Stories indexed with the term ‘street closure’

An extraordinarily light agenda offers the council a rare opportunity to dispatch with a meeting in about an hour tonight. No proclamations or presentations are scheduled for the start of the meeting.

Besides the consent agenda, the council will need to vote on just eight items. And half of those eight are standard easements, which are rarely subjected to any council discussion.

But those easements also mean that not too many councilmembers would have the chance to take the night off. As conveyances of land interest, the easements will require an 8-vote majority on the 11-member council. Two of the easements are related to the construction of a new Tim Hortons on South State Street, one is related to the Arbor Hills Crossing development at Washtenaw and Platt, and the fourth is linked to construction of the new Blake Transit Center in downtown Ann Arbor.

The other land-related item on the agenda is initial consideration of a rezoning request for a site that has been annexed into the city from Ann Arbor Township. The final vote on the item would come at a subsequent meeting after a public hearing at that meeting. The Aug. 19 agenda doesn’t include any items that require a public hearing.

The council will be asked to approve a $107,000 purchase order for continued participation in CLEMIS (Courts and Law Enforcement Management Information System). The service is used by several public safety agencies in southeast Michigan. Among the support services provided by CLEMIS are computer-aided dispatch (CAD), mobile CAD, report management system, fingerprinting and mug shots.

The council will also be asked to approve the issuance of $3.15 million in revenue bonds to fund some electrical improvements for the water supply system.

The final voting item on the agenda is confirmation of several nominations to city boards and commissions made at the council’s previous meeting.

The agenda still offers some opportunity for stretching long. For example, the council could separate out some of the nominations for individual consideration. Among those nominations, the council will be asked to confirm appointments to the boards of two high-profile organizations – the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority and the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority. Rishi Narayan, founder of Underground Printing, is the nominee to the DDA board. Jack Bernard, who works in the University of Michigan’s office of the general counsel, is the nominee to the AAATA board.

The council could also pull individual items off the consent agenda for separate consideration. Two of those items are street closures for downtown bars to host Oktoberfest activities on Sept. 20-21. It’s possible those items could be pulled out for separate consideration – but not because of a desire to deny the requests. Instead, a possible reason to consider them separately would be to highlight what’s different about the Oktoberfest street closures, compared to a similar request made at the council’s last meeting for “Beats, Eats, and Cleats.” That request, which was denied, was for an event sponsored by The Landmark apartment building. It was scheduled for Friday, Sept. 6, 2013, the evening before the football game between the University of Michigan and the University of Notre Dame.

The Oktoberfest event also takes place on a weekend when the Michigan football team plays a game. But that game against the UConn Huskies will be contested on the gridiron of Rentschler Field in East Hartford, Conn. – over 700 miles away from the intersection of Washington and Main Streets in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Councilmembers also have the opportunity at three different points in the agenda to share communications with the public and their fellow councilmembers.

More detail on the meeting agenda items is available on the city’s Legistar system. Readers can also follow the live meeting proceedings on Channel 16, streamed online by Community Television Network.

The Chronicle will be filing live updates from city council chambers during the meeting, published in this article “below the fold.” The meeting is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. [Full Story]

On Saturday, Sept. 10, Main Street in Ann Arbor will be closed between Pauline and Stadium Boulevard from 5 p.m. until the conclusion of the football game at Michigan Stadium. A press release issued Friday morning by the city of Ann Arbor cited security concerns due to the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks coinciding with the University of Michigan’s first night football game, to be played against Notre Dame.

Starting at 5 p.m. on Saturday, northbound Main Street traffic will be detoured from Stadium Boulevard to 7th Street, and from 7th to Pauline, then back to Main. Southbound Main Street traffic will be detoured from Pauline to 7th Street, and 7th to Stadium, then back to Main. Main Street … [Full Story]

When The Chronicle first reported that the one-block stretch along South Fifth Avenue – between Liberty and William – would be closing on Aug. 1, the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority hadn’t yet finalized contingency plans for the change, which will affect one of the city’s main southbound arteries through most of 2011.

This week, the DDA – which is managing the closure as part of the construction of the underground parking structure on South Fifth – released more information about changes in traffic routes and parking, related to the closure.

Those changes include the closing of the downtown post office’s public parking lot, allowing truck traffic on southbound Main Street, and installing a new turn arrow at the intersection of Fifth and William, to allow AATA buses to turn north onto Fifth. Read on for more details about these and other changes to expect after Aug. 1. [Full Story]

At planning commission’s working session on Tuesday night, held in the 6th floor conference room of the Larcom Building, representatives of the University of Michigan described a request for permanent closure of Monroe Street, between Oakland and State streets. Previously, The Chronicle covered the proposed Monroe Street closure as part of UM’s early December 2008 meeting with neighbors, which is now required under the city of Ann Arbor’s citizen participation ordinance.

Sue Gott, university planner, and Jim Kosteva, director of community relations, made the presentation to the commission’s working session for the permanent street closure, which would not come before the commission as a formal request until April 21 at the soonest, according to Connie Pulcipher, senior planner with the city of Ann Arbor, who attended the working session. [Full Story]