An architectural drawing of the proposed Fuller Road Station. (Image links to city of Ann Arbor webpage on the Fuller Road Station)

The press release includes a statement from mayor John Hieftje, which reads in part: “After months of fruitful discussions, we received new information from the Federal Rail Administration regarding the eligibility of monies for the local match. This information altered project timing such that we could no longer finalize a proposal under the current Memorandum of Understanding.”

On the university’s side, Jim Kosteva – director of community relations – is quoted in the press release as follows: “We are optimistic the city’s drive to win additional federal and state dollars for Fuller Road Station will be successful …When the time comes, we stand ready to reengage.” [.pdf of press release]

The press release also includes the news that the university will build the parking deck it had planned for the Fuller Road Station site at a different location: “… it is acknowledged that the University will need to move forward with building a parking structure, in a yet to be determined location, near the Medical Campus to address the expected demand as employment and patient activity continues to grow.”

The university was primarily interested in the initial phase of the project, a large parking structure with more than 1,000 spaces planned.

The city of Ann Arbor’s main interest was in the second phase of the project – a multimodal transit center that city officials hope would include a new Amtrak station, bus depot and sufficient parking for those needs. That component of the project appears to be very much still in play, contingent on identifying funding.

The Chronicle has compiled a timeline overview of Fuller Road Station with links to previous coverage. After the jump, we look at: (1) the train/bus station component of the project; (2) what led UM to initially participate in the project; (3) what happened since a memorandum of understanding between the city and the university was ratified; and (4) the timing of the decision to halt the project.

Funding a Rail Station

With the university’s parking requirements no longer a part of the project, some of the controversy surrounding it could be reduced. That specific controversy stemmed from the objection that the construction of a large parking deck would require some kind of lease arrangement with the university over a long enough period to be tantamount to a sale of the land. A sale of city parkland is required by Ann Arbor’s city charter to be put to a voter referendum.

The parcel is zoned as public land (PL). The city council approved a change to the city’s zoning code in July 2010 that explicitly allows for “transportation facilities” on public land.

The city was looking to an investment from the university in Fuller Road Station to count toward matching funds for federal funding that would support construction of a later phase of the project, which would include a rail station. The project would still need to include a parking component – but not anywhere near the scale of the structure UM was planning to build. It’s not certain what funding sources will be available to the city of Ann Arbor as it moves forward with the project without UM’s involvement.

However, federal funds have always been a part of a hoped-for funding strategy. And in the spring of 2011, the city received news that initial federal funding for the project had been awarded – $2.8 million from the Federal Rail Administration, towards a $3.5 million project for environmental assessment and engineering at the site. The difference is required to be paid by a local match. The city and the university have already made expenditures in connection with that project that the city believes will count for most if not all of that local match. It’s typical that federally-funded infrastructure projects require something on the order of a 20% match in local funds.

The rail station component of the project is estimated to cost about $18 million, with necessary modifications and upgrades to tracks totaling an additional $6-7 million. When the FRA funding for the environmental assessment was announced, Ann Arbor transportation program manager Eli Cooper called the award significant because it indicates the FRA’s willingness to be the lead federal agency for the project. Although it’s not guaranteed, the FRA does not typically fund initial phases of a project like the environmental assessment without following through with funds for the project itself.

If the city eventually pursues the project independently of the university’s own parking needs, it would provide a more narrow focus on the amount of parking that’s required just for the rail station component. To meet that need, some amount of parking spaces would be required for short-term and drop-off parking, as well as some long-term parking. The figure corresponding to the city’s allotment of the spots when UM was involved would have worked out to around 200 parking spaces. Those spaces would need to be constructed as a project independently of UM’s parking needs.

The FAQ maintained by the city of Ann Arbor about Fuller Road mentions that Greyhound and Amtrak have indicated an interest in the project. [For a historical look at Amtrak ridership from 1994-2011, see "Transit Ridership Data Roundup: 2011"]

The Fuller Road Station is included in a 30-year vision that has been developed by the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority as part of a transportation master plan for a countywide system. The transition of the AATA to a system of governance that includes a wider geographic area than the city of Ann Arbor is currently being debated by the Ann Arbor city council. That’s a discussion centered on details of a four-party agreement – between the city of Ann Arbor, the city of Ypsilanti, Washtenaw County and the AATA.

Wall Street Controversy Led to Fuller Road Location

The attempted collaboration by UM with the city on Fuller Road Station stemmed from a controversy about UM’s plans to build a parking structure on Wall Street dating back at least four years. Plans by UM to expand in the general area go back to the 1980s. In 2008, the university’s plans to address its parking needs by constructing a parking deck on Wall Street had generated vocal opposition among nearby residents.

Early sketch of Fuller Road transit station from 2008-2009. (Image links to higher resolution image.)

So the alternative proposal to build the parking structure at the Fuller Park location next to the railroad tracks – in conjunction with a transit station that the city hoped to construct – had relieved some of the Wall Street controversy.

The specific pitch by the city to the university to collaborate on a multimodal transit center was publicly given concrete form at a January 2009 meeting of city staff and neighbors held at the Northside Grill, on Broadway in the Wall Street neighborhood. The city had identified the possible site for the proposed Fuller Road Station – a parking lot on land designated as part of the city’s park system – in its “Model for Mobility” long-term transportation planning initiative.

Later that year, on Nov. 5, 2009, the city council ratified a memorandum of understanding with the university for the parking deck component of the project. It called for a 22%-78% city-university proportionate share of the 1,050 parking structure spaces and a corresponding financial responsibility for construction. With an estimated cost of $46.6 million, the city’s share of the parking structure (phase 1) would have been roughly $10 million.

The UM board of regents approved the project at its Jan. 21, 2010 meeting. The memorandum of understanding calls for the parking structure component of the project to be ready for use by June 15, 2012. Construction would have needed to start in 2011 for that target to have been met.

The memorandum of understanding between the city and the university also gave a nod to the university’s interest in the rail station component (phase 2) portion of the project, but placed no obligations on UM: “The City and University shall cooperate and use their best efforts to achieve completion of mutually-beneficial elements of Fuller Road Station not included in Phase One.” Now, however, it’s not clear how UM might be involved on any elements of a rail station that might connect across the tracks to the UM hospital complex. The Feb. 10 press release includes the statement from Kosteva: “When the time comes, we stand ready to reengage.”

After the City-University MOU

Since the ratification of the memorandum of understanding, the project had languished, with little visible progress on the city-university deal. But community conversation about the deal has continued – during public commentary at meetings of the city council, the city’s park advisory commission, the city planning commission and of the UM regents. That’s because the Fuller Road location for the construction of parking for UM included at least as much controversy as the original Wall Street location – due partly to the fact that the parcel (currently a surface parking lot) is located on city-owned land designated as part of the city’s park system.

In May 2010, the city’s park advisory commission (PAC) considered a resolution that called for the city council to abandon the Fuller Road Station project, or at the least to get a better deal from the university in terms of revenues provided to the city for leasing the structure. [Chronicle coverage: "Better Deal Desired for Fuller Road Station"] That caught the attention of Hieftje, an advocate of the project, who attended PAC’s May 18, 2010 meeting and asked commissioners for their support. [Chronicle coverage: "Hieftje Urges Unity on Fuller Road Station"]

Hieftje’s request led commissioners to reconsider their position, dropping a call to stop the project but still urging city council to work for a more open process and to ensure a better financial deal to benefit the parks system. [Chronicle coverage: "PAC Softens Stance on Fuller Road Station"] The Ann Arbor city planning commission voted 7-2 on Sept. 21, 2010 to recommend approval of the Fuller Road Station site plan.

By the next year, with no visible additional movement, in June 2011 Hieftje indicated at a city council meeting that he’d be willing to schedule a work session on the topic of Fuller Road Station. And when a July 11, 2011 work session was added to the council’s calendar, it appeared the topic would be Fuller Road Station. However, at the council’s July 5, 2011 meeting, Hieftje indicated that the upcoming work session would not deal with Fuller Road Station – it dealt instead with possible changes to the city’s approach to garbage collection, as well as a reorganization of the city/county office of community development.

Later in July 2011, Hieftje sent a letter to constituents that reviewed much of the information that was previously known, but appeared to introduce the possibility that the University of Michigan would provide construction costs for the city’s share of the parking structure up front, with the city’s portion of 22% to be repaid later.

Although the final project has not been voted on and formally approved by the city council, aspects of Fuller Road Station, including its design, have moved ahead. A task force for a public art component was formed last year, for example. But at the public art commission’s November 2011 meeting, commissioners on the task force reported that they were told by city staff that the project had been delayed by 6-12 months.

Timing of the Decision to Halt Fuller Road Project

The Feb. 10 announcement about halting the joint university/city project comes after a release on Jan. 31 by the Sierra Club-Huron Valley Group of the city of Ann Arbor’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information on Fuller Road Station.

The material released under the FOIA request indicated growing frustration on the university’s side dating back at least to late October of last year. In an Oct. 20, 2011 email sent to mayor John Hieftje and city administrator Steve Powers – with the subject line “Action on Fuller Road Station” – UM director of community relations Jim Kosteva wrote:

There is growing anxiousness among university leadership regarding the ongoing delay in getting the commitment from Council and construction started. And revisiting our decision to postpone the structure(s) on Wall Street is becoming a more frequent discussion.

In that email Kosteva points to the imminent opening (since opened) of the new C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and the increased pressure that the new hospital puts on the university’s parking system. [.pdf of Oct. 20, 2011 Kosteva email]

The decision about halting the Fuller Road Station project was made at least as early as Wednesday, Feb. 1. And in retrospect, there were some signs of that. During that afternoon’s meeting of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority, Hieftje appeared pre-occupied at the board table – he did not cast his vote of principle against the Republic Parking management incentive, as he has consistently done the previous three years.

And Lucy Ann Lance reported on air just after 9 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 3 that a hoped-for guest who could talk about UM’s parking and transportation system – Hank Baier, associate vice president for facilities and operations – would not appear on her Business Insider radio show (1290 AM) that morning.

Joe Grengs, University of Michigan associate professor of urban and regional planning, speaking at a Feb. 9 forum on sustainability in the city of Ann Arbor.

Possibly factoring into a delay in announcing the news were two public events held by the city of Ann Arbor on Wednesday and Thursday this past week (Feb. 8 and 9) – events where the topic of Fuller Road Station might naturally emerge. On Wednesday, the city hosted two sessions of a forum on the city’s non-motorized master plan update. And on Thursday, the city held the second of a four-part series on sustainability forums. The city’s transportation manager and AATA board member, Eli Cooper, was a speaker at both events. Had the news been released before those events, conversation might have centered on Fuller Road Station to the exclusion of other topics.

Even without the news of the project’s suspension, the topic of Fuller Road Station was raised during the sustainability forum, which focused on land use. During a question-and-answer period, Clark Charnetski – a member of the AATA’s local advisory council – voiced support for the proposed location.

Charnetski’s comment prompted a response from Joe Grengs, a panelist and UM associate professor of urban and regional planning. Grengs said he didn’t believe the university needed more parking, and that there are steps that could be taken to reallocate parking within UM’s current infrastructure.

The Fuller Road Station project undermines the city’s stated sustainability goals, Grengs said, because the mode of parking falls into a completely different category than walking, biking and rail transit. All of those latter modes work well in areas of high density, he said. But cars work against that – they are “big, hulking objects” that simply sit all day, he observed. So to have 1,000 cars parked at that location every day, at a place where there should be opportunities for interaction – places for retail or recreation, for example – “to me is a mistake and I’d urge the city to think about that,” he concluded. Grengs’ remarks were met with a smattering of applause from the audience.

Grengs’ commentary included a view that has been expressed by UM graduate student Joel Batterman at more than one public meeting covered by The Chronicle: That the university could meet its parking needs by reallocating and optimizing its current parking resources. Batterman is an urban planning student who is specializing in transportation issues. From his remarks made to UM regents on Jan. 20, 2011: “… continually increasing parking supply may be less environmentally and fiscally sustainable than an alternative strategy of adjusting parking pricing to more efficiently use existing parking supply.”

Fuller Road Station Timeline Overview

The following is a detailed timeline of the Fuller Road Station project, compiled by The Chronicle, with links to previous coverage.

• 1824 Ann Arbor is founded.
• 1837 University of Michigan re-locates from Detroit to Ann Arbor.
• 1993-Jun-26 UM and city make a land swap deal involving the surface parking lot at the site of the proposed Fuller Road Station. Ann Arbor News article states: “Oak trees to be spared from ax – A request from UM officials for a temporary parking lot may be the key to saving condemned burr oak trees.”
• 2006-Jun-15 City of Ann Arbor “Model for Mobility” introduced as a three-point vision, with: (1) north-south commuter rail, (2) east-west commuter rail, and (3) local circulator connector system.
• 2008-Sep-18 University of Michigan regents give initial approval to $48.6 million Wall Street parking structure.
• 2008-Dec-16 UM officials meet with residents who live near the proposed Wall Street parking structure projects.
• 2009-Jan-27 City transportation program manager gives combined multimodal transit center and parking structure concrete form by showing a sketch of the project, indicating its location at the Fuller Park parking lot. The presentation takes place in the context of a neighborhood meeting to respond in part to concerns about the UM proposal to build parking structures on Wall Street.
• 2009-Jun-19 UM regents pause the proposed Wall Street parking structure project.
• 2009-Aug-17 Ann Arbor city council approves $213,984 of city funds for an environmental study and site assessment. Of that amount, $104,742 was appropriated from the economic development fund.
• 2009-Nov-05 Ann Arbor city council approves memorandum of understanding with UM on Fuller Road Station.
• 2009-Nov-05 Ann Arbor city council authorizes additional $111,228 for environmental study and site assessment.
• 2010-Jan-21 UM board of regents approves the Fuller Road Station project.
• 2010-Feb-10 Public forum held for Ann Arbor residents on Fuller Road Station.
• 2010-May-04 Ann Arbor park advisory commission weighs a resolution calling for the city council to abandon the Fuller Road Station project, or at the least to get a better deal from the university.
• 2010-May-04 Ann Arbor city planning commission recommends amending zoning code list of permitted principal uses of public land (including the site of the proposed Fuller Road Station) – specifically, changing a “municipal airports” use to “transportation facilities.”
• 2010-May-18 Ann Arbor mayor John Hieftje attends meeting of park advisory commission urging their support of Fuller Road Station.
• 2010-Jun-01 Ann Arbor park advisory commission modifies resolution draft due in part to the mayor’s visit at their previous meeting.
• 2010-Jul-06 Ann Arbor city council votes to change zoning code to allow transportation facilities as allowable use for public land.
• 2010-Jun-15 Ann Arbor park advisory commission passes resolution on Fuller Road Station calling for transparency.
• 2010-Sep-21 Ann Arbor city planning commission votes 7-2 to recommend approval of the Fuller Road Station site plan.
• 2011-May-17 Ann Arbor park advisory commission gets update on Fuller Road Station, including award of $2.8 million from Federal Rail Administration for environmental study and site analysis. The funds would reimburse some money already expended.
• 2011-Jun-06 Public commentary at a city council meeting prompts city councilmember Sabra Briere (Ward 1) to request that a council work session be scheduled on Fuller Road Station – mayor John Hieftje agrees that one can be scheduled.
• 2011-Jun-20 City council adds a working session to its calendar for July 11, 2011.
• 2011-Jul-05 Mayor John Hieftje indicates during the city council’s meeting that Fuller Road Station is not among the intended topics for the July 11 work session.
• 2011-Jul-27 Mayor John Hieftje sends letter to constituents about Fuller Road Station.
• 2011-Oct-20 Jim Kosteva, UM director of community relations, sends an email to the mayor and city administrator warning of the need for urgency.
• 2012-Jan-31 Press release from Huron Valley Group of the Sierra Club calls for details of Fuller Road Station plans to be made known.
• 2012-Feb-10 Press release from the city of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan announcing a halt to the project.
• 2012-Jun-15 Date by which Ann Arbor-UM memorandum of understanding anticipates Fuller Road Station parking structure would be ready for use.

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For actual coverage of the announcement that the Fuller Road Station project has been suspended, see: “UM, Ann Arbor Halt Fuller Road Project.”

U.S. president Barack Obama, speaking at the University of Michigan's Al Glick Fieldhouse on Friday morning, Jan. 27. His remarks focused on the issue of education and college affordability. (Photos by Mary Morgan.)

Also not wanting to miss Barack Obama’s appearance at the University of Michigan – a return visit after delivering the commencement address in May of 2010 – were dozens of other national, state and local media. Attention is heightened even more during this election year, and Friday morning’s speech was just one of many stops as Obama hit the road following Tuesday’s State of the Union address.

There will be countless reports and opinions offered on the Jan. 27 speech at UM, but we’d encourage you to approach it unfiltered, at least initially. You can watch the roughly 40-minute speech in its entirety online, or read a transcript of it here.

For Obama’s remarks almost two years ago at the 2010 UM commencement, we provided a bit of our own analysis, along with photos by Myra Klarman.

This time, we went with an eye for recording the community connections we could see at the event. And there were many – not surprisingly for a Democratic stronghold like Ann Arbor. Politicians were easy to spot, of course, but there were also educators, business owners, government workers and many others.

Over 3,000 people attended Friday morning’s speech. Here are a few of those we encountered there.

Eugene Kang, left, lost a close race for a spot on the Ann Arbor city council several years ago – and now has to content himself as the president's special projects coordinator and assistant. State Rep. Jeff Irwin of Ann Arbor, top left, had worked on Kang's council campaign. In the foreground is state Sen. Rebekah Warren and her husband Conan Smith, chair of the Washtenaw County board of commissioners.

Susan Pollay, director of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority.

Deborah Ball, dean of UM's School of Education, gets camera instructions from Brit Satchwell, president of the Ann Arbor Education Association, before the president's speech. Satchwell is standing with Tracey Van Dusen, a Pioneer High School government teacher who was a 2010 Classroom Teaching Ambassador Fellow with the U. S. Department of Education.

Washtenaw County commissioner Yousef Rabhi (in light blue cap and scarf, with beard) and Andy LaBarre (back right), a candidate for commissioner and former aide to Congressman John Dingell.

Ann Arbor city administrator Steve Powers had a height advantage over some of the other spectators at the Jan. 27 event.

Jim Kosteva, UM's director of community relations, glides down the risers.

Jason Brooks, a management analyst in the Washtenaw County administrator's office and a 2011 Ann Arbor Chronicle Bezonki Award winner, got a prime spot next to the stage.

Many people in the crowd were taking photos and texting on their iPhones or other mobile devices and sending the information to the Internet in realtime. But one man passed the minutes waiting for the president by reading an account of the previous day's news printed off on multiple sheets of paper – a so-called "news paper."

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, leaning over in the center of the huddle, prompted a brief media scrum before the start of Obama's speech.

Media photographers stood on risers for a clear view of the speaker's podium. Photographers in the crowd had to rely on other techniques to get their shots.

Jo Mathis, left, takes a "Hail Mary" shot. The former Ann Arbor News columnist is now editor of the Washtenaw Legal News.

University of Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson poses for a photo with U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow. The crowd's cheer for Robinson, who arrived several minutes before the president, nearly rivaled its enthusiasm for Obama. Robinson fielded dozens of autograph and photo requests, including one from a member of the event's security detail.

Ann Arbor city councilmember Stephen Kunselman, who's employed by UM as an energy management liaison.

Among the spectators in this crowd shot are Ann Arbor Public Schools superintendent Patricia Green and AAPS trustee Andy Thomas, and Ann Arbor city councilmembers Christopher Taylor, Tony Derezinski and Carsten Hohnke.

From left: University of Michigan regents Kathy White and Denise Ilitch, chair of the board of regents.

From left: Eastern Michigan University president Susan Martin and Rose Bellanca, president of Washtenaw Community College.

Barack Obama during his speech. Trust us: Among the people in the background risers are Ann Arbor city councilmember Sabra Briere and her husband, local attorney David Cahill; Democratic activist Doug Kelley; Ann Arbor Art Center president Marsha Chamberlin and her husband John Chamberlin, a UM professor of public policy.

UM president Mary Sue Coleman, at right, listened to Obama's speech on a platform behind the speaker's podium. She did not address the crowd.

After his speech, Barack Obama worked the crowd. He offers a high five to Mark Bernstein's kid – Bernstein is a candidate for UM regent.

Ann Arbor city councilmember Sandi Smith, center, gets ready to greet the president. Behind her, slightly to the right, is Ann Arbor Public Schools trustee Glenn Nelson.

Following Obama's speech, anti-fracking protesters were keeping a cold vigil in the parking lot outside of the Al Glick Fieldhouse. To the right, a man holds an "I Vote Pro-Life First" sign. Volunteers were also passing out Obama re-election campaign literature and collecting signatures for repeal of the state's emergency financial manager law.

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Looking east down Monroe Street, across State Street. This section of Monroe Street is flanked by two University of Michigan law school buildings: Hutchins Hall to the north, and South Hall. (Photos by the writer. )

Following State Street north up the hill towards downtown will lead you to the intersection with Monroe Street. Turn right on Monroe, and you’ll wind up at Dominick’s, a local watering hole, majestic in its own right.

One parking option for patrons of Dominick’s is that first block of Monroe Street east of State. And what better topic to discuss over a pitcher of beer, sitting at a Dominick’s picnic table, than Ann Arbor parking rates. How much should it cost to use an on-street parking space on Monroe in that one block between State and Oakland?

Here’s a different question: How much for the whole damn block? I don’t mean just the parking spaces. I mean the whole right-of-way.

That question is part of a current conversation among public officials from the city of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. The university is not interested in parking cars on that block. In fact, it’s the university’s desire that the thoroughfare be blocked to vehicular traffic. Permanently.

By tackling this topic, I’d like to achieve a two-fold purpose. First, I’d like to promote the daylighting of conversations now taking place out of public view. Second, I’d like to provide a rational way to approach calculating the value of city right-of-way, specifically in the general context of city-university relations.

Otherwise put, I’d like to sketch out a kind of Monroe Doctrine for Ann Arbor, which might in some ways mirror the message in the original Monroe Doctrine, set forth by President James Monroe in his address to Congress, on Dec. 2, 1823.

I’m not going to suggest including the part that talks about when “our rights are invaded or seriously menaced …”

Monroe Street: Place, Time Not Random Coincidence  

It’s not a random accident that the university would like to see that block of Monroe Street essentially absorbed into its campus. Two university law school buildings now stand on opposites sides of Monroe Street. On the north is Hutchins Hall, which dates from 1933. On the south is the newly-constructed South Hall, which opened just this fall.

On a scenario closing that block of Monroe Street to automobile traffic, only a pedestrian-type corridor would separate South Hall from Hutchins Hall. Arguably, the university’s law school campus would have better physical coherence with that layout.

The university’s desire with respect to Monroe Street is not news. In fact, The Chronicle reported on a meeting hosted by university officials for residents in late 2008, when the proposal was floated. The idea was that the city of Ann Arbor would grant permanent use of the right-of-way to the university for one block of Monroe Street. The presentation was given by Jim Kosteva, UM’s director of community relations, and Sue Gott, the university’s head of planning. At that point, the plans for South Hall were still on the drawing board.

Residents did not give the proposal a warm reception. One argument against the proposal was based on civil liberties, public access to the space, and the substitution of the university’s police force for the city’s police department as a means to discourage expression of dissent. Another argument was based on the idea that one of the distinctive and valuable qualities of UM’s Ann Arbor campus is the degree to which it is integrated with the rest of the city. That contrasts with Michigan State University’s campus in East Lansing, which is more isolated and sharply delineated from the city. Closing down Monroe Street and turning over control of the right-of-way to UM was seen as counter to that positive quality.

A few months later, the university’s Monroe Street proposal was pitched to the city’s planning commission at a working session of the commission in early 2009. Planning commissioners also expressed little enthusiasm for the Monroe Street closure. Their concerns included the loss of on-street parking spaces. At that point, the university seemed to be contemplating bringing a formal proposal to the planning commission later in 2009. But that strategy was apparently re-thought in light of the lukewarm reception at the two public meetings.

However, based on email correspondence obtained by The Chronicle through a Freedom of Information Act request, it’s clear that conversations between the city and the university about Monroe Street have continued since early 2009. Unlike the two public pitches by the university from that timeframe, recent conversations have taken place out of public view.

It’s understandable, even reasonable, that the university would see now as an opportune moment in history. The current city council configuration is still ripe, just as it was back in 2009, for pitching that elected body a concept that would directly benefit the university’s law school. Then as now, two University of Michigan law school alums serve on the city council: Tony Derezinski and Christopher Taylor.

It’s time to daylight that conversation.

Private Conversation

Even while the university was pitching its Monroe Street proposal at public meetings in late 2008 and early 2009, not surprisingly, private conversations were taking place.

The following email from UM law alum and city councilmember Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) to then-city administrator Roger Fraser shows that UM law school dean, Evan Caminker, reached out to Taylor and then-councilmember Leigh Greden (an attorney, though not a UM law school graduate, who also represented Ward 3) on the Monroe Street issue.

From: Taylor, Christopher (Council)
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 11:10 AM
To: Fraser, Roger
Cc: Miller, Jayne; Dempkowski, Angela A; Greden, Leigh; Lloyd, Mark; Hieftje, John
Subject: Monroe St. Closure

Roger,

The Dean of the Law School (and Third Ward resident) has contacted Leigh and me to meet regarding the proposed closure of Monroe Street. We hope to schedule this meeting for next week. To prepare, I would be grateful if you and Staff could provide for us by 2-9 am:

1) A description of the state of conversations between City and University on the subject.

2) Any technical information you believe relevant, including potential/likely harms/costs to the City that would result from such a closure.

Also too if you have any questions, thoughts or advice on matters that I may not have considered, I am, as ever, all ears.

Many thanks,

Christopher

The non-public conversations between the university and the city have continued past the second public discussion in early 2009. Here’s an email exchange from the summer of 2010 involving UM law school alum and city councilmember Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) and a UM project director in architectural and engineering services, Thomas Schlaff. It leads to setting up a meeting with UM director of community relations Jim Kosteva [emphasis added].

From: tderezinski@comcast.net [mailto:tderezinski@comcast.net]
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 5:09 PM
To: Schlaff, Thomas
Cc: Caminker, Evan
Subject: Monroe Street

Dear Tom,

I attended a reception last night on the U Mall sponsored by the Law School, and engaged Dean Caminker in a conversation regarding the new building and the status of Monroe Street. In addition to being an alumn of the Law School, I also presently serve on the City Council. I was specifically interested in the timing regarding action of the proposal before the City to vacate a block of it, and also the relationship of that action to the timing, and expense, of construction of the whole project, and who I could talk to regarding these matters. He suggested you and Larry Bowman, and Jim Kosteva. I happened to see Jim at lunch today, and he was interested in doing so.

So I woulld like to get together with you, Jim and Larry some time, perhaps next week, for about an hour, and perhaps also at or near the site (Dominics?) [sic] to talk about it. Jim said he would be happy to facilitate it.

I will be gone from early tomorrow through Monday, but will be checking my email. I hope we can do so; perhaps you could also call Jim Kosteva re same.

Thanks!

Tony Derezinski

==========

From: Thomas Schlaff”
To: “tderezinski @comcast.net” Cc: “Evan Caminker”
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 10:26:49 PM
Subject: RE: Monroe Street

Tony,

Thanks for messaging, and would love to gather with you and Jim. I’ll call Jim and make sure we get a date soon to chat. Next week would be great.

Again, thank you for your note, and especially for your support for our very special Law School Project.

Tom

Thomas G. Schlaff, P.E. – Project Director
Architecture, Engineering & Construction
The University of Michigan

==========

From: “Alicia Boltach”
To: tschlaff@umich.edu, TDerezinski@a2gov.org
Cc: tderezinski@comcast.net
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 4:13:03 PM
Subject: Meeting w/Jim Kosteva

Tom and Tony,

Jim has requested to meet with both of you to discuss Monroe Street.

He has asked for the meeting to occur around the 4 p.m. hour and to
occur at Dominick’s. Please see below available dates and respond with your availability.

Thursday, July 1st: 4 p.m.
Friday, July 2nd: 4 p.m.
Tuesday, July 6th: 4 p.m.
Thursday, July 8th: 4 p.m.
Kind Regards,

Alicia

Alicia Boltach
Office of the Vice President for Government Relations
University of Michigan

More recently, this past summer the university was interested in talking to councilmembers about two topics: Monroe Street and football stadium security.

By way of background, as a security measure the university has been interested in seeing the block of Main Street between Stadium Boulevard and Pauline Street closed during home football games. According to the city, the closure of Main Street for the Sept. 10 game between Notre Dame and UM this year stemmed from security concerns related specifically to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and was a one-time event. However, UM’s interest is in closing down Main Street for that block as a matter of standard operating procedure for home football games.

Closure of Main Street is related to the general issue of logistics on home football game days, which is a topic that includes both security (fire and police) and traffic controls. Historically, the university has reimbursed the city’s costs for extra staffing of fire and police on game days, but has refused to reimburse the city for costs related to traffic controls.

This year, the city council passed a resolution directing its city administrator not to provide traffic management services on football game days unless the city’s costs were reimbursed. And the university agreed to reimburse those costs, but at a much lower level of service.

In a phone interview with The Chronicle, UM’s Kosteva clarified that the clearly contemporaneous conversations about football stadium security and Monroe Street, indicated in the email below, were just that: contemporaneous but separate conversations that were part of the same meeting:

From: Robyn Snyder [mailto:rasnyder@umich.edu]
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 11 :22 AM
To: Robyn Snyder
Subject: Meeting with Jim Kosteva – University of Michigan

Good morning,

Jim Kosteva the University of Michigan, Director of Community Relations would like to request a half hour of your time to discuss
the universities [sic] interest in Monroe Street-Stadium security. We understand how busy you are, but if you can, please take a moment to complete this doodle poll for your availability. This can take place someplace for a coffee, or in your office.

Link to poll: http://doodle.com/d2c7ehezvey9dgxr

Once a date and time has been established, I will email you with a confirmation.

If you are unable to access this poll, or have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you for your time.

Robyn Snyder
Administrative Assistant Intermediate
University of Michigan
Office of the Vice President for Government Relations

==========

From: Teall, Margie
Sent: Tue 6/7/2011 4:12 PM
To: Higgins, Marcia; Hieftje, John; Taylor, Christopher (Council)
Subject: FW: Meeting with Jim Kosteva – University of Michigan

Did all of Council receive this request?

==========

From: Taylor, Christopher (Council)
Sent: Tue 6/7/2011 4:57 PM
To: Teall, Margie; Higgins, Marcia; Hieftje, John
Subject: RE: Meeting with Jim Kosteva – University of Michigan

Yes. Met with the gentleman today.

Christopher Taylor
Member, Ann Arbor City Council (Third Ward)

==========

From: Higgins, Marcia
Sent: Wed 6/8/2011 10:24 AM
To: Taylor, Christopher (Council); Teall, Margie; Hiefije, John
Subject: RE: Meeting with Jim Kosteva – University of Michigan

How did that go?

==========

From: Taylor, Christopher (Council)
Sent: Wed 6/8/2011 2:59 PM
To: Higgins, Marcia; Teall, Margie; Hieftje, John
Subject: RE: Meeting with Jim Kosteva – University of Michigan

He said he’d give us everything we wanted. [Ed. note: Read on to see that Taylor is kidding.]

Christopher Taylor
Member, Ann Arbor City Council (Third Ward)

==========

From: Higgins, Marcia
Sent: Thu 6/9/2011 12:54 PM
To: Taylor, Christopher (Council)
Subject: RE: Meeting with Jim Kosteva – University of Michigan

what do we want?

==========

From: Taylor, Christopher (Council)
Sent: Thu 6/9/2011 12:55 PM
To: Higgins, Marcia
Subject: RE: Meeting with Jim Kosteva – University of Michigan

He didn’t say that.

Christopher Taylor
Member, Ann Arbor City Council (Third Ward)

==========

From: Higgins, Marcia
Sent: Thu 6/9/2011 2:39 PM
To: Taylor, Christopher (Council)
Subject: RE: Meeting with Jim Kosteva – University of Michigan

are you pulling my leg here?

Public Conversations Between Public Bodies

Conversations about handing over control of a city block’s worth of public right-of-way to another entity should obviously take place in the public sphere.

UM director of community relations Jim Kosteva typically prefers to describe the city-university relationship as like “a marriage where divorce and separation aren’t an option.” That’s the analogy he drew for a group of visitors from Chapel Hill, North Carolina exactly three years ago last Friday. A member of that group Twittered out Kosteva’s remarks, which The Chronicle has preserved forever in its New Media Watch archives.

@orangepolitics is Twittering live the remarks of A2 and UM luminaries. Highlights: “Jim Kosteva, UofM: ‘town-gown relations are like a marriage wher divorce is not an option.’ Then he hands the city councilwmn some flowers!” Councilwoman in question is Briere.

I disagree with Kosteva that this is an appropriate analogy – although sometimes it might seem to residents in student neighborhoods like the university has a habit of leaving its underwear lying around the living room.

It’s not an appropriate analogy, because marriages are between private individuals, and topics of conversation in the context of a marriage are inherently not required or expected to happen in public view. But that is exactly the expectation for conversations between two public entities like the city of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan: They need to happen in public view.

I don’t think a colorful analogy is required to understand what the university’s relationship is to the city. What’s most useful is the straightforward factual description: The city and the university are two public landowners, whose property and activities are often proximate to each other.

The city and the university should thus behave like two landowners. If one landowner wishes to have control of the other landowner’s property, then what typically happens is that some kind of negotiation takes place between the two parties, and some consideration is offered in exchange for control of that property. The amount of consideration offered is based on some sort of standard prevailing practice.

An example of that is the kind of discussion taking place now between the city of Ann Arbor and the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA) in connection with a strip of city-owned land. The six-foot-wide strip is adjacent to the two downtown parcels occupied by the Blake Transit Center (BTC). As part of the planned reconstruction of the BTC, the AATA would like to align the parcel boundaries.

The city of Ann Arbor is not simply handing over the six-foot-wide strip to the AATA. Instead, it’s being appraised, and there’ll ultimately be a cash transaction based on that appraisal. The acquisition of the six-foot strip has been mentioned at several AATA board meetings during routine updates.

Some kind of compensation was pointedly not a part of the university’s proposal back in late 2009 and 2010, when the city was asked to cede control of its right-of-way for an entire block of Monroe Street.

But currently, the conversation between the city and the university about Monroe Street has reportedly evolved to include some kind of payment. The amount of the deal and its structure – a one-time payment or a series of payments in perpetuity – is still an open question.

That evolution reflects progress. A deal struck on its fair financial merits would help avoid the possibility that an agreement on Monroe Street was being played as a quid pro quo in connection with some other deal – like Fuller Road Station, for example, or payments for traffic controls on football game days.

At a budget retreat held in December 2010, former city administrator Roger Fraser cautioned councilmembers against playing a game of tit-for-tat on unrelated issues involving the city and the university. Fraser’s comments came in response to a councilmember suggestion that if the university continued to refuse reimbursement to the city for costs of traffic management on football game days, the city should be uncooperative in some other area – like Monroe Street.  Fraser cited the specific example of Fuller Road Station, where that tit-for-tat strategy could yield undesirable results. [Fuller Road Station is a large parking structure, bus depot and possible train station that's a joint city/UM project. Design is already underway, but a contract laying out financial terms and other aspects of the partnership hasn't been publicly announced.]

In Kosteva’s recent phone interview with The Chronicle, he also described how he did not think it was in the interest of the overall health of the city-university relationship to play one situation off against an unrelated one. He likened it to a negotiation between spouses in which one agreed to attend a concert with the other as a condition on the other coming along to visit an unpleasant relative.

The marriage analogy aside, Kosteva still arrives at essentially the same conclusion as Fraser, as reflected in Fraser’s comments at the budget retreat. Each situation should be handled on its own merits. I think that’s the right way to approach Monroe Street.

And that means two questions need answers. First, does the city even want to do a deal on Monroe Street? Second, what should the deal structure and dollar amount be? The answers to those questions should be worked out in public view. And now’s a good time to start.

I’d like to focus on the second of these questions, because it looks like that second question will need an answer fairly quickly for a different UM project.

Potential Precedent: Institute for Social Research Expansion

North of Jefferson Street, between Division and Thompson streets, UM is building an expansion to the Institute for Social Research.

The University of Michigan Institute for Social Research expansion is indicated in reddish brown, to the northwest of the existing building. The project will result in the net loss of one metered parking space.

Constucting that project as currently planned will result in the elimination of two metered parking spaces on Thompson Street, which is partly balanced out by the addition of a parking space on Division Street.

So the ISR expansion will result in the net loss of one metered parking space.

The city of Ann Arbor completed its review of the ISR project this summer and signed off on it.

Although the university’s projects are not subject to site plan approval by the planning commission and the city council, city staff from various departments do review the plans and provide comments. Those documents are available through the city’s eTrakit system. [Projects aren't linkable, but the ISR project can be found by searching for address, project name, or by project number: UM10-014]

Among the city’s review materials for the ISR expansion are two memos from Joe Morehouse, Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority deputy director, to Connie Pulcipher, a city of Ann Arbor systems planner. [Morehouse Memo 1] [Morehouse Memo 2]

The memos from Morehouse address specifically the issue of the net parking loss associated with the ISR expansion. Morehouse cites a March 4, 2009 DDA resolution that addresses the value of on-street parking spaces. The resolution adopts the policy recommendations of the DDA board’s operations committee and encourages the city council to do the same. Those policy recommendations include the following:

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

The $45,000 figure is based on an average construction cost to build a new space in a structure, either above ground or below ground.

So the March 4, 2009 resolution essentially calls on the city council to adopt a policy on the elimination of metered parking spaces – which it has not done over the last two and a half years. However, a new contract signed between the city and the DDA this year, under which the DDA manages the city’s public parking system, gives some impetus for action on this issue and provides a role for the DDA to help determine what that policy will be for removal of on-street parking. [emphasis added]

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

The ISR expansion involves just one parking space. One friction-free option for UM would be to simply pay the $45,000 that the DDA is recommending as the value attached to an on-street space. In the context of a $23 million project, $45,000 doesn’t seem like a lot.

However, that would likely define expectations for the dollar figure attached to any Monroe Street deal. And with 22 parking spaces at stake on Monroe Street, UM could be looking at more than $1 million as the starting point of a conversation about how much more should be paid to account for the additional right-of-way control beyond the elimination of the parking spaces. [Back in 2009, the number of spaces was described as 22; a recent count of meter heads on the block by The Chronicle gave nine twin-head meters, or 18 spaces, plus a loading zone area.]

Price of a Parking Space

Part of the challenge in determining a fair way to do a deal on Monroe Street is that there’s not really a robust market for Ann Arbor city streets. How would you establish the comparables?

Price: Community Benefit

In a phone interview with The Chronicle, Kosteva did not argue for a specific dollar figure or a particular deal structure. But he did suggest some questions that the discussion should include.

One is the issue of “community benefit,” mentioned in the city-DDA parking contract. Kosteva is right in pointing out that this is somewhat vague.

Depending on how the council and the DDA wind up defining the phrase, it might turn out that elimination of parking spaces on Monroe Street meets the criteria of a “community benefit.” In that case, there’s no need to contemplate a parking space replacement cost methodology.

For example, it might be possible to construe “community benefit” in a way that translates any benefit enjoyed by the university, given its prominent role in the city’s economy, to a benefit enjoyed by the entire city. This would essentially formalize the idea that whatever is good for the university is also good for the city, and therefore a community benefit.

But that goes against the principle that each specific situation should be evaluated unto itself. It hardly makes sense to say that a Monroe Street closure will benefit the community economically because of the additional jobs that the university’s new children’s hospital will bring to the city. On the other hand, if the university could demonstrate that the Monroe Street closure would allow the enrollment of X additional law students, or the hiring of Y additional faculty, that could be part of a case that closing down Monroe Street brings an economic benefit to the community.

It’s not crazy to insist on that kind of specific accounting to claim a community economic benefit. It’s exactly the standard that’s used in evaluating the merits of a tax abatement, for example.

Economic benefits aren’t the only kind of benefit. If UM were proposing to close down Monroe Street so that a small skatepark could be built there and used by Ann Arbor’s skateboarding community, then that might conceivably meet a reasonable definition of “community benefit.” It would provide an amenity for city residents that they currently don’t have. [This is by way of a hypothetical example. As far as I know, no one is interested in seeing that location become a skatepark.]

But to sum up, I don’t see any reasonable way of defining “community benefit” that would encompass the closure of one block of Monroe Street. Indeed, I would point to the same considerable community detriment noted by attendees at the December 2009 public meeting and Ann Arbor city planning commissioners three months later.

Price: Who’s Asking?

Another question identified by Kosteva in his phone interview with The Chronicle is this: Should all parties be treated the same way?

Without arguing either side, Kosteva suggested that as the city and the DDA work to develop a policy, it’s worth considering whether a large multimillion-dollar private company seeking to build a large headquarters in downtown Ann Arbor should be treated the same way by the policy that a nonprofit organization – like a church – would be treated.

I think that’s a fair question.

But I think it’s clear that any difference in treatment should be based not on who the party is, but rather on the earlier notion of community benefit. If the large multimillion-dollar private company can demonstrate that X jobs will be created as a result of a project that eliminates the on-street parking spaces, then that’s relevant to the discussion. In the same way, if a church can demonstrate that its project will draw Y additional worshipers from outside the city every Saturday morning, some percentage of whom will stay for lunch in Ann Arbor restaurants, then that potential economic benefit is relevant to the discussion.

But I can’t see any reason to treat different parties differently based purely on who they are.

Price: Value Based on Parking Revenue

But even if we treat all parties equally, that doesn’t mean that we have to treat all parking spaces equally.

That’s an additional consideration suggested by Kosteva that should be part of the conversational mix as the city and the DDA develop the policy. Specifically, Kosteva suggested that the revenues generated by a metered parking space could factor into an assessment of the relative value of a parking space, compared with other spaces in the parking system. Some spaces generate more revenue than others, based on where they’re located.

Note that this is not equivalent to suggesting that replacement of a specific meter’s revenue would be appropriate compensation for eliminating that parking space. Rather, it’s a suggestion more like the following: If Meter A generates twice as much revenue as Meter B, then even if the starting point of a replacement cost allocation for a parking space is $45,000, surely it matters whether Meter A or Meter B is proposed for elimination.

Leaving aside the question of the absolute revenue, if a meter is generating so little revenue that the city and DDA don’t perceive a need to actually construct a parking space to replace it, it doesn’t make complete sense to insist that a payment be made to pay for the cost of replacing it. It’s possible to conceive of some kind of “discount” for low-revenue meters, or perhaps a surcharge for particularly high-revenue meters.

That’s all very well and good. But how much revenue do Monroe Street parking meters generate, and how does that compare to the rest of the parking meters in Ann Arbor’s public parking system?

Systemwide, here’s the distribution revenue annually by percentiles: bottom third generates 0-$960; middle third generates $961-$1,963; upper third generates more than $1,963. [The DDA is currently engaged in designing a tiered pricing structure for downtown parking meters – based on demand for the spaces, where demand is measured by revenue generated. So keeping track of this information is part of the DDA's current work plan.]

Taking the average of annual revenues generated by six of the meters for the Monroe Street block (those for which The Chronicle was able to identify data) yields $1,643 per year. So it appears that the Monroe Street meters are firmly in the mid-range for parking meter revenue systemwide.

In that case, at least for the Monroe Street meters, it’s hard to see how any “discount” that might be developed for the cost replacement allocation formula would apply to the Monroe Street spaces.

So based on a count of 22 spaces and the DDA-recommended $45,000 figure, the parking replacement cost would be $990,000 – a one-time cost. [The DDA's recommendation does not contemplate any additional payments.]

Of course, what the university hopes to achieve goes beyond the parking spaces, and includes control of the entire right-of-way.

Price: Based on Right-of-Way Rental

Rental of the right-of-way is another way to think about the Monroe Street proposal. For construction projects (requiring, for example, a temporary lane closure) the city applies a standard rate for the rental of public right-of-way: 1.5 cents per square foot per day.

The aerial photo provided by the Washtenaw County online mapping system still shows the surface parking lot south of Monroe Street. South Hall now stands at that location. The rectangle is drawn based on the parcel boundaries displayed on Washtenaw County's mapping website. (Image links to higher resolution file.)

Using 17,500 square feet as a figure for the amount of public right-of-way at stake (as measured using online mapping tools through the Washtenaw County website), that would work out to about $96,000 annually.

From the university’s point of view, it might be not be desirable to enter into an arrangement that’s based on an annual payment in perpetuity. And it’s possible to argue against the 1.5 cent rental rate on the grounds that right-of-way rental for construction purposes is not the same thing as permanent control of the right-of-way. Ordinarily, there’s some kind of discount for rental agreements where the tenant is willing to sign on to a longer lease.

But from the city’s point of view, a right-of-way rental at $96,000 annually needs to be the starting point for the negotiation. If there’s not a $96,000 annual payment to be made in perpetuity, and the deal is instead structured as a one-time payment, then that lump-sum should be based on something real, not just pulled out of thin air.

One possibility for a real number is the projected useful life of any new parking structure built by the DDA: 75 years. So one approach would be to say that after 75 years, the $96,000 annual payment from UM to the city would end. That would amount to a total of $7.2 million (75 × $96,000) paid over the course of 75 years. If UM wanted to negotiate a lump sum payment (to avoid writing a Monroe Street check every year), presumably the city should be willing to negotiate downward from $7.2 million.

Monroe Street Doctrine

To oversimplify it, the Monroe Doctrine, expressed by President James Monroe in 1823, said “hands off” the Western Hemisphere to future colonization by other countries:

We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.

Translating that to city-university terms would amount to a declaration that any attempt by the university to expand the campus would be considered as dangerous to the city’s peace and safety.

That seems overwrought and probably would lead to endless frustration – the university is free to purchase land from people who want to sell it. [In fact, UM regents just last week approved the purchase of a parcel that's currently the site of an apartment building, at 716 Oakland Ave., just around the corner from Monroe Street.]

But to my eye, there’s an obvious part of that Monroe Doctrine excerpt that could be adopted as a doctrine to help guide city-university relations on the side of the city. It’s the part about candor.

So in closing, I’d  suggest something along the following lines:

We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the city of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan that we should consider any land transfers between these two parties only in the context of public meetings between public officials.

There are multiple mechanisms through which this conversation can occur publicly. Those might include communications from councilmembers during their council meetings, or full-on working sessions attended by councilmembers and university officials.

Whatever the mechanism, it’s time to put the Monroe Street conversation in public view.

The Chronicle could not survive without regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of public entities like the city of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

Coleman’s salary before the raise was $570,105. Regents had awarded a 3% raise a year ago. Her compensation package also includes $75,000 in deferred compensation, a $100,000 retention bonus, $24,500 in retirement pay, and an additional $30,850 supplemental retirement payment. Her current contract goes through July 31, 2014.

At Thursday’s meeting, Coleman said she planned to donate her raise to fund scholarships for international travel.

This brief was filed from the boardroom of the Fleming administration building, on UM’s Ann Arbor campus. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

This month, the items related to the following businesses: Cornell Farms; Civionics Inc.; NeuroNexus Technologies Inc.; Inmatech Inc.; Vortex Hydro Energy; Rolith Inc.; Lean Therapeutics; Electric Field Solutions Inc.; Diapin Therapeutics; Arbor Research Collaborative for Health; Absolute Nano Inc.; and Michigan Critical Care Consultants Inc.

This brief was filed from the boardroom of the Fleming administration building, on UM’s Ann Arbor campus. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

In its August 1909 article on student hazing, Hearst Illustrated magazine published A. S. Lyndon's 1908 photo of students jostling around a flagpole, intent on removing the banner.

The article concerned a developing tradition on college campuses across the country, including UM: an autumn clash between freshmen and sophomores known as “rush.”

The late 1860s appear to be when UM’s tradition of an annual October rush began. The practice would survive for decades despite hospitalizations, expulsions, and several bans against rushing by student government and university officials.

“A rush is a miscellaneous row between two classes, generally freshmen and sophomore, who meet in any of the college halls or grounds,” reads a May 16, 1868 University Chronicle piece on student slang, “and in our own institution is seldom anything more than a good-natured trial of strength between the opponents.”

The article also included slang terms for freshman hazing practices. These included “pumping,” or dousing a frosh in a public water pump, “shaving,” or a less than careful haircut, and “smoking out,” or invading a freshman’s room en masse and lighting pipes till the room was choked with smoke and the new student was nauseated.

Rushing began as more or less impromptu scraps between freshmen and sophomores, as noted in an Oct. 17, 1877 article in the Ann Arbor Register. “One of ‘ye old time rushes’ occurred in front of the post office, on Friday evening, and resulted in the arrest of a sophomore … [the combatants] then adjourned to the campus, and indulged in a rush in front of the Law Building.”

The next year, faculty quashed the practice. “One by one our privileges are taken from us,” moaned an Oct. 26, 1878 article in the student newspaper The Chronicle. “First it was hazing, next horning, [a surprise night assault with noisemakers] and now it is rushing. Yes, nocturnal rushing has been ‘sat down upon.’ An edict from the faculty forbids this gentle sport, even upon the campus, our own territory.”

The article continued, “The ‘peelers,’ [police]* backed by this authority, are getting saucy, and have the courage to display their ‘billies’ in open daylight. Truly we are degenerating.”

The ban held for the following year. “The old-time rush is gone forever,” mourned a May 3, 1879 article in the University Chronicle. “Last year there were indications of a revival of the time-honored custom, but the new regime has extinguished all such indications and we hear no more of the contest of the classes.”

Over the ’80s and ’90s, impromptu rushes continued off campus. The October 12, 1889 issue of the student newspaper the Michigan Argonaut registered its disapproval:

It has been the custom of late years to frown upon the ‘barbaric freshman-sophomore rush’ and to suggest substitutes in the way of picked sides, brickbat contests at five hundred yards and the like. We, for our part, would enter strong protest against the discontinuance of the time-honored rush … We know from experience that class-room work, absorbing as it may be, does not develop an esprit de corps and fails utterly to give that peculiar flavor to college life which the old alumnus looks back to with a retrospective smacking of lips.

By 1900, more than lips were being smacked as rushing returned with a vengeance: “The night of the 5th October … was a night of horrid orgy,” reported the November 1900 Inlander student literary magazine. “The charging of multitudes of roughly clad youths … the stolen hat, glaring bon fire, the perfunctory arrests of the usual five, the mob clamoring for their release, the sudden peace in the dawning: all go to make up one’s impression of the Freshman-Sophomore rush.

Around the turn of the century, rushing had become a more formalized ritual, heralded by mocking posters sophomores pasted around town as in this 1903 example:

OH! JOY! FRESHMAN BLOOD!

You have encroached upon our sacred rights.

You have smoked on the Campus. You have been seen in our refreshment parlors.

You have enjoyed yourselves at the theater from the first five rows.

You have made goo goo eyes at the co-eds.

You have trespassed on our game preserves at Ypsi [the predominately female student body then at EMU].

For this you deserve DEATH. May your lot be fire and brimstone, hades without end.

The poster also invited all and sundry to a “Freshman Barbecue” featuring such dishes as “Fried ’07 Suckers,” “Prime Ribs of Fresh Beef,” and “Freshman Brains (?) in Season.”

Another new development in the tradition was a flagpole-climbing contest to capture the rival class’s flag. The January 1907 Michigan Alumnus included an article describing the custom:

When college opens in the fall and ye all-wise Freshman is given unceremonious introduction to the various niceties of university life, he learns from eager informants of that ordeal, known as the ‘banner-scrap’ … on a Friday evening several weeks after college has started, these members of the youngest class are formed about a flag-pole, located on the east side of the Campus. This flag-pole bears their first symbol of class unification and they are there to defend it with all the energy and determination that they possess. At a given signal, the Sophomores rush this band of Freshmen and the struggle lasts until the flag is captured by the older class, or until the Freshmen have defended it for thirty minutes.

After this evening rush was deemed too violent, the UM Senate and Student Council in 1909 altered the event to an afternoon scrap on Ferry Field called “Black Friday.” Posters, hazing, and the word “rush” were forbidden. Black Friday featured three 28-foot-tall poles, greased to nine feet high and crowned with the class and school banners.

The 1910 Michiganensian printed a vivid description of the event.

At two-thirty o’clock, [football captain] Dave Allerdice, the referee, gave the signal for hostilities to begin, and with wild yells the rival classes rushed to the poles, swarming about them in a frenzied attempt to gain the banners floating high above the ground.

Each class stationed a band of its best men to defend its own banner and with the remainder tried to capture the other two banners … [O]ne of the freshmen, climbing upon the heads and shoulders of the dense mass which surged about the middle pole [with a block M flag], managed to get beyond the reach of the sophomores and pulled himself up past the slippery part of the pole and then climbed the remainder of the distance to the flag without much effort. There was a shout of triumph from the first year men upon the achievement of this victory.

The freshmen then attacked the sophomore pole, said the article, and won that too. The article continued:

As in former years the winning of the rush was merely a preliminary victory. The real rush began when the freshmen, proud of their achievement, scattered over the field yelling and singing. The sophomores … organized themselves into squads and made every lone freshman they caught their victim. Not many escaped.

The trees surrounding Ferry field were well filled and an empty box car upon the siding of the Ann Arbor Railroad made a temporary prison.

Today the old tradition of the freshman-sophomore rush has faded away. Almost all evidence of the custom is gone – but not entirely.

The onetime sophomores plastering their rude and ribald posters around town little dreamt that one day, a few of those ephemeral scraps would end up in the Bentley Historical Library, as carefully curated fragments of a colorful chapter of Michigan history.

*Named for Robert Peel, who in 1829 created London’s first police force.

Mystery Artifact

Last week’s Mystery Artifact is answered in this column – though it’s a little unclear as to whether the student in question is grasping one of the greased poles or perhaps the “freshman tree.”

Mystery Artifact

What do you think?

This week’s artifact also deals with wood. It’s an eight-and-a-half-inch long wooden device with a hand-carved wooden screw on top securing the movable square block.

The top edge of this object is ruled in inches.

What might it be? Take your best guess and good luck!

Laura Bien is a local history columnist and collector of non-functioning Depression-era gas station cash registers. Her second book, “Hidden Ypsilanti,” is due out this fall. Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like Laura Bien. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

The 1890 inaugural issue of the U. of M. Daily, later the Michigan Daily (public domain image from Wikipedia).

The University of Michigan was once disgraced with a nickname so disreputable, so slangy and vulgar, that an essay was published protesting its use. Even a newspaper in another city ran a disapproving editorial.

That nickname was “U. of M.”

In the April 1903 issue of The Michigan Alumnus, a former grad fumed against “the continued and persistent use of the compromising appellation, ‘U. of M.’” He found it coarse – unworthy of a great university.

“In the first place it is not distinctive enough, as there are several other ‘U. of M.’s,’ Maine, Minnesota, and Missouri being the most conspicuous,” he began, going on to excoriate the sloppy abbreviation.

He was not alone.

If that contributor wished to banish the term, he was several decades too late. Students had created it in the 19th century, and weren’t about to abandon it.

The oldest citations for “U. of M.” appear in student-published campus newspapers, of which there have been over a dozen through the years. In one, the April 1879 edition of The Chronicle (a student publication from that era, not The Ann Arbor Chronicle), appears an article rebutting Depauw University’s student newspaper’s critique of the Ann Arbor school.

The Asbury Monthly seems to think that the University is to be outstripped by Wisconsin, because the latter institution has secured Prof. Watson. The fact is that, while we regret much the departure of our great astronomer, the U. of M. is too great a fact, her foundations are laid too strong and deep, and there are too many great men left here in charge to allow it to be suddenly ‘outstripped’ by a young institution.

The editorial used “U. of M.” twice.

Contemporaneous local city papers avoided the term, preferring more dignified phraseology. The April 2, 1879 Ann Arbor Register reported, “To the friends of the University, irrespective of party, the vote on Regents is gratifying …” In the same issue it stated, “A proposed game of foot ball to be played in Detroit by a senior fifteen and a University fifteen, is now being talked of.”

Charles Chapman in his 1881 “History of Washtenaw County” did not deign to use the term. Years later, Samuel Beakes in his “Past and Present of Washtenaw County” mentioned it exactly twice, but only to list a student publication whose name included the undignified moniker.

Students paid no heed. In the June 1883 student paper the Argonaut, the term appears again. “It is with the utmost confidence that we assert that the Senior invitations are the most elegant ever seen at the U. of M.,” adding, “Hay-making on the campus is not a success in this weather.” [For many decades, hay was grown and harvested on what is now the Diag area]. The Argonaut survived until 1890, and numerous instances of the hated appellation pepper its pages.

An out-of-town paper noticed the term, and found it a handy space-saver for headlines. “The U. of M.—Its Approaching Semi-Centennial to be a Great Event,” reported the Detroit Free Press on June 18, 1887. “U. of M. Beaten in the Great Foot Ball Game Yesterday at Chicago,” read a November 30, 1888 Free Press headline. The Free Press still used the more formal terms in the text of its stories.

That changed around the early 1890s. A March 3, 1892 story mentioned the one-year anniversary of “the U. of M. Oratorical Association.” Meanwhile, a new campus paper took things further. Emblazoned across the inaugural September 29, 1890 issue was the masthead “U. of M. Daily” in a big, craggy font. The paper would survive to become today’s Michigan Daily.

City newspapers were holding the fort against the offending abbreviation. As an example, the January 3, 1890 Ann Arbor Argus story reported, “The Yale catalogue just published shows 1,477 students in attendance there. Yale is only about 700 students behind Michigan University …” However, later that year, cracks began to show in the foundation as the slang term crept into use. One November 6, 1890 Argus blurb said, “The [student paper] Chronicle-Argonaut is desirous of stirring up the poetic muse in the U. of M.”

A neighboring newspaper, the Ypsilantian, took a dim view of these developments. “The use of the mutilation ‘U. of M.,’ for ‘University,’ has nothing under the sun to recommend it,” reads an October 13, 1892 editorial. “It is an abbreviation that does not abbreviate, a contraction that does not contract, and can be classed only as a mutilation. In print it is scarcely shorter, and in speech it is decidedly more clumsy to utter and wanting in euphony to the ear.”

The article continued, “‘The University’ expresses to everybody here fully and exactly what is meant; and in other parts of the country where it would be necessary to say ‘University of Michigan,’ the mutilation ‘U. of M.’ would not be understood. We are surprised that it should find place in the columns of any newspaper.”

The term that offended local editors and alumni was by then so commonplace to students that it wasn’t even considered slang anymore – or so it’s suggested by a survey of UM student slang.

Students in an 1895 fall semester rhetoric course were asked to collect examples of slang they used. Over 600 terms were submitted. In the following spring semester, students voted on which terms were genuine slang and which could be crossed off the list as just ordinary words.

The resulting list of 446 slang terms and their definitions was published in three parts in the November and December, 1895 and the January, 1896 issues of the Inlander, a campus literary magazine.

“Hen-medic” was a female medical student. “Freshlet” meant a young freshman, and “moke” a fool. “Flops” denoted a saucer of ice cream and strawberries. “Squatchetery” meant “admirable, pleasing: ‘Your new gown is decidedly squatchetery.’” “Varsity” was defined as “from [the word] University.” A laggard might be called an “ice-wagon.”: “A student calls to a companion for whom he is waiting, ‘Come, don’t be an ice-wagon.’” “Lunch hooks” were teeth, and to “feed one chunks” meant to fib, as in “Do you think I believe you? You are feeding me chunks.”

The term “U. of M.” appears nowhere in the long list.

An 1897 ad for the U. of M. Toilet Parlors.

Meanwhile, townspeople were adopting the term. A Mrs. Trojanowski opened her “U. of M. Toilet Parlors” at 32 South State Street. Paul Meyer ran the “U. of M. News Depot” at 46 East Williams. It was a year after “Levy’s U. of M. Shoe Shop” opened that the alumnus magazine burst forth with its aforementioned scathing 1903 editorial.

That writer seethed against the use of the term. “But fostered as it is by the U. of M. Daily and all the ‘esteemed’ metropolitan papers of Detroit, there is small hope of betterment until an adverse sentiment is created and the students shall boycott all ‘U. of M.’ concerns and insist on the use of the name, University of Michigan, or the permissible abbreviation, Michigan, in the papers to which they subscribe.”

He wrote, “[W]ith the ‘U. of M. Barber Shop,’ the ‘U. of M. News Stand,’ the ‘U. of M. Lunch Room,’ the ‘U. of M. This,’ and ‘U. of M. That,’ the student is disgusted and chagrined to have this cheapened and unworthy title applied to his Alma Mater.”

Many businesses adopted the offending moniker.

Nonetheless, a few years later the U. of M. Restaurant joined the throng. The U. of M. Toilet Parlor, now the U. of M. Barber Shop, advertised its services as “Strictly Sanitary Shaving Parlors and 
Bath Rooms, Olive Oil, Crude Oil, and Mange Shampooing our Specialty.”

One wonders what that alum would think to see the modern ubiquity of the nickname he so despised.

Thanks to Ann Arbor historian Wystan Stevens for information about the U. of M. Daily.

Mystery Artifact

In the previous column, cmadler, Dave, TJ, and Irene all correctly guessed that the object in question was a mustache cup, which “kept the man’s mustache from getting hot liquids onto it, which would melt his mustache wax,” as Dave remarked.

Mystery Object

This week, in keeping with the University theme, our Mystery Artifact is one related to a onetime campus ritual.

In this photo from an issue of the Michiganensian, you can see a student grasping this large item, but why? It’s not a tree, and ignore the letter B in the background.

What’s going on here?

Take your best guess!

Laura Bien is the author of “Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives.” Her second book, “Hidden History of Ypsilanti,” will be published this fall. Reach her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our columnists like Laura Bien and other contributors. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

A 1935 Ypsilanti Daily Press article reflects concerns over rabid dogs.

The severed head of a small white poodle was sent from Ypsilanti to Ann Arbor in the summer of 1935.

It wasn’t a grisly threat or an act of revenge. The head’s recipients were neither surprised nor disgusted. Severed dog heads were their stock in trade.

The poodle had belonged to Herbert Wilson of Ypsilanti’s northside Ann Street. The dog was “so vicious,” according to the Aug. 6, 1935 Ypsilanti Daily Press, “that even after being wounded by the officers’ rifle fire, [Officer] Klavitter had to strike him with the gun to protect himself. The blow bent the rifle barrel and the officer had to use a nearby tree limb to finish killing the dog.”

The dog had bitten 5-year-old William Himes on his right arm and leg, in an era when a dog bite could lead to an agonizing death.

Dogs in Ypsilanti that August were under quarantine, meaning that they had to be contained within the owner’s home or property. Dogs that broke loose or wandered into the street could be shot on sight by police. In earlier years, anyone was welcome to take their rifle or shotgun into the street and play Atticus Finch with mad dogs.

In the summer of 1909 Ypsilanti’s Board of Health proclaimed, “For a period of three months from the date of this notice, all dogs, male or female, muzzled or unmuzzled, running at large on any street, alley, or public grounds, or on private premises, not the premises of the owner or keeper thereof, may be killed by any person …”

The precautions were not enough. Just a few days later, 14-year-old Morton Crane was bitten. “Many dogs have been killed since the Crane boy was bitten,” reported the June 16, 1909 Ypsilanti Daily Press, “and the warm weather of the past few days is making the mothers and fathers anxious while their children are playing on the street. Chief Gage is using every effort to prevent another scare and every dog seen on the streets without a muzzle is being shot regardless of the value of the animal …” Ann Arbor also had its share of incidents.

The fear was rabies.

There was no cure, and little warning, as the disease initially presents in an insidiously innocuous form. Those infected can be symptom-free for months – even up to a year or two. The first signs are flu-like symptoms. Left untreated, these progress to anxiety, confusion, insomnia, brain dysfunction, paranoia, and painful paralysis of the throat and jaw.

The term “hydrophobia” comes from the natural swallowing reflex, made intensely painful by rabies – even the sight of water is enough to trigger an agonizing throat spasm, hence aversion to liquids despite increasing thirst. The rabies virus’s ongoing damage to the central nervous system can lead to seizures, paralysis, coma, and heart or respiratory failure.

Though rabies doesn’t give much warning with its mild initial symptoms, it usually leaves a calling card in its wake: Negri bodies. A post mortum analysis can reveal the abnormal structures in brain nerve cells. They were first discovered by Italian pathologist Adelchi Negri in 1903.

In April of that year, the University of Michigan opened its Pasteur Institute on campus, specifically for the diagnosis and treatment of rabies. Pasteur had famously discovered the vaccine for rabies in 1885. UM’s Pasteur Institute was, and for many decades remained, the only such rabies treatment clinic in the state. It was the sixth such institute to open in the United States. Dog-bite victims from around Michigan came to Ann Arbor for the “Pasteur cure,” consisting of 21 or more injections of rabies vaccine in the abdomen, initially over a period of eighteen days.

The institute charged $25 ($600 today) for the treatment. Room and board was extra. An act of the Michigan legislature mandated that paupers could receive treatment for free, paid for by local municipalities. The institute also examined dog brains under the microscope, looking for Negri bodies so as to confirm a diagnosis of rabies.

By 1920, the institute had treated nearly 1,600 human cases of the disease. But without a rabies vaccine for dogs, the malady persisted.

Dogs were quarantined in Ypsilanti throughout the Depression. In the 1940s, a rabies vaccine for dogs was finally developed. By 1941, the institute claimed to have treated 2,815 cases of rabies, all successfully.

Well, almost all successfully. In 1911 a three-year-old boy arrived at the Institute for treatment, having been bitten three weeks previously. “The dog was shot and the brain sent to the University of Michigan Pasteur Institute and pronounced rabid,” reported a case study in the August 1911 issue of Physician and Surgeon magazine. “A report was immediately sent to the parties concerned, requesting that the child be brought here for treatment. As the child did not appear, after some length of time, Doctor Gumming sent a second urgent telegram. Still the child was not brought here until a week or ten days later.”

It was too late. The child couldn’t take food or water. He was finally admitted on the afternoon of May 29, 1911, and died a day later.

In the fall of 1917, another advanced case, a young schoolboy, was admitted to the Institute at noon. He died shortly after midnight.

The sadly failed cases were exceptions. UM’s Pasteur Institute was a leader in eradicating rabies in the state. In tandem with other anti-rabies efforts, the institute was so successful that it made itself obsolete. In the 1940s, vaccines for dogs were developed; 1948 marks the last incidence of human rabies in Michigan until the 1980s.

By then, thanks to dog vaccination campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s, dog-borne rabies had almost entirely disappeared. After 1960, the primary host of rabies in Michigan became wildlife, particularly bats. That remains true now, though only a tiny percent of bats are actually infected.

Today parents need not worry about the dog days of August, thanks to UM’s pioneering Pasteur Institute and its good work in detecting and treating the onetime scourge of summer.

Mystery Object

No one correctly guessed the identity of the sinister-looking mystery artifact from the last column.

Mystery Artifact

Housed in a case on the second floor of the Ypsilanti Historical Museum, the “jackknife thingy,” as one commenter called it, is a doctor’s bloodletting knife, evocative of an age of considerably cruder medical knowledge.

This time we have an artifact more connected to bodily appearance than bodily health. Here’s a strange-looking vessel. What might it be? Take your best guess and good luck!

Laura Bien is a local history columnist and collector of non-functioning Depression-era gas station cash registers. Her second book, “Hidden Ypsilanti,” is due out this fall. Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like Laura Bien. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

O’Dell, an Ann Arbor resident, currently is chief of police and executive director of public safety at Eastern Michigan University. He holds a juris doctorate degree from the University of Toledo College of Law and a bachelor’s degree from EMU. He is also a graduate of the FBI National Academy and the EMU school for police staff and command, according to a UM press release.

O’Dell will oversee a department that employs 80 people, including 55 sworn police officers. The campus area faces heightened security in the wake of a half-dozen recent assaults on women in downtown Ann Arbor.

The position of UM police chief had been in limbo since the previous chief of university police, Ken Magee, went on medical leave in October 2010. Magee was hired in 2008. He was the subject of public commentary at the January 2011 board of regents meeting, with questions raised about his departure. The university posted the position in February 2011.