Stories indexed with the term ‘A2D2’

Following months of public input and review by a consultant hired by the city, Ann Arbor planning commissioners finalized a set of recommendations to revise parts of the city’s downtown zoning. Those recommendations will now be forwarded to the city council. The action took place at the commission’s Dec. 3, 2013 meeting.

The recommendations, which in general aim to create more of a buffer between downtown development and adjacent or nearby residential neighborhoods, included the following:

• Rezone the parcel located at 336 E. Ann from D1 (downtown core) to D2 (downtown interface).
• Reduce the maximum height in the East Huron 1 Character District (on the north side of Huron, between Division and State) to 120 feet. Include a tower diagonal maximum and consider … [Full Story]
  

Ann Arbor planning commission meeting (Nov. 19, 2013): The main agenda item for the commission’s most recent meeting was a list of draft recommendations that would complete the current phase of a months-long downtown zoning review.

Planning commissioners made decisions on the majority of recommendations for revising the city’s downtown zoning ordinance, but adjourned after midnight before completing their final resolution for city council. Though they did not formally vote to postpone action on the resolution, the item will be taken up again at the commission’s Dec. 3 meeting. [.pdf of revised draft recommendations to be considered on Dec. 3]

Generally, the changes reflect a downzoning in some locations in an attempt to lessen the impact of development on adjacent residential neighborhoods.

A public hearing on the downtown zoning review drew seven speakers, all of whom had previously addressed the commission on this topic. Andy Klein – one of the owners of a site at the southeast corner Main and William, which is being considered for downzoning – spoke against rezoning that property, calling himself the “lone dissenter.” Other speakers at the hearing were in favor of downzoning in general, including at that site. The recommendation for that property – possibly one of the most controversial – was not debated or acted on by commissioners at their Nov. 19 meeting.

Attached to the commission’s Dec. 3 agenda was a communication from Scott R. Bonney of Neumann/Smith Architecture, written on behalf of KRG Investments, the owners of the Main and William property. It suggests a third option to consider as a compromise, and indicates that Bonney will attend the Dec. 3 meeting to make a presentation about this proposal in person. [.pdf of Bonney's letter]

After the planning commission finalizes and approves its resolution regarding these downtown zoning recommendations, the resolution will be forwarded to the city council for consideration. The intent is for the council to review the recommendations and give direction to the commission about which recommendations to implement.

At that point, the commission’s ordinance revisions committee would work with city planning staff to craft actual ordinance language. Any specific ordinance changes would be reviewed by the full commission and ultimately would require city council approval before taking effect. That process would include additional opportunities for public input.

In addition to downtown zoning, three other projects were on the Nov. 19 agenda. Commissioners recommended approval of a proposal to build two restaurants adjacent to Macy’s at Briarwood Mall. They also recommended approval of a four-story addition to the existing two-story building at 210-216 S. Fourth Ave., between East Liberty and East Washington in downtown Ann Arbor, known as the Montgomery Building. The expansion will create 32 new housing units, including four studios, 14 one-bedroom, and 14 two-bedroom units.

One project that didn’t move forward was a proposed expansion of Germain Motors – the former Howard Cooper dealership on South State Street. Owner Steve Germain and his daughter Jessica Germain attended the meeting and described the growth of their business, with a 55% increase in combined sales compared to last year. They indicated that expanded showrooms and additional parking and vehicle display areas are needed to accommodate future growth. However, planning staff recommended postponement to address several outstanding issues, and commissioners acted on that advice. [Full Story]

After three hours of discussion at their Nov. 19, 2013 meeting, Ann Arbor planning commissioners made decisions on the majority of recommendations for revising the city’s downtown zoning ordinance, but adjourned after midnight before completing their final resolution for city council. Though they did not formally vote to postpone action on the resolution, the item is expected to be taken up again at the commission’s Dec. 3 meeting.

This zoning evaluation began earlier this year, following a city council directive to the planning commission on April 1, 2o13 that was prompted in part by the controversial 413 E. Huron development. The council’s direction was to make recommendations to the city council by Oct. 1. Planning consultant ENP & Associates was … [Full Story]

Continuing a discussion that began at their Oct. 8 working session, Ann Arbor planning commissioners gave feedback on a consultant’s report with recommendations to changes in downtown zoning. The item was on the commission’s Oct. 15, 2013 agenda. [.pdf of downtown zoning report]

The commission’s Oct. 15 meeting also included a public hearing on the recommendations. Ten people spoke.

Although commissioners spent about two hours on this agenda item, … [Full Story]

A site plan for a 14-story, 216-apartment building at the northeast corner of Huron and Division streets has been postponed by the Ann Arbor city council. The vote to postpone the 413 E. Huron project came at the council’s March 18, 2013 meeting. It will be back on the agenda for the council’s April 1 meeting.

413 E. Huron from the northwest. Division Street is in the foreground … [Full Story]

The Ann Arbor city council has given direction to the planning commission to review downtown zoning – without imposing a moratorium on approval of site plans for downtown Ann Arbor. A moratorium had been contemplated in the council’s original resolution. The action took place at the council’s March 18, 2013 meeting.

… [Full Story]

At its April 16, 2012 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council voted unanimously to reject a request to conditionally rezone 1320 S. University – from D2 (downtown interface) to D1 (downtown core).

The conditions on the D1 designation would have included restrictions on height and floor area that are less than what’s allowed in “unconditioned” D1. For example, the by-right height limit in D1 is 180 feet, but one condition the owner of the property – Philip Sotiroff – wanted to place on the property was a 145-foot height limit.

That 145-foot limit, however, is more than twice the limit of the parcel’s current D2 zoning, which allows buildings only as tall as 60 feet. Currently at the site – on the south … [Full Story]

Ann Arbor planning commission meeting (April 5, 2011): In another step toward completing a years-long process to develop design guidelines for downtown properties, planning commissioners unanimously recommended approval of amendments to Ann Arbor’s city code that establish a design review board and design review procedures.

One person, former planning commissioner Ethel Potts, spoke during a public hearing on the topic. Potts said she was glad the design review comes early in the project approval process, but she wondered how the review would be used – that could be a challenge. Commissioners discussed the issue only briefly before the vote.

In the city’s project approval process, the design review would take place before the mandatory citizen participation meeting, so that the design review board’s comments could be incorporated into the project’s design before it’s presented to citizens. However, developers aren’t required to act on the review board’s recommendations. Though the review process is mandatory, implementation of the board’s suggestions is voluntary. [Full Story]

Ann Arbor City Council Sunday Caucus (Nov. 15, 2009): Around two dozen residents came to city council chambers Sunday night to convey their thoughts on two major planning issues on the city council’s agenda for Monday.

The downtown zoning ordinance package – known as A2D2, which the council has approved on two prior occasions at a “first reading” – will be given a public hearing, with a vote also scheduled for Monday night. In addition, the downtown design guidelines will have its public hearing continued, which started on Oct. 5. No vote on design guidelines is scheduled for Monday.

Also receiving discussion at caucus were the six projects that were submitted before last Friday’s Nov. 13 deadline, in response to the city’s request for proposals to use the space on top of the Fifth Avenue underground parking garage.

Also the council’s agenda, but not receiving discussion among councilmembers who attended the caucus, is the council’s formal acceptance of the Huron River and Impoundment Management Plan (HRIMP) from the city’s environmental commission – but not the plan’s recommendations related to Argo Dam.

And a consent agenda item that requests funds to purchase additional electronic parking meter equipment contains in its description a plan to install meters in new areas that have not been previously identified.

Finally, there’s a whole new category of item on Monday’s agenda – a category that raises questions. [Full Story]

Ann Arbor City Council Sunday night caucus (Oct. 4, 2009): At its Sunday night meeting attended by only three councilmembers – Mayor John Hieftje, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Mike Anglin (Ward 5) – downtown zoning was again center stage.

A dozen or so residents attended the caucus and many of them addressed the changes that can be traced in the draft documents for A2D2 downtown building design guidelines from Oct. 15, 2007 to April 30, 2008, to Aug. 28, 2009, and most recently in the Sept. 30, 2009 version of the document.

The council will open a public hearing on the proposed guidelines on Oct. 5, but is not scheduled to vote on the matter until at least Oct. 19. At caucus, Hieftje said that the public hearing might be left open until Oct. 19 and that it was possible that no vote would be taken then – there was “no rush,” he said.

The complaint of many of those who addressed caucus was this: A commitment to the design guidelines as a compulsory part of project review had been gradually written out of the various drafts.

The challenge in following the changes to the draft was made more difficult, some speakers contended, by the fact that the city had altered its strategy for publicizing public hearings. That’s a strategic necessity driven by the fact that the closing of The Ann Arbor News leaves The Washtenaw Legal News as the only local “newspaper of general circulation.” [Full Story]

Almost every child learns in school that a haiku is a short poem with three lines – lines that adhere to a 5-7-5 syllable count pattern.
But only some children learn that not all poems conforming to that 5-7-5 rule are good haikus. For example:

I saw a tower/Looming, stretching really tall/
Is it ever high!

Many readers will recognize those lines as a generally failed poem. But what specifically makes it a bad haiku, even though it follows the rule? The first-person narrative, the lack of seasonal referent, the lack of any kind of “aha!” moment – there are any number of ways in which that poetic effort fails to meet basic haiku design guidelines.

Similarly, a proposed new downtown Ann Arbor building that follows a basic height rule of “180 feet maximum” – specified in the zoning regulations – might still be generally recognizable as a poorly-designed building.  [Full Story]

Ann Arbor City Council meeting (July 6, 2009): The word “public” covered much of the ground of this past Monday’s meeting: public art, public land, public input.

The council got an annual report from the Public Art Commission highlighted by a reminder that Herbert Dreiseitl will be visiting Ann Arbor on July 20 to introduce plans for the storm water art he’s been commissioned to design for the new municipal center. The designs have not yet been accepted.

The council also heard a report from the Greenbelt Advisory Commission on a slight strategy shift in the use of $10 million of public money so far to protect 1,321 acres of land. The  council also approved a resolution to preserve the First & William parking lot as public land.

The discussion of another parcel of public land, the library lot, led to long deliberations on the wording of a resolution to establish an RFP (request for proposals) process for development of the site – below which an underground parking structure is planned. At issue was the timing of the RFP and the explicit inclusion of a public participation component in the process. The deliberations provided some insight into how councilmembers work together when the outcome of their conversations at the table is not scripted or pre-planned. [Full Story]

Ann Arbor City Council meeting (June 15, 2009): The council covered a lot of ground at its Monday night meeting, much of it related to streets and transportation. Besides dealing with a raft of garden-variety street closings that generated some unexpected “controversy,” the council put in place a plan to delay the installation of some parking meters in near downtown neighborhoods, launched a safety campaign, and funded a bike path, pedestrian amenities and the city’s portion of a north-south connector feasibility study.

But it wasn’t the bike path that drew more than 20 people to speak at a public hearing. That turnout was for the adoption of the Downtown Plan. It was ultimately adopted as amended by the city’s planning commission so that the D2 buffer in the South University area is a small area in the southeast corner.

The expected vote on the City Place project along Fifth Avenue was delayed again after additional technical errors by planning staff were discovered related to the planning commission’s April meeting. That project will now start over with the planning commission public hearing.

Audience members who waited until the end of the long meeting heard Mayor John Hieftje appoint a subcommittee of councilmembers to meet with the DDA’s “mutually beneficial” committee to discuss the parking agreement between the city and the DDA.  In the discussion after the jump, we provide a record produced in the preliminary response to a Chronicle FOIA, which dates the renegotiation of the parking agreement to as early as September 2008 and connects it to discussions between the mayor and a candidate for the DDA board, Keith Orr, who was eventually appointed to the board.  The record shows that his appointment was not contingent on a commitment to a particular vote on the parking agreement. [Full Story]

At its Tuesday meeting, Ann Arbor’s planning commission voted to adopt a downtown plan that was different in significant ways from the one they’d previously adopted just three months ago. A small D2 (interface) in the South University area has been carved out, when none previously existed on the planning commission’s map. And  a one-parcel-wide expansion of the D2 area has been undertaken to include a property owned by Zingerman’s Deli.

Why was the commission considering the changes? Since the plan’s previous adoption, the city council had undertaken revisions to the proposed city zoning ordinances that had rendered the downtown plan inconsistent with those ordinances.

While the city council has final say over the ordinances, the council and planning commission must agree on the adoption of the same downtown plan. [See previous Chronicle coverage of the commission-council relationship on this issue.]

The planning commission’s action taken Tuesday night does bring its adopted downtown plan closer to consistency with the city council’s proposal for Ann Arbor’s new downtown zoning, but a significant incompatibility in the South University area remains. Before planning commission met, the revised downtown plan was scheduled to be presented for action by council at its June 15, 2009 meeting, with consideration of the final vote on the zoning package on July 6, 2009.  Now that time frame could change, depending on the path taken by council. More on possible outcomes after the break. [Full Story]

Ann Arbor City Council Sunday caucus (April 5, 2009): Like the Michigan State Spartans basketball team practicing  a fast break, Ann Arbor city councilmembers quickly handled their caucus discussion of possible amendments to the planning commission’s A2D2 zoning recommendations, which could be brought forward at their Monday night meeting.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) called for the ball to address a repaving contract on the agenda, as well as to float the idea of a parliamentary alternative to formal discussions –  ideas that are still rattling around the rim.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) arrived just as the 20-minute session concluded; he was not asked to run punishment laps around council chambers. An informal shoot-around, in the form of conversational pods among some councilmembers and members of the public, persisted until nearly 8 p.m.

Council’s Monday meeting starts at 7 p.m. on CTN’s Channel 16, which allows at least 2 hours and 21 minutes of council viewing before the NCAA finals begin.

After the break, we provide viewers with a playbook of sorts to follow the action in council chambers. It’s a set of 12 possible amendments to the zoning recommendations passed by planning commission that have been compiled by city staff. [Full Story]

Downtown Development Authority board meeting (April 1, 2009): The board of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority held its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday and passed  a resolution – with some dissent – recommending that city council eliminate the character districts from the A2D2 zoning proposal.

The board also authorized spending around $75,000 to help start a business district in the Main Street area – an idea mentioned in our report on the board’s December 2008 meeting.

Additional spending, totaling around $25,000, was authorized for bicycle parking – some of it on-street.

The board also heard a report from its ad hoc committee on the discussion of the parking agreement with the city of Ann Arbor. Initial indications are that there was clear (but not unanimous) sentiment on the committee against renegotiating the existing agreement, but for exploring other alternatives.

Accessibility was a theme that came up in the form of DDA meeting material as well as real-time parking data. [Full Story]

City council convened Monday night to hear public commentary on the downtown plan and A2D2 zoning revisions for the downtown area, which were approved by planning commission earlier this month, and which council had already begun contemplating at a working session two weeks ago. Nothing else was on the agenda.

About 30 residents took their 3-minute speaking turns on Monday, which did not preclude their participation at the public hearings when the amendments to the zoning ordinance are heard formally. The zoning ordinance’s first reading is planned for April 6 with a second reading on May 4. The  downtown plan will be heard April 20.

By 8:30 p.m. the Monday meeting had concluded, with many of the speakers and councilmembers mingling afterwards. [Full Story]

At Monday night’s city council work session councilmember Leigh Greden said that he wanted to see growth. Growth is what he could see (even if not the kind he was looking for) by turning his gaze to his immediate left at the council table to look at his colleague, Christopher Taylor’s upper lip, which is sprouting a mustache for charity. That kind of growth is no longer visible on city administrator Roger Fraser’s chin. Before the work session began, Fraser joked with the Ward 3 council contingent that he’d shorn his whiskers in order to appear as youthful as Greden.

Illustration of the concept of a … [Full Story]

Just before 11 p.m. on Tuesday evening, Ann Arbor’s planning commission, on an 8-1 vote, passed a recommendation on to city council to enact a series of zoning changes as a part of the A2D2 package. The set of proposed new zoning regulations had undergone some revision in response to additional community feedback on the first version that had been recommended by the commission. That feedback had been collected through the fall of 2008 in a series of public workshops.

Our goal in this article is not to lay out the complete set of revisions to the zoning recommendations. So the discussion of why there will be no adult entertainment district in downtown Ann Arbor will be put off until another day. Instead, we write for an audience of one – a South University area resident who we imagine will read the headline of this article with a disbelieving sense of déjà vu. She’s a resident who attended city council’s most recent Sunday night caucus, and who also attended planning commission’s meeting last night, leaving “early” when she likely believed a vote of particular interest to her was done. [Full Story]

The city’s website reflects a change in the Dec. 3 A2D2 Steering Committee meeting. The meeting start time has been moved from 6 pm to 6:30 pm. It will be held in the 6th floor conference room of the Larcom Building. The meeting will focus on synthesis of community feedback.[Source]

At a work session sometime in January 2009, city council is expected to discuss proposed zoning changes to downtown Ann Arbor, which have emerged from a process involving consultants, staff, and the public over more than two years. But before that, the A2D2 steering committee, which consists of Roger Hewitt (DDA), Marcia Higgins (city council) and Evan Pratt (planning commission), will meet in the Larcom Building’s sixth-floor conference room on Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 6 p.m. to review comments and feedback accumulated to date. (That is a public meeting, but there is no public participation component.) [Full Story]