Mary Hathaway spoke to the Ann Arbor District Library board about efforts to create a public gathering place atop the underground parking structure adjacent to the downtown library. (Photo by the writer.)

The commentary focused on what’s now being called the “Library Green” – an effort to create a public park atop the underground parking structure that’s being built on South Fifth Avenue, adjacent to the downtown library building. Advocates for the park conveyed that they’ve taken to heart the concerns of the library, and hope to partner with AADL to develop an area that benefits the public and helps the library to thrive.

The board began its meeting with a closed session, in part for the purpose of getting advice from AADL’s legal counsel. In her written report to the board, AADL director Josie Parker noted that the library is considering the legal and financial implications of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority’s decision regarding “excess” taxes captured in the DDA’s tax increment finance (TIF) district.

Board members did not discuss this issue, but voted to schedule another closed session at their Sept. 19 meeting again to hear advice from legal counsel.

Public Commentary

It’s rare that people address the AADL board during public commentary time, but on Monday night four people attended in support of a public park – now dubbed “Library Green” – atop the city-owned Library Lot, adjacent to the downtown library. Three of them addressed the board. Alan Haber, who has frequently been the point person for this effort, attended the meeting but did not speak during public commentary.

Will Hathaway said he was representing a group of people who’ve been talking for several months about how to create a park on the land next to the downtown library, where an underground parking structure is currently being built – the parking structure is set to be completed in early 2012. He thanked AADL director Josie Parker for meeting with him and his mother, Mary Hathaway, about the project, and noted that AADL board member Ed Surovell had also met with them and had been very generous with his time. Hathaway said they’d come away from those meetings with a better understanding of the issues and challenges that the library faces, and he wanted to convey to the board how those conversations had a big impact on his group.

The group has been giving a lot of thought on how to address the library’s concerns, and how development of the Library Lot could have a synergy with the downtown library branch, Hathaway said. The group has also met with other people who have experience with downtown developments, he said. They’ve worked up sketches for possible development of a public park, taking to heart the aspirations and hopes of the library. Everyone in the group cares about the library and wants it to thrive at the center of Ann Arbor, he said, and that’s what he wanted to convey to the board.

Mary Hathaway said she agreed with her son’s statement, and that the group hoped to be partners with the library. Among other things, the group viewed part of their mission as addressing some of the problems that were found at another nearby public park, she said. [Hathaway did not identify the park by name, but was likely referring to Liberty Plaza at the southwest corner of Liberty and Division. It is often a hangout for panhandlers, and aside from certain events – like the Sonic Lunch concert series – the park is not widely used by the general public.]

Odile Hugenot Haber told the board that the group is now referring to the project as “Library Green” in hopes of attracting more support. [Previously, it has been called the "community commons."] Their vision is of a park with a playground, fountains, a theater and a “beautiful room” to hold events like weddings and community functions, Haber said. The more activities that take place there, the more diverse mix of people it will draw, she noted. Haber also addressed what she called a great fear that many people had of the homeless. Before coming to Ann Arbor she lived in Berkeley, California, she said, and helped start a movement called “Homeless, Not Helpless.” Many homeless people have skills, she noted, and we need to look at them not as bums, but as people who are down and out, yet who can still contribute to society. Haber urged the library to participate in developing the vision for a public commons.

Board members did not respond to public commentary during the meeting.

Director’s Report

Josie Parker had provided a written report to the board prior to Monday’s meeting. Included in it – but not discussed at the board meeting – was a note that the library is considering the legal and financial implications of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority’s decision regarding “excess” taxes captured in the DDA’s tax increment finance (TIF) district. The AADL board began its meeting with a closed session to discuss the opinion of its legal counsel, as well as for labor negotiations.

Although the board did not discuss the issue during the public portion of its meeting, board members scheduled another closed session at its Sept. 19 meeting that includes getting the opinion of legal counsel.

At issue is the interpretation of a city ordinance about TIF capture in the DDA’s downtown district, and a decision by the DDA board made at a special meeting held on July 27, 2011. At that meeting, the DDA board passed a resolution stating its view that the city’s ordinance did not require the DDA to return money to taxing authorities in its TIF district – which the DDA had already returned earlier this year. The language of the resolution was somewhat vague, stating that “no redistribution to relevant taxing authorities is required.” The AADL is a taxing authority in the DDA’s TIF district.

Parker had attended the July 27 special meeting, and afterwards told The Chronicle that the library would be working with its legal counsel, Hooper Hathaway, in preparing a response to the DDA’s decision. AADL board member Nancy Kaplan also attended the DDA’s July 27 meeting. Then-president of Washtenaw Community College, Larry Whitworth, told The Chronicle after the DDA’s July 27 meeting that WCC was disturbed by the DDA’s decision and that the college – as one of the taxing authorities in the TIF district – would also be responding to the DDA. And in a phone interview with The Chronicle on Tuesday morning, Aug. 16, county administrator Verna McDaniel said the county’s legal counsel is also reviewing the DDA’s decision.

By way of additional background, earlier this year – at a May 20, 2011 DDA board meeting– board members had voted to accept a method of excess TIF calculation that amounted to roughly $473,000 of excess TIF capture since 2004, to be divided among taxing authorities that have a portion of their tax revenues captured in the DDA TIF district: Washtenaw County, Washtenaw Community College, and the Ann Arbor District Library. The library’s share was about $75,000. The calculation also called for $711,767 to be returned to the city of Ann Arbor, but the Ann Arbor city council waived that repayment.

The Chronicle has published two op-ed pieces on the subject, arguing that the method the DDA used to calculate the excess TIF was not accurate: “Taxing Math Needs Another Look” and “TIF Capture is a Varsity Sport.”

Director’s Report: Other Items

Parker’s written report also noted that Eli Neiburger, AADL’s associate director of IT and product development, has accepted an invitation to serve as a member of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Beta Sprint review panel. The DPLA’s steering committee is working to form a national digital public library – Parker participated in a working group for the effort earlier this year. The Beta Sprint project is looking for ideas and prototypes to show how the DPLA could index and provide access to a range of content. Based on the review panel’s recommendations, the DPLA steering committee – which includes Paul Courant, dean of libraries for the University of Michigan – will ask the creators of those ideas and prototypes to make presentations at a public meeting on Oct. 21, 2011 in Washington, D.C.

The director’s report also mentioned that Parker was asked write a blog post for the TechSoup for Libraries website. The post – titled “Utopian Benchmarks Are Not the Goal” – reflected on her experience as the representative for public library directors in the Public Access Technology Benchmarks Initiative, a consortium of 13 organizations working on a project funded by the U.S. Libraries Program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In addition to her written report, Parker mentioned three other items at Monday’s meeting. A project that Parker had first described at the board’s Dec. 20, 2010 meeting – a six-part public series of lectures, documentary film screenings and other events titled “From Bluegrass to Broadway: A Film History of America’s Popular Music” – has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Neiburger and Tim Grimes, AADL’s community relations and marketing manager, are advisors on the project, which is spearheaded by the Tribeca Film Institute.

Parker noted that this is the second NEH project to which library staff are connected – Grimes is also helping develop an NEH-funded project titled “Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Worlds.” That effort will identify books and other resources that will ultimately be distributed to at least 1,000 public libraries nationwide, designed to spur discussion and programming about the Muslim culture. As a result of Grimes’ participation, AADL is one of six libraries chosen to serve as focus groups for the project. The focus groups will help gauge reaction to the books and themes proposed for the project. To be part of two NEH projects ”for a library our size, it’s pretty remarkable,” Parker said.

Parker also reported that she had attended a reception last week for the new Ann Arbor Public Schools superintendent, Patricia Green. She described Green as enthusiastic about being here – Parker said she looks forward to getting to know Green.

Finally, Parker gave the board an update on a decision the library staff made in 2004. Prior to that time, AADL contracted with a local collection agency to collect on accounts of unreturned materials and overdue fines. Once an account is turned over to a traditional collection agency, it’s all about the money, Parker said, and that wasn’t satisfactory to the library, which was interested in recovering its materials. So in 2004 AADL began contracting with the library division of Unique Management Services. [According to its website, the firm has trademarked a "Gentle Nudge" process to recover materials and fines.]

Parker said she just received a report from the firm for the period of February 2004 through July 2011. During that time, the return on investment for the library has been $7.12 for every dollar the library has paid the company. She said AADL will continue that service.

Responding to a question from board member Jan Barney Newman, Parker said that between 2004 and July 2011, the library submitted 10,233 accounts for collection. During that time, about $600,000 in cash was recovered, and about $122,000 in materials. She noted that collection is more difficult in a college town, with a more transient population. Parker also said it was important to put these numbers in the context of the library’s entire circulation – about 9 million items each year. Most people who use the library return their materials and pay their fines, she said.

Financial Report

Ken Nieman, AADL’s associate director of finance, HR and operations, gave a brief financial update to the board, referring to a written report provided in the board packet. [.pdf of finance report] He described the month of July as fairly typical, ending with a fund balance of $7.9 million and an unrestricted cash balance of $6.7 million. He noted that three items are currently over budget – employment costs, purchased services and communications – but are expected to fall back in line by the end of the fiscal year. The library’s fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30.

Board members had no questions about the financial report.

December Meeting Date

The board voted on two items during its Aug. 15 meeting: (1) setting a closed session for its Sept. 19 meeting to discuss the opinion of legal counsel and for labor negotiations; and (2) changing its December meeting date from Monday, Dec. 19 to Thursday, Dec. 15. Both votes were unanimous, without discussion.

Present: Rebecca Head, Nancy Kaplan, Jan Barney Newman, Prue Rosenthal, Ed Surovell. Also AADL director Josie Parker.

Absent: Margaret Leary, Barbara Murphy

Next meeting: Monday, Sept. 19, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the library’s fourth floor meeting room, 343 S. Fifth Ave. [confirm date]

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Highlights of the presentation included the organization’s funding stream, which comes not just from the city of Ann Arbor property taxes. In fiscal year 2010, in addition to the $7,344,364 the AADL received from Ann Arbor property owners, it also received taxes from Pittsfield Township ($1,849,036), Scio Township ($1,252,179), Ann Arbor Township ($804,236), as well as other surrounding municipalities.

In 2010, 1,792,526 visits were made to the library’s five branches – 627,196 of them to the downtown location. In 2010, a total of 62,696 visitors attended library events – 23,612 of them at the downtown location. For those downtown events, 79% of attendees arrived to the event by car, compared with 7% by bus, 2% by bicycle and 12% by walking. Of those who drove a car to the event, half parked either at an adjacent surface lot or at the Fourth and William Street structure, and 31% used street parking.

If one-third of all 627,196 visits to the downtown library location are assumed to be made by people who pay to park downtown, then visitors to the downtown library in 2010 generated at least $200,000 in public parking revenue.

The presentation came in the general context of an effort by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority, at the direction of the Ann Arbor city council, to start leading a public process to evaluate alternative uses for city-owned surface lots in the downtown area. Immediately to the north of the downtown library location is the construction site of an underground parking garage, expected to offer around 640 spaces. Known as the Library Lot, though not owned by the library, the top of the underground parking garage is one of the pieces of land that the public process is meant to address. [Recent Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor DDA Continues Planning Prep"]

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]

Doug Kelbaugh and Kit McCullough at the June 8 partnerships meeting of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority.

The parcels are currently used for parking – except for the Library Lot. It’s the construction site for an underground garage that, when completed, will offer around 640 parking spaces. The structure is engineered to bear the weight of a building on top of it that’s as tall as 180 feet.

The main event of the June partnerships meeting was a formal proposal to lead a public engagement process that would take place starting this fall. The proposal came from Doug Kelbaugh, former dean of the University of Michigan’s college of architecture and urban planning, and Kit McCullough, who teaches at the college.

The two had attended the May partnerships meeting and given a more conversational, informal version of the proposal. As laid out by Kelbaugh and McCullough this month, the process would include three phases: (1) a data gathering phase; (2) a public meeting phase – one in October to solicit input, and one in November to present two or three concepts for the public’s response; and (3) a presentational phase – in January 2012, they’d consolidate feedback into a final concept plan, which would describe massing, ground floor uses, public/civic uses and pre-schematic site design.

Before Kelbaugh and McCullough presented their proposal, the conversation among committee members and other attendees ranged across several topics – the nature of suburban versus urban, the conceptual compared to the real, and the contrast between consensus and unanimity. The attendees, both at the table and in the audience, were a formidable group. They included local developer Peter Allen, who with his brother Lane presented a more elaborate version of the “four corners” concept that Allen had briefly sketched for the DDA board at their June 1 meeting. Those corners are the Allen Creek greenway (Ann Arbor downtown); the riverfront of the Huron River; the proposed Fuller Road Station near the University of Michigan’s medical complex; and the university’s central campus.

Also in attendance was Albert Berriz, CEO of McKinley Inc., a real estate development and property management firm. When asked for his advice, Berriz emphasized dealing with real people who had real capital and real ideas. He pointed to the McKinley Towne Centre renovation at Liberty and Division streets as an example of the kind of capital and commitment that’s required. Now eight years into that project, Berriz said, it’s really only just beginning. He anticipated it would take 20 years altogether to bring the project to full fruition.

Jesse Bernstein – chair of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority board, and former head of the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce (now the Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor Regional Chamber) – drew on the AATA’s experience over the last year or more in transit master planning. That had included a significant investment in educating the public as well as the AATA board, he said, simply in terms of what transit options are available. He also stressed that for him, “consensus is a special word.” It’s not about unanimity, he said, but rather about what you can live with.

DDA board member Russ Collins, executive director of the Michigan Theater, revisited a theme he’s highlighted before at DDA board meetings over at least the last year: Suburban versus urban development. The U.S. has seen 70 years of investment in suburban development, he said, and part of the idea of a downtown development authority is to direct at least a trickle of reinvestment in the existing infrastructure of urban centers.

Collins summed up his view of a path forward, based on the morning’s discussion, by saying, “We need to facilitate, educate and get real.” Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, suggested that the next partnerships meeting in July should be treated more like a retreat. The committee could settle in and figure out exactly how the DDA would meet the city council’s directive to facilitate a public engagement process to find alternate uses for downtown city-owned property.

Peter Allen:  Cheerleading

Peter Allen had attended the partnerships committee meeting in May, and had at that time begun to articulate the role he’d like to play in the process. Asked by DDA board member Bob Guenzel at that meeting what the nature of his involvement was, Allen explained that he’s spending his own money as he’s talking with property owners in and around the 500 foot x 500 foot block bounded by Liberty, Division, William and Fifth.

Peter Allen's "Schematic of Relationships." (Image links to higher resolution .pdf file)

At June’s partnerships committee meeting, Allen identified various categories of risk associated with development, rules for developing walkable neighborhoods, and emerging trends he saw. Throughout his remarks, some recurrent themes emerged.

Chief among them was the significance of the role the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown location, at the northeast corner of Fifth and William. [Ken Nieman, AADL associate director, also attended the meeting, sitting in the audience.]

Allen returned often to the point that the library is a major anchor on the block. In Allen’s schematic of relationships among local entities, laid out geographically and functionally, the library enjoys a big blue circle in the middle of the graphic. The library, Allen said, needs to be nurtured more than any other idea. Allen felt that AADL director Josie Parker understood that the library of the future is not primarily a place just for storing books. What happens with the library’s future building plans will set the tone for what happens on the block, he said.

By way of background, the AADL board has weighed a plan to construct a new building on the same site as its current downtown location, but paused those plans in late 2008, when the economy took a sharp downturn. The library board had an in-depth public discussion about revisiting those plans most recently in February 2010. And the possibility of building a new facility surfaced indirectly as the library board made investments in a new chiller for the existing building in September 2010. At the board’s January 2011 meeting, outgoing board president Rebecca Head described the current building as “crumbling,” and said she expected the board to take up the issue again in the coming months. [Chronicle coverage: "Citing Economy, Board Halts Library Project," "Board Renews Library Building Discussion" and "Library Board: Invest in Current Building?"]

At the June 8 DDA partnerships meeting, Allen speculated that the library could partner with The Ark – a nonprofit  folk music venue on Main Street. [DDA board member Bob Guenzel also serves on The Ark's board.] And Allen reported that Herb David, whose guitar studio is located in an historic house on the corner of Fifth and Liberty, is interested in staying right where he is, but would like access to more performance space nearby.

Another recurrent theme in Allen’s remarks was the importance of rationing newly constructed space to the needs of the marketplace. Newly constructed space needed to be pre-leased and pre-sold, so that it does not wind up sitting empty like roadkill from the last economic cycle, he said. At the moment, pre-leasing and pre-selling is a challenge for new office space, he said, because rents currently are around $20 a square foot, but would need to be around $30 to support new construction.

Also recurring throughout Allen’s remarks was the importance of transportation connections. He identified four different transit connections that are crucial: (1)  the Ann Arbor-to-Chicago rail connection; (2) the Ann Arbor-to-Detroit rail connection; (3) the planned Plymouth-State street high capacity corridor connector; and (4) countywide transit currently being planned by the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority.

For the Chicago connection, Allen said he thought that reliable service in under four hours should soon be a reality – we can plan on that, he said. For the Ann Arbor-Detroit commuter connection, not all funding is in place, but he felt like the political support is there. For the Plymouth-State street connector, he said, the question is what happens when it gets to downtown. Would it go down Liberty Street? Would it go down William Street?

Jesse Bernstein: Education, Consensus

For his part, Jesse Bernstein said that the lesson the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority had learned in its transit master planning process – which it has conducted over the last year or more – was the importance of education.

Almost two years ago, the AATA decided they needed to engage in a process. And they’d looked at the Ann Arbor community, and at the norms and ways it’s historically gone about planning. The AATA had concluded it’s critical to involve people personally in groups or over the Internet. Bernstein noted the AATA had held more than 60 meetings that were open to citizens over the last year and a half.

The AATA had looked at a 30-year vision. It’s a chicken-egg situation, he said. Folks won’t move to a place the minute the buses start running. It will take a while to figure out where the routes will be. There are also short-term details to be worked out. In redesigning the new Blake Transit Center, for example, there was a recognition that to maintain tight time schedules, easy access to bathrooms for drivers would be a requirement – the building design was modified to accommodate that.

On a short-term basis, the AATA will continue to provide the same services it provides now, Bernstein said. When the new Blake Transit Center is constructed, the BTC will still have a lot of buses coming together in one spot, so they’d also started looking at the first floor of the Fourth and William parking structure as a potential site for transportation use.

But that has to be discussed in terms of all the sites the DDA will be looking at – it’s not helpful to do one site at a time, Bernstein cautioned. When he was president of the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce, he said, national developers knocked on his door, but when they looked at the way Ann Arbor does its planning and processes, he said they shook his hand and walked away.

In terms of shorter-term expansions of the services AATA might be able to provide, Bernstein said the AATA is looking to beef up the corridor between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. Another short-term possibility is to add express buses and speed up the Ypsi-Ann Arbor trip.

Bernstein said he would love to restart the LINK – a downtown circulator bus service. He said his understanding was that the number of stops was determined based on the number of letters in the alphabet and that created a structural problem (too many stops to maintain on-time efficiency). When it’s restarted, he quipped, perhaps the number of stops could be based on the number of letters in Susan Pollay’s first name. Pollay joked back that it would mean only four stops, because one of the letters repeats.

Bernstein also reported that AATA is working intently on getting airport shuttle service up and running. The current strategy is to work with Michigan Flyer, which is already running buses from the Sheraton hotel in Ann Arbor to the Detroit Metro airport. So Bernstein said the AATA hoped to be able to use the top of the Fourth and William parking deck for parking spaces for Michigan Flyer airport shuttle patrons. AATA is talking to the University of Michigan – for UM affiliates who need to travel, such an airport shuttle service could be a boon, he said.

In the course of the conversation at the table, a point to which Bernstein returned was the importance of education and understanding the real meaning of consensus. In engaging the public about transportation planning, he said, the AATA needed to make sure the public understood what’s possible. By way of example, he said that before joining the AATA board, he had no idea what bus rapid transit (BRT) was. That’s when you use “big monster buses that bend in the middle” that can carry 180 people at one time, which travel on a dedicated lane or in regular traffic, he explained. The same kind of educational component needs to be included in planning for the downtown, he said.

The last point Bernstein made was a process point. He talked about how, to him, “consensus” is a very special word. It doesn’t mean that everyone agrees with the outcome – it means that they’ve agreed they can live with the outcome. In Ann Arbor, he said, people are very sensitive to the minority. But it should not be the case that they keep asking: “Is anybody objecting to this?” If they don’t ask people if they can live with it, they’re doomed to failure, he concluded.

Albert Berriz: Realist

Asked for his thoughts at the partnerships committee table, Albert Berriz noted that McKinley Inc. had around 170 active projects. With respect to the planning work, he suggested if the DDA had well-capitalized, legitimate developers, “they’ll do this for you.” They needed to be grounded in pragmatism, he advised. As an example of a development that was not grounded that way, he offered the proposed Broadway Village at Lower Town development. [Proposed by East Lansing-based Strathmore Development, the project stalled after the old Kroger store was demolished, and now sits as an empty field bounded by Broadway, Maiden Lane and Nielson Court.]

A parking lot for Lower Town should not be the outcome, Berriz said. The people who attempted the development at the site “weren’t real,” he said. The project was misrepresented, and undercapitalized. At the corner of Liberty and Division street, he said, McKinley had created the Towne Centre by getting “real people with real capital.” He said that project would take a total of 20 years to bring to fruition. Already eight years into it, he said, it’s still really at the beginning. If someone doesn’t have the capital to hang with you for 10 years, they shouldn’t be in the room, he concluded.

The area the DDA has been asked to look at, he said, is a “superb opportunity.” He cautioned the DDA: “Don’t go too long in a fantasy world.”

Collins: Suburban-Urban

Russ Collins said he and the rest of the DDA board had done a lot of reflection in the last few months. He suggested that Ann Arbor has a larger community issue to think about: Understanding what an urban center is.

He felt that the nature of an urban center is not well understood  by citizens – or even by the DDA board or the Ann Arbor city council. The reason for that lack of understanding, he said, is that for the last 70 years, governmental policy has been to build suburban infrastructure. Building highways and making it easy to develop greenfields discouraged reinvestment in urban centers, he said. That resulted in “donut holes” [areas with abandoned urban centers]. That’s been not just government policy, but also the expectation of citizens. The strategy has not been to re-use the investment that was already put into urban centers, he said. That approach is deeply seated in the way we live and move: “Suburbanization is the way you develop if you develop in America.”

Downtown development authorities were formed in the 1980s to help deal with this lack of reinvestment in urban centers, Collins said, but instead of directing a stream of funding to the urban centers, it’s been a trickle, which is better than nothing at all.

Kelbaugh and McCullough: Facilitators

Doug Kelbaugh, former dean of the University of Michigan’s college of architecture and urban planning, and Kit McCullough, who teaches at the college, attended the partnerships committee meeting to deliver a formal proposal they’d been asked to present after the conversation they’d had at the previous month’s partnerships committee meeting.

Their formal proposal to the DDA to lead a public engagement process includes three phases:

1. July-September 2011: Preliminary analysis, data gathering. This would prepare Kelbaugh and McCullough for the first public meeting.
2. October-November 2011: Public meetings. The public meeting in October might be conducted in two separate but identical sessions to allow for a broader range of people to attend. They’d start with a presentation on the opportunities, constraints and possibilities, using examples from other communities. The conversation would be both broad, touching on the community’s aspirations for the downtown and a longer-term visions, as well as getting input that’s specific to the parcels. Kelbaugh and McCullough are proposing to focus on the Library Lot (the top of the South Fifth Avenue underground parking structure), the old YMCA Lot (at William and Fifth), and the Palio Lot (at William and Main). They’d leave the Kline’s Lot (along Ashley, north of William) aside for now. For the November meeting, Kelbaugh and McCullough would return with two or three concepts to get response from the public.
3. January 2012: Final concept plan. Feedback from the public will be consolidated into a final concept plan that describes massing, ground floor uses, public/civic uses, public space and pre-schematic site design. This concept plan could be used to craft future requests for proposals (RFPs) for the sites. The plan would then be presented to the DDA and the city council.

Kelbaugh cautioned that he and McCullough would not be providing their services in their capacity as University of Michigan employees, but rather as independent professionals. The proposed fee for their scope of work is $30,000.

Drawing on the basic elements of advice from different people they’d heard that morning, Russ Collins declared: “We need to facilitate, we need to educate and we need to get real!”

As the meeting wound down, Susan Pollay, the DDA’s executive director, encouraged the partnerships committee members to think of their next meeting in July as more like a retreat. She said she might discuss the idea of extending the meeting into the transportation committee’s regular slot, which immediately follows the partnerships committee meeting.

Kelbaugh cautioned that if he and McCullough were going to do the work they were proposing, they needed to begin in July, or August at the latest. Waiting until the spring term was not an option, because McCullough would have teaching responsibilities then – she’s got the fall term free. [The full DDA board meets once a month. The soonest the board could approve the Kelbaugh-McCullough proposal would be at its July 6 meeting. Committee meetings take place after the full board meeting, which falls on the first Wednesday of every month.]

Responding to Kelbaugh’s concern about the timeline, Collins noted that he’d previously said they needed to “get real.”

Collins concluded: ”Timelines are real.”

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Light pink areas are all city-owned land. The red outlined area is the DDA tax district. The green rectangle is the smaller area of focus for which the DDA has been given responsibility to lead a process to explore alternative uses of city-owned surface parking lots. The green rectangle is bounded by Ashley, Division, Liberty and William streets. (Links to higher resolution image. Map data is available on the city's website at a2gov.org/data)

The parcels are currently used as surface parking lots – except for the Library Lot, which is the construction site for an underground parking garage that, when completed, will offer around 640 parking spaces. It was previously a 192-space surface parking lot.

The committee meeting included a presentation on the city’s sewer system from Cresson Slotten, a manager with the city of Ann Arbor’s systems planning unit.  The agenda also included a conversation with Doug Kelbaugh, former dean of the University of Michigan’s college of architecture and urban planning, and Kit McCullough, who teaches at the school. The two are interested in helping facilitate the public process stipulated in the city council parcel-by-parcel resolution. Also interested in sharing information he’s gathering from downtown property owners is Peter Allen, a local developer who attended the partnerships meeting.

One major theme that emerged during the committee’s discussion is the idea that a public space can be successful if it is programmed, used and supported by the community, even if its design is lacking.

The parcel-by-parcel resolution was passed at the same meeting that the council voted to terminate the review process for proposals the city had solicited for use of the top of the underground parking structure.

The termination of that RFP review process came just before the council was supposed to consider formally signing a letter of intent to hammer out a development agreement for the finalist project – a hotel/conference center proposed by Valiant Partners. [Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor Council Focuses on Downtown"]

Sanitary, Stormwater Sewer System

Cresson Slotten, an engineer who is a manager in the city’s systems planning unit, gave the DDA partnerships committee an overview of Ann Arbor’s downtown infrastructure, focusing on the sanitary and stormwater sewer systems. The sanitary system is designed to handle everything that goes down toilets, sinks, and showers, and that is treated at the wastewater treatment plant on Dixboro Road near Geddes Dam, before being piped into the Huron River. The stormwater system handles rain – the curb drains in streets, for example, lead to that system.

Slotten’s presentation came in the wake of a recent communication delivered by interim city administrator Tom Crawford at the city council’s May 2, 2011 meeting, which advised the council that the city’s sanitary sewer system had been threatened by recent rainfall. The system had been filled to the point of overflowing during recent heavy rains, he said, telling the council that local soils are saturated to the point that they cannot absorb additional rainfall. That means that all additional rain becomes runoff.

If the city maintains two separate systems – one for wastewater and one for rain – why does rainfall affect the wastewater system? As Slotten laid out to the partnerships committee, the sanitary sewer also receives flow from rainfall – because the footing drains of some buildings, including many residential properties, are connected directly to the sanitary sewer. Footing drains run around the perimeter of a building’s foundation, collecting water and leading it away from the foundation. Before 1981, it was common practice in southeast Michigan to connect footing drains to the sanitary sewer system.

It’s undesirable to have rainwater flowing through the sanitary sewer system, because it winds up at the wastewater treatment plant, where it gets treated. That’s an expense to the city – even though rainwater obviously does not need treatment before flowing into the river. The additional burden on the sanitary sewer can also cause sewage backups in basement drains.

By way of background, residents on Iroquois Place, near the intersection of Packard and Stadium, experienced dramatic sewage backups in their basements in June 2010 during a heavy rain. The city prioritized its footing drain disconnect program for the neighborhood, but city has denied damage claims, which for one homeowner amounted to $15,000. [Previous Chronicle coverage on the footing drain disconnect program from two years ago: "Drain Disconnect Time for Homeowners"]

Money for the Iroquois Place disconnections came in part from the University of Michigan, and was related to the renovations at the football stadium, which added load to the city’s sanitary sewer system. Due to the added burden, UM paid the city for 140 disconnections at a cost of $10,040 per project.

In fact, all new developments in the city are subject to a standard specification requiring that the additional burden to the sanitary sewer system be offset with footing drain disconnects. The offset specification was authorized by the city council in 2003, in response to an administrative consent order from the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality. [.pdf of city's standard specifications on added sanitary sewer burden] [.pdf of 2003 city council resolution authorizing standard specifications]

In his presentation, Slotten explained to the DDA partnerships committee how the standard specifications include a 20% system recovery factor: For 1.0 gallons of increased burden on the sanitary sewage system, 1.2 gallons of flow needs to be reduced elsewhere.

Slotten also outlined for the committee how new investment in additional capacity for either the stormwater system or the drinking water system is limited by the requirement that only the existing infrastructure that has reached the end of its useful life can be replaced at a cost to ratepayers – consumers who pay for drinking water and sanitary sewer service. That is, ratepayers don’t subsidize development or invest speculatively on system expansions. [This legal principle factored into the 1998 Bolt v. Lansing court decision, which involved a stormwater system expansion in Lansing.]

Slotten described it as a challenge for the future to contend with how developers are charged for localized expansions in the sewer system that are required to support a development. One scenario is that an initial development uses all of the available capacity, which means that the next development needs to mitigate the additional need. A third development might then be able to use that additional capacity paid for by the second development – which he said does not seem equitable. [.pdf of Slotten's infrastructure slide presentation]

Public Process: City Council Resolution

Slotten’s presentation on the downtown infrastructure was invited in the context of the DDA’s city-council assigned responsibility to lead a process to explore alternative uses for some of the city-owned surface parking lots in downtown Ann Arbor. The amended resolution narrowed in scope the original resolution, which called on the DDA to look at the entire DDA tax district. [.pdf of city council resolution as amended on April 4, 2011] [.pdf of city-owned parcels to be considered by the DDA]

Slotten’s presentation is part of the Phase I activity described in the resolution:

Public Services: Obtain detailed public infrastructure information for Parcels, including data on adjacent storm, water, and sanitary main capacity, hydrant coverage and other capacity-related information.

Somewhat more controversial than the public infrastructure component of the DDA’s process was the part of the resolution that addressed the kinds of input the DDA would seek from the community.

The council required several months to pass the resolution. Councilmembers had considered but postponed the resolution at its March 7, 2011 meeting, and before that at its Jan. 18, 2011 meeting. At the March 7 meeting, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) had complained that no revisions had been made to the resolution to accommodate objections made at the Jan. 18 meeting. [.pdf of the unamended resolution with the parcel-by-parcel plan] At that meeting, objections to the proposal included “resolved” clauses in the resolution that would (1) require placement of items on the city council’s agenda; and (2) under some circumstances require the city to reimburse the DDA for its expenses.

At its Jan. 5 board meeting, the Ann Arbor DDA board had approved a resolution urging passage of the council resolution, which had been circulated as early as the city council’s Dec. 20, 2010 meeting. At that time, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) had attached a copy of the draft resolution to the council’s meeting agenda, and alerted his council colleagues to it at the Dec. 20 meeting.

Receiving a good deal of discussion by the city council was wording in the resolution that, in its final form, reads as follows in relevant part:

Phase II …

• Solicit robust public input and conduct public meetings to determine residents’ Parcel-level downtown vision
• Solicit UM, EMU, and other higher education faculty to authorize class participation in the visioning process
• Meeting(s) with UM Planning staff to maximize coordination
• Meetings with business and community leaders to obtain their analysis of downtown’s strengths and weaknesses, its opportunities and inherent obstacles …

Phase III …

• Solicit robust public input and confirm the extent of community consensus for the Parcel-by-Parcel Plan through public meetings and surveys
• Hold meetings with business and community stakeholders to determine professional assessment of the Parcel-by-Parcel Plan …

Conversation with Kelbaugh, McCullough, Allen

Doug Kelbaugh is former dean of the University of Michigan college of architecture and urban planning. Kit McCullough is a lecturer at the college. Peter Allen is a local developer. All three attended the DDA partnerships committee meeting.

Conversation: Introductions

Kelbaugh told the committee members that two years ago he’d stepped down from the deanship of the the UM college of architecture – he’d moved to Ann Arbor 12 years ago to take that job. He said he thought it’s great that the city controls four key sites in the downtown area that the DDA is being asked to look at. He noted that he’d used the sites as student projects. Kelbaugh told the committee he lives downtown “right around the corner.” [He lives in the Armory building at the corner of Ann Street and Fifth Avenue. It was converted to residential living space by local developer and former DDA board member Ed Shaffran.]

Kelbaugh noted that he has a history of involvement in downtown Ann Arbor planning issues, having participated on a task force a few years ago. He said he enjoys living downtown. [.pdf of 2004 Downtown Residential Task Force report]

He mentioned that his colleague, McCullough, does not have a driver’s license, is thus sensitive to walkability issues. He stressed the need to have a 5-25 year vision for the downtown, so that the whole can become greater than the sum of its parts. Public expectations shouldn’t be unreasonable, he said – those expectations should be aspirational, yet feasible.

Conversation: Constraining the Issues, Public Engagement

Board member Russ Collins mentioned to Kelbaugh that the partnerships committee had invited David di Rita of the Roxbury Group to its last meeting and he’d suggested that in terms of requests for proposals from developers, a somewhat more specific RFP would create a better outcome.

Rather than saying, “Here’s a plot of land, we’re accepting proposals,” Collins reported that di Rita’s advice had been to be more specific. [Di Rita had consulted for the city on the Library Lot RFP, a process which the city council terminated this spring. Chronicle coverage that includes parts of the April DDA partnerships committee meeting: "Balancing Ann Arbor, Detroit and a Vision"]

Kelbaugh responded to Collins by saying that good designers welcome constraints – they don’t necessary want a blank slate.

McCullough suggested that the public process could be used to get community consensus that can inform what the RFP says. Bob Guenzel – former Washtenaw County administrator and the newest appointee to the DDA board – wondered how much should be presented in advance of the public process. He ventured that you don’t just go out there and say, “What do you want the downtown to look like?”

Kelbaugh noted that Peter Allen, who was in the committee meeting audience, had volunteered to do a study, canvassing all the surrounding property and business owners around the sites. Kelbaugh felt that Allen’s work would be useful preparation. [The Chronicle encountered Allen downtown recently as Allen was beginning that canvassing work.]

So for the public engagement process, Kelbaugh told the committee that he and McCullough were thinking of two or three town hall meetings. McCullough said first meeting would be educational and would “set the table” for the public. For the second meeting, they would come back with two or three concepts. Kelbaugh said there will never be unanimous agreement, but there might be some overlapping agreement. He suggested that there are two ways to handle the public meetings: (1) hire a professional facilitator without subject matter knowledge; or (2) hire someone with subject matter knowledge – the Kelbaugh-McCullough alternative.

Kelbaugh made a case for a subject-matter expert by saying that it should not just be a list-making exercise. It wouldn’t just be a feel-good taking down of every idea that everyone has, he said. They could provide some real-time feedback. The session would have some “viscosity,” he said.

Responding to Collins’ concerns about the kind of reactions from the public that might be encountered, Kelbaugh said a certain amount of “ventilation” is good. You have to let people vent, he said, but you have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

DDA board member Sandi Smith noted that as much as the DDA is limited in focus to just the four parcels in the rectangle, she wondered how planning for the limited area could take into account how it should fit into a broader context – it’s not located in a vacuum. “How do you work that into public process?” she wondered.

McCullough suggested that an initial meeting can address what people’s aspirations are for the downtown. Kelbaugh observed that if there is any light rail planned for downtown, a choice for running it down Liberty Street would make a big difference, compared to bringing it down William Street.

Smith cautioned against inviting people to attach everything they want to a single parcel – that sets the whole thing up for failure, she said.

Conversation: Subject Matter of Downtown Ann Arbor

Part of the subject matter knowledge, Kelbaugh said, involves understanding what some of the physical constraints are. There are, for example, physical constraints on the Library Lot, which are further complicated by the nearby Ann Arbor Transportation Authority’s Blake Transit Center. Smith noted that the “air rights” to a newly constructed Blake Transit Center would need to be factored into the thinking.

Kelbaugh said that he and McCullough actually think Kline’s Lot is “a different animal” from the rest of the parcels. McCullough thought that Ashley Street – which bounds the Kline’s Lot on the west – might need its own vision. Kelbaugh allowed that it’s true that the Kline’s Lot also fronts on William, like Palio’s Lot and the old Y Lot, but it seems like it might still need to be treated separately.

Kelbaugh said he was glad Library Lane is a done deal. Blocks that are that large tend to “clog up,” Kelbaugh said. [Library Lane is the east-west connection between Division and Fifth that's being created as part of the underground parking garage project.]

The community’s appetite for parkland would never be satisfied, Kelbaugh said. He observed that Ann Arbor doesn’t have a piazza that works, yet. He characterized Main Street as a real jewel, but said it has no place to gather – it’s just linear. Kelbaugh said the Library Lot is not really big enough to be a piazza, but it’s a possibility. As for an “outdoor living room”-type space, he said the Palio Lot doesn’t really work, because that kind of space needs to be mid-block.

Conversation: Programming, Design

Collins responded to Kelbaugh’s concerns about the Palio Lot by saying that it’s not just a matter of the space – it’s what goes on there. Collins related his experience as executive director of the Michigan Theater by noting that the community had rallied to save the theater, but a lot of people think that once the space is there, you don’t need to do anything else.

Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority board member Russ Collins before the May 11 partnerships committee meeting started. The board positions are volunteer. Collins earns his livelihood as executive director of the Michigan Theater. (Photos by writer)

The Ark, a nonprofit acoustic music club on Main Street, exists because of programing, not because there’s a natural market for folk music, Collins said. It’s well-programmed and the community supports it, he said – that’s why it exists. DDA board member Keith Orr noted that The Ark is not the easiest thing to spot or see, yet people throng to it. Collins reiterated that The Ark exists because the community supports it beyond ticket prices. He urged his colleagues on the committee to think about separating design from purpose. The community can create a space that’s valuable, even if it’s terrible space. He mentioned the Kerrytown Concert House and the Ann Arbor District Library as other entities that exist because the community supports them and because of their excellent management and programming.

Collins said the same could be done for Liberty Plaza – which is widely thought to be a poorly designed space on the corner of Liberty and Division. If there was $250,000 a year to put programs on in that park, it’d be a different story, he said – ice sculptures or an active stage on a regular basis, and the like. Josie Parker – director of the Ann Arbor District Library, who typically attends DDA partnerships committee meetings – noted that during the summer months, the Bank of Ann Arbor sponsors the Sonic Lunch concert series at Liberty Plaza, and that costs the bank money.

For programming, McCullough suggested that Campus Martius in Detroit as a good model. It’s programmed and supported as a space – the idea of an urban living room needs to be supported like that.

Conversation: Peter Allen’s Role

Amber Miller, a planning and research specialist with the DDA, asked how Kelbaugh and McCullough planned to bring into the process business owners and other stakeholders, in addition to public. Kelbaugh answered by saying Peter Allen’s role would be valuable. Kelbaugh also observed that McCullough would not be teaching during the fall term and would be available to do some of that work. He stressed the need to get people to participate who don’t normally come out to meetings – they need to get younger voices. Collins suggested that perhaps it’s the DDA’s job to figure out how to do that.

Asked to elaborate more on his role in the process, Peter Allen said what he’s trying to do in the next three months is talk to around 25 property owners about their business needs – he’s just getting started. He reported that he’d already talked to Herb David, who owns Herb David Guitar Studios. David has very strong feelings, Allen reported.

Allen said that the guitar studio, on the southeast corner of Liberty and Fifth, gives the area a lot of character – and David wants it to grow. He’d also talked to Ali Ramlawi, owner of the Jerusalem Garden restaurant (around the corner from Herb David), who sees good days coming. So far, Allen had only talked to about 10% of the people he plans to meet.

Peter Allen, standing, points out to DDA partnerships committee members the area he's focusing on in conversations with property owners.

One important property owner in the area is Bill Martin, who owns the building just west of Liberty Plaza. Allen said he wanted to talk to Martin about bulldozing the building – Allen stressed that he didn’t know if Martin would be open to that idea, and felt that fair market rate would need to be offered. Allen had two words for the credit union building on the block’s south side, east of the library: bulldozer bait.

The Kempf House, though, Allen characterized as an anchor. Allen felt like some of the other historic houses on the block could be picked up and moved around on the same block. Allen said he wanted to find out: What do property owners on the block think is good for their business?

Guenzel wanted to know in what capacity Allen was currently talking with business owners: “Are you doing that independently?” Allen told him he was doing it as a real estate broker, trying to help property owners analyze the situation – he’s doing it “on my own nickel.” The property owners would be potential clients, he said.

Guenzel wanted to know if Allen would share information. Yes, answered Allen, just as he had a decade earlier, when Washtenaw County had been looking for a site to place a consolidated homeless shelter. He said he’d helped point the county towards the property on East Huron Street, which was owned at the time by National City Bank. [.pdf of Jan. 19, 2000 Washtenaw County board of commissioners resolution]

Conversation: Next Steps

Kelbaugh said he would like to hit the ground running in the fall by preparing this summer, but noted that he and McCullough can’t do it for free. He’s found that work you do for free is not taken seriously.

Kelbaugh emphasized that the work he and McCullough were proposing to do would be parallel but independent and separate from Allen’s work.

Guenzel asked about a timeline. Kelbaugh suggested the start of school in the fall as a potential start of the public process. The summer would be a good window for gathering data.

Next steps: McCullough and Kelbaugh will come back to the DDA’s June partnerships committee meeting with a specific proposal. A calendar of all DDA meetings is available on the DDA website.

The resolution – sponsored by mayor John Hieftje and councilmembers Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) and Sandi Smith (Ward 1) – would reject the letter of intent that was being prepared for consideration by the council at its April 19 meeting. From the resolution: “… City Council has decided not to select any of the proposals made in response to RFP #743, and that the RFP review process for the building site on top of the new parking structure at 319 S. Fifth Avenue that began in August of 2009 is hereby concluded;”

The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority is currently constructing a roughly 640-space underground parking garage on the parcel. In 2009, the city of Ann Arbor issued a request for proposals for the use of the space above the underground garage. The process of evaluating the six proposals yielded the Valiant Partners proposal as the preferred one.

At a work session on March 14, 2011, the council was presented with a draft letter of intent (LOI) that would have set a four-month timeframe for working out a development agreement with Valiant Partners. A vote on a final draft of the LOI was scheduled for the council’s April 19 meeting, along with a public hearing.

The public hearing and the vote on the LOI would not take place, if the resolution on the council’s Monday, April 4 agenda passes. [Previous Chronicle coverage "Library Lot from Top to Bottom"]

At a meeting of the DDA’s bricks and money committee on Wednesday, March 30, Hieftje hinted that he felt the Valiant proposal would not get approval from the council, when he told Sandi Smith (Ward 1), a councilmember and DDA board member, that he thought the space above the underground garage would be used as surface parking for at least the next few years. He was responding to Smith’s concern about the limited net gain of parking spaces that will result from the construction of the underground garage.

Also on the council’s Monday, April 4 agenda is an item that would establish a process under which the Ann Arbor DDA would facilitate the development of downtown city-owned surface parking lots, which would not now presumably include the top of the underground parking structure. That so-called parcel-by-parcel plan – somewhat of a misnomer because it envisions the master planning of districts of the downtown, not individual parcels – has been considered by the city council at two previous meetings, but postponed. 

Last Thursday, news of a breach in the earth-retention system of a downtown Ann Arbor construction site had reached all the way to Detroit’s Channel 4 News. Channel 4 sent a crew Friday evening to file a report. It was tagged on the Channel 4 website with the summary: “An Ann Arbor construction project is sinking, literally.” Chalk that up to the hyperbole of television news.

Top: View to the northeast along Fifth Avenue from Valiant Partners' concept for a conference center and hotel, proposed for the top of the Library Lot underground parking garage. Bottom: Breach in the earth retention system for the underground parking garage currently under construction on the Library Lot.

While the roughly 640-space underground parking garage, being built by Ann Arbor’s Downtown Development Authority, is not sinking in any way, a conference center and hotel proposal for the top of the underground structure might be sinking.

At first glance, the 190,000-square-foot project proposed by Valiant Partners Inc. seems like it’s on a path to approval by the city council. In November 2010, an advisory committee – charged with evaluating responses to a city of Ann Arbor request for proposals issued in late 2009 – finally settled on the Valiant proposal as the best of the six the city had received.

That decision came with the aid of Roxbury Group, a consultant hired to help evaluate the proposals and to negotiate an agreement with a developer. At an early March meeting of the advisory committee, a Roxbury representative presented a draft letter of intent, which had been worked out by Valiant and Roxbury, to be signed by the city of Ann Arbor and Valiant. The committee voted unanimously to recommend that the city council consider the letter of intent.

Then, on March 14, the city council held a work session on the proposed conference center. The council heard essentially the same presentation about the letter of intent that Roxbury had made to the advisory committee. The council is scheduled to consider the letter formally at its second meeting in April, which is now scheduled for Tuesday, April 19, to accommodate the first night of Passover. The letter of intent calls for a development agreement to be presented to the city council within four months of signing the letter of intent – which would mean sometime near the end of August 2011.

But I think it’s clear at this point that a development agreement between Valiant and the city of Ann Arbor to develop the Library Lot would not achieve the necessary eight-vote majority for an actual real estate deal. That’s why I think the city council might vote down the letter of intent – even if there are at least six councilmembers who would support going forward with the letter, which is all it would take for the letter’s approval.

I base that conclusion on remarks made by councilmembers at the March 14 work session, and regular politics as reflected in the council’s history – both recent and ancient. But before considering politics, let’s dig into some really ancient history – the kind measured in geological time – to gain some additional insight into why a pile of dirt spilled unintentionally into the underground parking garage construction pit.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach

On Thursday afternoon, March 24, a sinkhole appeared behind the Jerusalem Garden and Earthen Jar restaurants, on the north side of the underground garage construction site. Where did that dirt go? It had poured through a small breach in the earth-retention wall about 30-feet below grade.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach: Jerusalem Garden

When I visited Jerusalem Garden on Friday morning, owner Ali Ramlawi was preparing for regular business after the sinkhole had forced the evacuation of his restaurant the day before.

That morning, he seemed even a little more exasperated than he did in October 2010, when he’d addressed a meeting of the DDA board during the time reserved for public comment. On that occasion he’d ticked through a variety of concerns, including the underground parking garage, which he called the DDA’s “civil engineering project.” Ramlawi was also one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in August 2009 over the construction of the garage.

On Friday, Ramwali told me how one of his employees had driven over the spot where the sinkhole opened up, just 10 minutes before the earth gave way. He considered it just lucky that nobody got hurt.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach: Geology – It’s Sand, Man

So how exactly does dirt that far down pour through a gap that appears to be just a few feet wide?

To get a better idea of why that might happen, I talked to Kevin Foye. Foye is a Ph.D who works as a project engineer with CTI & Associates, a civil engineering firm in Wixom, Mich. How earth settles and moves is part of Foye’s specific area of expertise – he recently gave a lecture as part of the University of Michigan’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Geotechnical Engineering Seminar Series, called “Differential Settlement of Landfill Foundations Modeled Using Random Fields.”

As it happens, Foye had taken photos of the construction site a few weeks earlier, and was somewhat familiar with the site. He described how not all soil is the same – it’s some combination of sand, silt and clay. The Library Lot site in Ann Arbor, he continued, is a little different – it’s predominantly sand. So it’s going to be more apt to move through a slot like the one that opened up in the retention wall.

The make-up of the soil at the site as predominantly sand was also reported by then-library board member, and geologist, Carola Stearns in a presentation she gave to the board back in September 2010. She described the site as 55 feet of coarse, well-bedded, well-sorted sand and gravel – the product of glacial activity.

And at the end of the day Friday, I spoke with Pat Podges, the Christman Company’s construction manager on site; he also described how the dirt on the site would just run through your fingers when you pick up a handful.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach: Don’t Tear Down that Wall

On Friday, Podges also confirmed that the earth-retention system used at Ann Arbor’s Library Lot site is the same one the Christman Company had previously used in building an underground parking garage in Grand Rapids, as part of the Michigan Street Improvement project. The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority awarded the pre-construction services contract to Christman back in August 2009, partly based on the strength of that experience.

Site of the breach in the earth-retention wall at the site of the Library Lot construction. The view is to the north.

The earth-retention system was also familiar to Foye, who described what he’d seen when he’d visited the site a few weeks ago. Visitors to downtown Ann Arbor last summer will likely remember seeing the tall drill operating on the site and the vertical pieces of steel that were then pounded into the holes – down to the silt layer that the water table sits on. Those vertical pieces of steel were subsequently encased in concrete.

Between each pair of steel-beam reinforced concrete columns, additional inner columns were poured – but not reinforced with steel beams. Podges described how for most of the steel-reinforced pairs, two additional columns were poured between them, but for some pairs, three additional columns were poured. The idea is that the columns between the steel beams interlock with each other, wedging against the steel beams.

This specific earth-retention system, called a “tangent wall” system, is used on the north face of the site, but not everywhere. Podges explained it’s used there because it’s better at preventing water from entering the pit than an alternative wood lagging system, which is used in some other locations. In the wood lagging system, heavy timbers span the vertical steel beams.

Chronicle readers might remember that outgoing DDA chair John Splitt received a memento of appreciation for his service, which was fashioned from a piece of timber left over from the wood lagging system.

A bucket is filled with gravel before getting hoisted over to back-fill the sinkhole.

In addition to the structural elements of the basic earth-retention wall, additional supporting elements include: (1) “whalers” – steel beams that are bolted horizontally across vertical members; and (2) “tie-backs,” which are essentially guy wires installed into the face of the wall.

To install tie-backs, Foye explained that a small-diameter hole is drilled from the face of the wall on the pit side, around 30-50 horizontal feet into the surrounding soil. That hole is filled with high-strength grout. A steel rod is inserted into the hole and bolted to a bearing plate on the face of the wall. That rod is then tensioned with a hydraulic jack to the pressure that’s been calculated to be appropriate for that specific location, then locked off at that specified pressure. Foye said in these kinds of applications, the pressure would be in the tens of thousands of pounds.

When construction of the parking garage is complete, the retention wall elements will remain in place, even though they won’t actually be needed to hold back the earth, Podges told me. The floors of the deck, which are braced against each opposing wall, will provide adequate opposing force. The tensioned tie-backs nearer to the surface will likely be de-tensioned, Podges said, because if someone were excavating years from now and hit one of the rods, it would be best for it not to be under tension.

A construction worker prepares to release the load of gravel into the sinkhole. Note the safety tether attached to his harness. In the background is the Ann Arbor District Library building, to the south of the construction site.

It’s apparent, from looking at photos as well as at the site itself, that the element that failed was part of one of the inner columns in the tangent wall system. And it failed at a point just below a horizontal reinforcement (a “whaler”) that was bolted onto the face of the retention system. That whaler spans six of the steel-beam reinforced columns. Foye said that based on photos he’d seen, it appeared that for some reason, there was a loss of the interlock between the inner columns – it would take further investigation to figure out what was different on Thursday from all the days before, during the time the pit has been open.

Podges said that the analysis of why the breach occurred is being done by Soil and Materials Engineers Inc., the company that designed the retention system. But they’ve determined that the problem was isolated. They’ve checked all the motion monitors that are attached to various points of the earth-retention wall, as well as the surrounding buildings – and everything is still in the same place, Podges said. Visual inspection of the perimeter has revealed no obvious other problems.

By Friday morning, a Christman crew had begun filling in the sinkhole with coarse gravel. The night before, a concrete cap had been poured over bags of gravel that had been dropped in to plug the breach from the sinkhole side. Additional repairs will need to be undertaken to the pit side of the wall – they appeared to be partly underway on Saturday morning, when I passed by the construction area. A team of workers on a platform had been lowered by crane to the breach point.

According to a briefing email sent out early Sunday morning by Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, among other measures, ground-penetrating radar will also be used to check for any other voids that might have developed.

What Is the City Council Thinking?

The closest thing we have to ground-penetrating radar to detect any voids in the heads of city councilmembers is simply to pay attention to what they say, when they do their work in public view. And based on that kind of radar, I don’t detect any voids on the conference center issue – but it does look to me like there could be sufficiently solid opposition to doing a real estate deal, that the council could vote down the letter of intent before even getting to that point.

City Council: Work Session – Background

At the city council’s March 14 work session about the conference center proposal, the Roxbury Group’s David Di Rita walked the council through the draft letter of intent. He’d done the same thing for the RFP review committee at its March 8, 2011 meeting. Here’s how the 190,000-square-foot project breaks down, as described in the draft letter of intent:

(i) Core elements:

• 150 hotels units – 87,000 sq. ft.
• Conference center – 26,000 sq. ft.
• Restaurant/Retail – 6,000 sq. ft.
• Public space/Plaza

(ii) Additional elements

• Office space – up to 48,000 sq. ft.
• Residential condos – up to 22,000 sq. ft.

That square footage breakdown is slightly different from Valiant’s original proposal, which included 12 condo units compared to the six in its revised proposal. More significantly, the size of the conference center in Valiant’s revised proposal is 6,000 square feet smaller than the 32,000-square-foot facility in the original proposal.

At the March 14 city council work session about the proposed Valiant conference center: (left to right) Sandi Smith (Ward 1), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Mike Anglin (Ward 5) and Tony Derezinski (Ward 2).

The reduction in condo units and the size of the conference center is offset by the possible addition of up to 48,000 square feet of office space. [See page 27 of the .pdf for Roxbury Group's report, submitted in November 2010, for a breakdown of the contrast between Valiant's original and revised proposals.]

DDA board member Newcombe Clark has expressed some skepticism to The Chronicle that prevailing rental rates for office space in downtown Ann Arbor would be adequate to support new construction of office space. [Clark has worked in real estate, most recently with Jones Lang LaSalle, but is no longer with that firm.]

But it’s the revised configuration of the square footage that has allowed Valiant to eliminate from its proposal a request that the city of Ann Arbor issue bonds to fund the project’s construction. The use of public bonds as a financing tool has been described as a deal-breaker, even by the chair of the RFP review committee, Stephen Rapundalo, who represents Ward 2 on the city council. And Rapundalo is widely perceived as one of the strongest supporters of a conference center at the Library Lot location.

Remaining in the letter of intent, however, is a requirement that the city of Ann Arbor would own the conference center. Valiant has pitched this as a benefit to the city, but it carries with it potential for liability as well.

City Council: Work Session Views – Legal Ownership

It was the conference center ownership question that drew the specific attention of Sabra Briere (Ward 1) during the work session. She told the Roxbury Group’s David Di Rita that the whole proposal seemed to be predicated on a belief that the city of Ann Arbor wants to own a conference center. Di Rita responded in a way that suggested that the ownership question is not a closed issue and could be subject to further discussion.

Briere’s reply was fairly sharp. She told Di Rita that maybe there is stuff in the letter of intent that doesn’t need to be in there.

The city’s relationship to the conference center, as described in the draft letter of intent, is one of ownership. The city would have an agreement with the developer whereby the developer would manage the center. And just as long as the developer holds that management agreement, the city would not be liable for costs related to operation and maintenance.

The draft letter of intent also describes how the developer could itself use the money being paid to the city for development rights, to develop the conference center. That strategy only makes sense in a scenario where the city owns the center. It reduces to this: At least part of the compensation the city would get for allowing the developer to build the project – instead of a lease payment or property taxes – is ownership of the conference center.

But ownership does not translate directly to a financial benefit to the city, any more than ownership of additional parkland does. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) has frequently pointed out that continued acquisition of additional parkland, without an adequate revenue source for maintenance, has led Ann Arbor to a situation where it can maintain the parkland it has only with great difficulty. And the same principle applies to ownership of a conference center.

So far, Valiant has tried to make its financial offer more attractive to the city by eliminating the need for the city to issue bonds. It’s conceivable that the letter of intent the council considers on April 19 will continue that trend by eliminating the requirement that the city own the center, and that Valiant will find some other way to pay for that part of the deal.

But right now, we’re presented with a tale of a profitable project that even the teller of the tale apparently doesn’t believe. Frankly, I believe that a place where you can host a 1,200-person conference in downtown Ann Arbor without breaking a sweat would be a well-used and welcome facility. You could imagine some kind of center of intellectual inquiry – that’s not necessarily a university – sprouting up in concert with the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown location. Indeed, Valiant representatives have talked a lot about their desire to partner with the library.

But I don’t think Valiant really trusts their own narrative. If they did, we would not see a proposal for the city to issue bonds, or for the city to own the conference center, or any other creative approach to financing. Instead, we’d see a straight-up offer to lease or purchase development rights for some dollar figure.

What should that dollar figure be? Before the work session began, local developer Peter Allen told The Chronicle that a rule of thumb for land value would be 10-20% of the total value of the planned development. So if you’re planning to build a $54 million project, then $5.4 million would be a low-end ballpark number for the land value.

You might make a case that the city should accept a somewhat lower offer than Allen’s rule of thumb. An outline of that case might go something like this: (1) Look, this conference center of intellectual inquiry that we’re going to build is not going to be as profitable as, say, a project consisting of mostly residential units, and here’s why; (2) A conference center is going to have a greater positive economic impact to the downtown than just residential units would have, and here’s why; (3) You should be willing to accept a slightly lower direct financial return to the city of Ann Arbor’s general fund, in exchange for a greater positive economic impact overall, and here’s what that impact looks like.

If Valiant were inclined to make that kind of offer, however, I think they’d already have done that – between November 2010 and March 2011, when they negotiated the draft letter of intent with the Roxbury Group. But a simple, straightforward lease or purchase of development rights did not emerge from that negotiation.

The letter of intent is to be considered by the council at its April 19 meeting. Among the revisions to be added to the final draft of a letter of intent is language that makes clear that the city of Ann Arbor will not bear any risk. It’s not yet clear what linguistic form those revisions would take.

Work Session: Work Session Views – Ownership of Advocacy

Near the conclusion of the March 14 work session, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), who was chairing the session in mayor John Hieftje’s absence, floated a question about who would take responsibility for making revisions to the letter of intent. Here’s how she put it: “Who owns those revisions now?” City administrator Roger Fraser indicated that he felt revisions fell now into the category of “staff work” – the RFP committee’s work was done, he said.

Higgins question about “ownership” of a specific task – like revising a document – could just as well be asked about the entire conference center proposal. Up to now, the project seems to have been owned by Roger Fraser. He first introduced the council to the existence of Valiant’s proposal at the 2009 budget retreat.

Chronicle file photo from the January 2009 Ann Arbor city council budget retreat. City administrator Roger Fraser, left, talks with Christopher Taylor (Ward 3). They're looking at conceptual drawings for a possible conference center on top of the underground parking garage now being built at the Library Lot between Fifth and Division streets.

On that occasion, he’d announced the existence of a proposal for a conference center, and told councilmembers they could look at the conceptual drawings. But he would not disseminate the proposal publicly – at the request of the proposers.

Later, it was revealed he’d done that against the explicit advice of the council.

With Fraser’s departure at the end of April to become a deputy treasurer for the state of Michigan, it’s not clear who might take ownership of Valiant’s proposal on the city’s side to make sure that an acceptable development agreement is struck, based on a letter of intent. Even if Susan Pollay, the DDA’s executive director, might seem a logical candidate to champion the project through to completion, her remarks at the work session suggest she’s not necessarily publicly embracing that kind of role.

Pollay began the work session by telling the council that she was there as a city staffer. The RFP had been issued through the city’s community services area, and only a few months after the RFP was issued, the community services area administrator, Jayne Miller, left the city to take a different position. Because the project was of interest to her, Pollay said, she’d volunteered to help out as needed. But she stressed that the project is not a DDA project – she’s just assisting.

Before the March 14 work session: Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, and David Di Rita of The Roxbury Group, which acted as a consultant for the RFP review committee.

On the council itself, Sandi Smith (Ward 1) might be a logical choice to champion the project through to final approval. In fact, at least as far back as March 2009, Smith has pushed specifically for planning some kind of use on the top of the underground parking structure. On that occasion, she introduced a successful resolution at the DDA’s March 2009 board meeting that articulated the DDA’s readiness to support the planning process for the top of the structure.

But as recently as the March 21, 2011 city council meeting, Smith has demonstrated that she can be a fiscal hard-ass, who might give priority to the city’s near-term bottom line over long-term overall economic impact. At that meeting, she was the sole voice of dissent in voting against an amendment to a state grant application that prioritized support for a skatepark over improvements to the Gallup canoe livery. She had established during deliberations that the canoe livery improvements would necessarily add revenue, whereas the skatepark was a question mark.

With the current murky level of detail available, use of the top of the parking garage as additional surface parking might actually mean more for the city’s bottom line than striking a deal with Valiant. And at the March 14 work session, Smith described the conference center proposal as “one of the largest decisions that I will have had to make in my brief tenure here.”

So I don’t think Smith is likely to pursue the conference center with the single-minded bull-doggedness of purpose that would likely be required for its eventual approval. The project needs someone to champion it who is absolutely dedicated and practically blind to all other options, if it’s to win ultimate approval from the council, and I don’t think Smith is that person.

As chair of the RFP committee, Stephen Rapundalo would also be a logical candidate to take ownership of the project – even if the committee’s work is over. But to be successful, whoever takes ownership of the project will need to enjoy a certain amount of deference from the council as a whole. And based on deliberations at the March 7, 2011 council meeting, his fellow councilmembers aren’t willing to give Rapundalo that deference, even when he clearly has earned it.

On that occasion, the council voted, over his objections as chair of the council’s liquor license review committee, to allow the appointment of a single hearing officer for liquor license non-renewal hearings – Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) – instead of appointing the entire committee as the hearing board. Any councilmember who voted with Derezinski on that – which was everyone except for Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) – gave little weight to Rapundalo’s record of service on the council’s liquor committee since its very creation back in 2007. So I think the council is unlikely to show Rapundalo any deference when it comes to the conference center development agreement.

Work Session Views: Decision Time?

Historically, the Ann Arbor city council’s inclination has been, whenever possible, not to make a decision at all. The current status of the city’s Argo Dam is a good example of that. In early 2009, the city embarked on a public engagement process about the Argo Dam, which led the community to believe that the city council would be making a major policy decision that summer about leaving the dam in place or removing it.

But the council has never voted on the issue, which formally leaves the question open, though from a practical point of view, the dam is still in place. Margie Teall (Ward 4) and Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) have remained vigilant in making sure that subsequent decisions made the council – like approving construction of a portage-free bypass around the dam – don’t necessarily preclude the dam’s eventual removal.

From the time of the Library Lot RFP issuance, councilmembers were eager to stress that the issuance of the RFP did not represent a decision to develop any of the proposals that might be submitted. After receiving proposals, it was again stressed that the city was under no obligation to accept any of them. And after identifying Valiant as the best of the six proposals received, the RFP review committee stressed that there was no obligation to do a deal with Valiant.

At the work session, councilmembers again appeared eager to downplay the significance of approving a letter of intent. Sandi Smith (Ward 1) characterized it as a “going steady” phase, with a prenuptial agreement to be possibly realized in the form of a development agreement. Margie Teall (Ward 4) indicated she was satisfied with David Di Rita’s characterization of the letter of intent as an outline to get to a final deal, but not the deal itself.

But at the RFP committee meeting in early March, Eric Mahler indicated his skepticism that the letter of intent did not place an obligation on the city to see the negotiations through to the proposal of an actual real estate deal. Mahler, an attorney, represented the city’s planning commission on the committee.

And at the council’s work session, the same concern about the contractual nature of the letter of intent was expressed by Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), who did little at the session to hide his overall displeasure with the whole proposal. He stated flatly that he felt the arrangement being proposed was “very squirrelly,” and offered up his assessment that when the city went fishing for development proposals, “we catch nothing but leeches that want to suck on the public dollar.”

Even if Kunselman’s colleagues on the council may have rolled their eyes at his rhetorical flourish, they likely took to heart his point about the contractual nature of the letter of intent. It’s not “just another step” in the process where the city can take any action, or no action, for any reason at all. This is, in fact, a decision point of some kind that requires a proposal to come before the council.

What kind of decision point does the letter of intent represent? I think it’s somewhat similar to appointing a study committee to make a recommendation on establishing a historic district in a particular area. The council has a recent record to show that appointing a committee does not necessarily result in establishing such a district. At its July 6, 2010 meeting, the council rejected a study committee’s recommendation that a historic district be established along Fourth and Fifth Avenues, just south of the Library Lot. I can imagine that some councilmembers might even draw upon that episode as an analogy: Just as appointing a committee did not obligate us to vote for a historic district, we are not obligated to approve the development agreement that emerges in four months time after the letter of intent is signed.

But I think that for any councilmembers who appeal to that analogy, there will be others who are persuaded by a different historical episode involving the non-appointment of a historic district study committee – at the council’s Oct. 20, 2008 meeting. The committee in question would have studied an existing district, the Old Fourth Ward, to consider removing one property from the district. Then representing Ward 3, Leigh Greden argued against even appointing a committee, independent of what recommendation the committee might eventually make. Here’s how The Chronicle reported Greden’s sentiments:

Councilmember Leigh Greden suggested that if a recommendation came back from the committee to remove the property, he still did not imagine he could vote for its removal – acknowledging that he’d perhaps made that conclusion too soon.

Put coarsely, if you’re going to vote no later, you might as well vote no now.

At the March 14 city council work session: Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5).

I think some councilmembers might follow that same logic in weighing their vote on the letter of intent between Valiant and the city of Ann Arbor – a letter that is supposed to lead to a development agreement. An additional factor playing into that logic is that the real estate deal associated with the development agreement will need eight votes for approval by the city council.

So even if the letter of intent might have sufficient votes for approval, the real estate deal already looks like it will fall short of the eight-vote requirement.

Based on their remarks at the work session, Briere and Kunselman are likely no votes, as is Mike Anglin (Ward 5). At the work session, Anglin recited a laundry list of criticism of the project, from insufficient public process to the project’s lack of viability.

Anglin’s Ward 5 colleague, Carsten Hohnke, expressed his view at a 2010 Democratic primary election forum that the conversation about what should go on top of the library should start fresh, with a clean slate:

Hohnke said he is not convinced that any of the proposals that had been submitted are good ones, and it’s important to remember that a request for proposals does not need to be acted on by the city. If none of them meet the satisfaction of the community, there’s no need to accept one, he stressed.

Hohnke continued that he would like to see a renewed effort of community conversation – starting from a blank slate, with no preconceptions. What is the best solution for this vital parcel right in the center of our community?

Hohnke’s contribution to the March 14 work session conversation hinted that he was still thinking along the lines of starting fresh. He asked Rapundalo to review for the council how the RFP committee had winnowed down the six proposals to the final two proposals, both of which called for some kind of hotel and conference center. Among the six proposals that did not make the final cut was one for a community commons put forward by Alan Haber and Alice Ralph – who both attended the work session. [Chronicle coverage from January 2010: "Hotel/Conference Center Ideas Go Forward"]

Mayor John Hieftje’s vote could be purely political. It was Hieftje’s penchant for using the privilege of voting last in any roll call vote, to cast such purely political votes, that finally led the council in 2006 to change its rules for roll calls. The start of a roll call vote now rotates among councilmembers.

With four likely votes against the letter of intent – Anglin, Briere, Kunselman, Hohnke – there’s sufficient safety in those numbers that Hieftje could join them. With potentially five votes against the letter of intent, it’s hard to see how Valiant or other councilmembers would want to invest time and energy in putting together a development agreement that’s not going to meet the eight-vote minimum.

Certainly in the past, the council has been reluctant to proceed with only thin majorities. In early 2005, DDA board members were told that there were at least six votes in support of the 3-Site Plan to develop city-owned downtown properties – all the plan needed to go forward. But then councilmembers Leigh Greden and Chris Easthope counseled against placing the 3-Site Plan on the council’s agenda, in order to generate additional support on the city council. By late in 2005, the public engagement process had actually seemed to diminish rather than increase council support, and the 3-Site Plan never made it to the council’s agenda.

Conclusion: Get the Dirt out of the Hole

Besides offering a rule of thumb for calculating land value, at the March 14 work session Peter Allen also told me he thinks the entire Library Lot block needs to be master planned, before trying to develop that individual parcel. For a course he teaches at the University of Michigan, Allen assigned his students in 2009 to complete an exercise like that. [Chronicle coverage: "Column: Visions for the Library Lot"]

Restarting the conversation about the Library Lot – as Hohnke suggested back during his 2010 Democratic primary campaign – is a process that would be consistent with Allen’s suggestion to master plan the whole block. That conversation could take place in the context of a proposal currently being worked out by the DDA and the city that would assign the DDA responsibility to facilitate the development of other uses for downtown city-owned surface parking lots. That proposal, however, is currently stalled.

I think any use of the space above the underground parking garage needs to be considered as a coherent part of the city’s thinking, not just with respect to that entire block, but also in connection with the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority’s countywide transportation plan, the possible construction of a new downtown library – which has been put on hold, but might re-emerge – and even the current discussion of a corridor improvement authority along Washtenaw Avenue.

The sooner the city council votes down Valiant’s specific proposal for its conference center, the sooner we can settle into a process that might well produce a community consensus for a different kind of conference center – one that includes a real vision for the kind of inquiry and collaboration that might take place at the conferences such a center might host.

Valiant’s proposal is, I think, like the pile of dirt that poured through the breach in the retaining wall, piling at the bottom of the underground parking garage site. As a guy in a hardhat told me Thursday morning, the pile of dirt wasn’t hurting anything, but it was in the way. Valiant’s current proposal is like that pile of dirt, because it just needs to be cleaned out of the hole for now. If we need more dirt, there’s plenty more where that came from.

We shouldn’t adopt the attitude that if we let Valiant’s conference center proposal sink out of view, we’ll lose forever the opportunity to enjoy the benefits that a conference facility in downtown Ann Arbor might bring.

Why do I think that? It’s because I believe in second-hand learning. At the DDA’s January 2011 board meeting, management assistant Joan Lyke’s last one before her retirement, she addressed a few remarks to the board, summarizing what she’d learned working at the DDA.

On Lyke’s bulleted list was this: “If an idea is good, it will always resurface.”

The basketball hoop on the south end of the court in Ann Arbor's newly renovated West Park. (Photo by the writer.)

Here’s a highlight reel of how events unfolded on Tuesday. Play opened with a disputed call, and one of the fans nearly got tossed out of the venue. There was a guy with a red sweater, reminiscent of those favored by Bob Knight when he coached the Indiana University squad, even though he was not the guy in danger of getting tossed. He was actually prepared to do the tossing.

Early on, the coach told the team about the “four corners” – which some older sports fans might recognize as a stalling style of basketball made popular by legendary University of North Carolina coach Dean Smith. And the team managed to hold the ball for one final shot, which it made. The cheerleaders cheered. The victors were valiant … hail, hail, etcetera.

The venue? It was the fourth floor meeting room of city hall. And the five-person team was the committee charged with evaluating proposals for use of the city-owned Library Lot. That’s the parcel atop the Fifth Avenue parking structure currently under construction.

Who says local civic affairs isn’t at least as interesting as NCAA basketball? Well, actually, most readers would say that, I’m guessing.

But here’s something I think we can all agree on: Fans at basketball games get to cheer or boo as loud as they like … within certain parameters. The parallel principle for public meetings, like the one on Tuesday, is that members of the public should be allowed to address the group during its meeting.

The city of Ann Arbor’s stated written policy on this is actually quite clear: Even entities that are not public bodies under the Open Meetings Act should, to the best of their abilities, conform with the spirit of the OMA – which includes a provision for public participation at meetings.

The Dispute with the Ref

The “fan” who risked getting tossed from the meeting room was local attorney Tom Wieder. [A "telestrator-annotated" version of the opening paragraphs is appended at the conclusion of this column. For regular news coverage of the meeting, see "Work Session Called on Conference Center"] When committee chair Stephen Rapundalo started the meeting on Tuesday, Wieder indicated he wanted to address the committee, saying that the city’s policy allows it.

Rapundalo replied that the RFP review committee was an “advisory committee” and it would not be entertaining public commentary. However, the committee did welcome public input, Rapundalo stressed, and he encouraged people to communicate in writing to the committee, or to city councilmembers, or the city administrator.

Wieder challenged Rapundalo to demonstrate that the committee had actually chosen not to entertain public commentary. When Rapundalo said the committee had been using rules that did not include a provision for public commentary, Wieder wanted to know if there was a written copy of the rules and whether the committee had voted on using those rules. Rapundalo finally said, “Mr. Wieder, I’m trying to run a meeting.” City administrator Roger Fraser admonished Wieder, saying that if he wanted to be disruptive, the committee could ask him to leave.

When Wieder said he was simply asking to be able to address the committee, committee member Margie Teall – who represents Ward 4 on the city council – told Wieder that he was not asking, but rather was insisting. Wieder allowed that, well, okay, he had been insisting. When Fraser pointed out that Rapundalo had made clear that no opportunity for public commentary would be given, Wieder replied: “I did hear what he said,” to which Fraser shot back, “You didn’t act as if you did.”

Wieder could lay claim to the last word in the exchange by replying, “No, I just didn’t accept it.” From that point on, Wieder sat back and listened.

What Play Are We Running?

In one sense, it was fine theater – Wieder appears comfortable in the role of the rabble-rouser. For all we know, he wanted to get tossed out of the meeting – for the same reason a basketball player or coach will sometimes deliberately bait the referee into calling a technical foul. It sometimes serves to fire up your team and to shift the momentum of a game.

But what exactly was Wieder talking about? Does Ann Arbor really have a policy on whether someone can address a meeting like one held by the Library Lot RFP review committee? Yes. The playbook Wieder was working from – as an email he sent to Rapundalo following the meeting makes clear – is a resolution passed by the city council in 1991:

R-642-11-91 RESOLUTION REGARDING OPEN MEETINGS FOR CITY COMMITTEES, COMMISSIONS, BOARDS AND TASK FORCES
Whereas, The City Council desires that all meetings of City boards, task forces, commissions and committees conform to the spirit of the Open Meetings Act;
RESOLVED, That all City boards, task forces, commissions, committees and their subcommittees hold their meetings open to the public to the best of their abilities in the spirit of Section 3 of the Open Meetings Act; and
RESOLVED, That closed meetings of such bodies be held only under situations where a closed meeting would be authorized in the spirit of the Open Meetings Act.

The idea of the resolution is this: Even entities to which the OMA would not technically apply are still expected to conform to the spirit of Section 3 of the OMA – to the best ability of that entity’s members. Section 3 includes a provision that allows a person to address a meeting of a public body.

It’s a council resolution The Chronicle has written about previously – in connection with the council’s apparent game plan of calling its ad hoc committees “work groups” in order to shield their work from the 1991 resolution. From an April 2010 Chronicle article:

On Friday, April 16, [2010] at 3 p.m. members of the DDA’s committee met with some city councilmembers in Roger Fraser’s office to discuss the deal. In barring The Chronicle from the Friday meeting, which we attempted to attend, Fraser rejected the applicability of the council resolution that requires the meetings of city sub-committees to comply with the Open Meetings Act, contending it was a “working group,” not a sub-committee.

That incident involved a committee charged with negotiating with the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority on a new contract for managing the city’s public parking system. In addition, currently the city council is also picking and rolling with a “work group” that it has put together to study the question of a city income tax – instead of simply referring the matter to its budget committee.

From The Chronicle’s report of a recent budget retreat:

At the Jan. 8, 2011 retreat, there was some back-and-forth about whether the work group looking at the income tax question – as well as the possibility of a Headlee override – should be called a “committee” or a “work group.” Implicit context for the distinction is that council committees are supposed to do their best to conduct their meetings openly in accordance with the Michigan Open Meetings Act – based on a two-decades-old city council resolution. Work groups are not considered to have the same obligation.

View from the Head of Officials

In a dispute over rules, policy and legal matters, the view of the city attorney carries some weight. Does Ann Arbor’s city attorney acknowledge the current applicability of a two-decades-old city council resolution? Yes. Last year, Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) asked city attorney Stephen Postema during a council meeting whether a committee of the council could violate the Open Meetings Act.

In asking the question, Derezinski was in some sense running the alley-oop play – where one player lobs a ball above the basket to a teammate who can throw down an easy dunk. Derezinski served in the state legislature when the Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information Act were passed, and is a retired attorney specializing in municipal law, so he likely knew the answer to the technical OMA question.

But Postema couldn’t deliver the simple answer that Derezinski seemed to expect, because of the city council’s 1991 resolution. From The Chronicle’s report of that May 17, 2010 meeting:

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) asked the city’s attorney, Stephen Postema, if a council committee could be subject to the Open Meetings Act (OMA). Postema indicated to Derezinski that it was not the OMA, but rather a council resolution [from 1991] that was the “operative document.” [It requires city committees to adhere to the OMA to the best of their abilities.]

But what about “advisory committees”? In explaining to Wieder why he wouldn’t be allowed to address the meeting, Rapundalo stressed that the RFP review committee was an “advisory committee.” Did Postema say anything about advisory committees last May?

For that, we need to go to the tape. It’s at roughly the 1:51:00 mark where Postema states [emphasis added]: “… if it’s truly an advisory committee … under the attorney general’s opinion and others, an advisory committee would not be covered under the Open Meetings Act, but it would still be covered under the council resolution.”

It’s difficult to see how simply encouraging people to contact the committee, or their councilmembers, or the city administrator outside of the committee meeting could be analyzed as serving the spirit of the Open Meetings Act requirement that a person be allowed to address a meeting.

If civic affairs in this city had a challenge flag that could be thrown, the booth review would have shown that Wieder was right and should have been allowed to address the meeting. Ah, but challenge flags and video review are for football. And this, apparently, is basketball we’re talking about.

Playing Smart

Independent of the fact that the decision to refuse Wieder the opportunity to speak was inconsistent with the city’s policy on committee meetings, it just wasn’t smart.

Regardless of what you might think about the value of public participation in the abstract, there is a real practical benefit to not just allowing, but actually insisting that the public come and address meetings, particularly on controversial issues.

Thinking along purely adversarial lines, for proponents of the conference center proposal, Rapundalo squandered an opportunity to watch the other side scrimmage.

Thinking more cooperatively, refusing someone the opportunity to address a meeting leaves skill and expertise that exists in the community lying on the table. Certainly that skill and expertise – in the form of, say, critiques of the letter of intent – might eventually be brought to bear on the issue. Written communication after the fact could be used to improve whatever letter gets signed – or influence a decision not to sign the letter at all.

But there is, I think, greater value to injecting that skill and expertise in a more timely fashion, by including it in the public meetings that lead up to the “big game.”

Telestrated Version of Opening Paragraphs

Here are the X’s and O’s of this column’s opening paragraphs.

On Tuesday a capacity crowd packed a local Ann Arbor venue to watch a five-person team do its work. [The Library Lot RFP review committee consists of five members: Margie Teall, Stephen Rapundalo, John Splitt, Eric Mahler, and Sam Offen.] Part of the color commentary included talk of game-changing players [the conference center proposed by Valiant has been described as having the potential to be a "game changer"] and speculation about who had the best center of all the conferences [Valiant's proposal is for a conference center]. Everyone knew that whichever team prevailed on Tuesday would not win the whole tournament – it would just advance to the next round. [The recommendation to sign a letter of intent will ultimately require city council action.]

Here’s a highlight reel of how events unfolded on Tuesday. Play opened with a disputed call, and one of the fans nearly got tossed out of the venue. [Tom Wieder repeatedly asked to address the committee and was told by city administrator that he might be asked to leave.] There was a guy with a red sweater, reminiscent of those favored by Bob Knight when he coached the Indiana University squad, even though he was not the guy in danger of getting tossed – he was actually prepared to do the tossing. [Roger Fraser sported a red sweater vest.] Early on, the coach told the team about the “four corners” – which some older sports fans might recognize as a stalling style of basketball made popular by legendary University of North Carolina coach Dean Smith. [David Di Rita of The Roxbury Group called the what, where, when and how of the project the "four corners."] And the team managed to hold the ball for a one final shot, which it made. [The committee voted 5-0 to recommend that the city council approve a letter of intent.] The cheerleaders cheered. [Margie Teall offered that she thought it was a great idea.] The victors were valiant … hail, hail, etcetera. [The name of the development team is Valiant, which is an allusion to the University of Michigan fight song. The song's chorus begins with the line, "Hail to the victors, valiant ..."]

About the writer: Dave Askins is editor and co-founder of The Ann Arbor Chronicle.

And that’s what the committee voted to do – specifically, to recommend to the city council that a letter of intent (LOI) be signed with Valiant, the developer, which could eventually lead to a development agreement. The city council will receive a presentation on the letter of intent at a work session on Monday, March 14 at 7 p.m. at the Washtenaw County Board room at 220 N. Main St.

David Di Rita of the Roxbury Group addresses the Library Lot RFP review committee. Left in the frame in the background is local attorney Tom Wieder. Right in the frame is Vivienne Armentrout, a former Washtenaw County commissioner and author of the blog, "Local in Ann Arbor." (Photos by the writer.)

In the draft of the LOI unveiled at Tuesday’s committee meeting, the city and Valiant would try to strike a development agreement no later than four months after the signing of the LOI, with construction to start 15 months after the signing of the development agreement.

Attending the committee meeting on Tuesday was David Di Rita of The Roxbury Group, which has served as a consultant to the committee. In November, Di Rita had delivered a report to the committee recommending Valiant’s proposal over a similar project proposed by another developer – Acquest.

The majority of Tuesday’s meeting time was taken up with Di Rita delivering introductory remarks – a self-described “soliloquy” – and walking the committee through the main points of the draft LOI, or responding to committee member questions.

In his introductory remarks, Di Rita distinguished between the idea of analyzing the financial viability of a specific proposal – which he stressed that The Roxbury Group had not done – and the overall economic validity of a concept.

Key points in the draft LOI are the idea that Valiant would pay for the acquisition of development rights on the property, but could use part of that payment for the design and financing of the conference center. The city of Ann Arbor would own the conference center, and would not be held liable for its maintenance and operation costs, unless Valiant were to cease holding the management agreement. The city’s ownership could, according to the draft LOI, possibly implicate payments by Valiant to the city in lieu of taxes. The draft LOI also calls for reserving no fewer than 350 daytime parking spaces in the underground parking garage, currently under construction, for the hotel/conference center.

In addition to committee members, more than 20 people attended the meeting, filling the fourth floor conference room of city hall. Attendees in the audience included Ward 1 councilmember Sabra Briere; Ann Arbor District Library director Josie Parker; and AADL board member Nancy Kaplan. Several people who attended have expressed objections to the hotel/conference center project, based on either the substance of the proposal itself or the decision-making process.

Related to complaints about the decision process, the meeting began with an adamant request from local attorney Tom Wieder to be allowed to address the committee, which was denied by the committee’s chair, Stephen Rapundalo.

Rapundalo’s refusal to allow Wieder to address the committee was supported by city administrator Roger Fraser, who also attended the meeting, and who raised the specter of asking Wieder to leave. At that point Wieder ended his persistent requests, and was allowed to stay.

Wieder based his request to verbally address the committee on the city of Ann Arbor’s policy of handling all committee meetings under the requirements of the state’s Open Meetings Act – a policy that does appear to afford members of the public at least the reasonable expectation of being able to address committees during meetings like the one on Tuesday.

Background, Review

On Nov. 5, 2009, the city council first appointed a five-member committee to review proposals in response to the city’s RFP for use of the top of the Fifth Avenue underground parking garage – the so-called Library Lot. The city-owned Library Lot is located north of the downtown library, between Division Street and Fifth Avenue. The garage, currently under construction, is a project of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority.

That committee consists of: Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2 city council member), who chairs the committee; Margie Teall (Ward 4 city councilmember); John Splitt (DDA board member); Eric Mahler (planning commissioner); and Sam Offen (member at large). Offen also serves on the Ann Arbor park advisory commission.

The city received six proposals in response to its RFP. Of those, the committee eventually selected two for final consideration – both were for hotel/conference center-type concepts. [See Chronicle coverage: "Hotel/Conference Ideas Go Forward"] Not included in the final mix were either of the two proposals that envisioned the lot as primarily open space. Alan Haber, who had worked with a group to advance a community commons proposal, also attended Tuesday’s meeting.

Among those attending Tuesday's meeting were attorney Susan Morrison, who wrote a letter to the RFP review committee on behalf of Ann Arbor resident Mary Hathaway, and Alan Haber, who is part of a group that had submitted a proposal for a community commons on the Library Lot.

The Roxbury Group was hired to assist with the evaluation of the finalist proposals – from Valiant and Acquest. On Nov. 23, 2010, The Roxbury Group delivered a report to the committee recommending the proposal from Valiant as the stronger of the two. [.pdf of The Roxbury Group report]

The RFQ (request for qualifications) issued by the city of Ann Arbor, which led to the engagement of The Roxbury Group’s services, stated that the consultant should be able to “determine if the projects submitted to the City are economically viable and make financial sense in the Ann Arbor marketplace.” [.pdf of consulting RFQ].

However, Roxbury’s report indicates that it “does not include and is not intended to serve as a feasibility study for the concepts included in the two proposals … it is generally assumed that the overall concepts included in the uses for the Library Lot contained in each proposal are valid and supportable from a market and demand standpoint.”

Economic Feasibility: Committee Discussion

During his introductory remarks, Di Rita stressed that The Roxbury Group was charged with the responsibility of taking the two proposals, from Acquest and Valiant, and making a recommendation about whether to proceed with one, the other, or neither proposal.

Di Rita stressed that Roxbury had not been charged with the responsibility of evaluating the feasibility of a hotel/conference center. Later, in response to a question from committee member Sam Offen, who said he thought that feasibility was a part of the charge, Stephen Rapundalo read aloud from the RFQ for consultation services what was expected:

• Determine if the projects submitted to the City are economically viable and make financial sense in the Ann Arbor marketplace
• Determine if respondents are financially stable and have the capacity to complete their projects as proposed
• Determine what the likely timing for each proposed project might be following selection by Ann Arbor City Council, including design development, securing financing, and construction
• Help the City determine which project will provide the maximum financial return to the City
• Assist the City in working with each developer to improve their proposals and provide the City with competitive options that optimize desired features
• Help develop criteria for review, implementation and performance of proposals before and after recommendation for award
• Help the City determine which project will provide the greatest community benefits
• Help the City create a public process that encourages community input and involvement
• Provide information on the impact of similarly scaled projects in similarly sized communities
• Assist the City as needed in negotiations with the selected project team
• Attend, in an observatory role, the project interviews scheduled for January 19-20, 2010 and the evening open house scheduled for January 20, 2010

Offen allowed that the list did not specifically call out a “feasibility study,” but said he felt that Roxbury could have done more investigation to assess that the economic assumptions behind the proposals were valid and correct, instead of taking the word of the proposers. Earlier in his presentation, Di Rita had called the conversations with the developers the “beating heart” of Roxbury’s analysis.

Sam Offen enters the fourth floor conference room of city hall for the Library Lot RFP review committee meeting on March 8, 2011.

Responding to Offen, Di Rita said that the first thing to look at was the overall economic viability before asking the feasibility question. He said if the city were interested in the financial feasibility, absent a specific development deal, then there are people far more qualified to assess that than Roxbury. They wouldn’t know what to study, until they knew specifically what the details of the project are.

Roxbury had spent a lot of time on the stakeholder interviews, including meeting with representatives from the Ann Arbor District Library, the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor SPARK, Di Rita said. And there was unanimity of opinion among the stakeholders that yes, that facility would get used. What would make it a “game changing” facility would not be just that it could host a plenary session with 500-600 people, but that it could do so in the center of the city.

Rapundalo noted that the university’s conference needs are decentralized – perhaps even down to the individual faculty member. Di Rita responded to Rapundalo by saying that this potential user of the center – the university – doesn’t know its own demand or supply for conferencing services.

Di Rita concluded that the “ultimate feasibility study” is the ability of the developer to draw financing for the project. If the development agreement results in a financed project from lenders, then “the feasibility comes along for the ride,” he said.

Economic Feasibility: External Views

In the last few weeks, a November 2010 report written by Chuck Skelton, who is president of Hospitality Advisors Consulting Group, has circulated throughout the Ann Arbor community – it was conveyed to the city council at the end of January. Skelton concludes that Valiant’s conference center proposal would not be successful – based on estimated revenues of $42 per square foot against estimated operating expenses of $58 per square foot, which would lead to around a $0.5 million annual shortfall. Skelton calculates an additional $0.5 million shortfall due to debt service.

Skelton’s report has received considerable interest from Public Land-Public Process, a group opposed to the conference center proposal – opposition based partly on the grounds that they contend a conference center is not economically feasible. In a post on her blog “Local in Ann Arbor,” Vivienne Armentrout calls Skelton’s report an authoritative study.

An earlier national study from 2005 by Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at University of Texas at San Antonio, has also made the local rounds. [.pdf of "Space Available: The Realities of Convention Centers as Economic Development Strategy"] In Sanders’ paper, which is one of several he’s written on the topic of convention centers, he concludes that “if taxing, spending, and building have been successful, the performance and results of that investment have been decidedly less so. Existing convention centers have seen their business evaporate, while new centers and expansions are delivering remarkably little in terms of attendance and activity.”

Letter of Intent: Highlights

David Di Rita walked the committee through the 15 points of the draft letter of intent.

LOI Highlights: Project Description

Highlights included a description of the project:

(i) Core elements:

• 150 hotels units – 87,000 sq. ft.
• Conference center – 26,000 sq. ft.
• Restaurant/Retail – 6,000 sq. ft.
• Public space/Plaza

(ii) Additional elements

• Office space – up to 48,000 sq. ft.
• Residential condos – up to 22,000 sq. ft.

Given the lack of a square-footage number attached to the public plaza space, Sam Offen wondered what would guarantee that the project would have a significantly-sized plaza area. Di Rita responded by saying that the “stake in the ground” is the letter of intent, with the apparent implication that from there the two parties could eventually pin down the plaza size with more precision.

During his presentation, Di Rita had introduced the idea that the letter of intent would establish the “four corners” of the deal – the what, where, when and how. Margie Teall stated that the developer understood that the project “goes nowhere” without a significant plaza area. John Splitt noted that the underground structure design depends on a plaza area, and that if one is not included, then the underground structure would need to be redesigned. [Construction is already well underway, and such a redesign would result in significant expense and delay.]

LOI Highlights: Payments, Liabilities of Ownership

One kind of payment described in the LOI is some equivalent of property taxes to be paid to the city on the conference center, even though property taxes would not apply, given that the city of Ann Arbor would have ownership of the conference center.

In the committee discussion of payments in lieu of taxes, Offen said he thought that the University of Michigan had a payment in lieu of taxes program, to which city administrator Roger Fraser quipped, “To whom?” Fraser followed up by saying that even though UM does not currently have such a program, he thought that perhaps as late as the 1950s there was some kind of program like that in place. He noted that the idea is not to have Valiant duck taxes by having the city own the conference center.

Eric Lipson, former planning commissioner, chats with Margie Teall, who represents Ward 4 on the city council and serves on the Library Lot RFP review committee. Seated is Nancy Kaplan, board member for the Ann Arbor District Library.

In addition to some payment in lieu of taxes program, there would be some kind of payment made by Valiant to the city in consideration of the conveyance of the development rights – either to the city or a 501(c)(3) nonprofit designated by the city. But that payment could be used by Valiant to help create the conference center [emphasis added]: “The Developer will be solely responsible for the design, financing and development of the Conference Center utilizing both the consideration it will provide to the City as set forth in Section 3 and to the extent required its own funds, as set forth in the Development Agreement.”

In light of the ownership by the city of the conference center, the LOI includes language meant to address the city’s potential liability [emphasis added]: “Notwithstanding the ownership of the Conference Center, neither the City nor the 501(c)(3) will be liable in any way for any costs relating to the design, financing, development, operation or maintenance of the Conference Center so long as the Developer holds the Management Agreement.” The LOI does not address eventualities where the developer ceases to hold the management agreement.

Eric Mahler, an attorney by profession, expressed reservations about the idea of city ownership of the conference center, saying that he was leery of it – because you could not write an agreement that would cover all of the city’s liability. He made his support for the recommendation to sign the letter of intent contingent on the possibility of negotiating the ownership piece.

LOI Highlights: Timeframe, Reimbursement of City Costs, Approvals

The letter of intent sets forth a four-month timeframe from the signing of the letter of intent to the completion of a development agreement. City administrator Roger Fraser allowed that this was clearly an aggressive timeline. In order for the city to allocate the necessary time and resources to get to a development agreement within that timeframe, the letter of intent provides for a payment of up to $75,000 to the city for costs related to consultants and legal counsel. However, the letter of intent also states that the developer would not be liable for the $75,000 payment, if it fails to secure construction financing.

The letter of intent includes language to the effect that the various standard approvals required of the project would be those in effect on March 8, 2011, which was coincidentally the date of the committee meeting. That was an artifact of a previous expectation that the city council would have already acted, at its meeting on March 7, to authorize signing the letter of intent. Mahler insisted that the date would need to be changed – he assured his committee colleagues that as chair of the planning commission, he could say that several things in the city’s set of development requirements might change in the future. As a specific example, he cited the introduction of the new design guidelines for new downtown buildings, which the planning commission’s ordinance review committee is now working on.

The letter of intent also mentions a “dedicated representative” of the city to help coordinate the approval process. Mahler got clarification that this essentially followed the usual practice of assigning someone on the planning staff to shepherd the project through the process. Mahler joked that he just wanted to make sure it was not the city administrator who would be the dedicated representative.

LOI Highlights: Parking Space Reservation, Other Legal Issues

The letter of intent calls for 350 daytime spaces and 250 nighttime spaces to be reserved in the new underground parking garage in support of the hotel/conference center project. Offen wanted to know how many total spaces the underground garage would offer. Susan Pollay, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, told the committee that the new garage would have roughly 650 spaces.

Executive director of the DDA, Susan Pollay, exchanges documents with Stephen Rapundalo, who represents Ward 2 on the city council and chairs the RFP review committee.

The number of spaces allocated to the hotel/conference center is relevant to the financing of the underground parking garage. Why? The nearly $50 million in bonds used to finance the parking garage were federal Build America Bonds. In an April 14, 2010 letter to the city council, Noah Hall, then executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, outlined federal restrictions on how the bond proceeds can be used. Those restrictions could have an impact on the city’s ability to allocate more than a small percentage of spaces to a non-public use.

Other possible legal issues are outlined in a March 8, 2011 letter to the RFP review committee from Susan Morrison, an attorney for Ann Arbor resident Mary Hathaway. Those issues include a possible argument that Valiant’s desired subordination of rent payments to Valiant’s construction mortgage could violate the Michigan Constitution. A second possible argument is the idea that the arrangement with Valiant would constitute a “business enterprise” under Michigan’s Home Rule City Act, which would require voter approval before proceeding.

Next Step: City Council Work Session

Near the conclusion of the meeting, Rapundalo raised the question of whether the committee needed to take any formal action. Fraser told him it would be helpful to have a recommendation from the committee for the city council to consider the draft letter of intent – if the council recommends changes, they can be made as appropriate. Teall concurred with that sentiment.

Offen said he’d like to see somewhere a brief description of the financial benefit to the city, given that the tangible financial benefits were a major criterion for selection of the proposals.

It was Splitt who made the recommendation that the city sign the letter of intent with appropriate amendments. During the brief discussion, Offen said he’d support the motion, but only because the previous request by Valiant that the city issue bonds to support the project had been removed. Mahler wanted to make sure that the ownership of the conference center by the city was something that could be negotiated. Rapundalo expressed his support by saying that the letter of intent resets further dialogue under a framework. He allowed that financial feasibility would become a question.

Outcome: The committee voted unanimously to recommend that the the city council consider the letter of intent.

There will be a city council work session on Monday, March 14, 2011 at the Community Television Network (CTN) studios, 2805 S. Industrial Highway Washtenaw County board room at 220 N. Main St., dedicated to the topic of Valiant’s letter of intent.

Bricks: Part of the new streetscape improvements on Fifth Avenue in front of the DDA offices. Money: New ePark payment kiosks. As part of the Bricks and Money Committee report to the DDA board, John Splitt noted that the new street lights were being "wired as we speak." That was literally true – as evidenced by the yellow-vested, hooded electrician observed an hour before the meeting started. (Photo by the writer.)

The money is offered by the DDA as a challenge to other local organizations to support service enhancements on the route, which are estimated to have a total cost of $180,000. Board member Newcombe Clark described the grant as a great first step, adding “but man, is it a baby one.”

Although the transportation grant was the only vote taken by the board at the meeting, board members entertained discussion on two topics that are likely to receive a great deal of focus in the broader community over the next few months: (1) the future use of the Library Lot; and (2) the “mutually beneficial” discussions between the city and the DDA about the parking contract under which the DDA operates the city’s parking system.

The board also heard the usual range of reports from its committees. No one addressed the board during either of the two slots set aside for public commentary.

Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti Buses

Before the DDA board was a resolution that would offer a $14,417 challenge grant to fund service improvements for the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority Route #4 bus, which runs between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. The dollar figure for the grant is based on a total estimated price tag for the improvements of $180,000 and a Washtenaw Area Transportation Study (WATS) computer model, which estimates about 8% of riders on the #4 bus have destinations west of State Street in the DDA district. In response to an email query from The Chronicle, WATS transportation planner Ryan Buck explain some basics of the computer model:

The WATS model is a complex four-step travel demand model. There are two types of inputs to the model, one is the supply of transportation infrastructure which include available roads and transit routes. The second type of input is the demand, or the number and type of trips which are estimated from demographic information such as the number of people per household and the number of vehicles available to a household. We can change either supply side or demand side data and then analyze the impact on the transportation network.  A good example of this is to increase the frequency of a bus route such as the number 4. That increases the supply of available bussing and makes it a more attractive travel option which will likely increase the demand (riders).

This analysis looked at the number of trips for people who live in Ypsilanti and travel to the DDA area. The model estimates the total number of trips between the two areas as well as the percentage of people who will likely use a bus for their trip.  If we look at the riders on the #4 route we see that 8% of those riders are destined for the DDA area.

The DDA hopes the challenge grant will encourage support for Route #4 enhancements by other organizations – like the University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University, private property owners, other municipalities, and the AATA. The improvements in service might include: increasing service frequencies to every 10 minutes; reducing travel time from 45 minutes to 38 minutes or less; or inclusion of a stop downtown before continuing to the UM Hospitals.

The resolution was introduced to the board by chair of the DDA transportation committee, John Mouat. He allowed that the dollar amount was “fairly modest” and also explained that the money had been previously budgeted but unused by the getDowntown program. It was a matter, he said, of redirecting previously budgeted funds. The earliest the service enhancements could be implemented would be in May 2011.

Mayor John Hieftje sketched an optimistic future with commuter rail servicing the connection between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor with 10-minute travel times.

Newcombe Clark characterized the grant as a great first step, “but man, is it a baby one.” Clark has championed the idea of enhancing the transit connection between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor since his appointment to the DDA board a year ago. He noted that there is other money in the DDA budget that has been allocated but not spent that is “burning a hole in [his] pocket.” He was alluding to $335,000 earmarked for support of the WALLY north-south commuter rail project. Previously, Clark has suggested redirecting the WALLY allocation to fund the policing of the downtown.

Outcome: The resolution to establish a challenge grant for service enhancements on the Route #4 AATA bus was unanimously approved.

Library Lot

Last year, the city of Ann Arbor issued an request for proposals for the future of the Library Lot – the top of the underground parking garage currently under construction by the DDA. The DDA has representation on the committee charged with review of the responses to the RFP. That committee consists of Stephen Rapundalo and Margie Teall [both on city council], Sam Offen [as a resident, although he is also a member of the city's park advisory commission], Eric Mahler [city planning commission] and John Splitt [DDA board].

Splitt has reported for the past several months that the committee has not met. Since late summer, the committee has been awaiting the completion of a report by The Roxbury Group, which is a consultant hired to help the committee assess the merits of the two finalist proposals from Valiant and Acquest. The DDA provided a grant of up to $50,000 for a consultant, half of which has now been paid to the Roxbury Group.

John Splitt led off the report of the committee by announcing: “We actually had a meeting.”  The meeting took place on Nov. 23, he reported, and the committee had received The Roxbury Group’s report. [.pdf of The Roxbury Group report]

Splitt described how The Roxbury Group had interviewed people who would have some interest in what impact a conference center or hotel could have. [Those interviewed by The Roxbury Group included: Josie Parker, director of the Ann Arbor District Library; Mary Kerr, president of the Ann Arbor Area Convention & Visitors Bureau; Mike Finney, president and CEO of  Ann Arbor SPARK;  Jim Kosteva, director of community relations for the University of Michigan; Bill Villisides, conference manager for UM conference services; and Diane Keller, president and CEO of the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Regional Chamber of Commerce.]

The evaluation based on interviews resulted in the conclusion that there’s a consensus about the need for a downtown conference center. Another conclusion related in The Roxbury Group’s report is the importance of synergies that may exist between the Ann Arbor District Library and a conference center, Splitt said. [The library is adjacent to the city-owned property where the underground parking structure is being built.]

Splitt also described how The Roxbury Group had interviewed the two finalist proposers and had recommended the proposal from Valiant as the favored one. One reason Splitt cited for Roxbury’s Group’s preference was that a conference center plus a hotel [as proposed by Valiant ] would have a greater benefit than a hotel alone [as Acquest had proposed – with a conference center possibly to be developed later, possibly at the Fifth & William lot]. The size of Valiant’s proposal was seen as having the potential to be a “game changer.”

A second reason Roxbury favored Valiant was that, while Acquest has more experience developing similar projects, Valiant’s proposal had more specificity and definiteness with respect to the financing.

Splitt reported that the city will now move forward with due diligence and development of a letter of intent.

Leah Gunn added that she thought the most exciting line in The Roxbury Group’s report was that “Valiant was able to strengthen the development’s potential for revenue generation, eliminating the need for any publicly-guaranteed debt.”

Newcombe Clark raised the question of whether it might be appropriate to include the Library Lot process with the ongoing discussions between the city and the DDA regarding “mutually beneficial” outcomes with respect to a renegotiated parking contract under which the DDA operates the city’s public parking system. The city-DDA discussions on the parking contract are taking place in parallel with a conversation about a more active role for the DDA in the development of city-owned surface parking lots.

Clark also expressed concern about the way Valiant had eliminated the need for $8.1 million of 30-year bonds to be issued by the city: The Valiant team had decided to add a 48,000-square-foot office space component to the project – reducing the square footage of the conference center from 32,000 to 26,000 square feet and reducing the number of condominium units from 12 to 6. The current market for rents, Clark said, is about half the rate of what would be needed in order to justify new construction.

Responding to Clark’s inquiry about linking the Library Lot project to the current conversation with the city about the DDA’s role in developing downtown city-owned surface lots, Splitt said that the Library Lot project was standing on its own. He expressed some uncertainty about the extent to which the DDA might provide some input on the creation of the letter of intent.

Responding to a query from Bob Guenzel, Splitt said he was not certain if the committee would meet again before the holidays or in January. Board chair Joan Lowenstein indicated that the DDA’s partnership’s committee would review the DDA’s input into the project.

Mutually Beneficial Discussion

Since the early summer of 2010, discussions between the city of Ann Arbor and the Ann Arbor DDA have been taking place in public on a renegotiation of the parking contract under which the DDA manages the city’s parking system. The existing contract runs through 2015. The city would like to renegotiate the contract so that the city continues to receive a roughly $2 million sum per year from the DDA for the next four years, as it has for the prior six years – it is money that the DDA does not owe under terms of the existing contract.

Each body has assigned a committee to undertake the negotiations. Roger Hewitt reported that the discussions had come to a point where a proposal would be brought to the DDA board and to the city council for reaction and feedback. The idea is to have something concrete to which the two bodies could react, he said.

Hewitt described the discussions as having been difficult but cordial, and the tentative proposal as “far from perfect.” But he said they now had something that could be discussed.

Before getting into the specifics of the proposal, Hewitt described two different views of the relationship between the DDA and the city. The first view, he said, was a contractual view: The city and the DDA have an existing contract that has four years yet to run, and any modification to that contract should include equal benefit to both sides. The second view, Hewitt said, is of the DDA as a political body made up of an appointed board, so the conversation had a layer of political context.

Hewitt said that because the DDA uses the city’s assets to operate the parking system, it makes sense for the city to have something to say about how the proceeds of the parking system are used. Previously Newcombe Clark has advanced the idea of the DDA purchasing city-owned surface lots as a mechanism for transferring money from the DDA to the city. At Wednesday’s meeting, Hewitt weighed in against that idea by saying that citizens would want some say about what the future use of the land would be, which a strict sale would not necessarily allow. The DDA’s proposal for development of the city-owned downtown surface parking lots, Hewitt said, was focused on generating a lot of input from citizens and from professional consultants.

The part of the conversations through the summer about the parking contract, Hewitt said, had resulted in a proposal with the following key features:

• Parking district: A geographic area would be clearly defined where the DDA would manage parking.
• No city council veto: The DDA would have the authority to set and change parking rates without a veto from the city council, as is currently the case. The rationale for the change is based on an evolution from the three kinds of rates currently charged (metered spaces, surface lots, parking structures) to a more complex system with several kinds of rates that could change dynamically based on time of day and geographic area
• DDA direction of enforcement: The DDA would provide direction to the city’s community standards division on some minimum number of hours in specific regions of enforcement.
• Payment: Instead of using the metaphor of “rent,” the DDA would pay the city a fixed percentage of the gross revenue from the parking system. The basic percentage that had been discussed by the committees was 17.5%. At Wednesday’s meeting the percentage of gross figure for the first two years of the proposed contract, FY 2012 and FY 2013, had been reduced to 16%, with 17.5% stipulated for the following eight years. Hewitt described the rationale as based in part on the desire of the city to mitigate against revenue loss for parking fines as compliance increases. As compliance increases, the thinking is that revenue will increase, and the city would share in the increase. Hewitt also said that there would be less inclination on the part of the city to come back to the DDA in the future to discuss the contract – there is an acceleration of payment built into the agreement.

Mutually Beneficial: Parking District

At the most recent meeting of the city and DDA’s “mutually beneficial” committees on Nov. 22, Amber Miller – the DDA’s planning and research specialist – had presented a methodology for creating a possible parking district that could define where the DDA manages parking in the city. At Wednesday’s DDA board meeting, Hewitt described Miller’s presentation as a scientific approach rather than an emotional one. At the Nov. 22 meeting of the committees, here’s the approach Miller took. The starting point was the DDA tax district:

Outlined and shaded red: DDA tax district.

The DDA manages parking meters and structures outside the tax district, so the next step was to add all the areas to the map where the DDA manages parking:

Outlined and shaded red: DDA tax district. Heavy bright red: DDA-managed parking facilities.

Miller took the maximum distance between the tax district and DDA-managed parking, 3,300 feet, and generated a 3,300-foot buffer around the entire DDA tax district as a way of describing a maximum parking district:

Inner outlined and shaded red: DDA tax district. Heavy bright red: DDA-managed parking facilities. Outer outlined and shaded red: Maximum parking district.

Starting with the maximum district, Miller then began a process of chiseling away, based on considerations like streets with residential parking permit programs, but preserving areas with primarily non-residential uses.

Inner outlined and shaded red: DDA tax district. Outer outlined and shaded red: Maximum parking district. White: Streets with residential parking permit programs. Blue: Streets with primarily non-residential uses. Orange: One possible resulting parking district.

Miller also considered current residential land use and the University of Michigan in producing one possibility for a DDA-managed parking district:

Shaded red: DDA tax district. Outlined and shaded green: Possible DDA-managed parking district.

Images in this article are not Miller’s originals. They were generated from GIS shape files provided by Miller to The Chronicle and converted by The Chronicle to .kml files at GeoCommons.com. The .kml files were then opened in Google Earth to create the images. Here’s a list of the .kml files:

• DDA tax district
• 3,300-foot buffer around DDA tax district
• Streets with primarily non-residential uses
• DDA-managed parking locations
• Streets with residential parking permit programs
• Possible DDA parking district
• Current land use
• University of Michigan property

Mutually Beneficial: Board Discussion

Bob Guenzel led off the board discussion by getting clarification from Roger Hewitt that the DDA development of downtown surface lots was not proposed to be a part of the parking contract.

Gary Boren began the more substantive discussion by alluding to the two different views that Hewitt had sketched out, saying that he took a more legalistic, contractual view rather than a political view of the situation. Boren expressed some frustration that the $2 million the DDA had authorized for payment to the city in the previous year – money that was not required to be paid under terms of the current contract – was being talked about as if it were ancient history, with the focus now only on the next four years. The DDA, he said, needs to be able to rely on promises from the city.

Boren noted that if the DDA’s mission is political, then that mission is all about the downtown. And he would thus consider a politically-based agreement only if it is mission-based. Boren questioned why profit from the parking system should go to the city’s general fund. Merchants, he said, could fairly ask: What’s in it for me? Boren pointed to the fact that the city and DDA have a monopoly on parking, and suggested that the transportation demand management strategy amounted to a way of maximizing revenues, making parking fees effectively a tax on downtown merchants.

Leah Gunn began by saying she disagreed with Boren. The city, she said, had supported the downtown through the development of the new downtown plan and the A2D2 rezoning initiative. She noted that she is the longest-serving member of the DDA board and recalled a time when the DDA did not receive revenue from the parking meters. When Ingrid Sheldon had been mayor, she said, Sheldon had been resistant to the idea. However, John Hieftje had been more receptive to the idea of the DDA collecting parking meter revenue.

The downtown, Gunn said, is more than merchants and downtown residents – it’s also all of us. She said it is important to give the city credit for cooperating with the DDA and that it’s not fair to say that the city council hasn’t created a mission for the downtown.

Newcombe Clark pointed out that the excess revenue from the parking system is, in fact, a tax. That is why, he continued, he felt he did not want the DDA board, with its appointed, not elected members, to have anything to do with it – it should go to the city. Clark expressed concern that the transportation demand management strategy of raising rates on surface lots to encourage people to park in structures could be affected by the fact that the DDA was simultaneously seeking to help the city develop those lots.

Clark said he is concerned about an expectation on the city’s part that it would be held harmless if parking system revenues declined, due to development of surface parking for other uses. He sought to negate Gunn’s point about meter revenues, saying that there is not a lot of net from the meter revenues.

Clark noted that last year, when the DDA decided to authorize an additional $2 million payment not required by the current contract, the DDA had explicitly decided not to give the city help in the form of a grant, but rather had acted on the advice of its legal counsel to move to a contractual approach. [See Chronicle coverage: "DDA OKs $2 Million Over Strong Dissent"] Clark said he was interested in finding a way to convey excess money to the city of Ann Arbor because it’s not appropriate for the DDA to administer the excess revenue.

Hiefte expressed skepticism about the idea that parking fees could be construed as a tax. He also questioned whether merchants had more ownership of downtown than other citizens.

Keith Orr appealed to the reason that DDAs exist: A strong downtown is good for the city. But he said the converse is also true. Orr drew an analogy between the current city-DDA conversation and the re-opening of a union contract, saying that he’s a card-carrying union member. He said that in a collective bargaining negotiation, there would be two basic points the union would make: (1) Show us your finances, and (2) What’s in it for us?

Orr reiterated a point he’s made before – that he thinks the “mutually beneficial” committees were mis-named. They should be more appropriately called the “shared sacrifice” committees, he said, and they need to find a way to make it a shared sacrifice. With respect to the specific numbers, he said he thinks that a 17.5% of gross payment is perhaps on the high side, but not egregiously so. However, he continued, in the context of re-opening the contract, the 17.5% figure was very high. Orr suggested that something like 13-14% might be more appropriate in terms of a shared sacrifice. When the Ann Arbor housing commission or Avalon Housing comes to the DDA to ask for a grant, Orr said, he wanted the DDA to have funds available. [It was a reference to a recent request from the housing commission to fund improvements for Baker Commons.]

Boren responded to Hieftje’s remarks by noting that a merchant selling shoes downtown is competing with stores outside of downtown that have free and easy parking. So parking ease and rates affect the revenues that merchants in the downtown are able to capture, he said. Further, in an allusion to the precedent-setting Bolt v. City of Lansing case, he noted that whether the purpose of a charge is to generate revenue as opposed to regulate use helps to define the difference between a fee and a tax.

John Mouat, noting the implicit link between the DDA’s ratification of a new parking contract and the DDA’s taking greater responsibility for developing downtown surface parking lots, wondered if the additional responsibility is really a “benefit” worth paying for. Mouat expressed some uncertainty about establishing of a parking district.

Russ Collins responded to some of Mouat’s concerns about the significance of a parking district, saying that there is not a lot of street parking to be added. The idea is not to define an area where the DDA would like to put meters, he said. The point is to provide clarity. Collins recognized that Hewitt had put in a lot of work in trying to move the discussion forward. Collins agreed with Orr that there should be shared sacrifice.

Board chair Joan Lowenstein stated that she felt the proposal would be a good framework for the board’s January retreat.

Bob Guenzel characterized himself as “the new kid on the block” – the recently retired Washtenaw County administrator is the newest appointee to the board, joining it in September. He said he had a lot of respect for the two partners in the discussion – the DDA and the city of Ann Arbor. His role was essentially a fiduciary one, he said. A central question he identified was: What really is a fair rent for the city’s parking system assets? Guenzel said the real issue for him was long-term certainty on both sides.

Hieftje came back to the question of why DDAs were created, noting that it was one mechanism for cities to compete against townships. He stated that it’s an extraordinary time. He also stated that the city’s community standards officers had indicated a willingness to be ambassadors and to retrain. He emphasized that the DDA budget is not static – it will increase with the addition of more development in the downtown area, citing specifically Zaragon Place II, which was recently approved, and 601 S. Forest, for which the developer has started pulling necessary permits.

Boren wrapped up the discussion by striking a conciliatory chord, saying that he could get pretty passionate, but he’d always trusted the integrity of those involved and believed that everyone was working for the benefit of the community, even if there were things on which they disagreed.

Communications and Committee Reports

The DDA board meetings typically include reports from its various subcommittees, as well as a report from Ray Detter, on behalf of the downtown citizens advisory council.

Comm/Comm: Downtown Citizens Advisory Council

Ray Detter reported that the December meeting of the downtown citizens advisory council was held in the spirit of a holiday gathering with food and drink provided. It was an occasion to review the goals of the advisory council for 2011. He reported that they had been a supporter of the 1992 downtown plan as well as the revised downtown plan approved in the summer of 2009. The advisory council supported the A2D2 rezoning initiative, as well as the design guidelines that are currently in the last phase of development. They support increased density in the downtown area and mixed use development of the Library Lot, Detter reported. The advisory council has a commitment to downtown greenspace, including support for the Allen Creek greenway.

Detter reported that the advisory council is delighted with the recent reconstruction of parts of West Park, which he said some members had suggested be renamed “Central Park West.” Detter also conveyed support for the preservation of the millrace and the pond at Argo, saying that it would only take him five minutes to drop a fishing line in the pond, starting from his downtown home. He allowed that he’d never caught anything, but said that the pond is a major amenity worth emphasizing. The advisory council supports alternative transportation, he said. Detter also expressed the group’s support for the street outreach task force that is taking a look at the panhandling issue in downtown Ann Arbor.

Comm/Comm: Transportation

Besides the resolution on Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor bus service enhancements, John Mouat reported from the transportation committee that the getDowntown Night Ride fare is increasing from $1 to $3. That reflects a reduction – from $4 to $2 – in the getDowntown subsidy to the regular $5 Night Ride fare. Mouat reported that there is some discussion of expanding the area of service for the subsidized Night Ride fares.

Mouat also reported that the latest progress on AATA’s Blake Transit Center (BTC) project has been outreach to Greyhound and the University of Michigan with the idea of bringing a broader range of transportation services to BTC and the Fourth Avenue block between Liberty and William streets.

Comm/Comm: Partnerships

The report  from co-chairs of the partnerships committee, Sandi Smith and Russ Collins, summarized the energy-saving grant program through the first two years: 73 energy audits have been completed and the DDA has paid $145,000 towards installation of energy-saving improvements in downtown buildings. A grant to XSeed in connection with a solar panel installation on the Michigan Theater, approved by the city’s historic district commission late this summer, will be contingent on an audit obtained through the energy grant program. At the partnerships committee meeting, when the issue was discussed, Collins – who is executive director of the Michigan Theater – left the room for the duration of the discussion, due to the potential conflict of interest.

There are two grants the partnerships committee is not recommending for approval at this time:  (1) an additional allocation to the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County for solar panels and computers, and (2) a grant to support Baker Commons, an Ann Arbor housing commission building located at the intersection of Packard and Main. The grant would be for a 50% match on $500,000, and would be used for window replacement, hallway carpet, and parking lot resurfacing.

Collins explained that the recommendation at this time against the Shelter Association and the housing commission grants was due to other commitments the DDA currently has. Collins repeated a sentiment that he’d expressed at the partnerships committee meeting when he said that given the nature of the mutually beneficial discussions currently taking place with the city of Ann Arbor, “it wouldn’t be illogical” to put the Baker Commons grant “into the hopper.”

Comm/Comm: Bricks and Money

Roger Hewitt gave the usual update on parking demand, saying that they were not seeing anything he’d characterize as a drop in demand. He reported that the DDA’s audit had given the DDA a clean bill of health, which identified a few technical issues that they’d taken care of. [.pdf of audit].

Hewitt also reported that the DDA had put out an RFP (request for proposals) for financial institutions at the request of a board member, but that they were planning to stay with the Bank of Ann Arbor for the next three years. It emerged that one reason the Bank of Ann Arbor gets the DDA’s business is this: It’s the only bank that can count in house all the coins from the parking meters. Russ Collins quipped that Tim Marshall has calluses on his fingers from all the coin counting – Marshall is president and CEO of the Bank of Ann Arbor.

Hewitt also reported that Mark Lyons, who is general manager for Republic Parking – the firm with which the DDA contracts for parking management – had identified $140,000 worth of savings he’d be able to make by adjusting labor and hours of operation.

John Splitt gave updates on the DDA’s construction projects. The tower crane has been constructed for the underground parking garage. Several concrete pours have taken place and were scheduled. The mass excavation is now 98% complete.

The Fifth and Division streetscape improvement projects are being winterized and work was wrapping up for the season on Friday. Before then, the wiring for the new streetlights would be complete – they were being “wired as we speak,” Splitt said.

Present: Gary Boren, Newcombe Clark, Bob Guenzel, Roger Hewitt, John Hieftje, John Splitt, Sandi Smith, Leah Gunn, Russ Collins, Keith Orr, Joan Lowenstein, John Mouat

Next board meeting: Noon on Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011 at the DDA offices, 150 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 301. [confirm date]

The Ann Arbor District Library building, on the northeast corner of Fifth & William. (Photos by the writer.)

They ultimately approved replacing the chiller for $108,555 – but also agreed to plan a retreat where they’ll discuss the issue of the downtown building in depth. The retreat will be scheduled sometime after the Nov. 2 election, when seven candidates will vie for four seats. In addition to the four incumbents running – Jan Barney Newman, Barbara Murphy, Carola Stearns and Ed Surovell – two other candidates attended Monday’s meeting in the audience: Vivienne Armentrout and Lyn Powrie Davidge. Nancy Kaplan is also running for a board seat.

The board heard a report that employee benefits are over budget, primarily due to increased health insurance costs. The administration has addressed that issue by changing the insurance options for its non-union employees, a move that’s expected to bring the expense back to its budgeted amount by the end of the fiscal year.

Also during Monday’s meeting, the board and staff heard a presentation by Stearns, a geologist, who described the effects of glaciers on this region’s topography, in part by looking at the layers of earth exposed during excavation for the underground parking garage being built adjacent to the downtown library building.

Chiller Replacement: How Much to Invest?

On the agenda was a request to either repair or replace one of two chillers used to cool the downtown library building at the corner of Fifth and William. The chillers were installed in 1989, with an expected lifespan of 20-30 years. A condenser coil on one of the chillers was damaged this summer, causing the loss of refrigerant. AADL director Josie Parker reported that most of the time, the chiller wasn’t fully operational and the building got “a little clammy.” Because replacing the chiller in the summer would mean closing the building – it would be too hot for staff and patrons – the best time to replace it is in the fall or winter months.

The board was asked to consider four options: 1) repairing the chiller at an estimated cost of roughly $64,000; 2) replacing it with a new Trane chiller for $112,600; 3) replacing it with a new McQuay chiller for $108,555; or 4) do nothing. The administration recommended replacement with the less expensive McQuay chiller.

Prue Rosenthal asked whether it made sense to wait until next year to replace it, so that the warranty would be activated closer to the time when they’re actually ready to use the equipment. Ken Nieman – associate director of finance, HR and operations – said that if they ordered the new chiller now, it likely wouldn’t be installed until December. It would be possible to wait and install it in February or March, he said, but they’d need to get new bids if they waited. Another factor: The company that’s building the underground parking structure next to the downtown library currently has a crane on site that the library could use to unload the chiller, Nieman said. Otherwise, the library would need to rent a crane – a cost not included in the bid.

Carola Stearns asked for the rationale to buy a new one, rather than replace renovate it, given the cost as well as the uncertain plans for the downtown building. [The board and administration had planned to construct a new building on that site, but had called off plans to do that in late 2008, citing concerns about the economy. The topic has emerged repeatedly in board discussions since then, and was a focus of the board's February 2010 working session to develop its strategic plan for July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2015.]

At Monday’s meeting, Parker responded to Stearns by saying they’d taken a conservative approach in recommending replacement. Nieman pointed out that there are no current plans to do anything with the downtown building. During the summer, he said, the building’s pumps were running 24/7 to circulate cold water as an alternative to the crippled chiller – that’s causing wear-and-tear on the pumps, too. The chilled water is circulated through the building’s air-handling systems. Board member Jan Barney Newman noted that the board had recently approved replacing two of the building’s five air-handlers as well.

Stearns said it was clear that they needed to replace the chiller and keep the library open. But it’s uncomfortable, she said, because they were being asked to spend over $100,000 that hadn’t been budgeted for equipment, and they’re not taking into consideration the broader context of the building’s future. The building won’t likely be around another 20-30 years, she noted. At some point, the board needs to look at how much they’ve already spent, how much more they’ll likely need to spend, and when they should put the brakes on investing more in the current building.

Board chair Rebecca Head said she understood Stearns’ perspective, but they couldn’t predict the future. It would be hard to identify a specific amount, she said, “but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss it.”

Stearns then asked where the chillers would be located when Library Lane opens. The new east/west sidestreet will be located directly north of the library, between the library and the parking structure. The equipment will likely stay were it is, on that north side of the building, Nieman said. The roof isn’t structurally designed to handle the weight, and if they move the chillers to the parking lot on the east side, they’d also have to reroute plumbing. Parker added that if the chillers are kept at their current location, the library still has the option of adding a door on the north side, opening out onto Library Lane.

Ed Surovell weighed in, saying he agreed with the decision to replace the chiller. Repair was a gamble, he said, especially on an old piece of equipment. The bigger question is: How much longer do they continue to invest in the building?

Rosenthal noted that at some point, given the current economic conditions, they might have to consider renovating the building instead of replacing it with a new structure, as they had previously planned. She acknowledged that although they had rejected the idea of renovation, they might need to rethink that now.

Head suggested focusing their board retreat on this issue, and proposed holding the retreat after the Nov. 2 election. She said it made more sense to wait until then – presumably so that potential new board members could participate.

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to replace the broken chiller with a new McQuay chiller, to be installed by Pace Mechanical at a cost of $108,555. Margaret Leary had left the meeting early and was not present for the vote. The board subsequently approved transferring $110,000 from the library’s fund balance to the capital outlays budget, to cover the cost of the project.

Changing Legal Counsel

AADL director Josie Parker explained that the law firm Dykema handled all the library’s legal matters except for those related to real estate, which were handled by Butzel Long. There was an attorney change at Butzel, and she said it seemed like an appropriate time to shift the real estate work back to Dykema.

Ed Surovell said he had no prejudice against Butzel or Dykema, but “I have a strong preference for firms that are headquartered here, of which there a number.” He noted that the “horse was out of the barn” and it wasn’t worth holding up the vote, but he hoped that in the future they could take that into consideration. Pointing out that he had very good friends at both law firms, Surovell said, nonetheless they are “carpetbaggers.”

Outcome: The board unanimously approved changing its legal counsel for real estate matters from Butzel Long to Dykema.

Finance Report

Ken Nieman, associate director of finance, HR and operations, gave the finance report, which looked at the months of July and August. The reports to the board typically cover the previous month, but there was no meeting held in August.

At the end of August, the library had a positive fund balance of $7.6 million, Nieman said. He noted that six items are over budget through August, but are expected to fall back in line later in the year. The largest item over budget relates to employee benefits, and reflect an increase in health insurance costs that took effect July 1. [The budgeted amount of $250,000 has been exceeded by nearly $17,000.] Nieman said they are implementing cost-saving measures that are expected to address this issue by the second half of the fiscal year.

Later in the meeting, board chair Rebecca Head reported that the board’s executive committee – consisting of Head, Jan Barney Newman and Prue Rosenthal – had discussed the issue of health insurance costs, and confirmed with Parker that Parker, as director, had the authority to offer AADL’s non-union employees alternative health insurance plans aimed at cutting costs for the library. Head said all three plans that were offered provide good coverage, and one of the plans is at no cost to employees. No additional details were provided.

AADL employs 250 people, including 100 full-time benefited workers. Of those full-time workers, 52 are represented by unions.

Director’s Report

Josie Parker provided both a written and verbal director’s report to the board. She noted that more than 9,000 people participated in AADL’s summer reading program, including 2,771 adults – numbers that are “very good,” she said. Of the total participants, 52% reported that they’d finished the program, meaning that they read the recommended books. Probably more people completed it but didn’t report back, Parker said, but even 52% is a good result.

Parker reminded the board that she represents the library on a countywide cyber-citizen task force that’s focused on how to use the Internet in a safe, productive way. It’s a coalition spearheaded by Washtenaw County commissioner Kristin Judge that includes representatives from law enforcement, the courts, education, local government and nonprofits. A kick-off breakfast will be held Oct. 6 from 8-10 a.m. at Washtenaw Community College’s Morris Lawrence Building, and Parker encouraged board members to attend. She noted that it’s very relevant to the library’s work, given that the library provides Internet access to its patrons.

Parker also reported that she recently attended a Success by Six legislative breakfast – the library is involved in that effort. She posed a question to the board that attendees at the breakfast had been asked: When you think of the most common age for expulsion, what comes to mind? One board member suggested eighth grade. In fact, for private schools, kindergarten has the highest expulsion rate, Parker said. Success by Six trains daycare providers to help parents deal with behavioral problems – like biting – that lead to expulsion. It’s an interesting conversation to have about school readiness, Parker said. It’s not about counting to 10 or learning your colors – it’s about learning the behavior to stay in school. “This is something I care a great deal about,” she said.

Board member Barbara Murphy had a question about an item in Parker’s written report, which mentioned that the library now provides web hosting services for Washtenaw Literacy, and that the Huron Valley Community Network has relocated its computer server to AADL’s datacenter. Murphy said she supported these partnerships, but wondered how they were selected.

Parker said that the nonprofit and AADL must have parallel or complementary missions, and that the library doesn’t provide financial support or content development. AADL doesn’t advertise this service, she said, and it typically takes a long time to work out terms of the partnership, depending on how much the nonprofit needs or wants from AADL.

Resolutions of Thanks

The library board unanimously passed resolutions of thanks for the service of two employees, both named Janet Smith, who recently retired.

Janet P. Smith worked for the library since 1983, most recently serving as manager of access, user services and collections. In her director’s report, Josie Parker stated that Smith’s interest in local history and geneology led to the library offering classes on computer searching as well as enhancements to the library’s special collections. “Janet will be missed by her colleagues for her wit and wisdom, both always given with respect and humor,” Parker wrote, “and offered in abundance.”

Janet A. Smith joined AADL in 1987, and worked in bindery services. “To say that she personally touched almost every item that was purchased by the Library at some point or other over two decades would not be an exaggeration,” Parker wrote. “Her quiet smile, competence and work ethic were appreciated by her colleagues, and will be missed by us all.”

Carola Stearns.

Ann Arbor Under Ice

At the end of the meeting, board member Carola Stearns gave a presentation on the impact of glacial formations in the Ann Arbor area. A geologist, Stearns had taken advantage of the deep excavation in the city-owned Library Lot, located directly north of the downtown library building, to explore the exposed strata. An underground parking structure is being built on that site.

Most of her presentation focused a broader overview of glacial activity in North America and in the Ann Arbor region, where three “end moraines” – the linear pile-up of debris and sediment at the end of a glacier – define the local topography. The three moraines running through Ann Arbor are the Fort Wayne Moraine, the Outer Defiance Moraine and the Inner Defiance Moraine.

In the last “glacial maximum,” the Ann Arbor area had been totally covered by the Laurentide ice sheet, which stretched down into Ohio. The glacial sediment from that period is 100-200 feet deep here.

In the Library Lot pit itself, Stearns said she found nothing surprising or interesting – just 55 feet of coarse, well-bedded, well-sorted sand and gravel. She had hoped for a big tree stump or something that would provide material that could be dated.

Stearns mentioned that she’s spent time in Killians Killins gravel pit, located near Wagner and Liberty, where about 100 feet of gravel and sand is exposed. Ed Surovell described Killins as a “remarkable sight.”

Stearns received a round of applause after her presentation.

Present: Rebecca Head, Margaret Leary, Barbara Murphy, Jan Barney Newman, Prue Rosenthal, Carola Stearns, Ed Surovell. Also: Josie Parker, AADL director.

Next meeting: Regular board meetings are typically held on the third Monday of the month, with the public portion of the meeting starting at 7 p.m. in the library’s fourth floor board room, 343 S. Fifth Ave. The board’s next regular meeting is on Monday, Oct. 18, 2010. [confirm date]