact the language about motorists stopping, but still limit the right-of-way to just pedestrians within a crosswalk – that is, it would not afford the right-of-way to those standing at the curb.

Some of the public’s perspective and council discussion on the crosswalk issue was aired out during the council’s Sunday caucus, held in council chambers at city hall. This week the caucus was rescheduled for 1 p.m. instead of its usual evening start time, to accommodate more discussion of the local crosswalk law. The caucus drew six councilmembers and a dozen members of the public, and lasted three hours.

Another topic that could extend the Dec. 2 meeting is related to the pending sale of the Edwards Brothers property on South State Street to the University of Michigan for $12.8 million, which was announced in a press release last week. A right of first refusal on the property is held by the city of Ann Arbor as a condition of a tax abatement granted by the city council almost three years ago, on Jan. 18, 2011.

There’s some interest on the council in holding a closed session on Dec. 2 to review the options and the impact of those options. Any interest on the council in acquiring the land, which seems somewhat scant, would be based on a desire eventually to put the land back on the tax rolls. The topic of land acquisition is one of the legal exceptions to the Michigan Open Meetings Act, which requires all deliberations of a public body to be open to the public. If the council holds a closed session on that topic, it could extend the Dec. 2 meeting.

One reason the council may have little appetite for acquiring the Edwards Brothers property is that the city has just now managed to sell a downtown property the city acquired 10 years ago – the old Y lot on William Street, between Fourth and Fifth avenues. Approval of the $5.25 million sale to Dennis Dahlmann came at the council’s Nov. 18 meeting. But it’s possible that not all the due diligence will be completed before Dec. 16, when the city owes the $3.5 million principal it used to purchase the property. As a hedge against that possibility, the council will be asked on Dec. 2 to approve a six-month extension on the installment purchase agreement with Bank of Ann Arbor for the $3.5 million.

In the meantime, the minutes of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority’s most recent operations committee meeting reflect the DDA’s expectation that all of the equipment used to operate the public surface parking facility at the old Y lot will need to be removed by Dec. 31, 2013.

The city’s right of first refusal on the Edwards Brothers property is linked to a tax abatement. And on the council’s Dec. 2 agenda is an item that would establish an industrial development district (IDD) for a different property, at 1901 E. Ellsworth, where Extang Corp. and GSG Fasteners are located. Creating an IDD is a step in the process for granting a tax abatement.

Land control and use is a predominant theme among other Dec. 2 agenda items as well.

The council will be asked to give initial approval to a rezoning request for the Traverwood Apartments project – from ORL (office, research and light industrial district) to R4D (multiple-family district). The First Martin Corp. project would include 16 two-story buildings for a total of 216 one- and two-bedroom units – or 280 total bedrooms. The site plan and final rezoning approval would come before the city council at a future meeting. The Dec. 2 meeting will also include council’s consideration of a donation of 2.2 acres to the city from Bill Martin just north of the Traverwood Apartments project site. The acreage to be donated is next to the city’s Stapp Nature Area and the Leslie Park golf course.

At its Dec. 2 meeting, the council will also be asked to approve the site plan for a three-story addition to the Running Fit store at the northwest corner of Fourth Avenue and Liberty Street in downtown Ann Arbor. The first floor will be retained as retail space, but six residential units would be built on the upper three floors – one two-bedroom and five one-bedroom units.

The city council will also be asked to place a value on land currently used as on-street parking spaces – $45,000 per space. By formally adopting that figure, any future development that causes the removal of on-street parking could be charged that amount. It would be paid to the Ann Arbor DDA, which manages the city’s public parking system. In this matter, the council would be acting on a four-year-old recommendation, approved by the Ann Arbor DDA in 2009.

In non-land issues, the council will be introduced to newly hired firefighters at its Dec. 2 meeting. The budgeted staffing level for the fire department is 85. However, the statistical section from the city’s most recent comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR) shows 82 AAFD staff in fiscal year 2013. That’s because the council approved the hiring of additional firefighters after the fiscal year began, bringing the total to 85.

The CAFR itself is indirectly included in the council’s agenda – as part of a presentation that will be given by chief financial officer Tom Crawford on the result of this year’s audit. It was a clean audit that showed the general fund doing about $2.4 million better than budgeted.

Among the other myriad statistics in the CAFR are the number of parking violations recorded by the city – which are again down in the range of 90,000, as they’ve been for the last three years. That’s about half what they were in 2006 and 2007. Those numbers in the CAFR don’t include University of Michigan parking tickets – although the city and the UM have an agreement under which the city processes tickets and hears appeals for the university. A renewal of that agreement is on the council’s agenda for Dec. 2.

On Dec. 2 the council also has a fair amount of its own internal business to wrap up, associated with the seating of the new council, which took place on Nov. 18. That includes adoption of the council rules. Based on a less than 10-minute meeting of the council’s rules committee on Nov. 29, no changes to the rules would be put forward at this time. Based on that meeting, it appears that Sally Petersen (Ward 2) will replace Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) on that council committee. The rest of the new council committee assignments are also supposed to be made at the Dec. 2 meeting.

The council’s calendar of regular meetings and work sessions will also be adopted at the Dec. 2 meeting. The basic pattern is first and third Mondays for regular meetings, except when there’s a holiday or an election during the week of the meeting.

This article includes a more detailed look of many of these agenda items. More details on other meeting agenda items are available on the city’s online Legistar system. Readers can also follow the live meeting proceedings Monday evening on Channel 16, streamed online by Community Television Network.

The Chronicle will be filing live updates from city council chambers during the Dec. 2 meeting, published in this article below the preview material. Click here to skip the preview section and go directly to the live updates. The meeting is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. Updates might begin somewhat sooner.

Crosswalk Law

The council will be asked to give final approval of a repeal of the city’s crosswalk ordinance. The council gave initial approval to the repeal at its Nov. 18, 2013 meeting – on a 9-2 vote.

Current Ann Arbor local law differs in two ways from the state’s Uniform Traffic Code. First, under current local law, motorists in Ann Arbor are supposed to yield the right-of-way to those pedestrians not just “within a crosswalk” but also to those who are “stopped at the curb, curb line or ramp leading to a crosswalk.” Second, when driving toward a crosswalk, motorists in Ann Arbor don’t have the option to yield to a pedestrian by merely slowing down; instead, they’re required to yield by stopping.

Here’s what the current law says (as a result of amendment on Dec. 19, 2011):

10:148. Pedestrians crossing streets

(a) When traffic-control signals are not in place or are not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop before entering a crosswalk and yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian stopped at the curb, curb line or ramp leading to a crosswalk and to every pedestrian within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is on the half of the roadway on which the vehicle is traveling or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.

(b) A pedestrian shall not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into a path of a vehicle that is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield.

(c) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway. (Corresponds to UTC rule 706)

For more detail on the evolution of the local law, see “Column: Why Did the Turkey Cross the Road?”

A possible compromise the council might consider would leave intact the language about motorists stopping, but still limit the right-of-way to just pedestrians within a crosswalk – that is, it would exclude those standing at the curb.

The compromise could be based on the wording of the ordinance used by Traverse City:

When traffic-control signals are not in place or not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop and yield the right-of-way to every pedestrian within a marked crosswalk.

Representatives of the Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition, who are advocating against repealing the crosswalk ordinance, contend that Traverse City police enforce “within a crosswalk” by including the curb. When The Chronicle interviewed Traverse City code enforcement officer Lloyd Morris by telephone, he indicated that a pedestrian merely standing at the curb, not in the roadway, would not be considered to be “within a crosswalk.” But he allowed that Traverse City enforces the language to mean that a pedestrian who is not in the roadway but approaching the crosswalk with a clear intent to enter the roadway should be given the right-of-way. But at the council’s Nov. 18 meeting, assistant city attorney Bob West indicated that he didn’t interpret “within a crosswalk” to mean anything except being in the roadway.

At least some of the community debate on the topic has included the question of whether Ann Arbor’s ordinance is unique. On a national level, the ordinance language used in Boulder, Colorado includes more than just those pedestrians within a crosswalk:

A driver shall yield the right of way to every pedestrian on a sidewalk or approaching or within a crosswalk.“

And in Seattle, a similar effect is achieved by defining the crosswalk to extend from the roadway through the curb to the opposite edge of the sidewalk:

‘Crosswalk’ means the portion of the roadway between the intersection area and a prolongation or connection of the farthest sidewalk line or in the event there are no sidewalks then between the intersection area and a line ten feet therefrom, except as modified by a marked crosswalk.

Edwards Brothers Land

A pending sale of the Edwards Brothers property on South State Street to the University of Michigan for $12.8 million was announced in a press release last week. A right of first refusal on the property is held by the city of Ann Arbor as a condition of a tax abatement granted by the city council almost three years ago, on Jan. 18, 2011.

The topic of land acquisition is one of the legal exceptions to the Michigan Open Meetings Act, which requires all deliberations of a public body to be open to the public.

The council’s deliberations on granting the tax abatement nearly three years ago contemplated the possibility that the council could be faced with a decision about whether to act on the right of first refusal, which was associated with the tax abatement. At the time, city assessor David Petrak pegged the value of the land at anywhere between $1 million and $50 million. From The Chronicle’s report of that Jan. 18, 2011 meeting:

The cover memo also indicates that the Edwards Brothers real property is located immediately adjacent to a University of Michigan park-and-ride lot, and it’s felt that UM may have some interest in purchasing the property, which would remove it from the city’s tax rolls. In that light, the city staff built a stipulation into the tax abatement that would give the city the right of first refusal on any future land sale. So if UM offered to purchase the property, the city would have an opportunity to make an offer – presumably with the idea that the city would then sell the land to some other private entity, thereby returning the land to the tax rolls.

City assessor David Petrak briefly introduced some of the background on the request to the council.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) pressed for some additional explanation. Without additional information, she said, she could not support it. Why was the city considering the application? The answer was that by statute it must be considered.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) reminded the council that Edwards Brothers has been in Ann Arbor for over 100 years. When the previous abatement was granted, he said, the company was “this close” to moving the operation to North Carolina. Instead, due to the abatement, the company decided to remain in Ann Arbor and preserved around 400 jobs in this community.

With respect to Edwards Brothers not meeting the employment numbers required by the first tax abatement, Rapundalo cited the dire economic times, noting in particular that the book business has not exactly been thriving. So he did not want to hold the job losses against the company. He called Edwards Brothers a long-standing corporate citizen. He also said that if the company left, he would not doubt for a second that UM would pick up the property.

From the city’s CFO, Tom Crawford, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) elicited the fact that the tax abatement would apply to a new press – a typical economic requirement in a very competitive industry, he said. Petrak went on to explain the right of first refusal on the possible sale of the real estate, if Edwards Brothers decided eventually to leave anyway.

City administrator Roger Fraser elaborated in more detail on Crawford’s description of the press to be acquired. It’s particularly suited to quick turnaround on small printing jobs, and offers an opportunity to pick up some additional business for the company. The right of first refusal on the land sale, he said, was an attempt to extract some additional public benefit from the agreement.

Smith pressed for information about what the approximate cost of the land would be, if the city found itself having to contemplate whether to exercise its right of first refusal. Petrak didn’t have that information, but when continued to be pressed by Smith, he allowed that it was between $1 million and $50 million.

Mayor John Hieftje established with Crawford that there’d been no negative impact to the city’s revenues due to job losses at the company. Hieftje said the right of first refusal did not matter to him at all, but the 400 jobs at the company represented good, if not fancy, jobs. They might not earn the average $80,000 salaries that Pfizer workers earned, but they were good jobs. Hieftje also noted that the percentage of property that is abated in the city is minuscule.

…

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) observed that 415 jobs is a lot of jobs. The fact that there’d been only a 13% drop he characterized as a “great feat.” If it were a new company, he said, they would all be out helping to cut the ribbon.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) expressed his support for the abatement.

As that report from 2011 indicates, the abatement applies to “personal property” that’s used in book production. If that equipment is moved to the Edwards Brothers Jackson Road plant, as part of the company’s effort to consolidate operations, then that equipment would no longer qualify for the tax abatement. That’s because it will have been moved outside of the industrial development district (IDD) where the 2011 abatement was granted.

Bank of Ann Arbor Loan

An agreement to sell the old Y lot on William Street between Fourth and Fifth avenues downtown – to hotelier Dennis Dahlmann for $5.25 million – was approved by the council at its Nov. 18, 2013 meeting. [.pdf of rider] [.pdf of sales agreement]

But it’s possible that not all the due diligence will be completed before Dec. 16, when the city owes the $3.5 million principal it used to purchase the property. As a hedge against that possibility, the council will be asked on Dec. 2 to approve a six-month extension on the installment purchase agreement with Bank of Ann Arbor for the $3.5 million. The interest rate would be the same as the interest rate at which the city is currently borrowing the money – 3.89% with no penalty for pre-payment.

If additional interest is owed due to the extension of the loan, presumably the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority would also continue with its share of the payments. That was an arrangement agreed to in 2003 through action by the DDA’s executive committee, not the full DDA board. The DDA’s portion of the interest payments could factor into the calculation of the net proceeds from the former Y lot sale. A year ago at the council’s Oct. 15, 2012 meeting, the council adopted a resolution that indicated the proceeds of the sale would:

“… first be utilized to repay the various funds that expended resources on the property, including but not limited to due diligence, closing of the site and relocation and support of its previous tenants, after which any remaining proceeds be allocated and distributed to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund …

However, two days after the council meets on Dec. 2, the board of the Ann Arbor DDA will be considering a resolution that would waive any need to repay the DDA for those interest payments or for the expenditures by the DDA to demolish the old Y building in 2008. [.pdf of Dec. 4, 2013 draft DDA resolution on Y lot proceeds]

Possibly relevant to the question of whether the DDA can simply waive any required repayment by the city to the DDA is the source of funds used by the DDA to make those payments. In recent years, the DDA has used parking funds to make the interest payments. To the extent that in earlier years, funds captured under the DDA’s tax increment finance (TIF) may have been used to make interest payments, it’s not clear if the DDA could simply allow the city to retain those funds as part of the proceeds of the Y lot sale.

Traverwood Apartments

On the council’s Dec. 2 agenda is a project proposed by First Martin Corp. that would construct a complex of 16 two-story buildings on the west side of Traverwood Drive, north of Plymouth Road. The development is called Traverwood Apartments.

Aerial view of proposed Traverwood Apartments at 2225 Traverwood Drive, north of Plymouth Road.

Only the initial vote on the zoning is being considered on Dec. 2. The final vote on the zoning and the site plan will appear on a future council agenda.

The project, estimated to cost $30 million, would include 16 two-story buildings for a total of 216 one- and two-bedroom units – or 280 total bedrooms. Eight of the buildings would each have 15 units and 11 single-car garages. An additional eight buildings would each have 12 units and 8 single-car garages.

The city’s planning commission recommended approval of the site plan and the required rezoning at its Nov. 6, 2013 meeting. The site is made up of two parcels: a nearly 16-acre lot that’s zoned R4D (multi-family residential), and an adjacent 3.88-acre lot to the south that’s currently zoned ORL (office, research and light industrial). It’s the smaller lot that needs to be rezoned R4D.

Land to be donated by Bill Martin to the city of Ann Arbor indicated in red outline.

The Dec. 2 agenda includes the council’s consideration of a donation of 2.2 acres to the city from Bill Martin just north of the project site. The donated acreage is next to the Stapp Nature Area and the Leslie Park golf course.

Running Fit Addition

At its Dec. 2 meeting, the council will be asked to approve the site plan for a three-story addition to the Running Fit store at the northwest corner of Fourth Avenue and Liberty Street in downtown Ann Arbor.

Aerial view of the Running Fit building, at the northwest corner of East Liberty and South Fourth.

The first floor will be retained as retail space, but six residential units would be built on the upper three floors – one two-bedroom and five one-bedroom units.

The city planning commission recommended approval of the site plan at its Oct. 15, 2013 meeting.

The location in Ward 1 is zoned D1, which allows for the highest density development in the city. It’s also located in the Main Street Historic District.

The city’s historic district commission issued a certificate of appropriateness on Aug. 15, 2013.

The project is expected to cost about $900,000.

Cost of In-Street Parking Spaces

The city council will also be asked to place a value on portions of the public right-of-way currently used as on-street parking spaces – $45,000 per space. By formally adopting that figure, any future development that causes the removal of on-street parking spaces could be charged that amount.

In this matter, the council would be acting on a four-year-old recommendation approved by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority in 2009:

Thus it is recommended that when developments lead to the removal of on-street parking meter spaces, a cost of $45,000/parking meter space (with annual CPI increases) be assessed and provided to the DDA to set aside in a special fund that will be used to construct future parking spaces or other means to meet the goals above. [.pdf of meeting minutes with complete text of March 4, 2009 DDA resolution]

The contract under which the DDA manages the public parking system for the city was revised to restructure the financial arrangement, which now pays the city 17% of the gross parking revenues. But it also included a clause meant to prompt the city to act on the on-street space cost recommendation. From the May 2011 parking agreement:

The City shall work collaboratively with the DDA to develop and present for adoption by City Council a City policy regarding the permanent removal of on-street metered parking spaces. The purpose of this policy will be to identify whether a community benefit to the elimination of one or more metered parking spaces specific area(s) of the City exists, and the basis for such a determination. If no community benefit can be identified, it is understood and agreed by the parties that a replacement cost allocation methodology will need to be adopted concurrent with the approval of the City policy; which shall be used to make improvements to the public parking or transportation system.

Subject to administrative approval by the city, it’s the DDA that has sole authority to determine the addition or removal of meters, loading zones, or other curbside parking uses.

It’s not clear what the specific impetus is to act on the issue now, other than the fact that action is simply long overdue. In 2011, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research expansion was expected to result in the net removal of one on-street parking space. [For more background, see: "Column: Ann Arbor's Monroe (Street) Doctrine."]

The $45,000 proposed amount is based on an average of the estimated construction cost for an above-ground space of $40,000, and $55,000 for a below-ground parking space, as estimated in 2009. By way of background the Ann Arbor DDA’s most recent financial records show that last year, on-street parking spaces generated $2,000 in gross revenue per space or $1,347 in net income per space annually. The contract with the city under which the DDA operates the public parking system stipulates that the city receives 17% of the gross parking revenues. So the city’s revenue associated with an on-street parking space corresponds to $340 per space annually.

The resolution on the council’s Dec. 2 agenda is sponsored by Christopher Taylor (Ward 3). Taylor participated in recent meetings of a joint council and DDA board committee that negotiated a resolution to the question about how the DDA’s TIF revenue is regulated. In that context, Taylor had argued adamantly that any cap on the DDA’s TIF should be escalated by a construction industry CPI, or roughly 5%. Taylor’s reasoning was that the DDA’s mission is to undertake capital projects and therefore should have revenue that escalates in accordance with increases in the costs to undertake capital projects. Based on that reasoning, and the explicit 2009 recommendation by the DDA to increase the estimated $45,000 figure in that year by an inflationary index, the recommended amount now, four years later, could be closer to $55,000, assuming a 5% figure for construction cost inflation.

The actual cost of building an underground space in the recently completed (2012) underground Library Lane parking structure could provide a more current estimate, but the DDA has not made public a breakdown of how that project’s actual costs lined up with its project budget.

The last two month’s minutes from the DDA’s committee meetings don’t reflect any discussion of the on-street parking space replacement cost. Nor has the issue been discussed at any recent DDA board meeting.

Audit, Firefighters, Other Stats

In non-land issues, the council will be introduced to newly hired firefighters at its Dec. 2 meeting.

The statistical section from the city’s most recent comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR) shows a budgeted staffing level for the fire department of 82, in fiscal year 2013. But the council approved the hiring of additional firefighters after the fiscal year began, bringing the total to 85.

The CAFR is indirectly included in the council’s agenda – as part of a presentation that will be given by chief financial officer Tom Crawford on the result of this year’s audit. It was a clean audit that showed the general fund doing about $2.4 million better than budgeted.

Highlights from that FY 2013 audit report, which has now been issued in final form to the city, include an increase to the general fund balance from about $15.4 million to about $16.2 million. The $800,000 increase contrasts to the planned use of roughly $1.6 million from the general fund balance in the FY 2013 budget. About $200,000 of the increase was in the “unassigned” fund balance.

The result of the audit, in the new GASB terminology, was an “unmodified” opinion – which corresponds to the older “unqualified” opinion. In sum, that means it was a “clean” audit. The concerns identified last year had been addressed to the auditor’s satisfaction.

Members of the council’s audit committee met on Oct. 24. 2013 to review the draft audit report, and were enthusiastic about the $2.4 million better-than-budget performance for the city’s general fund, which had expenditures budgeted for $74,548,522 in FY 2013.

Challenges facing the city this coming year include the implementation of the new GASB 68 accounting standard starting in FY 2015, which begins July 1, 2014. That standard requires that most changes to the net pension liability will be included immediately on the balance sheet – instead of being amortized over a long time period. The GASB 68 standard must be implemented for an organization’s financial statements for fiscal years beginning after June 15, 2014.

Two of the city’s funds were highlighted by Crawford at the Oct. 24 meeting as having potential difficulties associated with the GASB 68 standard – solid waste and the public market (farmers market). For the public market fund, Crawford floated the idea to the audit committee that it could be folded back into the city’s general fund, on analogy with the golf fund. Starting this year (FY 2014), the golf fund has been returned to general fund accounting.

Among the other myriad statistics in the CAFR are the number of parking violations recorded by the city – which are again down in the range of 90,000 as they’ve been for the last three years. That’s about half what they were in 2006 and 2007. Those numbers in the CAFR don’t include University of Michigan parking tickets – although the city and the UM have an agreement under which the city processes tickets and hears appeals for the university. A renewal of that agreement is on the council’s agenda for Dec. 2.

Here’s a sampling of the kind of data available in the statistical section of the FY 2013 CAFR, which includes data from previous CAFRs as well. [.pdf of final audit report released on Nov. 15, 2013]

Ann Arbor parking violations. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor traffic violations. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor physical arrests. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor police services data. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor fires extinguished. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor fire inspections. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor emergency responses by fire department. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor fire services data. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor police department staff strength. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor total city employees. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor water main breaks. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor taxable value. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Internal Council Business

On its Dec. 2 meeting agenda, the council also has a fair amount of its own internal business to wrap up, associated with the seating of the new council, which took place on Nov. 18.

That internal business includes adopting the council rules. Based on a less than 10-minute meeting of the council’s rules committee on Nov. 29, no changes to the rules were planned to be put forward at this time. The council’s rules committee – established by last year’s council – currently consists of Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) and mayor John Hieftje.

However, the .pdf file attached to the council’s online agenda – which reflects the council’s rules to be considered for adoption – includes a revision that was explicitly discussed and, for the time being, rejected at the committee’s Nov. 29 meeting. [.pdf of city council rules]

That change replaces “personality” (an archaic usage meaning a disparaging remark about a person) with “personal attack” in the following rule: “The member shall confine comments to the question at hand and avoid personality.” At the council’s Nov. 18 regular meeting, when the council voted to delay adoption of the rules pending a review by the rules committee, Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) had asked that the rules committee look at the rule requiring that councilmembers “avoid personality” during deliberations.

At the Nov. 29 committee meeting, Kunselman weighed in specifically for retaining the more archaic wording as reflective of history and tradition. The outcome of that committee discussion was that no changes would be recommended at this time, as any changes should be reviewed by the rules committee with its new membership. But based on the inclusion of the change in the Legistar document, it’s not clear what the status of that proposed change is meant to be.

A consensus on the committee at the Nov. 29 meeting seemed to be that the new membership of the rules committee should include Sally Petersen (Ward 2) in place of Kunselman, as Kunselman did not wish to continue on the rules committee. In addition, Petersen’s ethics initiative, which was approved at the council’s Nov. 18, 2013 meeting, tasks the rules committee with a certain amount of work – so the rules committee consensus on Nov. 29 appeared to be that the committee would be well-served by her membership.

The rest of the new council committee assignments are also supposed to be made at the Dec. 2 meeting.

The council’s calendar of regular meetings and work sessions will also be adopted on Dec. 2. The basic pattern is first and third Mondays for regular meetings, except when there’s a holiday or an election during the week of the meeting.

5:48 p.m. Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition board chair Erica Briggs has forwarded to the city council three documents – including a letter of support, and names of more than 600 people who’ve signed an online petition supporting the existing crosswalk ordinance. [.pdf of comments from supporters] [.pdf of WBWC letter to mayor and council] [.pdf of names of 668 people supporting existing crosswalk law]

6:35 p.m. Pre-meeting activity. The scheduled meeting start is 7 p.m. Most evenings the actual starting time is between 7:10 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.

6:38 p.m. Here in council chambers, the partitions are already pulled back in anticipation of a large crowd on the crosswalk ordinance. Folding chairs are set up to provide additional seating. Carolyn Grawi of the Center for Independent Living is here. Three members of the city’s commission on disability issues attended yesterday’s council caucus: Larry Keeler, Lloyd Shelton, Linda Evans.

6:49 p.m. Erica Briggs has arrived, as has Lloyd Shelton. Jack Eaton (Ward 4) is the first councilmember to arrive. City administrator Steve Powers is now here. Assistant city attorneys Mary Fales and Abigail Elias are also in council chambers.

6:49 p.m. Firefighters to be introduced have also now arrived.

6:52 p.m. Sally Petersen (Ward 2) has now arrived. Chambers are beginning to fill up.

6:55 p.m. Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1) and Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) are now here.

7:07 p.m. Chambers are now packed. We’re shoulder-to-shoulder. Much of the supplementary seating is now occupied. It will still be standing-room-only despite the additional seats.

7:12 p.m. Professor Jonathan Levine is here, as are several others who could be counted as public transportation and non-motorized advocates.

7:12 p.m. We appear to be nearly ready to begin.

7:14 p.m. And we’re off.

7:15 p.m. Call to order, moment of silence, pledge of allegiance, roll call of council. All except for Margie Teall (Ward 4) are present.

7:15 p.m. Teall’s absence might affect the council’s ability to achieve a political compromise on the crosswalk ordinance.

7:15 p.m. Approval of agenda.

7:17 p.m. Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) wants to swap the order of public hearings so that the crosswalk ordinance has its public hearing after the others. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) wants to move C1 before B1. That’s Traverwood Apartments rezoning before the crosswalk ordinance.

7:17 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to approve the agenda as amended.

7:18 p.m. INT-1: Introduction of new firefighters. The current authorized staffing level for the AAFD is 85. After the FY 2013 was approved last year authorizing staffing at 82, the council approved a subsequent increase to 85, based on the receipt of some grant funding.

7:20 p.m. Assistant fire chief Ellen Taylor is introducing the new firefighters. She’s describing the one-year probationary period. She’s introducing five of the seven new firefighters in the city. They get a round of applause.

7:20 p.m. INT-2: FY 2013 audit results. The 2013 fiscal year ended June 30, 2013. The council’s audit committee reviewed the draft report on Oct. 24, 2013. It was a clean audit that showed the general fund doing about $2.4 million better than budgeted. Highlights from that FY 2013 audit report, which has now been issued in final form to the city, include an increase to the general fund balance from about $15.4 million to about $16.2 million. The $800,000 increase contrasts to the planned use of roughly $1.6 million from the general fund balance in the FY 2013 budget. About $200,000 of the increase was in the “unassigned” fund balance.

The result of the audit, in the new GASB terminology, was an “unmodified” opinion – which corresponds to the older “unqualified” opinion. In sum, that means it was a “clean” audit. The concerns identified last year had been addressed to the auditor’s satisfaction. Challenges facing the city this coming year include the implementation of the new GASB 68 accounting standard starting in FY 2015, which begins July 1, 2014. That standard requires that most changes to the net pension liability will be included immediately on the balance sheet – instead of being amortized over a long time period.

7:26 p.m. Tom Crawford leads with some light humor: “I’m sure the crowd has come to hear this report.” He gets the intended laugh. Now he’s into a discussion of net assets of the city – over a billion dollars. But that’s mostly buildings and roads, not much of which can be used to pay for things, he notes. There’s $82 million that’s actually available. The general fund has a balance of about $14 million. Street repair millage had $18 million in it. Minimum balance for that fund is $9 million. Crawford explains that the apparent excess is partly due to timing of when road repair takes place. He’s talking about the potential liabilities of various funds. He highlights the public market fund – which has an adequate fund balance, but is actually weak in the context of GASB 68 requirements.

7:27 p.m. The pension system is 80% funded. VEBA is 39% funded. Their return achieved 11% last year, Crawford reports. He characterizes the general fund last year as doing about $2.4 million better than budgeted. It was a good year for the general fund, he says.

7:27 p.m. INT-3: Volunteer appreciation. Phillip Delekta is being honored with a mayoral proclamation for his volunteer work with the Ann Arbor police department.

7:29 p.m. Delekta is now explaining his work with the citizens emergency response team. He’s thanking the police and fire department personnel who’ve helped. Football games, the Ann Arbor marathon and the art fairs are some events they help with. He gets a round of applause.

7:29 p.m. Public commentary reserved time. This portion of the meeting offers 10 three-minute slots that can be reserved in advance. Preference is given to speakers who want to address the council on an agenda item. [Public commentary general time, with no sign-up required in advance, is offered at the end of the meeting.]

Tonight’s lineup for reserved time speaking includes just two speakers: Thomas Partridge and Henry Herskovitz. Partridge is speaking on ending discrimination. Herskovitz will be talking about the council’s 2014 meeting calendar, which will be set tonight.

7:33 p.m. Thomas Partridge is now addressing the council. He’s using the hand-held microphone. It doesn’t seem to be working. He says he’s an advocate for all residents of the city, county and state who need advocacy due to various challenges. Sound of kids in the audience makes this tough to hear. He calls for an end to discrimination. He contends that red-lining is practiced in Ann Arbor – with respect to housing and transportation. He says the council needs to be reformed. The council should see the world through the eyes of the most unfortunate among us, he says.

7:37 p.m. Henry Herskovitz says he’s speaking about the establishment of the council’s 2014 calendar. He wants the council reconsider a decision made 10 years ago to give preference to those commenters who want to talk about items on the agenda. That was based on a desire to prevent people from talking about Palestine and Israel, he says. He’d not been able to talk to the council at its previous meeting about “blacklisting of companies by MasterCard” – because it wasn’t an agenda item.

7:37 p.m. Communications from council. This is the first of three slots on the agenda for council communications. It’s a time when councilmembers can report out from boards, commissions and task forces on which they serve. They can also alert their colleagues to proposals they might be bringing forward in the near future.

7:39 p.m. Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) leads off by announcing he’ll be putting forward a compromise amendment on the crosswalk ordinance. “That will be my first order of business,” he says. “We will not be repealing the pedestrian ordinance,” he says. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) says that Kunselman means that he hopes a repeal will not happen. Added late to the agenda, she notes, are the city council committee appointments, including resolutions on the environmental commission and greenbelt commission.

7:41 p.m. Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) is speaking about the crosswalk ordinance. Kunselman’s compromise would strip out language that requires motorists to stop for pedestrians at the curb or curbline, Taylor stresses. Mayor John Hieftje is clarifying that the compromise would still not require motorists to stop for motorists at the curb. Kunselman reads aloud the language.

7:43 p.m. Taylor quips “with summer just around the corner” that a resolution will be brought forward in the near future (not at this meeting) about the art fairs. The council provides financial support for the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, and Taylor is indicating that the art fairs should also be supported.

7:44 p.m. Mike Anglin (Ward 5) thanks several people who are present: Matt Grocoff, Chris Hewett and Erica Briggs. A meeting will take place on Dec. 11 at Bach School at 6:30 p.m. on pedestrian safety and traffic calming. Screaming children in the audience.

7:45 p.m. Briere is calling the public’s attention to a meeting to be held on Dec. 4 at 6:30 p.m. on a presentation of results of the Allen Creek berm opening feasibility study.

7:47 p.m. CC-1 Appointment of 2014 city council committees. [.pdf of committee assignments]

7:47 p.m. Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) ventures that nobody wants to spend time with him on the University of Michigan student relations committee.

7:48 p.m. Hieftje says that Jack Eaton (Ward 4) was going to be asked to serve. Eaton asks when it meets. Hieftje explains that it’s not regular. Eaton accepts the assignment.

7:48 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to confirm all the committee assignments.

7:50 p.m. Local Development Finance Authority (LDFA) appointment. Sally Petersen (Ward 2) to LDFA.

Outcome: The council has voted to appoint Petersen to the LDFA.

7:51 p.m. Planning commission, greenbelt advisory commission. Briere is returned to the planning commission and Taylor to the greenbelt advisory commission by a unanimous vote.

7:52 p.m. Environmental commission. Anglin and Briere are appointed to the environmental commission.

7:52 p.m. Commission on disabilities. The council has established a position for a councilmember and appointed Petersen to that spot.

7:52 p.m. CC-2 Approval of 2014 city council rules. Internal business tonight includes adopting the council rules. Based on a less than 10-minute meeting of the council’s rules committee on Nov. 29, no changes to the rules were planned to be put forward at this time. The council’s rules committee – established by last year’s council – currently consists of Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) and mayor John Hieftje. However, the .pdf file attached to the council’s online agenda – which reflects the council’s rules to be considered for adoption – includes a revision that was explicitly discussed and, for the time being, rejected at the committee’s Nov. 29 meeting. [.pdf of city council rules] That change replaces “personality” (an archaic usage meaning a disparaging remark about a person) with “personal attack” in the following rule: “The member shall confine comments to the question at hand and avoid personality.”

At the council’s Nov. 18 regular meeting, when the council voted to delay adoption of the rules pending a review of the rules, Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) had asked that the rules committee look at the rule requiring that councilmembers “avoid personality” during deliberations. [For additional background see Internal Council Business above.]

7:52 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to adopt its rules for the year.

7:53 p.m. Communications from the mayor. Mayoral communications fall typically into two categories: (1) nominations to boards and commissions that will be voted on at a subsequent meeting; and (2) requests for confirmation of nominations that have been made at a previous meeting.

7:53 p.m. MC-1 Appointments. The council is being asked to confirm the nomination of David Blanchard, put forward at the council’s Nov. 18 meeting, to the housing and human services advisory board.

7:53 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to confirm David Blanchard’s appointment to the housing and human services board. It runs through June 4, 2016.

7:53 p.m. MC-2 Nomination. Elizabeth Bletcher is being nominated to replace Al Gallup on the Elizabeth Dean Fund committee. For some historical background on the Elizabeth Dean Fund, see “Dean Tree Fund Committee Changed.” That nomination will be voted on at a future meeting.

7:53 p.m. Public hearings. All the public hearings are grouped together during this section of the meeting. Action on the related items comes later in the meeting. Tonight three public hearings appear on the agenda. The first is on the repeal of the crosswalk law. The second is on establishing an industrial development district (to facilitate granting a tax abatement) at 1901 E. Ellsworth. The third is on a site plan to build a three-story addition to Running Fit at the corner of Liberty Street and Fourth Avenue downtown. The order of the hearings was changed at the beginning of the meeting, so that the crosswalk law public hearing will come last.

7:56 p.m. PH-2 Establish Industrial Development District at 1901 E. Ellsworth. Luke Bonner, vice president of business development for Ann Arbor SPARK, is addressing the council. The petition was initiated by the property owner, he says. The establishment of a district will allow a tenant there, Mahindra Genze, to then apply for a tax abatement.

7:58 p.m. Alan Clark is addressing the council as a Ward 3 resident working at a start-up, called Mahindra Genze. It was started in the basement of the chief engineer. The location at Phoenix Drive has “max-ed out,” he says. Another new hire came in today, Clark says, and there’s around 25 employees there. Clark moved to Ann Arbor from Washington D.C. to become the seventh employee. He’s describing the product: an electric scooter. They’ll sell the product nationally, he says. There’s international interest in the product as well.

7:59 p.m. Clark says the company is looking to hire another 34 employees and wants to start production early next summer.

8:01 p.m. Thomas Partridge is now addressing the council. He says he’s usually conservative with respect to such requests. But he’s endorsing this request. He calls for the establishment of a larger district, he says, which was the point of the state’s enabling legislation.

8:02 p.m. Here are the names of the firefighters who were introduced earlier: Brian Schotthoefer; George Allard; Nicholas Kaczor; Christopher McGlothin; John Crowell; Ryan Newkirk; and Christopher Brown.

8:03 p.m. That’s all for this public hearing.

8:04 p.m. PH-3 Running Fit addition site plan. Architect Brad Moore is addressing the council. The expansion will add more stories for residential units. He notes that there were previously more stories before it burned back in the 1950s. He notes that the city’s historic district commission gave it a unanimous approval, as did the planning commission.

8:05 p.m. Thomas Partridge contends that there’s been a history of discrimination involved in zoning and site plan approvals. The site plan should be re-examined with respect to accessibility issues, he contends. Affordable housing is needed, he says.

8:07 p.m. That’s all for this public hearing.

8:07 p.m. PH-1 Crosswalk ordinance change. Hieftje asks people to line up and be ready to speak.

8:08 p.m. Hieftje advises that it’s not required to use the whole three minutes, but people can do so. Erica Briggs, chair of the Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition, leads off.

8:11 p.m. Briggs urges the council not to repeal the ordinance. She says that the Kunselman compromise really does amount to a repeal. She’s ticking through familiar points. She’s citing pedestrian crashes so far this year – 36, and  she contends that this reflects a 16% decrease since the ordinance was passed. She cites the community-wide support for the ordinance. She invites people to stand who are against the repeal. The vast majority of people here are standing.

8:15 p.m. James Briggs addresses the council from his wheelchair. City clerk Jackie Beaudry then reads aloud his statement on his behalf. “It boils my blood,” says the statement, to see the ordinance repealed. He calls the approach that some councilmembers are taking one that asks people to “check your brains at the door.”

8:15 p.m. Katie Brion tells the council that she walks to school with her kids crossing Madison to get to Bach Elementary School. After the ordinance passed, she’s seen a huge improvement, she says. Enforcement should be the focus, she says.

8:18 p.m. Judy Stone speaks in favor of retaining the ordinance. She’s relating her experience almost hitting someone. She’s paid more attention to pedestrian crossings, since the installation of flashing lights, she says. The response to say “get rid of this system” goes in the wrong direction. It’s her own responsibility to modify her behavior, she says. Elderly people or people with children in tow shouldn’t have to put themselves in harm’s way, she says. Stone calls for a strong and ongoing educational campaign. “We need to keep at it,” she says. It would be shortsighted to repeal the ordinance, she says.

8:20 p.m. Matt Grocoff introduces himself as a resident of Seventh Street. He relates his experience taking his daughter back home and attempting to cross the street. The traffic was heavy and fast. He waited at the crosswalk with his daughter in his arms. Cars didn’t stop. Then an Ann Arbor Public Schools bus went through the crosswalk as he was already standing there with his child in his arms, he reports. He’s posted a video of the encounter on Safety on Seventh. He calls for a sober, thoughtful process.

8:24 p.m. Cory Snavely supports the ordinance as it stands. The point of contention, he says, is which pedestrians have the right-of-way, so Kunselman’s compromise doesn’t really do anything for that. He applauds the installation of the HAWK signal and pedestrian islands. He noticed a difference, he says, when the ordinance was passed. The only safe street to step into is one with no cars or cars that are stopped, he says.

8:26 p.m. Charles recalls spending a year in the hospital after being struck by a car. “When a car hits you, it wins, no question,” he says. He was proud that the ordinance had been passed and calls it a demonstration that Ann Arbor is a progressive town. He talks about how M.A.D.D. had changed culture with respect to drunk driving. And he calls for a similar cultural change for pedestrian safety.

8:28 p.m. Lloyd Shelton leads off by saying that the setup for addressing the council is not accessible. He’s astounded and disappointed that the city council would leave him out of the equation. “To put the onus on me is wrong. I would wag my finger at you if I could,” he says. Kunselman’s amendment is “exclusionary,” he says.

8:31 p.m. Annie Wolock tells the council she’s lived in Ann Arbor for 35 years. She wonders if repealing or changing the law is the right way to approach citizen safety. She calls for more law enforcement and education. Changing the law now will lead to more confusion, she says. “We need to stay the course,” she says and reevaluate after 10 years. She calls for tabling the issue.

8:34 p.m. Marissa Arnold has been a bus driver at UM for 15 years. She’s noticed a shift in culture for pedestrians. On a daily basis, pedestrians don’t do what their mothers taught them, she says – they just go out into the street. She says that pedestrians think that because they have an ordinance to back them up, they can just walk across the street without checking traffic. She calls for balance. She calls for more education. “Everyone has somewhere they need to go and be,” she says. So she supports the amendment of the ordinance as Kunselman is proposing. It’s too difficult to assess the intent of someone standing at the curb, she says.

8:37 p.m. Jeff Hayner urges the council to increase education, engineering and enforcement of the current ordinance. Failing that, he’s in favor of repealing it. He’s spoken to thousands of people, he says. [He ran for Ward 1 city council earlier this year.] He heard from a lot of people who wanted to see the crosswalk ordinance repealed. But he’s not sure that’s the right thing to do. He says that the lack of engineering leads to people not knowing what to do – giving the example of three crosswalks in succession that are marked in different ways. He calls education of pedestrians and their responsibilities an important priority.

8:39 p.m. Another UM blue bus operator [Kwajalynn Burks] is addressing the council. She wants more HAWK signals. Other drivers are always trying to beat her somewhere, she says. Pedestrians feel entitled, she says, which could lead to a fatality. At some intersections near campus, there’s no end to the pedestrian flow, she says. The “pedestrian rules” type of marketing has pushed pedestrians to adopt that mindset, she says.

8:42 p.m. Helen Aminoff says she’s lived here since 1960. The push to repeal the crosswalk law was prompted by the tragedy of a death in a Plymouth Road crosswalk, she says. That incident was not a result of the crosswalk ordinance, she points out. The driver had passed a car that had been stopped at the crosswalk and struck the pedestrian, she says. There’s room for improvement and tweaking, she allows, but she doesn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

8:44 p.m. Ted Reynolds relates an experience from 10 years ago. He was in the middle of a crosswalk when he saw a car come through a red light. He dodged the car, but fell and struck his head on the pavement. His brain had lost the connection to his right foot. He has not driven since then. He says he didn’t want to become an old geezer who rams into people in a crosswalk. He’s against anything that makes it easier for drivers to go through crosswalks and strike pedestrians.

8:45 p.m. Emma Wendt is advocating for the current crosswalk ordinance. She says she wants more of her peers to move to Ann Arbor. It’s a walkable, liveable, progressive city, she says. But her friends on the coast find it odd that she likes living in the Midwest. When they hear that Ann Arbor is planning to repeal the crosswalk ordinance, they’re aghast, she says.

8:47 p.m. Chris reports that he was hit in 1980 by a car. He was on the sidewalk on a ramp and the person turned left. A good buddy of his, a “little person” in a wheelchair, was crossing Stone School, he says, and was killed. An apparatus needs to be set up to make cars slow down, he says.

8:48 p.m. The gentleman now addressing the council supports the current ordinance. Before he moved to Ann Arbor, he says, he was director of disability resources for a university in Illinois. Each of you will have a disability if you don’t die first, he tells the council.

8:51 p.m. John Weir is a Ward 4 resident. He walks where he goes – by choice. It matters a lot to him to live in a place where he feels safe and doesn’t need to own a car. That matters to a lot of his peers, he says. The other towns and cities of Michigan are not the only places that compete with Ann Arbor. The norm for Boston, where he’s from, he says, is better education and enforcement than Ann Arbor. “We can do better,” he says.

8:53 p.m. Don Whitaker has lived in Ann Arbor for 28 years and he supports the current ordinance. He’s an automotive engineer and commutes to Detroit every day. He was proud of the council when the council passed the ordinance originally, calling it a progressive move. Walkable cities are good for property values, he says. The main reason we should have the ordinance is safety, but a vision of a better community for everybody is also important. We need to work on education of pedestrians and motorists alike, he says.

8:56 p.m. Carolyn Grawi, of the Center for Independent Living, speaks in favor of keeping the current ordinance. She says there’s a lot of work to be done on engineering and education. She points out that in 1978, the law changed so that you’re supposed to stop for people with white canes. Before the ordinance, it took 35 minutes for someone with a white cane to cross, she says, which is not acceptable. She agreed with the UM bus drivers that pedestrians also need education.

8:58 p.m. Steven Kronenberg cautions against the idea that it should be an issue of motorists versus pedestrians. He points out the link between the amount of traffic on the roads and the number of parents who drive their children to school. He urges the council to preserve the ordinance.

9:02 p.m. Tricia Jones introduces herself as a Ward 5 resident. She feels for the UM bus drivers who spoke, but says that students have behaved that way forever. The recent data at non-signalized intersections, she says, show that incidents have decreased from 34 to 11 – but she allows that it’s just for 10 months of the year. She urges the council to preserve the ordinance.

9:03 p.m. Andrew Peters is a student at UM law school. He and his wife chose Ann Arbor over Boulder and Manhattan. They didn’t know about the crosswalk ordinance before they moved here. But when they visited they noticed that people were able to walk around the city. He was concerned that before something is changed – about something that makes Ann Arbor what it is – more thought should be given to it.

9:05 p.m. Julie Grand says that she visited some personal websites of councilmembers. She’s quoting their own sentiments at them to argue for waiting for a recommendation from the pedestrian safety task force.

9:08 p.m. Jonathan Levine said he’s relieved that Kunselman is bringing forward an amendment that would still require motorists to stop. A number of states are updating their laws from “yield” laws to “stop” laws, he says. If Ann Arbor is going to be different from the rest of Michigan, it’s important to think about how it should be different. He argues from the point of view of how to treat the negligent pedestrian versus the patient pedestrian. A law requiring motorists to stop for pedestrians standing at the curb rewards patient pedestrianism, he says.

9:11 p.m. Ken Clark notes that Michigan actually doesn’t have a law on crosswalks. He reviewed all the 2012 pedestrian crashes. 77% of the crashes last year were assessed by the police as the fault of drivers, he says.

9:14 p.m. Jeff Gaynor, a teacher at Clague Middle School who’s on the school’s Safe Routes to School committee, explains how the group had applied for a grant. Three of the engineered crosswalks had been installed on Green Road with that money, he says. In his 35 years of teaching, he’d taken his students on hundreds of field trips and taught them how to cross the street. There has been an increase in the number of cars that stop, he says, but the behavior is not yet universal.

9:15 p.m. Gaynor says that he can’t tell his students to step off the curb and hope that cars will stop.

9:17 p.m. Mike Miller says he logs 30-35 miles a week walking different routes. He thinks that the ordinance has made things better. He thinks Kunselman’s amendment is a step backwards. He calls for more engineering and education. He thinks that stoplights might be put in on certain streets. Through enforcement we could get a more effective law, he says.

9:19 p.m. Julia Roberts is speaking as a resident (she’s an AAATA transit planner). She’s lived in Ann Arbor for eight years – having moved here from Chicago. She’s proud of the ordinance that was passed. The crosswalk law isn’t responsible for reckless driving or walking. She asks for the council to wait for a recommendation by the pedestrian safety task force.

9:20 p.m. Tony Pinnell, a translator for European companies, advises the council that repealing the ordinance would send a bad message – and would be bad business.

9:21 p.m. Chip Smith says he lives in Ann Arbor to give his daughter a chance to walk to school. In the 18 years he’s lived here, the city has made progress but it’s still not a walkable city. He calls for the council to wait until the pedestrian safety task force can make a recommendation.

9:23 p.m. Mary Benson describes the situation as “Russian Roulette.” She thinks the issue isn’t addressed in either version of the ordinance. “I think we need more red lights,” she says. That’s universally understood. People don’t know what the flashing beacons mean. “We can educate until hell freezes over,” she says. There will still be 10,000 new drivers every year, she says. She also calls for enforcement of jaywalking laws.

9:24 p.m. Larry Deck says that he doesn’t see how Kunselman’s amendment gets to the heart of the matter. He encourages the council to wait for the recommendation of the pedestrian safety task force. He calls for a culture of mutual respect.

9:26 p.m. Ed Vielmetti says he started looking at maps of pedestrian crashes. Many of them happen near UM campus and downtown. There are two problems. One is main arteries along big long stretches. The other problem is downtown pedestrian safety, where cars are turning. He cites State Street as a particularly difficult area.

9:30 p.m. Kathy Griswold says that almost 10 years ago she spoke to the council and asked why Ann Arbor couldn’t be more like some other cities. But Ann Arbor doesn’t want to do the work, she said, to enforce existing ordinances. She contends that the crosswalk ordinance was borne out of a desire to help Ann Arbor win awards. Ann Arbor’s crosswalk ordinance isn’t consistent with AAPS school safety rules, she says, or with the state’s UTC. She contends that a professional engineer hasn’t been heard from. She asks if the city wants to work hard or just have an ordinance.

9:31 p.m. Robert Gordon addresses the council as a Ward 3 resident. He says this is a “rush” to repeal. He calls for waiting for the pedestrian safety task force to make its recommendation.

9:34 p.m. Thomas Partridge recounts his various candidacies for public office. He calls for using scientific data and for enacting ordinances to make a better community. Councilmembers come to meetings having made decisions before the meetings, no matter how many people come to the podium to make reasoned, logical arguments, he contends. He’d attended his first caucus meeting yesterday, when they had spoken in emotionally committed ways to the repeal. He calls the language of the ordinance “muddled.” He tells councilmembers to put themselves in a wheelchair and then try to cross Huron Street.

9:36 p.m. Karen Moorhead asks the council to move carefully and slowly. She hopes that the council might reconsider how much the ordinance means. Think about enforcement, engineering, and education, she says.

9:37 p.m. Recess. The public hearing on the crosswalk ordinance is done. We’re now in recess.

9:49 p.m. And we’re back.

9:50 p.m. Approval of minutes from previous meeting.

9:51 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to approve the minutes of the previous meeting.

9:51 p.m. Consent agenda. This is a group of items that are deemed to be routine and are voted on “all in one go.” Contracts for less than $100,000 can be placed on the consent agenda. This meeting’s consent agenda includes just one item: a resolution to approve purchase order for Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) for annual geographic information system (GIS) software maintenance and license agreement ($58,900).

9:51 p.m. Councilmembers can opt to select out any items for separate consideration, but no one moves to separate out the one item from itself.

9:51 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to approve the consent agenda.

9:51 p.m. C-1 Approve rezoning for Traverwood Apartments. The council is being asked to give initial approval for rezoning of a 3.88 acre parcel for the Traverwood Apartments project – from ORL (office research light industrial district) to R4D (multiple-family district). The site plan for this project, being developed by First Martin Corp., is not being considered by the council tonight. But the $30 million project would include 16 two-story buildings for a total of 216 one- and two-bedroom units – or 280 total bedrooms. [For additional background, see Traverwood Apartments above.]

9:52 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted without discussion to give initial approval of the rezoning necessary for the Traverwood Apartments project. A final vote will come at a future council meeting after a public hearing.

9:52 p.m. B-1 Crosswalk ordinance. The council will be asked to give final approval of a repeal of the city’s crosswalk ordinance. The council gave initial approval to the repeal at its Nov. 18, 2013 meeting – on a 9-2 vote. Current Ann Arbor local law differs in two ways from the state’s Uniform Traffic Code. First, under current local law, motorists in Ann Arbor are supposed to yield the right-of-way to those pedestrians not just “within a crosswalk” but also to those who are “stopped at the curb, curb line or ramp leading to a crosswalk.” Second, when driving toward a crosswalk, motorists in Ann Arbor don’t have the option to yield to a pedestrian by merely slowing down; instead, they’re required to yield by stopping. Here’s what the current law says (as a result of amendment on Dec. 19, 2011):

10:148. Pedestrians crossing streets (a) When traffic-control signals are not in place or are not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop before entering a crosswalk and yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian stopped at the curb, curb line or ramp leading to a crosswalk and to every pedestrian within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is on the half of the roadway on which the vehicle is traveling or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger. …

For more detail on the evolution of the local law, see “Column: Why Did the Turkey Cross the Road?” [For additional background in the preview above: Crosswalk Law]

9:53 p.m. Kunselman leads off by calling it a great discussion with the citizenry. That had led to the effort not to repeal but to amend the ordinance, he says. It would also make it more consistent with the language on the city’s signs, he says. He now reads forth the ordinance in its entirety.

9:54 p.m. The key part is “shall stop and yield the right of way to every pedestrian within a crosswalk …”

9:55 p.m. Hieftje says that Kunselman can just substitute the amendment in place of the previous repeal, without a vote.

9:57 p.m. Kunselman says that the issue has been talked about for several months. The death on Plymouth Road was very emotional, he says. Whether that death resulted from the words in the ordinance, it was a situation to be taken seriously, he says. Kunselman complains that Erica Briggs of WBWC had taken the conversation he’d had with her and used it as “propaganda.”

9:58 p.m. Kunselman reviews the Traverse City ordinance, which requires stopping, but doesn’t talk about pedestrians anywhere except within a crosswalk.

10:01 p.m. Kunselman argues from the point of view of uniformity. We don’t want to have confusion among drivers trying to guess how to operate, he says. About the crash data, he says, any decrease can’t be attributed to the crosswalk language. He says that the citizenry has called for more enforcement and education. So at the next council meeting, “by golly” he’s going to propose a budget amendment to fund more traffic enforcement.

10:03 p.m. Kailasapathy says that it’s not the case that councilmembers were asking pedestrians to step into traffic. And it’s not acceptable to have to wait a long time to cross the street, she says. “We’re telling you to wait and find a gap,” she says. She calls for HAWK and other signals and infrastructure. She supports any amendments to the budget to support this – like hiring more police, or spending money on infrastructure. The marginal rate of return on pedestrian infrastructure is greater than investing in something like a rail station, she says.

10:06 p.m. Lumm agrees with investing in infrastructure and enforcement capability as budget priorities. She appreciates everyone coming out to speak. She’s talking about the crash data. She says it can’t be used as a definitive argument either way. She’s reviewing the history of the crosswalk ordinance changes.

10:07 p.m. Lumm says she tried back in 2011 to get the crosswalk ordinance language revised to refer only to “within a crosswalk.”

10:10 p.m. Briere says that Lumm is correct that the data doesn’t support a particular conclusion. November and December – for which 2013 data is not available – are months when accidents have historically been higher, she says. Briere says the question is what problem they’re trying to fix. The public has said more education, enforcement and engineering is necessary. So she doesn’t see how changing the ordinance helps. She says that accidents happening with pedestrians are in the crosswalk, not when cars are stopping for pedestrians stopping on the curb.

10:11 p.m. Briere clarifies what a “traffic signal” is: a red-yellow-green light. So it doesn’t include flashing beacons or stop signs, she explains.

10:11 p.m. Briere notes that the ordinance doesn’t apply to most downtown locations.

10:13 p.m. Briere says she’s going to reflect more on this issue. But she says she’ll paraphrase Jeff Hayner, who ran against her this last election – he had called for education, enforcement, and engineering, not repealing the ordinance.

10:14 p.m. Anglin is for spending the money on education and engineering. Right now there are too many irregularities, he says. He notes that many of the drivers are parents driving their kids to school. He says he’ll support the Kunselman amendment, and says it’s important to follow through and support it.

10:15 p.m. We’re in a state of confusion, Anglin says. And until that confusion is removed, we won’t have a safe community.

10:18 p.m. Warpehoski says he doesn’t see how the Kunselman amendment lines up with the rhetoric of uniformity. He likes his irony like he likes his coffee: bitter. Tomorrow is the International Day for Persons with Disabilities, he points out.

10:19 p.m. Warpehoski talks about his goals for the pedestrian safety task force. He’s not convinced that an inappropriate sense of pedestrian empowerment exists. He doesn’t buy that argument – but allows that that’s a data question. That data could be collected, he says, or the council could take a fire-ready-aim approach.

10:21 p.m. Warpehoski says that he walks a lot, with his kids. And he says he’s noticed that things have improved since the ordinance was passed. He says he feels safer as a pedestrian since the ordinance was passed. He says he’ll vote no on Kunselman’s proposal.

10:23 p.m. Taylor says he rejects the idea that Kunselman’s proposal is a compromise. He’s ok with Ann Arbor being different with its crosswalk law. No ordinance can protect drivers or pedestrians from negligence, he says. He repeats an argument from the Nov. 18 meeting – that the ordinance can’t be so powerful to embolden pedestrians but too weak to compel motorists to stop. He calls the budgetary amendments that others have talked about “chest thumping.”

10:24 p.m. Taylor says that the alleged confusion and fear has been “sown” and is not real, because the ordinance is very simple.

10:28 p.m. Eaton thanks everyone who showed up to speak. But he also says his vote is informed by those he talked to during his council campaign. The small numbers in the data, he says, mean that conclusions can’t be drawn. Eaton calls for a real education program and a real enforcement regime. “Here were are again tinkering with the ordinance,” he says. Ultimately, the money will have to be spent, like Griswold said, Eaton says.

10:31 p.m. Petersen says that she’s struggled with the logic of the ordinance. She says the data doesn’t show that increasing the right-of-way for pedestrians has increased safety. Petersen is skeptical that enforcement of the current ordinance would actually work. And she’s skeptical that effective education is possible in a transient community. Pedestrians should take full responsibility for their own safety, she says.

10:31 p.m. Petersen puts her faith in engineering. She says she’ll support an ADA compliant pedestrian bridge over Plymouth Road.

10:35 p.m. Warpehoski says he can count votes and realizes that he’s not going to win this one. But some comments of colleagues have gotten under his skin. He responds to Eaton’s characterization of the engineering efforts to date by saying the staff should be applauded for their efforts. Warpehoski explains that Petersen’s characterization of how a pedestrian claims the right-of-way is not correct. He agrees that pedestrians need to take responsibility for their own safety, but argues that pedestrians can best do that when they’re standing on the curb and can expect that motorists can stop.

10:36 p.m. Petersen responds to Warpehoski by saying that what he’s describing is ideal and that there’s not adequate enforcement to get to the point where motorists will actually stop.

10:39 p.m. Taylor says there’s are those who are unable to make the judgment as to whether it’s safe to enter the roadway. Under the current ordinance, it’s proper for the motorist to stop for someone just standing at the curb. Taylor says that the public speaker who talked about the culture change associated with drunk driving made a good analogy. That casts interesting light on where we are as a culture, he says.

10:42 p.m. Briere says that Petersen wants better enforcement, engineering and education and thinks there’s no way to achieve those goals, and thinks that the ordinance needs to be changed. She ticks through a paraphrase of positions taken by Eaton and Kailasapathy. Briere says that as more cars stop for pedestrians, more and more cars will stop for pedestrians. When drivers are not prepared to see a pedestrian – because they don’t have to stop for pedestrians – then they’re not prepared to stop for a person with a white cane or a person in a wheelchair, she says.

10:44 p.m. Briere also says that for “foreigners,” the more they see people stop for pedestrians, the more those “foreigners” will stop for pedestrians.

10:46 p.m. Hieftje says that in light of the closed session that’s scheduled, he would like to have the council suspend the council rule that requires a closed session to begin before 11 p.m. That rule is now suspended. Now back to the crosswalk ordinance.

10:48 p.m. Lumm is arguing against tabling. She says there’s been a lot of debate about the ordinance. Lumm is now holding forth with prepared comments.

10:50 p.m. Lumm’s comments are based essentially on an argument for uniformity across Michigan.

10:53 p.m. Hieftje corrects Anglin’s previous statement that “most bicyclists get hit” saying that some do but most don’t. Hieftje says he doesn’t think there’s a case in the data for changing the ordinance.

10:55 p.m. Hieftje talks about a video that the council had been shown years ago that showed pedestrians not using a pedestrian bridge. That’s a response to Petersen’s expression of support to build a pedestrian bridge on Plymouth Road.

10:56 p.m. Hieftje says that education, better signage, and engineering will help. But he doesn’t see how changing the ordinance will help. He doesn’t see the logic of requiring a person in a wheelchair to roll out into the road to see if cars are going to stop.

10:59 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted 6-4 to change the ordinance. But Hieftje says he will veto the change.

11:00 p.m. DC-1 Establish 2014 city council calendar. In this item, the council is complying with a charter requirement: “The Council shall fix the time and place of its regular meetings and shall hold at least two regular meetings in each month.” The pattern of the council’s regular meetings is: First and third Monday of the month with a work session on the second Monday.

11:00 p.m. Briere raises the question of a conflict with Passover.

11:00 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to confirm its calendar of regular meetings.

11:00 p.m. DC-2 Approve city policy regarding removal of on-street metered public parking spaces. The council is considering establishing a value for on-street parking spaces, in situations where the builder of a project makes a proposal that results in the loss of an on-street metered parking space. The $45,000 proposed amount is based an average of an estimated construction cost for an above-ground space of $40,000, and $55,000 for a below-ground parking space.

By way of background the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority’s most recent financial records show that last year on-street parking spaces generated $2,000 in gross revenue per space or $1,347 in net income per space annually. The contract with the city under which the DDA operates the public parking system stipulates that the city receives 17% of the gross parking revenues. So the city’s revenue associated with an on-street parking space corresponds to $340 annually. [For additional background, see Cost of In-Street Parking Spaces above.]

11:01 p.m. Taylor says he’s going to ask for a postponement. A public hearing is recommended, he says, for any kind of fee. So he moves to have it postponed until Dec. 16.

11:01 p.m. Briere asks if there’s sufficient time to give notice or a public hearing. There is.

11:02 p.m. Lumm thanks Taylor for bringing it forward. She agrees with the concept. She thanks staff for their answers to questions.

11:03 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to postpone the question of how much it should cost to remove an on-street parking space.

11:03 p.m. DB-1 Approve Running Fit addition site plan. The site plan entails a three-story addition to the Running Fit store at the northwest corner of Fourth Avenue and Liberty Street in downtown Ann Arbor. The first floor will be retained as retail space, but six residential units would be built on the upper three floors – one two-bedroom and five one-bedroom units. [For additional background, see Running Fit Addition above.]

11:03 p.m. Hieftje says he supports the project.

11:03 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted unanimously to approve the Running Fit addition.

11:03 p.m. DB-2 Accept donation of 2.2 acres from W. Martin. The council is being asked to consider of a donation of 2.2 acres to the city from Bill Martin just north of the project site for Traverwood Apartments. Earlier in the meeting, the council gave initial approval to a zoning change related to the project. The donated acreage is next to the Stapp Nature Area and the Leslie Park golf course. [image of map showing location]

11:05 p.m. Briere says she wants to make sure the official record reflects the correct size of the donation.

11:05 p.m. She thanks Martin for the donation.

11:05 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted unanimously to accept the acreage as a donation from Bill Martin to the city.

11:05 p.m. DS-1 Approve contract with Emergency Restoration Company ($729,000). The contract is for asbestos abatement in city hall. The council is being asked appropriate $400,000 in funds for the contract.

11:06 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to approve the contract for asbestos abatement in city hall.

11:06 p.m. DS-2 Approve contract with Nova Environmental Inc. ($35,600). This is a contract for an air monitoring project during the city hall asbestos abatement project.

11:08 p.m. Anglin wants to know why this contract would not be included in the one for the work itself. Matt Kulhanek explains that this contractor would be overseeing the work of the other contractor. That’s why the items are separate.

11:08 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to approve the air monitoring contract.

11:08 p.m. DS-3 Establishing a tax abatement district at 1901 E. Ellsworth. Once an industrial development district (IDD) is established, the property owner can apply for a tax abatement. The consideration of the tax abatement is a separate vote, which will be taken at a future meeting.

11:12 p.m. Kailasapathy asks for CFO Tom Crawford. She gets confirmation that the point is eventually to allow for application for a tax abatement. Crawford says that abatements can be requested for any new investment, not just personal property. She wants to know how much the value of the tax abatement would be. She notes that the company, Mahindra Genze, is a large company in India, like GE here. So it’s not really a small start-up. The amount of the investment would be $1.6 million. That’s $25,000 in total tax and the general fund portion of the city would be less, he says.

11:13 p.m. Crawford responds to Kailasapathy by explaining that the question for the council to weigh is whether the company has alternative locations. Kailasapathy wonders if this isn’t just a “race to the bottom” among various communities vying to attract the company.

11:16 p.m. City administrator Steve Powers notes that another consideration was that it would be a manufacturing operation, which is underrepresented in Ann Arbor. The fact that it’s located in an identified important corridor is also important. Kailasapathy gets confirmation that the tax abatement would likely be around three years, but could be up to 12 years.

11:18 p.m. Eaton reports that he’d had the opportunity to sit down with Luke Bonner of Ann Arbor SPARK and Alan Clark of Mahindra Genze. But he’s skeptical about tax abatements. He gets confirmation that the district is attached to the property, not the tenant. Crawford notes that Ann Arbor’s practice is to close the district after the original intent is fulfilled.

11:21 p.m. Eaton says when he looked up the city’s policy, it has a sunset clause. Crawford says that the policy is supposed to be reviewed. Eaton quotes the policy that makes clear that it does end and has already expired. Crawford: “I stand corrected.” Crawford notes that the prior city policy reflects the state’s criteria, so it’s not as if there’s no guidance.

11:23 p.m. Hieftje says that if the investment weren’t made by this company, the city wouldn’t get any tax revenue. Crawford says there’s a history of neighboring jurisdictions aggressively pursuing companies. Hieftje agrees with Kailasapathy’s characterization of the process as a “race to the bottom.” But these are the rules that the state of Michigan has set up, he says.

11:27 p.m. Petersen asks Crawford how common tax abatement is as an economic development tool. Crawford says that very few are done in Ann Arbor – in his nine years, it’s been done for around nine companies, he thinks. Ann Arbor SPARK’s Luke Bonner clarifies that it was a multi-state competition for the location. There were internal forces within Mahindra Genze that would have preferred the manufacturing location to be in a southern state. Previously, Bonner worked in Sterling Heights, where the personal property tax revenue was about $10 million, which he describes as about what all of Washtenaw County generates. That was a function of a policy to grant tax abatements.

11:31 p.m. Petersen supports this as important for economic development, which is a council priority. “I just think this makes sense for us,” she says.

11:31 p.m. Taylor says he’s delighted to support this, echoing Hieftje’s comments about these being the rules of the game. Lumm says she’s also not crazy about tax abatements because they pit one community against another. But she thinks the addition of jobs and the particular technology is a good fit for Ann Arbor. Kunselman also says he met with the representatives of the company, and he’s excited about the product. It’s located in one of the poorest parts of the city, he says, and he hopes that some of those jobs go to locals.

11:31 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to establish the IDD at 1901 E. Ellsworth.

11:31 p.m. DS-4 Approve agreement University Of Michigan for municipal parking citation processing, collections and record management services. This is the renewal of an agreement with the University for processing parking tickets.

11:32 p.m. Hieftje says that last Saturday, UM was clocking speeders on Huron Street. He points out that UM does write tickets on city streets.

11:32 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted unanimously to approve the agreement with UM for parking ticket processing.

11:32 p.m. DS-5 Approve six-month extension of installment purchase agreement with Bank of Ann Arbor to finance purchase of former Y lot. ($3,500,000). In the event that completion of due diligence on the pending sale of the old Y lot is not done by Dec. 16 – the date on which the city’s $3.5 million balloon payment is due – this approval will allow the city to continue the financing arrangement it has with Bank of Ann Arbor for six months. [For additional background, see Bank of Ann Arbor Loan.]

11:34 p.m. Briere says, “It’s my hope we never use this.” City administrator Steve Powers says that next week might be ambitious, but by the end of the year, the sale would almost certainly be completed. Lumm thanks the Bank of Ann Arbor for the terms, which include no prepayment penalty.

11:34 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted to approve the extension of the financing arrangement with Bank of Ann Arbor on the former Y lot.

11:37 p.m. Communications from council. Warpehoski follows up on Lloyd Shelton’s comment during the crosswalk public hearing. He says that Shelton is right about the accessibility of the council chambers. “We should be doing better as a seat of government for people with disabilities,” he says. People should not face an undue burden to address the council or be employed, he says. The configuration would not allow for a mayor or city administrator who uses a wheelchair. Briere points out that the chambers was built to serve as a courtroom.

11:37 p.m. Public commentary. There’s no requirement to sign up in advance for this slot for public commentary.

11:40 p.m. Ed Vielmetti is addressing the council. He reminds the council of the commitment to put items on the agenda in time for people to read them in advance and be able to comment on those items. The council appointments had not been added in a timely way, he points out. He also points out that the amendment on the crosswalk ordinance was not added until just minutes before the discussion. People would like to see the agenda settled on Friday, he notes.

11:41 p.m. Kathy Griswold says it was a major omission to not have a professional engineer recommendation for the original ordinance change. Having one person veto the revision puts a great burden on that one person, she says.

11:42 p.m. Closed session. The council is asked to go into closed session. The purpose is to discuss a privileged attorney-client memo that will be in writing, says assistant city attorney Abigail Elias.

11:45 p.m. Outcome: The council has voted unanimously to go into closed session.

12:05 a.m. We’re back.

12:05 a.m. Adjournment. We are now adjourned. That’s all from the hard benches.

A sign on the door to the Ann Arbor city council chambers gives instructions for post-meeting clean-up.

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Screenshot of Legistar – the city of Ann Arbor’s online agenda management system. Image links to the Dec. 2 meeting agenda.

Items that could result in considerable council discussion include final approval of a repeal of the city’s crosswalk ordinance. A scheduled public hearing on that issue could also draw a number of speakers. The council gave initial approval to the repeal at its Nov. 18, 2013 meeting – on a 9-2 vote.

The tally could be closer for the final vote, as mayor John Hieftje, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) could join Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) and Margie Teall (Ward 4), who had dissented on the initial approval. Also a possibility is that a compromise approach could be worked out. The possible compromise would leave intact the language about motorists stopping, but still limit the right-of-way to just pedestrians within a crosswalk – that is, it would not afford the right-of-way to those standing at the curb.

Some of the public’s perspective and council discussion on the crosswalk issue might be aired out during the council’s Sunday caucus, held in council chambers at city hall. This week the caucus has been rescheduled for 1 p.m. instead of its usual evening start time, in part to accommodate more discussion of the local crosswalk law.

Another topic that could extend the meeting is related to the pending sale of the Edwards Brothers property on South State Street to the University of Michigan for $12.8 million, which was announced in a press release last week. A right of first refusal on the property is held by the city of Ann Arbor as a condition of a tax abatement granted by the city council almost three years ago, on Jan. 18, 2011.

There’s some interest on the council in holding a closed session on Dec. 2 to review the options and the impact of those options. Any interest on the council in acquiring the land, which seems somewhat scant, would be based on a desire eventually to put the land back on the tax rolls. The topic of land acquisition is one of the legal exceptions to the Michigan Open Meetings Act, which requires all deliberations of a public body to be open to the public. If the council holds a closed session on that topic, it could extend the Dec. 2 meeting.

One reason the council may have little appetite for acquiring the Edwards Brothers property is that the city has just now managed to sell a downtown property the city acquired 10 years ago – the old Y lot on William Street, between Fourth and Fifth avenues. Approval of the $5.25 million sale to Dennis Dahlmann came at the council’s Nov. 18 meeting. But it’s possible that not all the due diligence will be completed before Dec. 16, when the city owes the $3.5 million principal it used to purchase the property. As a hedge against that possibility, the council will be asked on Dec. 2 to approve a six-month extension on the installment purchase agreement with Bank of Ann Arbor for the $3.5 million.

In the meantime, the minutes of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority’s most recent operations committee meeting reflect the DDA’s expectation that all of the equipment used to operate the public surface parking facility at the old Y lot will need to be removed by Dec. 31, 2013.

The city’s right of first refusal on the Edwards Brothers property is linked to a tax abatement. And on the council’s Dec. 2 agenda is an item that would establish an industrial development district (IDD) for a different property, at 1901 E. Ellsworth, where Extang Corp. and GSG Fasteners are located. Creating an IDD is a step in the process for granting a tax abatement.

Land control and use is a predominant theme among other Dec. 2 agenda items as well.

The council will be asked to give initial approval to a rezoning request for the Traverwood Apartments project – from ORL (office, research and light industrial district) to R4D (multiple-family district). The First Martin Corp. project would include 16 two-story buildings for a total of 216 one- and two-bedroom units – or 280 total bedrooms. The site plan and final rezoning approval would come before the city council at a future meeting. The Dec. 2 meeting will also include council’s consideration of a donation of 2.2 acres to the city from Bill Martin just north of the Traverwood Apartments project site. The acreage to be donated is next to the city’s Stapp Nature Area and the Leslie Park golf course.

At its Dec. 2 meeting, the council will also be asked to approve the site plan for a three-story addition to the Running Fit store at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Liberty Street in downtown Ann Arbor. The first floor will be retained as retail space, but six residential units would be built on the upper three floors – one two-bedroom and five one-bedroom units.

The city council will also be asked to place a value on land currently used as on-street parking spaces – $45,000 per space. By formally adopting that figure, any future development that causes the removal of on-street parking could be charged that amount. It would be paid to the Ann Arbor DDA, which manages the city’s public parking system. In this matter, the council would be acting on a four-year-old recommendation, approved by the Ann Arbor DDA in 2009.

In non-land issues, the council will be introduced to newly hired firefighters at its Dec. 2 meeting. The budgeted staffing level for the fire department is 85. However, the statistical section from the most recent comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR) for the city shows 82 AAFD staff in fiscal year 2013. That’s because the council approved the hiring of additional firefighters after the fiscal year began, bringing the total to 85.

The CAFR itself is indirectly included in the council’s agenda – as part of a presentation that will be given by chief financial officer Tom Crawford on the result of this year’s audit. It was a clean audit that showed the general fund doing about $2.4 million better than budgeted.

Among the other myriad statistics in the CAFR are the number of parking violations recorded by the city – which are again down in the range of 90,000, as they’ve been for the last three years. That’s about half what they were in 2006 and 2007. Those numbers in the CAFR don’t include University of Michigan parking tickets –  although the city and the UM have an agreement under which the city processes tickets and hears appeals for the university. A renewal of that agreement is on the council’s agenda for Dec. 2.

On Dec. 2 council also has a fair amount of its own internal business to wrap up, associated with the seating of the new council, which took place at the council’s Nov. 18 meeting. That includes adoption of the council rules. Based on a less than 10-minute meeting of the council’s rules committee on Nov. 29, no changes to the rules will be put forward at this time. Based on that meeting, it appears that Sally Petersen (Ward 2) will replace Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) on that council committee. The rest of the new council committee assignments are also supposed to be made at the Dec. 2 meeting.

The council’s calendar of regular meetings and work sessions will also be adopted at the Dec. 2 meeting. The basic pattern is first and third Mondays for regular meetings, except when there’s a holiday or an election during the week of the meeting.

This article includes a more detailed preview of many of these agenda items. More details on other agenda items are available on the city’s online Legistar system. The meeting proceedings can be followed Monday evening live on Channel 16, streamed online by Community Television Network.

Crosswalk Law

The council will be asked to give final approval of a repeal of the city’s crosswalk ordinance. The council gave initial approval to the repeal at its Nov. 18, 2013 meeting – on a 9-2 vote.

Current Ann Arbor local law differs in two ways from the state’s Uniform Traffic Code. First, under current local law, motorists in Ann Arbor are supposed to yield the right-of-way to those pedestrians not just “within a crosswalk” but also to those who are “stopped at the curb, curb line or ramp leading to a crosswalk.” Second, when driving toward a crosswalk, motorists in Ann Arbor don’t have the option to yield to a pedestrian by merely slowing down; instead, they’re required to yield by stopping.

Here’s what the current law says (as a result of amendment on Dec. 19, 2011):

10:148. Pedestrians crossing streets

(a) When traffic-control signals are not in place or are not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop before entering a crosswalk and yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian stopped at the curb, curb line or ramp leading to a crosswalk and to every pedestrian within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is on the half of the roadway on which the vehicle is traveling or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.

(b) A pedestrian shall not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into a path of a vehicle that is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield.

(c) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway. (Corresponds to UTC rule 706)

For more detail on the evolution of the local law, see “Column: Why did the Turkey Cross the Road?”

A possible compromise the council might consider would leave intact the language about motorists stopping, but still limit the right-of-way to just pedestrians within a crosswalk – that is, it would exclude those standing at the curb.

The compromise could be based on the wording of the ordinance used by Traverse City:

When traffic-control signals are not in place or not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop and yield the right-of-way to every pedestrian within a marked crosswalk.

Representatives of the Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition, who are advocating against repealing the crosswalk ordinance, contend that Traverse City police enforce “within a crosswalk” by including the curb. But at the council’s Nov. 18 meeting, assistant city attorney Bob West indicated that he didn’t interpret “within a crosswalk” to mean anything except the roadway.

At least some of the community debate on the topic has included the question of whether Ann Arbor’s ordinance is unique. On a national level, the ordinance language used in Boulder, Colorado includes more than just those pedestrians within a crosswalk:

A driver shall yield the right of way to every pedestrian on a sidewalk or approaching or within a crosswalk.“

And in Seattle, a similar effect is achieved by defining the crosswalk to extend from the roadway through the curb to the opposite edge of the sidewalk:

‘Crosswalk’ means the portion of the roadway between the intersection area and a prolongation or connection of the farthest sidewalk line or in the event there are no sidewalks then between the intersection area and a line ten feet therefrom, except as modified by a marked crosswalk.

Edwards Brothers Land

A pending sale of the Edwards Brothers property on South State Street to the University of Michigan for $12.8 million was announced in a press release last week. A right of first refusal on the property is held by the city of Ann Arbor as a condition of a tax abatement granted by the city council almost three years ago, on Jan. 18, 2011.

The topic of land acquisition is one of the legal exceptions to the Michigan Open Meetings Act, which requires all deliberations of a public body to be open to the public.

The council’s deliberations on granting the tax abatement nearly three years ago contemplated the possibility that the council could be faced with a decision about whether to act on the right of first refusal, which was associated with the tax abatement. At the time, city assessor David Petrak pegged the value of the land at anywhere between $1 million and $50 million. From The Chronicle’s report of that Jan. 18, 2011 meeting:

The cover memo also indicates that the Edwards Brothers real property is located immediately adjacent to a University of Michigan park-and-ride lot, and it’s felt that UM may have some interest in purchasing the property, which would remove it from the city’s tax rolls. In that light, the city staff built a stipulation into the tax abatement that would give the city the right of first refusal on any future land sale. So if UM offered to purchase the property, the city would have an opportunity to make an offer – presumably with the idea that the city would then sell the land to some other private entity, thereby returning the land to the tax rolls.

City assessor David Petrak briefly introduced some of the background on the request to the council.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) pressed for some additional explanation. Without additional information, she said, she could not support it. Why was the city considering the application? The answer was that by statute it must be considered.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) reminded the council that Edwards Brothers has been in Ann Arbor for over 100 years. When the previous abatement was granted, he said, the company was “this close” to moving the operation to North Carolina. Instead, due to the abatement, the company decided to remain in Ann Arbor and preserved around 400 jobs in this community.

With respect to Edwards Brothers not meeting the employment numbers required by the first tax abatement, Rapundalo cited the dire economic times, noting in particular that the book business has not exactly been thriving. So he did not want to hold the job losses against the company. He called Edwards Brothers a long-standing corporate citizen. He also said that if the company left, he would not doubt for a second that UM would pick up the property.

From the city’s CFO, Tom Crawford, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) elicited the fact that the tax abatement would apply to a new press – a typical economic requirement in a very competitive industry, he said. Petrak went on to explain the right of first refusal on the possible sale of the real estate, if Edwards Brothers decided eventually to leave anyway.

City administrator Roger Fraser elaborated in more detail on Crawford’s description of the press to be acquired. It’s particularly suited to quick turnaround on small printing jobs, and offers an opportunity to pick up some additional business for the company. The right of first refusal on the land sale, he said, was an attempt to extract some additional public benefit from the agreement.

Smith pressed for information about what the approximate cost of the land would be, if the city found itself having to contemplate whether to exercise its right of first refusal. Petrak didn’t have that information, but when continued to be pressed by Smith, he allowed that it was between $1 million and $50 million.

Mayor John Hieftje established with Crawford that there’d been no negative impact to the city’s revenues due to job losses at the company. Hieftje said the right of first refusal did not matter to him at all, but the 400 jobs at the company represented good, if not fancy, jobs. They might not earn the average $80,000 salaries that Pfizer workers earned, but they were good jobs. Hieftje also noted that the percentage of property that is abated in the city is minuscule.

…

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) observed that 415 jobs is a lot of jobs. The fact that there’d been only a 13% drop he characterized as a “great feat.” If it were a new company, he said, they would all be out helping to cut the ribbon.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) expressed his support for the abatement.

Bank of Ann Arbor Loan

An agreement to sell the old Y lot on William Street between Fourth and Fifth avenues downtown – to hotelier Dennis Dahlmann for $5.25 million – was approved by the council at its Nov. 18, 2013 meeting. [.pdf of rider] [.pdf of sales agreement]

But it’s possible that not all the due diligence will be completed before Dec. 16, when the city owes the $3.5 million principal it used to purchase the property. As a hedge against that possibility, the council will be asked on Dec. 2 to approve a six-month extension on the installment purchase agreement with Bank of Ann Arbor for the $3.5 million. The interest rate would be the same as the interest rate at which the city is currently borrowing the money – 3.89% with no penalty for pre-payment.

If additional interest is owed due to the extension of the loan, presumably the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority would also continue with its share of the payments. That was an arrangement agreed to in 2003 through action by the DDA’s executive committee, not the full DDA board. The DDA’s portion of the interest payments could factor into the calculation of the net proceeds from the former Y lot sale. A year ago at the council’s Oct. 15, 2012 meeting, the council adopted a resolution that indicated the proceeds of the sale would:

“… first be utilized to repay the various funds that expended resources on the property, including but not limited to due diligence, closing of the site and relocation and support of its previous tenants, after which any remaining proceeds be allocated and distributed to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund …

However, two days after the council meets on Dec. 2, the board of the Ann Arbor DDA will be considering a resolution that would waive any need to repay the DDA for those interest payments or for the expenditures by the DDA to demolish the old Y building in 2008. [.pdf of Dec. 4, 2013 draft DDA resolution on Y lot proceeds]

Possibly relevant to the question of whether the DDA can simply waive any required repayment by the city to the DDA is the source of funds used by the DDA to make those payments. In recent years, the DDA has used parking funds to make the interest payments. To the extent that in earlier years, funds captured under the DDA’s tax increment finance (TIF) may have been used to make interest payments, it’s not clear if the DDA could simply allow the city to retain those funds as part of the proceeds of the Y lot sale.

Traverwood Apartments

On the council’s Dec. 2 agenda is a project proposed by First Martin Corp. that would construct a complex of 16 two-story buildings on the west side of Traverwood Drive, north of Plymouth Road. The development is called Traverwood Apartments.

Aerial view of proposed Traverwood Apartments at 2225 Traverwood Drive, north of Plymouth Road.

Only the initial vote on the zoning is being considered on Dec. 2. The final vote on the zoning and the site plan will appear on a future council agenda.

The project, estimated to cost $30 million, would include 16 two-story buildings for a total of 216 one- and two-bedroom units – or 280 total bedrooms. Eight of the buildings would each have 15 units and 11 single-car garages. An additional eight buildings would each have 12 units and 8 single-car garages.

The city’s planning commission recommended approval of the site plan and the required rezoning at its Nov. 6, 2013 meeting. The site is made up of two parcels: a nearly 16-acre lot that’s zoned R4D (multi-family residential), and an adjacent 3.88-acre lot to the south that’s currently zoned ORL (office, research and light industrial). It’s the smaller lot that needs to be rezoned R4D.

Land to be donated by Bill Martin to the city of Ann Arbor indicated in red outline.

The Dec. 2 agenda includes the council’s consideration of a donation of 2.2 acres to the city from Bill Martin just north of the project site. The donated acreage is next to the Stapp Nature Area and the Leslie Park golf course.

Running Fit Addition

At its Dec. 2 meeting, the council will be asked to approve the site plan for a three-story addition to the Running Fit store at the northwest corner of Fourth Avenue and Liberty Street in downtown Ann Arbor.

Aerial view of the Running Fit building, at the northwest corner of East Liberty and South Fourth.

The first floor will be retained as retail space, but six residential units would be built on the upper three floors – one two-bedroom and five one-bedroom units.

The city planning commission recommended approval of the site plan at its Oct. 15, 2013 meeting.

The location in Ward 1 is zoned D1, which allows for the highest density development in the city. It’s also located in the Main Street Historic District.

The city’s historic district commission issued a certificate of appropriateness on Aug. 15, 2013.

The project is expected to cost about $900,000.

Cost of In-Street Parking Spaces

The city council will also be asked to place a value on portions of the public right-of-way currently used as on-street parking spaces – $45,000 per space. By formally adopting that figure, any future development that causes the removal of on-street parking spaces could be charged that amount.

In this matter, the council would be acting on a four-year-old recommendation approved by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority in 2009:

Thus it is recommended that when developments lead to the removal of on-street parking meter spaces, a cost of $45,000/parking meter space (with annual CPI increases) be assessed and provided to the DDA to set aside in a special fund that will be used to construct future parking spaces or other means to meet the goals above. [.pdf of meeting minutes with complete text of March 4, 2009 DDA resolution]

The contract under which the DDA manages the public parking system for the city was revised to restructure the financial arrangement (which now pays the city 17% of the gross revenues), but also included a clause meant to prompt the city to act on the on-street space cost recommendation. From the May 2011 parking agreement:

The City shall work collaboratively with the DDA to develop and present for adoption by City Council a City policy regarding the permanent removal of on-street metered parking spaces. The purpose of this policy will be to identify whether a community benefit to the elimination of one or more metered parking spaces specific area(s) of the City exists, and the basis for such a determination. If no community benefit can be identified, it is understood and agreed by the parties that a replacement cost allocation methodology will need to be adopted concurrent with the approval of the City policy; which shall be used to make improvements to the public parking or transportation system.

Subject to administrative approval by the city, it’s the DDA that has sole authority to determine the addition or removal of meters, loading zones, or other curbside parking uses.

The $45,000 figure is based on an average construction cost to build a new parking space in a structure, either above ground or below ground – as estimated in 2009. It’s not clear what the specific impetus is to act on the issue now, other than the fact that action is simply long overdue. In 2011, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social research expansion was expected to result in the net removal of one on-street parking space. [For more background, see: "Column: Ann Arbor's Monroe (Street) Doctrine."]

The resolution on the council’s Dec. 2 agenda is sponsored by Christopher Taylor (Ward 3). Taylor participated in recent meetings of a joint council and DDA board committee that negotiated a resolution to the question about how the DDA’s TIF revenue is regulated. In that context, Taylor had argued adamantly that any cap on the DDA’s TIF should be escalated by a construction industry CPI, or roughly 5%. Taylor’s reasoning was that the DDA’s mission is to undertake capital projects and therefore should have revenue that escalates in accordance with increases in the costs to undertake capital projects. Based on that reasoning, and the explicit 2009 recommendation by the DDA to increase the estimated $45,000 figure in that year by an inflationary index, the recommended amount now, four years later, could be closer to $55,000, assuming a 5% figure for construction cost inflation.

The actual cost of building an underground space in the recently completed (2012) underground Library Lane parking structure could provide a more current estimate, but the DDA has not made public a breakdown of how that project’s actual costs lined up with its project budget.

The last two month’s minutes from the DDA’s committee meetings don’t reflect any discussion of the on-street parking space replacement cost. Nor has the issue been discussed at any recent DDA board meeting.

Audit, Firefighters, Other Stats

In non-land issues, the council will be introduced to newly hired firefighters at its Dec. 2 meeting.

The statistical section from the city’s most recent comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR) shows a budgeted staffing level for the fire department of 82, in fiscal year 2013. But the council approved the hiring of additional firefighters after the fiscal year began, bringing the total to 85.

The CAFR is indirectly included in the council’s agenda – as part of a presentation that will be given by chief financial officer Tom Crawford on the result of this year’s audit. It was a clean audit that showed the general fund doing about $2.4 million better than budgeted.

Highlights from that FY 2013 audit report, which has now been issued in final form to the city, include an increase to the general fund balance from about $15.4 million to about $16.2 million. The $800,000 increase contrasts to the planned use of roughly $1.6 million from the general fund balance in the FY 2013 budget. About $200,000 of the increase was in the “unassigned” fund balance.

The result of the audit, in the new GASB terminology, was an “unmodified” opinion – which corresponds to the older “unqualified” opinion. In sum, that means it was a “clean” audit. The concerns identified last year had been addressed to the auditor’s satisfaction.

Members of the council’s audit committee, which met on Oct. 24. 2013 to review the draft audit report, were enthusiastic about the $2.4 million better-than-budget performance for the city’s general fund, which had expenditures budgeted for $74,548,522 in FY 2013.

Challenges facing the city this coming year include the implementation of the new GASB 68 accounting standard starting in FY 2015, which begins July 1, 2014. That standard requires that most changes to the net pension liability will be included immediately on the balance sheet – instead of being amortized over a long time period. The GASB 68 standard must be implemented for an organization’s financial statements for fiscal years beginning after June 15, 2014.

Two of the city’s funds were highlighted by Crawford at the Oct. 24 meeting as having potential difficulties associated with the GASB 68 standard – solid waste and the public market (farmers market). For the public market fund, Crawford floated the idea to the audit committee that it could be folded back into the city’s general fund, on analogy with the golf fund. Starting this year (FY 2014), the golf fund has been returned to general fund accounting.

Among the other myriad statistics in the CAFR are the number of parking violations recorded by the city – which are again down in the range of 90,000 as they’ve been for the last three years. That’s about half what they were in 2006 and 2007. Those numbers in the CAFR don’t include University of Michigan parking tickets – although the city and the UM have an agreement under which the city processes tickets and hears appeals for the university. A renewal of that agreement is on the council’s agenda for Dec. 2.

Here’s a sampling of the kind of data available in the statistical section of the FY 2013 CAFR, which includes data from previous CAFRs as well. [.pdf of final audit report released on Nov. 15, 2013]

Ann Arbor parking violations. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor traffic violations. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor physical arrests. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor police services data. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor fires extinguished. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor fire inspections. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor emergency responses by fire department. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor fire services data. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor police department staff strength. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor total city employees. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor water main breaks. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Ann Arbor taxable value. (Data from city of Ann Arbor CAFR. Chart by The Chronicle.)

Internal Council Business

On its Dec. 2 meeting agenda, the council also has a fair amount of its own internal business to wrap up, associated with the seating of the new council, which took place at the council’s Nov. 18 meeting.

That internal business includes adopting the council rules. Based on a less than 10-minute meeting of the council’s rules committee on Nov. 29, no changes to the rules were planned to be put forward at this time. The council’s rules committee – established by last year’s council – currently consists of Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) and mayor John Hieftje.

However, the .pdf file attached to the council’s online agenda – which reflects the council’s rules to be considered for adoption – includes a revision that was explicitly discussed and, for the time being, rejected at the committee’s Nov. 29 meeting. [.pdf of city council rules]

That change replaces “personality” (an archaic usage meaning a disparaging remark about a person) with “personal attack” in the following rule: “The member shall confine comments to the question at hand and avoid personality.” At the council’s Nov. 18 regular meeting, when the council voted to delay adoption of the rules pending a review of the rules, Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) had asked that the rules committee look at the rule requiring that councilmembers “avoid personality” during deliberations.

At the Nov. 29 committee meeting, Stephen Kunselman weighed in specifically for retaining the more archaic wording as reflective of history and tradition. The outcome of that committee discussion was that no changes would be recommended at this time, as any changes should be reviewed by the rules committee with its new membership. But based on the inclusion of the change in the Legistar document, it’s not clear what the status of that proposed change is meant to be.

A consensus on the committee at the Nov. 29 meeting seemed to be that the new membership of the rules committee should include Sally Petersen (Ward 2) in place of Kunselman, as Kunselman did not wish to continue on the rules committee. In addition, Petersen’s ethics initiative, which was approved at the council’s Nov. 18, 2013 meeting, tasks the rules committee with a certain amount of work – so the rules committee consensus on Nov. 29 appeared to be that the committee would be well-served by her membership.

The rest of the new council committee assignments are also supposed to be made at the Dec. 2 meeting.

The council’s calendar of regular meetings and work sessions will also be adopted at the Dec. 2 meeting. The basic pattern is first and third Mondays for regular meetings, except when there’s a holiday or an election during the week of the meeting.

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Ann Arbor planning manager Wendy Rampson, center, talks with students in the University of Michigan masters of urban planning program. About 30 students attended the planning commission’s Oct. 1, 2013 meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

Five existing buildings at the back of the church – originally built as classrooms for a private school that moved out in 2003 – would be torn down and replaced with a 12,850-square-foot, two-story addition to be used primarily for the church’s educational activities.

Bonnie Bona urged the church to consider ways the space could be used as much as possible, not just for Sunday school and evening programs. Sabra Briere encouraged the church to explore adding permeable pavement to at least some of the parking area.

Commissioners voted unanimously to recommend approval of the site plan, which will next be considered by the city council. A special exception use was also unanimously granted, and does not require additional council approval.

In updates from the planning manager, Wendy Rampson reported that the Traverwood Apartments proposal – which was postponed at the commission’s Sept. 17, 2013 meeting – won’t be coming back to the commission for a few weeks. The developer, First Martin Corp., now wants to donate the two-acre high-quality woodland portion on the north end of the site to the city for parkland. So before the apartment project moves forward, the process of acquiring the parkland will unfold. That includes working through the park advisory commission’s land acquisition committee, she said, and then through city council.

Rampson also reminded commissioners that they’ll be getting a draft report on the downtown zoning review at their Oct. 8 working session. Then, based on feedback from that meeting, the report will be revised for commissioners to consider formally at their Oct. 15 regular meeting.

And a project on which commissioners had been briefed during their Sept. 10 work session – the city’s effort to be certified in Michigan’s “Redevelopment Ready Communities” program – will be on the city council’s Oct. 14 work session agenda.

The commission’s Oct. 1 meeting was notable for the crowd it drew, including about 30 University of Michigan students and at least one student from Skyline High. The UM students were in the masters of urban planning program.

Ann Arbor Christian Reformed Church

A project to expand the Ann Arbor Christian Reformed Church at 1717 Broadway St. was the main action item on the Oct. 1 agenda. It requires site plan approval, as well as a special exception use.

Aerial view of site for the Ann Arbor Christian Reformed Church at 1717 Broadway.

The site plan proposal calls for tearing down five existing buildings – including four that have been used for classrooms – and constructing a 12,850-square-foot, two-story addition to the rear of the church. The addition would be used for educational activities at the church, which is located on a 4.3-acre site in Ward 1, southwest of Broadway’s intersection with Plymouth Road.

The existing classroom buildings were constructed in 1991, when the city approved the use of that site for a private school. The school subsequently moved – in 2003.

The new addition would house 11 classrooms and conference rooms for church use.

According to a staff memo, only minor changes are proposed for the existing two parking lots, such as adding interior landscaped islands. The lots includes a total of 142 spaces, and no new spaces will be added. The topography of the site includes a sharp drop-off at the back of the site, where one of the parking lots is located. A detention basin at the rear would be enlarged slightly.

Additional sidewalks will be added, including a roughly 20-foot extension of the public sidewalk along Broadway Street, which currently stops short of the south property line. The proposal also entails removing one landmark tree that’s considered in poor health – a blue spruce.

The church is located next to Highland Apartments and Broadview Apartments, near the University of Michigan’s north campus. Because the church is in an area zoned for single-family residential use (R1C zoning), a special exception use approval is needed from the planning commission. The city’s planning staff noted that the church has been located there for about 50 years. The church has a capacity of 126 seats, which will remain unchanged.

In giving the staff report, city planner Jill Thacher showed photos from the site, including one that featured “a really nice whitetail deer who was very friendly and just hung out with me while I walked around and took pictures.”

The project is estimated to cost about $3 million. No approval is required from the city council for the special exception use, but the council will need to consider the site plan for approval.

Only one person spoke during the public hearing. Arnie Geldermans of Midwestern Consulting Inc. told commissioners that he was on hand to answer any questions.

Ann Arbor Christian Reformed Church: Commission Discussion

Bonnie Bona brought up the private school that had been located at that site. She wondered if a previously granted special exception use for that school had expired. City planning manager Wendy Rampson noted that because the school had vacated that location more than a year ago, the special exception use has lapsed.

Bona asked what the new classrooms would be used for, if they won’t be used for a private school. Arnie Geldermans of Midwestern Consulting reported that after the school moved out, the church bought the existing buildings to use for church activities, including Sunday school and other programs. The new addition is simply replacing those classroom buildings, “which have definitely reached the end of their useful life,” he said.

The amount of square footage is a lot just for use on Sunday, Bona said. Geldermans clarified that programs in the classrooms take place four or five nights per week. “It is a heavily-used facility,” he said.

From left: Bob Overhiser of Architects Design Group, and Arnie Geldermans of Midwestern Consulting.

Bob Overhiser of the Ann Arbor-based Architects Design Group came forward to provide more details about the plan, which includes renovating existing office space as well as providing new offices for the pastors and other work space. New barrier-free bathrooms will also be added, as well as a new elevator.

Bona said she might have sounded like she was opposed to the school, but in fact she wants to ensure that the building is used as much as possible. If there’s an opportunity for using those classrooms during the day, Bona said, she encouraged the church to return and ask for another special exception use.

Ken Clein said he knew of several churches who have built “substantial” additions for their educational and community programs, so this project isn’t out of the ordinary.

Kirk Westphal asked about the current parking capacity. Geldersmans, who is a church member, said the parking lot is rarely filled completely.

Sabra Briere, who also represents Ward 1 on the city council, said she’s very familiar with that site. [Briere lives on the same street.] She said there were no neighborhood concerns voiced about parking for the church. Because it’s on a heavily sloped property, she wanted to talk about the permeable surfaces. She wanted to know if any of the parking spaces in the lower lot could be made permeable.

Geldersmans replied that no parking spaces will be added, but some will be rearranged. One area will be regraded to make the parking spaces handicapped accessible. The church could explore using permeable pavement in that area, he said. Briere suggested looking at hard pavers that allow infiltration between the blocks. When Geldersmans said he’d be somewhat concerned about the aesthetics of those blocks, Briere quipped, “Since parking lots are so aesthetic?”

Geldersmans said the parking lot area almost feels like a park, because it’s very heavily wooded there. He again stated they could consider permeable pavement.

Briere wondered if there was a serious problem with overflow on that “glacial moraine.” She noted that rains are increasingly heavy and inclined to “come in a sudden rush.” Anything that can be done to increase filtration benefits the entire stormwater management system, she said.

Geldersmans pointed out that an earlier project on the site included an infiltration system, but the city staff hasn’t given the church “credit” for doing that, he said. The soil is very sandy there, he added, and drains quickly. He’s attended the church for 35 years and couldn’t recall ever seeing standing water.

Bona asked about the landscaping. Responding to her query, Rampson clarified that the church isn’t required to mitigate for the removal of the one landmark tree, because it was determined by the city forester to be unhealthy.

Clein asked about site lighting in the parking lots. Geldersmans replied that the upper parking lot has lighting, but the lower lot currently does not. The project includes adding about four lightpoles to the lower lot. City planner Jill Thacher said the lighting plan met city standards. Geldersmans said the church would not argue if the city decided to waive the lighting requirement. “It’s not within my power,” Clein joked.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously voted to recommend approval of the site plan. In a separate vote, commissioners voted to grant a special exception use to the project.

Communications & Commentary

During the meeting there were several opportunities for communications from staff and commissioners, as well as two general public commentary times. Here are some highlights.

Communications & Commentary: Traverwood Apartments

At its Sept. 17, 2013 meeting, the planning commission postponed action on a proposal by First Martin Corp. to build a major new apartment complex in northeast Ann Arbor. Traverwood Apartments would entail 16 two-story buildings and 216 one- and two-bedroom units on nearly 22 acres off  Traverwood Drive, north of Plymouth Road.

The item was expected to be on the commission’s Oct. 1 agenda, However, planning manager Wendy Rampson reported that it’s been deferred because First Martin now wants to donate a portion of the site to the city for parkland. So before the apartment project moves forward, the process of acquiring the parkland will unfold. That includes working through the park advisory commission’s land acquisition committee, she said, and then through city council.

The portion being donated is about two acres of high-quality woodland on the north side of the site, adjacent to Stapp Nature Area – which was created on land that First Martin sold to the city in 2003.

Communications & Commentary: D1 Zoning Review

Planning manager Wendy Rampson reminded commissioners that the consultants who are developing recommendations as part of a downtown zoning review– Erin Perdu and Megan Masson-Minock – will present their report at the planning commission’s Oct. 8 working session. Based on feedback from that meeting, the report will be revised for commissioners to formally consider at their Oct. 15 regular meeting.

For more background, see Chronicle coverage: “Priorities Emerge in Downtown Zoning Review” and “Downtown Zoning Review Moves Forward.”

Communications & Commentary: Upcoming Public Meetings

Planning manager Wendy Rampson pointed out several upcoming meetings that have connections to the planning commission.

On Wednesday, Oct. 9, a public meeting will be held about the Nixon/Dhu Varren/Green intersection. It evolved from a development project that hasn’t yet been formally submitted, located on the north end of Nixon Road near M-14. The intersection of Nixon/Dhu Varren/Green is an “awkward offset,” she said, and at the urging of some councilmembers, staff is convening a public meeting to get input from residents. It starts at 6:30 p.m. in the media center of Clague Middle School, 2616 Nixon Road.

Planning commissioner Bonnie Bona.

That same evening, the developers of the 624 Church Street Apartments are holding a citizen participation meeting for their revised residential development proposal. That meeting also starts at 6:30 p.m. at Pizza House Restaurant, 618 Church St.

On Oct. 14, Rampson reported that she’ll be the city council work session, along with Jennifer Rigterink of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. (MEDC) to talk about the city’s participation in the Redevelopment Ready Communities certification program. That session starts at 7 p.m. in the second-floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron. [.pdf of RRC program overview]

Planning commissioners had been briefed on this effort during a Sept. 10 commission work session. At that session, Rampson described the program as a tool to help communities put in place elements that would allow redevelopment to happen. Those things include master plans that are clear about what community expectations are for new developments, and zoning needs to reflect those expectations in a very specific way. It means that when developers look at a specific property, they’ll be able to know exactly what they can do.

If the city completes the state’s evaluation successfully, then it would be certified as a “Redevelopment Ready” community. This is a relatively new program, but the state has indicated that communities with this certification could receive priority points on grants from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA). Before the staff can proceed, the city council must pass a resolution stating that the city can participate.

Communications & Commentary: Public Hearings for Oct. 15

There will be two public hearings for projects on the Oct. 15 agenda of the planning commission. Those are:

• A site plan for an expansion of the building at 121-123 E. Liberty and 220 S. Fourth Ave., where Running Fit is located. The proposal is to build a three-story addition, adding 6,015 square feet to an existing 2,515-square-foot building on the 0.061-acre site. The upper three floors would be residential, with retail use remaining on the ground floor.
• A site plan and rezoning for two free-standing restaurants at Briarwood Mall. They would be located on the east side of the Macy’s building, 700 Briarwood Circle. The parking lot east of the new restaurants would be reconfigured, and a portion of the parking lot would be rezoned from P (parking) to C2B (business service).

Present: Bonnie Bona, Sabra Briere, Ken Clein, Diane Giannola, Kirk Westphal, Paras Parekh. Also: City planning manager Wendy Rampson.

Absent: Eleanore Adenekan, Jeremy Peters, Wendy Woods.

Next regular meeting: Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013 at 7 p.m. in the second-floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date]

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