The City’s old service yard and buildings are right across Main Street from the Near North site. Has that site been tested as the possible source of the petroleum by-products, considering it is uphill and upstream (Allen Creek) from Near North? Maybe from the old gas stations next door (although they are downstream/downhill)?

Seems to me that the source ought to be identified or the replacement soil will simply absorb the same stuff and this will be government money down the drain (in the form of tax credits).

The Property is considered an” eligible property” as defined by Act 381, Section 2 because the
Property meets the definition of a “facility”, as defined by Act 381. The property was identified
as a “facility” based on the results of soil and groundwater sampling conducted by NTH, Inc. on
April 3, 2009, and Soil and Materials Engineers, Inc. (SME) on February 11, 2010, for the
constituents listed below:

* Benzo(a)pyrene, arsenic and lead were measured in soil samples at concentrations above
the Part 201 Generic Residential Cleanup Criteria and Screening Levels (residential
cleanup criteria) for Drinking Water Protection and/or Direct Contact.

* Arsenic, barium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, selenium, silver and zinc were
measured in groundwater samples at a concentration above the residential cleanup criteria
for Drinking Water and/or GSI.

Jim, it’s possible that you’re counting “spaces” differently from the intern. A couple of days ago, at a planning commission meeting [link], this same issue came up when a petitioner objected to the 10 spaces in the agreement, when he knew he’d agreed to install 5 hoops:

He called Cheng’s attention to the fact that the revisions to the supplemental regulations specify 53 spaces for vehicles and 10 Class C bicycle parking spaces. Sprinkles noted that the number of bicycle spaces should be five. Cheng clarified that it’s five hoops, two bikes on each side, for a total of 10 spaces.

Of course for some of the downtown hoop designs, it’s a real art to get a bicycle locked to both sides of it. I wonder how the intern counted the repurposed parking meter posts — those would be a challenge for two bicycles.

But in any case, I suspect that the number of hoops was 500, for a total of 1,000 “spaces.”

The chair could have made an exception to allow a few more people the opportunity to speak before the vote. The rush to approve this grant was a disservice to an open public process.

I appreciate the coverage of this meeting and Dave’s reporting. However, I’d like to add the full text of my remarks below for anyone interested in more detail.

The DDA has an opportunity to step back from a wasteful project and redirect scarce dollars toward the downtown.

I live near the site and our neighborhood group had urged Avalon to build a smaller project that would offer more supportive housing units. But this idea was rejected. We were told that the building had to be this size to “make the numbers work” . As a result only 14 of the 39 units are supportive housing.

Since then Avalon has asked to count these yet unbuilt units as replacements for the 15 the units that Avalon is choosing to tear down and replace at Pauline using CDBG funds. So there is no net gain in supportive housing for Ann Arbor.

Meanwhile the 25 workforce units planned for NENO will rent for more than DOUBLE what our previous workforce neighbors paid per bedroom before they were evicted more than two years ago to make way for this project. (Eight houses with 27 bedrooms total were allowed to rot)

But not only will the NENO units be costly to rent, they are insanely costly to build. According to the developers own figures in your packet, each 750 square foot, 1 bedroom apartment will cost $284,000.00 or $378 per square foot. That is TWICE as much as a median two-bedroom Ann Arbor condo, and 20 percent MORE than a median 3-bedroom single family home. ($52K per unit was spent for the land)

The only real beneficiaries of this project are the for-profit investors (3 Oaks) who paid $1.3 million for the 9 lots and will receive more than $2 million for it, plus a $500K developer fee IF the project is ever built. Which brings us to the question – WHEN will it be built?

The only publicly recorded progress made in the 2 years since you first approved this grant is:

1) Ownership of the parcels was transferred from 3 Oaks (a group of private investors) to the non-profit NENO Partnership, thereby removing the property from the tax rolls, a loss to the city of $40-50 thousand per year in property tax revenue.

2) The NENO non-profit partnership is now obligated to mortgages in excess of $2.4 million dollars, which I assume, but cannot verify, is mostly in the hands of the for-profit investors (3 Oaks). They also appear to still be in need of close to 9 million dollars they hope to raise from the sale of Low Income Tax Credits, which should have closed last January but did not.

3) And if you call blight progress, viable housing stock has been allowed to deteriorate beyond repair, creating the blight necessary to receive 1.2 million in brownfield funding.

I respectfully suggest that the DDA’s scarce funds be invested much more wisely within the downtown borders.

From the DDA website, this one bears a 2011 file name: [link]