Thanks for the considered response above at #10! A lot of words that in my view don’t address the type of issues ordinary Ann Arbor residents should be raising. What John Hieftje’s personal intentions are or aren’t is not relevant to the point I was making in post #9 above. The fact remains that Mayor Hieftje has placed himself in a personally vulnerable position with the UofM by his own choice. Marry Sue Coleman and the UofM administration has demonstrated in the past that they are not afraid of destroying someone’s career when that person gets in the way of what the UofM administration wants (UofM’s trespass policy is just one example.) There is a valid question that voters should be asking themselves when they vote for Mayor: do they want someone representing them that owes there personal well being to the city’s largest employer? The city is laying off firefighters while UofM is not helping at all; a situation I find disgusting. Meanwhile, the city under John Hieftje’s leadership is planning to commit city money to a parking structure on park land that has almost no benefit for residents of Ann Arbor. UofM needs the parking because of expansion at the University Medical Center and has not properly planned to support the parking needs of the expanded staff and is now looking for handouts from the city to remedy the situation. It would be interesting to hear what the owner of Jerusalem Gardens would have to say about UofM’s predicament! I’m sure he can feel UofM’s pain.

I would like to know

1) if there are any public meeting spaces (conference centers + convention centers) that pay for their operations, and their debt service. Of these, how many have money left over to pay to the entity that owns them? If any pay for themselves, what would Ann Arbor have to do to emulate that success? If no successful public meeting facilities exist, why would Ann Arbor’s be the one successful exception?

2) When conferences move from one part of town (the U, or Sheraton 4 points, etc), how is that economic development? Looks to me like mere changing where spending happens in Ann Arbor without adding anything new. Am I missing something?

2A) How does it help us for a new, public, tax-subsidized meeting space to cannibalize existing private-sector business at existing, successful, businesses?

3) Such a facility helps Ann Arbor to the extent it brings to town meetings that now happen in other places. Nationally, is the demand for meeting spaces growing, or shrinking? What implication would growing or shrinking national demand for space have for our chances of bringing in new meetings?

4) As Dave Askins has noted, if this proposal is “economically viable”, why did Valiant ever want to involve the city? Why not just ask to buy the property up front, and avoid convoluted arrangements?

To me, these seem like pretty basic, obvious questions to ask if you are an elected official with fiduciary responsibility for the city. Three years into this conference center process, these should be easy questions for proponents to answer. However, I have not heard any proponent discuss any of them. What’s up with that?

Per the old Ann Arbor News, Mr. Derezinski “[has} a shared high level vision of the future of Ann Arbor”. He shares this vision with Carsten Hohnke, the mayor, Chris Taylor, Sandy Smith, and Marcia Higgins. None of them has ever shared that vision with the public. What’s up with that?

The Fuller Road parking structure might be an OK thing. Why not just run it through the charter-mandated process of putting it to a public vote? If Mr. Derezinski, the mayor, Mr. Hohnke et. al. can sell this to the public, OK. If not, well, then, OK, too. For people so convinced that the Fuller Road garage is a good thing, they seem awfully afraid of following the law. What’s up with that?

Lots of questions, no answers.

Based on the text of the amended resolution approved Monday night, no that’s not accurate. It’s true that the Library Lot is one of the four parcels the DDA will be tasked to focus on as it leads a process to develop a community view about what those lots should be used for and that would presumably implement some action to realize that view. And yes, the city council would need to vote to make any final decision. However, the resolution does not envision that the DDA will decide what to do with the Library Lot. So I don’t think it’s accurate to characterize the DDA’s intended role in this process as “getting to decide what to do with the lot.” [.pdf of parcel-by-parcel, as amended].

Let’s see–that adds up to an extra U of M provided $36K a year. Divide that by 12 months a year–$3K a month. For a thirty year mortgage, at 5% we get $1878.88 a month, with a nice $1100 a month cushion for taxes. Nice work if you can get it and it reaks of conflict of interest, especially after the $1 Million ‘payoff’ of the Stadium Bridges right-of-way. If this happened in Detroit, the media would be climbing all over it. In Ann Arbor we just take the Mayor’s word at face value.

Note that when you apply the percentage appointment (one-third) and add in the fact it’s for a half year — so one course taught per year — the roughly $100,000 rate paid to Hieftje works out to closer to $16,000 per year. For his wife, Kathryn Goodson, the roughly $60,000 rate works out to something closer to $20,000 per year when you factor in the one-third time appointment. (UM compensation data here: [link])

Regarding compensation for easements, we gave some context for how these real estate issues have been handled in the past in some previous reporting on the E. Stadium bridges:

In response to a query from The Chronicle, Jim Kosteva – UM’s director of community relations of community relations – gave examples of past projects that involved the university’s permanent conveyance of right-of-way to the city without a cash transaction: (1) expansion of Main Street at the intersection of Main and Stadium Boulevard to add a turn lane; (2) reconfiguration of Fuller Road around the VA hospital area to connect at Glazier Way; and (3) reconfiguration of Huron Parkway.

On the flip side, with the city permanently donating land to the university, Kosteva also gave examples: (1) the section of East University Avenue between North University and South University; (2) Monroe Street between Tappan and East University. [The university has also expressed interest in the last few years in acquiring the right-of-way between South State and Tappan on Monroe Street, but has up to this point received an unenthusiastic response from the city.]

In the category of temporary use of right-of-way, Kosteva offered various university construction projects that have required lane closures, most notably the football stadium renovation project, the construction of the North Quad dorm at State and Huron, and the law school project currently underway at State and Monroe. The city charges 1.5 cents per square foot per day for temporary use of the right-of-way. While the amount sounds trivial, Kosteva said that it has added up to several hundred thousand dollars over the last few years.

[To illustrate how the 1.5 cents can add up, consider a 12-foot-wide lane, and the 1,570-foot distance for one block of Main Street from Stadium Boulevard to Pauline Boulevard, for a closure of, say, 100 days. That works out to 12*1,570*.015*100 = $28,260]

It’s worth pointing out that the football stadium reconstruction project involved greater square footage of easements over a longer period of time than in the example given there, and came to a total of around $370,000 in payments by the UM to the city.

With respect to these particular easements, when the city was faced with funding the entire project itself, I believe that the UM had indicated a willingness to donate the land — but in searching The Chronicle’s past articles, I can’t find where we reported that, so I might be mistaken.

The bulk of the money paid to the UM for acquisition of right-of-way for this project comes from TIGER II federal funding, which requires a certain percentage of local match. Granted, TIGER II is taxpayer money, so certainly there’s a same-pair-of-pants-different-pocket argument to be made — that is, just because it’s federal money doesn’t mean we should just randomly sprinkle it around.

But given the broader context and the dollar amounts involved, I think the speculation about the mayor’s motives here is a bit of a stretch. I think one could reach the conclusion that paying the UM for the easements is good public policy, without being beholden to UM in any way, and without generally supporting the mayor’s politics.

Also; I don’t understand CM Briere’s dialogue/discussion comment. What’s the distinction there?

See [link]