Stories indexed with the term ‘surface parking’

Starting this past weekend, the city-owned 87-space surface parking lot at Fifth and William streets in downtown Ann Arbor – known as the former Y lot – was closed. And it might sit unused for a year or longer.

For the parcel to remain in use as part of the city’s public parking system, the pending purchaser of the property, Dennis Dahlmann, would need to reach an agreement on a leasing arrangement with the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. The DDA manages the city’s public parking system under a contract with the city.

Eventually, Dahlmann intends to build a mixed-used development on the parcel, but wants to provide surface parking while the project is in the planning stages. A site plan could easily take a year to design, and to obtain necessary approvals from the planning commission and city council. The city council approved the sale of the land to Dahlmann last year at its Nov. 18, 2013 meeting.

Ben Dahlmann, senior vice president with Dahlmann Properties, attended the March 26, 2014 meeting of the DDA’s operations committee to present a revision to the leasing proposal that Dahlmann had made in January. The original proposal had been for the DDA to lease the property back from Dahlmann for $150,000 a year.

The revised proposal would be for Dahlmann and the DDA to split the net income (after expenses) from the parking lot for the next two years. Dahlmann ballparked that number at around $180,000, which would translate to a $90,000 share for Dahlmann – less than the $160,000 per year that Dahlmann figured he’d owe in property taxes.

The final sale of the property by the city to Dahlmann – at a purchase price of $5.25 million – is scheduled for April 2. No agreement on Dahlmann’s offer to lease property to the DDA was reached at the March 26 meeting. But the committee will be taking up the issue again at its April meeting. [Full Story]

At its June 6, 2012 meeting, the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority board voted unanimously to renew lease agreements for two surface parking lots in downtown Ann Arbor. One lot is known as the Brown Block, bounded by Huron, Ashley, Liberty Washington and First streets. The other is located on the southeast corner of Huron Street and South Fifth Avenue. The new leases extend for a period of three years.

The DDA manages the two lots as part of Ann Arbor’s public parking system. The leases, which have been in place for several years, are between the DDA and two limited liability companies owned by local real estate development firm First Martin Corp. Those two companies are Huron Ashley LLC … [Full Story]

At its April 4, 2011 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council finally voted to approve a resolution that would establish a process to develop alternate uses of city-owned downtown surface parking lots, to be led by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. The vote was unanimous.

The council 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 the April 4 meeting, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) offered amendments to the resolution that among other things added additional language about public process: “Solicit robust public input and conduct public meetings to determine residents’ parcel-level downtown vision.” Taylor also added clarifying language that would require the DDA to account for its direct costs and that they be reported along the way, in order to potentially have their costs reimbursed. Those amendments were undertaken as revisions to the resolution at the start of deliberations.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) offered an amendment that confined the focus to the area bounded by William, Ashley, Liberty and Division streets, which passed on a 6-4 vote, with dissent from Taylor, Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5), Mike Anglin (Ward 5) and Tony Derezinski (Ward 2).

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, when Taylor had attached a copy of the the draft resolution to the council’s meeting agenda, and alerted his council colleagues to it at that meeting

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 100 N. Fifth Ave. A more detailed report will follow: [link] [Full Story]