A Wall Street sign at the intersection of Canal.

Amid a slew of multimillion-dollar projects that Tim Slottow presented to the University of Michigan regents on Thursday, one was notable for not moving forward – a controversial parking structure and office building previously proposed for Wall Street.

Slottow, UM’s chief financial officer, told regents at their monthly meeting that the university’s purchase of the former Pfizer property – a deal that closed on Tuesday – resulted in enough additional parking spaces to meet their current demands for the medical campus. Regents had given initial approval for the $48.6 million parking project at their September 2008 meeting, despite vocal protests from residents in the Wall Street neighborhood. It would have been a structure with 500 parking spaces and offices for UM’s Business Engagement Center, which now leases space at 1214 S. University Ave. Slottow characterized the project as being on a “pause” indefinitely.

It was one of two parking projects in the works that have been halted, at least temporarily. Another roughly $50 million parking structure was being planned in the north campus area, Slottow said, primarily to serve demand at the Walgreen Drama Center and adjacent Stamps Auditorium. During a break in Thursday’s meeting, Slottow told The Chronicle that they haven’t experienced the parking crunch they’d anticipated in that area. Given the lack of a real crunch, they felt it would be prudent to hold off on construction, he said, especially in the current economic climate.

Slottow also said he was encouraged by talks that the university was having the city of Ann Arbor about a possible intermodal transit station along Fuller Road. That might have an impact on future parking considerations as well. [As The Chronicle previously reported, a station is being considered as a hub for buses and rail, possibly located between Fuller Road and East Medical Center Drive, just east of Fuller & Maiden Lane.]

All of this could be welcome news for residents of the Wall Street area, who had organized to protest the parking project. At a meeting covered by The Chronicle in December 2008, residents expressed frustration that the university hadn’t sufficiently explored alternatives to dealing with its parking demands, and that UM officials weren’t listening to residents’ concerns about traffic congestion, impact on air quality, and crime. At another meeting in January 2009, city officials met with Wall Street area residents and talked about the city’s relationship with the university, both on that parking project and more broadly. At the time, city planners said the university was proceeding on parallel tracks with both the Wall Street parking structure and possible interest in a Fuller Street transit station.

Some residents may have already heard this news about the parking structure put on pause. On Tuesday, we encountered Eugene Dariush Daneshvar – a board member of the Riverside Park Place condominiums on Wall Street. And Daneshvar had told The Chronicle that the board was having a meeting that night with Ward 1 city councilmember Sabra Briere, who would be giving them an update on the parking structure project.

Updates for other parking projects will be on the agenda at next month’s regents meeting. Slottow said that Hank Baier, UM’s associate vice president for facilities and operations, would be making a presentation to regents at their July 16 meeting to give an update on the university’s strategic parking plan.

Note: Additional details about Thursday’s board of regents meeting, which included approval of the FY2010 budget and a 5.6% tuition increase, will be covered in an upcoming article.

Eli Cooper, transportation program manager with the city of Ann Arbor, discusses the possible location of a transit center nestled between Fuller Road and East Medical Center Drive, just east of Fuller & Maiden Lane.

On Tuesday evening, way after hours at Northside Grill, a collection of city staff and city councilmembers met with around 40 residents to discuss the relationship of the University of Michigan with the city of Ann Arbor – both generally and with specific regard to the proposed UM expansion along Wall Street.

That construction is currently proposed to include an office building, parking structure and transit center. It was not news to neighbors that UM plays by a different set of rules (its own). What could have been a revelation were the general mechanisms by which city staff work in an environment where they can attempt to nudge UM to adhere to the vision outlined in the city’s planning documents – documents that were created with participation of UM staff.

So there were no magic bullets offered that could kill the parking structure component of the current UM Wall Street expansion. But the vision of a possible transit station along Fuller Road, which would include a substantial number of parking spaces serving a variety of needs, was held out as a possibility that could attract the university away from building more parking along Wall Street. That potential transit station would be nestled between Fuller Road and East Medical Center Drive, just east of Fuller & Maiden Lane. 

How the City Works with UM

Craig Hupy, head of systems planning with the city of Ann Arbor, outlined for residents why the University of Michigan does not need to adhere to city-level or state-level ordinances and statutes (with respect to zoning or anything else): UM is a state constitutional entity, and as such, whatever the university does on its land is its choice. One example cited by Hupy of the disconnect between administrative control and practical consequence is the university’s fire code standards, which are administered by its own fire marshall – but the fires themselves are fought by the city of Ann Arbor.

Where the city does have some very limited leverage, said Hupy, is when the university needs access to the public right of way, which is administered (not owned) by the city of Ann Arbor: utility connections and driveway permits, for example. But here the city does not have the latitude to deny use of the right of way as a strategy for bargaining on unrelated matters. The city can simply require that the right of way is used in a manner consistent with the conditions required of any entity (including the university).

Northside Grill was filled with residents interested in hearing about city-university interactions.

In that context, Wendy Rampson and Mark Lloyd, planners with the city of Ann Arbor, described how city staff from planning and development services and systems planning meet with university planning staff on a roughly once-a-month basis. The point of the meetings is to work through technical details. And, said Rampson, staff attempts to “influence even if we cannot require” the university to take paths more consistent with existing city planning documents.

Asked to what extent the city could prevent the university from building parking structures based on the impact to traffic, Rampson said that the city did not have the sort of leverage they had with a private developer, where approval of the project’s site plan could depend on a demonstration that traffic patterns would not be disrupted. In the case of university parking structures, the city could require infrastructure improvements in terms of widening roads or improved signaling, but the city didn’t have the ability to kill a university project on that basis. The impact on air quality was handled on a regional level, said Rampson.

A pointed question from the audience: “How often do you say to them, ‘This conflicts with the North East Area Plan’?” Rampson’s answer: Often. She characterized the monthly meetings as “frank.”

But the focus of the monthly meetings to work out technical details is on projects already in the works.  And residents wanted to know to what extent city of Ann Arbor staff are included in the university’s conceptual planning – before a project is brought before the Board of Regents for approval. Rampson described how there is a sense among university planning staff that a project does not exist until it has been approved by the Board of Regents. This made them reluctant to talk about projects when they are in their nascent, conceptual stages. [This is consistent with the repeated emphasis of the phrase "regentally approved project" at a previous meeting between university staff and residents on the Wall Street expansion.]

In fact, when asked when the university began the conceptual planning for the Wall Street expansion, Rampson said, it was not clear when that might have been. At the point when the city’s Northeast Area Plan was adopted, which included participation from UM staff, Rampson said that there was no indication that the university wanted to build parking decks along Wall Street.

“The Regents are Oblivious”

Residents expressed the desire for the university to include not just city staff, but also ordinary citizens of Ann Arbor, in its conceptual planning process. Residents also expressed the sentiment that regents have little sense of the impact the university’s construction projects have on the Ann Arbor community. “The regents are oblivious,” said one voice in the audience.

Stephen Rapundalo, Ann Arbor councilmember for Ward 2.

Stephen Rapundalo, who was joined at Northside Grill by fellow city councilmembers Sabra Briere (who had asked for that evening’s meeting to take place) and Sandi Smith, said that the desire of greater participation by the city in university planning had been communicated to individual regents: “We have expressed the desire you have articulated.” But Rapundalo characterized the general approach of the university’s interaction with the city this way: “They come in and they lecture you.”

Some amount of frustration surfaced throughout the meeting on Tuesday evening and was reflected in the question from one audience member: “Are we going to lie down and let this happen?”

The meeting concluded with the expression of one woman in the audience of a wish for greater participation from citizens – but ultimately it was the city’s elected representatives who needed to bring specific proposals to the regents, she said. And if 100 residents needed to show up to the regents’ meeting to support them as they did that, then that’s what they would do.

Fuller Road Multi-Modal Transit Center

One of the specific proposals on the city’s side that residents wanted communicated more clearly to the university is the vision of a multi-modal transit center nestled between Fuller Road and East Medical Center Drive. The university has expressed interest, said Rampson, but is still proceeding on a parallel track to build more parking on Wall Street. The Fuller Road transit center’s relation to the university’s regentally-approved Wall Street expansion is that it would relieve some of the pressure to build parking along Wall Street that does not serve medical facilities on Wall Street itself.

This is the source of much of the resistance expressed among residents to the planned parking structures – the university’s planned structures are meant in part to serve patients on other parts of the medical campus. This, as one resident put it, is the worst of both worlds: (i) the location is far enough away from the clinical facilities that it requires a shuttle bus, and (ii) it’s close enough to central Ann Arbor to cause congestion.

Eli Cooper, transportation program manager for the city of Ann Arbor, showed a sketch (prepared in-house by city of Ann Arbor staff) of what the footprint of a multi-modal transit station along Fuller Road could be like. He cast the station in the context of an overall transportation planning context that includes east-west commuter rail, north-south commuter rail, and some kind of high-capacity circulator within the city of Ann Arbor. Why do we need all this transportation? Part of Cooper’s answer had to do with one projection that sees the addition of 20,000 jobs over the next 25 years in the Ann Arbor area – a projection based on the two growth areas of higher education and health care.

Sketch of Fuller Road transit center. (Image links to higher resolution file.)

As the western terminus of a possible east-west commuter rail corridor between the Detroit area and Ann Arbor, the Fuller Road transit station would, said Cooper, create demand for parking from people living to the north, the south, and further west, who would be driving to the station to get access. The Fuller Road transit station would include some 800 parking spaces to serve a range of different users – from university medical center patients to commuters. Cooper said that he’d had two phone conversations with Amtrak about the possibility of consolidating the Amtrak station (now located on Depot Street below the Broadway Bridge) with a Fuller Road transit station.

There were two questions about the siting of the Fuller Road transit station. One had to do with the possible restrictions on use of the land based on its history as a donated parcel. Cooper said that a preliminary look by the city attorney’s staff suggested that there were no encumbrances on the land. The second had to do with the environmental impact on the watershed, and where it sat with respect to the floodway.  Cooper said that in terms of impervious surface, a transit station would be no worse than the surface parking lot currently at the site, which lies outside the floodway.

How soon can we expect to see east-west commuter rail? Cooper said fall 2010 is the target demonstration date for the project, which is being managed by SEMCOG and MDOT.

Mark Lloyd, planning and development services manager for the city of Ann Arbor.

Wendy Rampson, systems planner for the city of Ann Arbor.

Wall Street area aerial map that was displayed at Northside Grill meeting. (Image links to higher resolution file.)

Eliana Moya-Raggio, a Wall Street resident and former UM faculty member, explains her objections to UM's proposed parking structure. She spoke at a Tuesday evening meeting held at the Kellogg Eye Center.

There were two distinctly different agendas on view at Tuesday’s Wall Street neighborhood meeting, hosted by University of Michigan staff. University representatives, led by Jim Kosteva, were there to deliver information about environmental and safety issues related to the proposed UM expansion in that area. The neighbors wanted answers to questions they’d been asking for many months – and their frustration was palpable.

This was the second in a series of meetings organized by UM to discuss the planned expansion of its medical complex with neighbors. The current piece of that project calls for an office building, parking structure and transit center on Wall Street, just down the street from UM’s Kellogg Eye Center.

Kosteva, UM’s director of community relations, repeatedly used the phrase “regentally authorized project,” and that was one of the first things challenged by neighbors at Tuesday’s meeting. In response to a question, Kosteva said that in fact the regents had taken the first of three steps: At their September 2008 meeting, regents gave initial authorization for the $48.6 million project and for hiring an architect. (Several neighbors were also on hand at that meeting, which The Chronicle covered, to speak against the project.)

At some point the regents will have to vote on approving a schematic design and a “refined” budget, Kosteva said, then at a later date they’ll vote on the project’s final design and budget. Sue Gott, a university planner, said the schematic design will likely be presented to regents at their March meeting.

Though Kosteva and other UM staff members repeatedly said they wanted feedback and would take the neighbors’ concerns into consideration as the project moved forward, residents on Tuesday were decidedly skeptical. As Kosteva finished his introductory remarks, one neighbor asked whether he planned to respond to questions and concerns raised at the November meeting, which focused on transportation issues, parking and the university’s planning process. She said the neighbors had hoped for a dialogue, but that based on Tuesday’s agenda, it didn’t appear that previously raised issues would be addressed, and that was disappointing.

UM's Jim Kosteva, left, makes a point to Eugene Daneshvar, a board member of Riverside Park Place condominiums.

Kosteva said the university staff was thankful and appreciative of all questions and concerns, which he said had caused the staff to analyze and reflect on their plans. But he said they did not intend to respond to those issues at this meeting. Gott said that at the February neighborhood meeting they planned to bring together everything they’d heard and roll it into a discussion then.

When pressed on whether this meant that there was room for negotiation of the medical system’s master plan, Kosteva responded that they were working under regental guidelines and have made adjustments based on feedback, but he did not specify what those adjustments had been. The master plan – which calls for eventually two parking structures along Wall Street and as much as 900,000-square-feet of additional office, clinical and research space – was first introduced in 2005, though the university has been talking about expansion in that area since the mid-1980s, Kosteva said. The street is already being transformed with the $121 million, eight-story expansion of the Kellogg Eye Center.

Several neighbors said they understood and even supported the medical system’s expansion – except for the inclusion of the parking structures.

Tim Mortimer, a board member for the Riverside Park Place condominiums, asked whether alternative sites had been considered for parking, such as land along Fuller that’s being considered for a city transit station, or a surface lot at the corner of Huron Parkway and Glazier Way. When it became clear that the answer was no – Kosteva said the university was working with the city on the Fuller site, but that the projects were on “parallel tracks” and wouldn’t eliminate the need for parking on Wall Street – neighbors responded with frustration.

Eliana Moya-Raggio said that the needs of the university weren’t the only factor – UM should also consider the solid opposition of the people who live in the area. “Who are we – are we nothing?” she asked. “Do people have no importance in this project of yours?”

Mortimer said the university had time and opportunity to look at alternative sites for parking, but that they just aren’t doing it. “You’re polite and courteous,” he said, “but you’re not listening.”

A major point of conflict is the fundamentally different goals that UM and the neighbors hold for that part of Ann Arbor. The university is trying to address the needs of its staff, faculty and patients who come to the medical complex. John Ballew, who manages facility planning for the UM health system, said that access to parking is crucial for employee satisfaction, retention and recruitment. He said that the health system’s staff – which the university expects to grow – wants parking that’s close enough for them to access their cars, especially for people who work off-hour shifts, have kids or dependent adults, or who move between the medical campus to other parts of UM during the day. He said the timing is uncertain for the city’s “multi-modal” station on Fuller, which is envisioned as a hub for light rail and bus.

Residents have a much different goal for Wall Street and the larger Lowertown area. Ray Detter, chair of the Downtown Area Citizens Advisory Council, read a section from the city of Ann Arbor’s master plan, which describes the vision for Lowertown as a “pedestrian-oriented urban village.” The influx of traffic from one or two large parking structures runs counter to that vision, Detter said.

Those disparate goals were also evident in the university’s presentation of crime statistics related to parking structures. David Miller, UM’s executive director of parking and transportation services, provided data on crime at UM parking structures on Glen, Ann and Catherine streets, and noted that parking structures in residential areas have far fewer crime incidents than those near businesses. (For those three structures, with a total of about 2,000 spaces, there were nine incidents in 2007 – four traffic accidents, three property damage incidents and two larcenies from vehicles.)

Sabra Briere, a neighborhood resident and Ward 1 city councilmember, said those statistics were important for people who used the parking structures, but were less valuable for people who live near them. Residents would be concerned about crime near the structure, or about bike/car and pedestrian/car incidents.

Mortimer described the proposed Wall Street parking structure as “the worst of both worlds.” The parking is far enough away from the medical complex to require that people take a bus from the structure to their destination. Yet it creates traffic congestion as people drive their vehicles to a parking structure in an urban neighborhood.

Moya-Raggio also remarked on the oddity of discussing environmental concerns – part of the university’s presentation was about how it planned to deal with various issues like air quality for its bus fleet – while at the same time encouraging people to drive by providing more parking. “It’s a paradox,” she said. Miller replied, “It’s complicated.”

Ray Detter listens to Sabra Briere, a neighborhood resident and city councilmember for Ward 1. The ward's other council representative, Sandi Smith, also attended Tuesday's meeting.

A couple of residents from Kessler Commons, another condominium complex on Wall Street, warned others of what they’ll face during construction. They said the university has ignored efforts to compensate them or deal with property damage and noise from the expansion of the Kellogg Eye Center. “You need to be aware of the scope of what’s coming,” said one resident, who asked not to be identified in this article.

When asked what the city was doing, Briere said the city’s staff was talking to the university’s staff, and that the mayor, John Hieftje, had managed to meet with UM President Mary Sue Coleman, “which was momentous to him.” She added that the council had passed a resolution to encourage that level of communication. But ultimately, she said, the city has no authority to do anything, other than to prevent the university from using the street.

Sandi Smith, who also represents Ward 1 on city council, said that UM officials need to respect the 2,000 residents in the area, and not create a plan that has no relation to the city in which the university exists. Celeste Novak asked whether it would be possible for neighbors to meet with city staff about what’s happening on Wall Street, and Briere said she could arrange a meeting, possibly at Northside Grill after the holidays.

The next neighborhood meeting with UM is on Jan. 27, when university staff plans to present a schematic design for the project.

UM President Mary Sue Coleman, at the head of the table, talks to regents at their Thursday board meeting. To her right is Rebecca McGowan. On her left are Larry Deitch, Andrea Fischer Newman, Olivia Maynard and Kathy White.

• They gave President Mary Sue Coleman a 4 percent raise, bringing her salary to roughly $553,500, effective Aug. 1, 2008. They said she’s doing a great job. She said thanks. Everyone clapped.
• They approved a controversial $48.6 million parking and office structure on Wall Street, near Kellogg Eye Center, and authorized hiring of an architect. This came after several people, including Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje, spoke during public comment session and asked the university to reconsider the project. Several smaller, multimillion-dollar projects were also on the agenda and approved without discussion.
• They signed off on a raft of appointments, including 1) Laura Lein as new dean for the School of Social Work, and her husband, Ben Kuipers, as a College of Engineering professor, 2) UM professor Dan Atkins as associate vice president for research cyberstructure, and 3) Robert Dolen, dean of the Ross School of Business, to the new endowed deanship at the school, funded with $5 million from The Frey Foundation, in honor of UM grad Edward J. Frey.

Much of the meeting was taken up by reports from executive officers and other senior staff. Jerry May, UM’s vice president of development, gave an update on the multi-year “Michigan Difference” capital campaign, which reached its $2.5 billion goal in mid-2007 but continues until year’s end. For the fiscal year ending June 30, UM received $342 million in donations, up 14 percent from the previous year.

Bob Winfield, the university’s chief health officer, gave a briefing on UM’s emergency preparedness. Earlier this year the university conducted a “tabletop” exercise about what needs to happen if there’s a shooter on campus. (It’s called “tabletop” because people sit around a table talking through the process, rather than dealing with a mock attack.) In response to a question, Winfield said the broader Ann Arbor community isn’t deeply involved in these plans. However, there are separate drills conducted specifically for Michigan Stadium that do include the Ann Arbor police and fire departments, state police and Huron Valley Ambulance.

(Interestingly, on Wednesday the Washtenaw County commissioners heard a similar report from Donna Sabourin, who’s helping organize a daylong, countywide conference on Monday to build a network of emergency response following a disaster. It’s unclear how involved UM is in that effort, if at all.)

Aside from these and other reports, the public comment sessions at the beginning and end of the meeting took the bulk of the two hours. Of the eight speakers (each with a five-minute time limit), five spoke about the Wall Street project and urged the regents to pull back from their construction plans. Just down the hill from UM’s massive medical complex, the project calls for a parking structure on Wall Street to provide 550 new spaces and a small transit center, and a 40,000-square-foot office building to house the Michigan Business Engagement Center. A major expansion of the Kellogg Eye Center – an eight-story, $121 million project – is already underway there. Another parking structure is proposed, but wasn’t part of the project that regents approved Thursday.

“You’re now deeply involved in a plan which to us doesn’t make sense,” said Ray Detter, a longtime community activist and chair of the Downtown Area Citizens Advisory Council. He said there needs to be a shared vision that would bring vitality to the area, and called UM’s proposal “a slap in the face.”

Eliana Moya-Raggio, a resident of the Wall Street area, urges UM's Board of Regents to reconsider their proposed development there.

Others spoke of environmental and health concerns, both to the Huron River and to individuals affected by increased traffic, vehicle exhaust, construction dirt and noise pollution. They said the project seemed at odds with UM’s commitment to environmental stewardship. Concerns about crime in the parking structures was also raised. And Rosemary Sarri, a UM professor emeritus, presented the board with copies of a petition signed by roughly 300 residents, protesting the development.

Heiftje, who was given the podium without a time limitation, called for a “pause” in the project, allowing university and city officials to discuss alternatives, such as building a parking structure on North Campus and providing shuttle service to UM’s medical complex. He said he believes that both a north/south and an east/west commuter rail would be completed by 2010, and could provide a viable alternative for employees who now have to drive to UM’s medical campus.

Later in the meeting, Julia Darlow, a regent from Ann Arbor, thanked residents for airing their views, and Regent Larry Deitch said their concerns needed to be taken seriously. The board then unanimously approved the project.

Some of the regents seemed most animated during one of the last public comment speakers, Bernard van’t Hul, a retired UM English professor, who delivered a droll yet scathing indictment of the Michigan Stadium renovations and the regents’ role in approving it, describing the new structure as an “ostentatious monument to Mammon.”

Saying she didn’t agree with his point, Regent Andrea Fischer Newman said his speech nonetheless was “just marvelous.”

“Thank you – I guess,” van’t Hul replied.

Regents present: Mary Sue Coleman (ex officio), Julia Darlow, Larry Deitch, Olivia Maynard, Rebecca McGowan, Andrea Fischer Newman, Andrew Richner, Martin Taylor, Kathy White. Absent: None

Next meeting: Thursday, Oct. 16 23, 3 p.m. at the Fleming Administration Building, 503 Thompson St. UM-Flint campus, Harding Mott University Center, 303 E. Kearsley, Flint.

Additional media coverage: The Michigan Daily reports on Coleman’s raise and the Wall Street project. The Ann Arbor News reports on some medical facilities projects and Coleman’s raise.

Members of UM's Solar Car Team answer questions at the Board of Regents meeting. The team was honored for winning this year's North American Solar Challenge, a 3,862-km race from Texas to Calgary.

Here are some items on their agenda:

• A $48.6 million project to 1) build a parking structure on Wall Street to provide 550 new spaces and a small transit center “to encourage the use of buses and shuttles”; and 2) build a 40,000-square-foot office building to house the Michigan Business Engagement Center. The center “is to function as the gateway to the university for business and industry.”
• A $5.9 million project to create a new outpatient observation care unit in the Taubman Health Center adjacent to the University Hospital ER.
• A $4.5 million renovation project to establish a clinic at Domino’s Farms for the Department of Internal Medicine’s Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Diabetes.
• A $3.15 million project to renovate an inpatient psychiatry unit at University Hospital.

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Addendum: Based a note from Matt late last night (see Comment 1 below) The Chronicle went out and photographed the poster early this morning:

Poster opposing construction of Wall Street parking structure by University of Michigan.

From the text of the poster:

• The UM will present a plan to the Board of Regents for approval to provide 1200 parking spaces in two parking structures with no logistical consideration for the already approved Lower Town development which includes 740 parking spaces, and intentions that conflict with the city of Ann Arbor’s Northeast Area Plan.
• 2000 cars will traverse Maiden Lane and Wall Street daily during morning and evening commutes, with vacant structures at night and on weekends that attract crime and deadened the community.
• Consider what the construction of more than 1 million additional square feet of high-rise space these parking structures, and a transit center, will do for your commute, not to mention the permanent damage to the historical character and function of the Lower Town Area.
• The concentration of over 2000 parked cars on Maiden Lane and Wall Street does not make sense.
• The area is unable to accommodate these types of additions, and unreasonable changes can be expected.
• This contradicts the founding principles of the UMHS to provide health and well-being to patients and Ann Arbor residents.
• Air quality concerns for exhaust emissions of 2000 cars twice daily.
• Water quality concerns from oil and chemical runoff flowing directly into storm sewers and onto Traver Creek and the Huron River.
• Irreparable damage to the ecosystem and biodiversity of the adjacent 100-year floodplain.