From left: Julie Grand (Ward 3 challenger), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3 incumbent), Jack Eaton (Ward 4 challenger), Mike Anglin (Ward 5 incumbent), Kirk Westphal (Ward 2 candidate), and Sabra Briere (Ward 1 incumbent).

In the Aug. 6 Democratic primary, only two wards offer contested races. In Ward 3, Democratic voters will choose between incumbent Stephen Kunselman and Julie Grand. Ward 4 voters will have a choice between incumbent Marcia Higgins and Jack Eaton. Higgins was reported to have been sick and was unable to attend.

The format of the event eventually allowed other candidates who are unopposed in the Democratic primary to participate: Mike Anglin (Ward 5 incumbent), Sabra Briere (Ward 1 incumbent), and Kirk Westphal, who’s challenging incumbent Jane Lumm in Ward 2. Lumm, who was elected to the council as an independent, was in the audience at the forum but didn’t participate. The event was held at the Ann Arbor Community Center on North Main Street. The Chronicle’s coverage is presented in a multiple-part series, based on common threads that formed directly in response to questions posed to the candidates, or that cut across multiple responses.

More than one question posed to candidates was explicitly designed to elicit views on downtown Ann Arbor. Taken as a group, the questions prompted responses that formed several discrete subtopics related to land use and planning: planning in general; planning specifically for city-owned properties; and planning for a hotel/conference center.

Another general theme covered the role of the downtown in the life of the city of Ann Arbor, with additional subtopics that included: the appropriate balance of investment between downtown and non-downtown neighborhoods; who should and does benefit from the downtown; and the role of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority.

This report includes candidate responses on these issues.

Part 1 of this series focused on the candidates’ concept of and connection to Ann Arbor, while Part 2 looked at their personal styles of engagement and views of how the council interacts. Part 3 reported on the theme of connections, including physical connections like transportation, as well as how people are connected to local government. Chronicle election coverage is tagged with “2013 primary election.”

Planning

Several of the candidates’ remarks related to themes that could be grouped together under the notion of planning.

Planning: Zoning, Density

Julie Grand noted that people have concerns about changes in the downtown landscape. And the 413 E. Huron development really seems to be the building that represents those concerns the best, she said – due to its proximity to a residential neighborhood. She attributed part of the concern to a sense that this change has been very rapid, and “very jarring.” “We wanted density in the downtown,” she said, but it wasn’t anticipated that it would involve adding mostly students in the downtown. “Those who supported density didn’t think it was going to be blocky buildings and students,” she said. Rather, they thought density was going to bring boomers and young professionals – and they were going to live in architecturally interesting buildings.

Grand indicated she was pleased that the city’s planning commission is now reviewing the D1-zoned properties – especially those parcels that are close to residential neighborhoods. [D1 is the zoning that allows for the highest density development.] She remains in favor of density in the downtown, and feels that there are now some opportunities, especially with the city-owned properties downtown, to “get it right” and to build buildings that are really consistent with what the community wants.

Jack Eaton thought the 413 E. Huron project needs to be considered in the broader perspective of the A2D2 (Ann Arbor Discovering Downtown) zoning. Radical, broad changes to downtown zoning were made, he contended, that didn’t comply with the city’s master plan. He agreed with the idea of creating an area in the core of the city that is dense. But the master plan calls for buffers – between that density and the nearby neighborhoods. And on that, he continued, “we failed miserably.” He had opposed the A2D2 plan at the time for that reason. When the 413 E. Huron site plan came forward, there was a proposal to impose a moratorium so that the city could go back and make the zoning compliant with the master plan requirement for buffer zones.

Eaton characterized his opponent in the Ward 4 race, Marcia Higgins, as one of the driving forces behind the A2D2 zoning that was flawed with respect to its incorporation of buffers, he said.

Stephen Kunselman said the 413 E. Huron project had resulted in a distrust of the whole planning process. He’d participated in the Calthorpe process back in 2004 when mayor John Hieftje appointed him to the planning commission, he said. He was very supportive of downtown density and efforts to bring residential living downtown. But he said it’s been a little discouraging that recent projects had all been geared toward student housing. He added, “You know, we’ll see how it plays out.” Kunselman called for cleaning up the periphery so that the example of 413 E. Huron is not repeated.

Mike Anglin said the hardest topic the council has addressed has been development. Every time a big, contentious development has come before the council, it’s taken an “inordinate amount of time,” Anglin said. He indicated some frustration about the fact that planning staff and the city attorney’s office should be directing the council on zoning issues. He characterized the long A2D2 zoning process as not being very effective. He observed that the council obviously was not unanimous about the 413 E. Huron building. [The project had been approved on a 6-5 vote at the council's May 13, 2013 session.]

Planning: Hotel/Conference Center

Jack Eaton stated that he’s not opposed to a downtown hotel or a downtown conference center. But he’s opposed to the city subsidizing either of those kinds of projects. He thought if there’s a market for a downtown hotel, a hotel company will come in and build one. As for a downtown conference center, he expressed confidence that there is no market for one. And any community that has engaged in subsidizing a downtown conference center has found itself throwing money into a hole for decades, Eaton contended: “It just doesn’t work.”

The Valiant Partners, who had proposed a downtown hotel and conference center, expected the city to pay for building it and expected the city to operate it forever, Eaton contended. He said we shouldn’t spend our tax money in that fashion. If there’s a market for those things, we should let it happen, he allowed. Certainly in the D1 zoning district downtown, somebody can come downtown and buy a parcel and do those things. But the city government should not involve itself financially in those opportunities, he concluded.

Julie Grand agreed that if there is going to be a downtown hotel and convention center, then the city should not pay for it. When the city had solicited proposals, it had been “a learning process,” she said. But she felt the city council had heard loud and clear from residents that they did not want to pay for a downtown conference center. If there is such a center, and it’s successful, then that’s great, she said. Grand was definitely not opposed to a new hotel space being built downtown. She’d heard over and over again that there’s a lack of hotel space downtown. A downtown hotel could bring more people to the downtown and help with positive activation of downtown space.

Grand said she’s interested in the question: How do we make our downtown spaces more active, safer, and in line with the community needs? If there is a hotel and conference center that someone wants to build, then she thought that needed to be considered carefully – adding that the city should not be using tax dollars to pay for it.

Stephen Kunselman said it’s great to know that other candidates at the forum agreed that public subsidies shouldn’t be used to promote a downtown conference center or hotel. He counted himself in the same camp. He pointed out that during all the discussions of the last couple of years, two new hotels have been built out at Briarwood. That showed that the private sector knows when it needs to build a hotel and knows where to put it. Briarwood had been chosen because that’s where parking is available, he said, and it provides easy access to the expressways.

“We can pontificate all we want about the need for a hotel downtown, but those of us who grew up in Ann Arbor remember the story of the Ann Arbor Inn which sat empty for many, many years,” Kunselman cautioned. If there was truly a market for it, somebody else would have taken that risk. And obviously they are not choosing to do so at this time, he concluded.

Planning: City-Owned Properties

On the subject of balancing development, Julie Grand questioned the idea that people want development throughout the city. That’s not necessarily what she’s hearing out in the neighborhoods, she said. There are some very dense neighborhoods in Ward 3, where she lives. Residents don’t want dense development – they feel it’s already dense enough as it is, she said. Grand noted that it’s important to build density in those places where people want density. And one of the ways that can be done – an approach over which the city council has a lot of control – is by using the downtown city-owned properties as an example.

By way of background, five of those downtown city-owned properties were the subject of the Ann Arbor DDA’s Connecting William Street project: (1) the Kline parking lot (on the east side of Ashley, north of William), (2) the parking lot next to Palio restaurant (northeast corner of Main & William), (3) the ground floor of the Fourth & William parking structure, (4) the former YMCA lot (on William between Fourth and Fifth), which is now a surface parking lot, and (5) the top of the Library Lane underground parking garage on South Fifth, north of the downtown library.

Grand described herself as a big believer in education through success, saying, “success breeds success.” If the city wants to show a good example of successful development – one that’s consistent with the values of this community – then the city-owned properties are a place where the city has to take charge and make sure that happens. If we want a building that’s not boxy, she said, that might mean we have to be “a little forward thinking as leaders in this community and not just necessarily accept the highest bid for a city property.” But Grand cautioned that it’s important to make sure that the debt is covered.

Commenting on the redevelopment of city-owned properties downtown, Stephen Kunselman said, “we have a horrible, horrible track record of participating in the development arena.” The former Y project [an allusion to William Street Station] was a good example of failure by a local government that came about because it was trying to do something it wasn’t capable of doing, he said. A local government is supposed to provide for public safety, health and welfare. When you engage in speculative development, by partnering with a developer, all they want to do is “suck on that public dollar,” Kunselman said. That’s not going to work.

Kunselman gave the previously proposed Lower Town development as one where the city started participating in that project – but now it’s going to be a blight on the community for years, he said, because it is so over-leveraged in debt that the owners aren’t going to be able to sell it. He ventured that nothing would happen to that property unless the University of Michigan bought the land, which he hoped would not happen. He said the city needs to do everything it can to prevent the university from purchasing it, but he wasn’t sure that was possible.

“We need to step back and understand what the limits are of what we can do as a local government, and focus on those core issues and on those core services and on public safety, health and welfare – and let the private sector take care of development,” Kunselman said. Good development can be encouraged by having a good site plan process and a good planning commission, he said, and by adhering to the city’s master plans and enforcing the city’s zoning ordinances. That’s what our neighbors expect of the city council, Kunselman added, and that’s what he thought would breed a better community and redevelopment in our community.

Grand responded to Kunselman’s negative assessment of the city’s past involvement in development projects. Just because the city council made mistakes in the past about how to spur successful development, doesn’t mean that they can’t get it right in the future, she ventured. She didn’t think that city councilmembers have been perfect in the past, but thought, “we can actually learn from our mistakes.” One of the things she thought she’d done fairly well as chair of the park advisory commission was to work toward public engagement. It’s something that she does as a volunteer, it’s part of what she teaches, and she thinks we can learn from the mistakes of the past.

For the city-owned properties, Grand said, the community should not be left out of those decisions, but “we just have to be smarter about how we involve the community.”

About the old Y site, Kunselman said it’s obvious that it would not be sold until the prospective buyer has a site plan approved by the city council. Nobody’s going to buy on speculation – not with that kind of money involved, he concluded.

Role of Downtown

Another theme that emerged during the candidate forum could be grouped under the notion of the role of the downtown in the community.

Role of Downtown: Balance with Neighborhoods

Stephen Kunselman allowed that investment in the downtown is great. And downtown Ann Arbor is the wealthiest area in the community, he said. But out in the deeper areas of Ward 3, property values have decreased by 30%. There is no investment, and those areas are not getting the kind of needed investments it takes to raise the value of those neighborhoods. How important is that? To illustrate the kind of positive impact that city investments can have, Kunselman gave the example of a Ward 3 neighborhood – Arbor Oaks. When you look at their brand-new roads and brand-new water mains and sidewalks – their neighborhood looks fine, Kunselman said. And if you talk to the people out there, crime is down and the perception of their neighborhood has improved dramatically. And that’s what the city needs to do for all neighborhoods, Kunselman said. He’s tired of walking along the street with potholes and listening to people complain that they are not getting services, when the local government talks about cutting services.

Julie Grand said she wanted to point out that she does care about investment in the city’s neighborhoods. She felt that she and Kunselman disagreed about whether there’s more of a symbiotic relationship between downtown and the neighborhoods. She believes that development in the city’s neighborhoods actually does contribute to the downtown. She acknowledged the fact that property values went down in some neighborhoods. But she didn’t think that has anything to do with the DDA, or a focus on the downtown. She thinks that people want to come to the city and want to move into the neighborhoods, because they want to have a downtown. A downtown actually supports core services and the value of our neighborhoods, she concluded.

Kunselman stressed the idea that infrastructure is what keeps property values stable and improving. But there’s been a lack of infrastructure improvements over the last decades, he said – because the city had been saving money for the East Stadium bridge, or the DDA is capturing tax revenue that could also be used to spread out to the neighborhoods. That’s the kind of thing he’s been talking about. It’s his purpose as a representative of Ward 3 on the city council to distribute the wealth to those that are more in need, he said.

In its neighborhoods, Ward 3 has some of the highest concentrations of low-to-moderate-income families, Kunselman said. There are abandoned homes, he said, giving as an example Platt Road, where there are at least three homes where the properties aren’t being mowed, and it looks bad. That translates into no investment, he said. Property values are not coming up, and there’s no infill development. A lot of housing is being built downtown, Kunselman said. But there aren’t single-family homes being built in the neighborhoods. And that’s what we need, he contended. That would be his purpose for the next two years, Kunselman stated – to help reestablish priority back on our neighborhoods and not downtown.

Jack Eaton allowed that the roads in Ward 4 are a mess. But in the Lawton neighborhood and in some of the Dicken neighborhoods – and everywhere downstream, apparently – there have been significant flooding problems. Eaton attributed that to the fact that the city’s stormwater system has been neglected for decades. Fifteen years ago, the city had hired a consultant to study the flooding problems, he noted. The city received a report but did not act upon it – because it was simply too expensive, Eaton said. Another study process has been started, which is going to take a year and a half or more just to come to some recommendations.

So Eaton didn’t really think that the most pressing issue in Ward 4 could be resolved in the next two years. But he would certainly try to push it along – to get some relief for the people who live in neighborhoods that get flooded every time a heavy rain falls. One of the things that the current study is not addressing is the harm that the city has done in houses through its requirement that they disconnect footing drains and install sump pumps, he said. In houses where there’s never been a problem before, they now flood every time it rains, Eaton said. While the city is studying its water systems, nothing is being done to alleviate the harm that has already been done to the homeowners – and he thought that’s just outrageous.

Eaton pointed out that the DDA received about $4 million in TIF (tax increment finance) revenues last year, but it also receives several million dollars from the public parking system. So there’s a lot of money in the downtown area that could be used for other purposes – additional police, additional attention to the city’s infrastructure. But because it’s the DDA that is contracting with Republic Parking rather than the city, the money first goes to the DDA, he said, and then the city gets a little bit of a return on that. [The city receives 17% of gross parking revenues.] Eaton thought more of the money that the DDA takes in should be spent on the general welfare of the whole city, especially the neighborhoods. At every door he knocks on, people complain about the city’s roads. At every door he knocks on, people are concerned about safety services. Those are appropriate spending priorities, Eaton said, and if it means that the DDA’s revenues need to be constrained, that’s fine with him.

Kunselman took the liberty of rephrasing one of the questions from the moderator as follows: What can we do as a local government to encourage redevelopment in our neighborhoods? The first thing, Kunselman said, is that we need to start pushing back on some of the policies that were put in place by [former city administrator] Roger Fraser and [former public services area administrator] Sue McCormick – which raised the cost of utilities, improvement charges and connection charges. Some of these things were just outrageous, he said. Those polices stymie and stifle infill development in our neighborhoods. A new house won’t get built in a vacant lot in his neighborhood when the lot itself costs less than $20,000, but the improvement charge is $40,000. “It’s not going to happen – the economics don’t work,” he said.

So those kinds of policies have created a stifling effect on neighborhood development, Kunselman said. But downtown is seeing lots of development, he noted. That’s why there’s such a disparity between downtown wealth and the lack of wealth in the city’s neighborhoods. So the council is now taking a new direction by starting to repeal some of those policies that Sue McCormick and Roger Fraser had put in place, he said. Those policies would never have been imposed in a place like Detroit, Kunselman ventured. But it had been assumed that Ann Arbor is so wealthy that people would be able to pay those $40,000 improvement charges. That had been an attempt to use the utility system to generate revenue – which was the wrong direction to go and we need to repeal that, Kunselman said.

Jack Eaton said that when there’s talk about expanding the tax base, it’s important to consider where development is taking place. If it takes place in the DDA TIF capture district, then the tax base is not actually adding to the municipal tax base by an appreciable amount. TIF districts capture taxes and divert them from the local government, Eaton said. The increased population will create new demands for police and other services, but the new tax revenues are diverted to the DDA, he said. So Eaton would take a close look at how much money is diverted to the DDA. Eaton said he would be especially skeptical about forming new TIF districts on the State Street corridor, on the North Main corridor, or the Washtenaw Corridor. [This is an allusion to the possibility of forming a corridor improvement authority (CIA), made possible by relatively new legislation.] We shouldn’t be skimming money off the general tax revenues, Eaton said, when we are trying to improve the city at large, and not just these districts.

About the idea of a corridor improvement authority (CIA), Grand didn’t want to comment on State Street. But she noted that she serves on the North Main Huron River corridor task force. And a CIA is something that the task force has considered as a way to develop properties along the river. But she characterized that as a long-term approach. She also stated that new development does contribute to the tax base, even if some of the additional taxes go to a TIF authority. All of that money goes toward schools, she contended, and a lot of that money goes to pay for core services.

Role of Downtown: Who’s the Downtown For?

The question that prompted comments along the lines of who the downtown is for seemed to include the premise that downtown Ann Arbor had become a tourist trap. Julie Grand began by saying she disagreed with the premise of the question. Ann Arbor has for a long time had events that have brought people to the community. Part of providing amenities for residents is having places that draw people from the outside, too, she said. “That’s what successful cities do, and what successful downtowns do,” she said. Grand reported spending a lot of Saturdays with a lot of people “in a big bowl” – at football games. When 112,000 attend a football game, they are coming from the outside, and it’s nice to be able to recapture those dollars and have them stay at hotels and have places to eat – that provide jobs and taxes, and that fund core services in our community.

So Grand doesn’t mind that Ann Arbor has a vibrant downtown that attracts people from the outside. She attributed that to the fact that the DDA is doing its job. She hears that some residents feel that “the downtown is not for me.” She didn’t agree with that perspective, but she did hear people who have that perspective. She felt it was important to talk about development in downtown that is for the people who live in the downtown. The downtown park subcommittee of the park advisory commission had taken a walk recently, to look at some of the development as well as existing parks and open space, she reported. And the idea had been discussed that maybe Main Street is for people who come from the outside. But there are some really great things that are happening in other parts of downtown – like South Ashley – that might be described as a “townie corridor.” Grand liked the fact that “people want to come in from the outside and see what a great community we have.”

Stephen Kunselman gave his perspective on Ann Arbor, having grown up here. He’s seen the changes to the downtown from the 1970s. In the 1960s, as a toddler, he and his mom lived where Liberty Plaza is today, at Liberty and Division. In the 1970s, as a young teenager, he came downtown frequently because that’s where everybody used to come and hang out. There’s been a significant change, he said. Retail businesses have gone out to Briarwood, and it seems like nothing but restaurants are back-filling those spaces. Borders bookstore has been lost, along with all kinds of flagship stores that previously brought the older residents into the downtown. That’s not happening as much anymore, he ventured.

About himself, Kunselman said, he’s not coming into downtown to hang out with a bunch of 20-year-olds anymore. He just turned 50 and – as much as he wanted to maintain his youth – he indicated he wasn’t going to be visiting downtown in the way he did when he was younger. He didn’t think we should be trying to change the downtown back to the way it used to be, with department stores like Jacobson’s: “I don’t think that’s within our ability and I don’t think that’s something we should worry about.”

The dynamic of downtown is bringing in outside dollars, Kunselman said, and it is supporting our economy. And people are coming to town to cultural events, primarily that the university provides. He thinks that’s great – as Ann Arbor does have an older citizenry that still loves culture. It’s those people who are going to come downtown in the evenings to go to Hill Auditorium and go to Michigan Theater, and to go to the Power Center and then go to some restaurants.

But if downtown Ann Arbor becomes nothing but a food court, that’s not going to be sustainable, he cautioned. Kunselman pointed out there’s always been a tension between residents and outsiders. Back in the 1980s, there had been a banner on Division Street on somebody’s front porch during the art fairs, which stated: “U.S. suburbanites out of Ann Arbor.” That tension between townies and those that come in and participate in Ann Arbor’s great cultural events has been there for a long time, and we are not going to solve that, Kunselman concluded.

As far as Ann Arbor being a tourist trap, Jack Eaton allowed that it might seem that way – because there are a lot of restaurants and bars. But he felt that’s part of any college town. About the DDA’s possible role in that, he thought the DDA does have the intent to diversify downtown, by bringing in empty-nesters and young professionals to live there. They want to attract new businesses downtown so that the downtown area has jobs. But Eaton expressed some doubt about whether the DDA had been successful at that yet. Still, the goals of the DDA are pointed in the right direction, Eaton said. We should be making efforts toward a good diverse economy downtown – so that it isn’t just a series of coffee shops, bars and restaurants.

Unfortunately, Eaton said, a lot of that effort has resulted in student high-rises, which he characterized as counter to the purpose of the goal. If you get too many students living in a neighborhood, Eaton cautioned, you’re not getting the empty-nester or young professional to live there, too. Eaton didn’t think there’s anything the DDA has done right or wrong to cause downtown to just be bars and restaurants. It’s a reflection of where the economy is right now. As retail has moved out, other things replace it. Because rents are so high in the downtown, Eaton ventured, the replacements will be chain stores like CVS or expensive coffee shops with high prices. If we can develop some new office buildings, and if new residents can be added to downtown, we might see some other changes, Eaton concluded.

Role of Downtown: Downtown Development Authority

Jack Eaton said he believes Ann Arbor has a good downtown development authority, and the DDA serves an important function. But the parameters for funding the DDA are laid out in the city’s ordinance. What disappoints him about the Ann Arbor DDA, Easton said, is that the DDA has interpreted the city ordinance related to TIF capture that is at odds with the interpretation that the city had provided. And the city council has just allowed a subordinate body to tell the city council how to interpret its own ordinance, Eaton said. “I think that’s outrageous.” He attributed the unusual assertion of that kind of authority to the fact that people have been allowed to serve for so long on the DDA board that they believe they know better about public policy than the city council does. Eaton would support Stephen Kunselman’s effort to rein in the amount of TIF capture the DDA receives and to impose reasonable term limits on service on the DDA board.

Julie Grand allowed that she’s heard concerns about the DDA out in the community. But regardless of your opinion about the DDA or the downtown, “we all benefit from what the DDA does,” she said. Everyone benefits from a vibrant downtown that attracts new residents – that supports our local businesses and helps our economy, Grand said. As someone who grew up in a small town that witnessed emptying storefronts, and as someone who has witnessed efforts that have not always been successful because that town didn’t have a strong organization like the DDA to rebuild the downtown, she appreciated the DDA’s efforts.

Grand feels that the current system of funding actually works pretty well. The fact that the DDA is receiving more money is a reflection of the DDA’s success, she said. The DDA’s purpose is to encourage investment in the downtown, and the fact that more money is being generated shows that the DDA is doing its job. She thought the council had exercised its right to ask questions of and communicate with the DDA about how some of that additional money is spent. Overall, Grand appreciated the DDA’s efforts that contributed to the city’s tax base.

Acknowledging that there were a number of DDA board members in the forum audience, Kunselman ventured that everybody knows there’s been some tension between himself and the DDA board over the interpretation of the city ordinances – about how the DDA operates and its responsiveness to the community as a whole, not just downtown. That had been a big issue in his 2011 election. He’d heard from the neighborhoods – the voters that put him in office – that there needs to be accountability. And Kunselman contended that there’s been a significant change in how the DDA operates since he’d raised those issues over the years.

As an example of that, he gave the fact that this year the DDA had adopted its budget after the city council had approved it [with changes made by the city council, compared to the budget previously adopted by the DDA board] – according to state law. That had never happened before, he said. He felt that the DDA provides a significant benefit to the community. But he also contended that because of the leadership he’d shown on DDA-related issues – despite the political intimidation, he said, and the character assassination that the DDA orchestrates against him – it was apparent that the DDA board members are not the leaders of this community: “We, the elected officials, are [the leaders].” Kunselman said it’s important that the relationship between the city and the DDA works for the community as a whole.

In discussing improvements of infrastructure in the neighborhoods, Kunselman took the opportunity to criticize the DDA – by saying the DDA doesn’t know how to spend its money. He pointed out that the DDA is not contributing to the Fourth Avenue project downtown, which includes installing new water mains and a new road surface. Now the DDA is talking about replacing light poles on Main Street, Kunselman said – which the DDA had the whole past year to plan for, but didn’t. He stressed that no one has ever called for the dissolution of the DDA. Kunselman ventured that the DDA is now being responsive to the community needs, whether they like it or not.

Grand said the city is fortunate to have volunteers in the community [DDA board members] who help formulate policy on downtown issues. As someone who serves on a commission herself as a volunteer [the park advisory commission] and who spends a lot of time at that, she appreciated the efforts of those volunteers who are working to better our community and who are doing it because they really care about the community. That’s why she serves on the park advisory commission.

Responding to Grand’s description of the DDA as successful, Kunselman allowed that since its establishment in the 1980s, the DDA has been tremendously successful. Our downtown is thriving, he said. He stressed that he’s not talking about dissolving the DDA. But the intent of the law that was drafted in 1981 was that when you’re successful, when the time is up, then dissolve the DDA and move on. That’s never happened, he said. Out of the roughly 200 TIF districts across the state, only four have been dissolved, he thought. So he was not calling for the dissolution of the Ann Arbor DDA.

However, he was saying that the DDA really needs to focus. The 2003 TIF plan gives the DDA a lot of different directions to choose from – and the DDA is “all over the place.” Kunselman pointed out that the city council had changed the DDA’s budget to put more money in the DDA’s housing fund, but the DDA was now complaining there are no affordable housing projects it can support with that money. He said that Miller Manor – an Ann Arbor Housing Commission property – would be a good project. “We’re trying to get the DDA to be more focused.” Any project the DDA wants to undertake should be in the city’s capital improvement plan (CIP), Kunselman said. That way, the community would also get to participate in that discussion.

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Councilmember Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) ticks through the list of parcels that would be the focus of a DDA-led development process. (Photos by the writer.)

Councilmembers voted on two major downtown-related agenda items – one affecting the immediate future of an individual parcel, the city-owned Library Lot. The other item involves a process by which the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority would lead the planning of development for multiple downtown parcels, including the Library Lot.

The council voted, over dissent from two of its members, to end the RFP process for the Library Lot and to reject a draft letter of intent they’d discussed at a March 14 work session, which would have called for the city to work with Valiant Partners to craft a development agreement for construction of a conference center and hotel on the lot. The Ann Arbor DDA is currently building a roughly 640-space underground parking garage on that parcel.

Based on a separate resolution passed by the council, the future use of the Library Lot could emerge from a process to be led by the DDA. The council required lengthy deliberations before narrowly approving an amendment that reduced the area of focus for the DDA-led process. The amendment limited the area to the square bounded by Ashley, Division, Liberty and William streets, which would include the Library Lot on South Fifth Avenue, the Kline Lot on Ashley, the old YMCA Lot at Fifth and William, and the Palio Lot at Main and William.

The resolution on the DDA-led process is part of a broader ongoing negotiation between the city and the DDA, related to the contract under which the DDA operates the city’s public parking system. That contract is being renegotiated, and since January, the city has not budged from its position that the DDA should pay the city a percentage-of-gross parking revenue of 16% in the contract’s first two years and 17.5% in years thereafter. It appears that the DDA board is gradually conceding to the city’s bargaining position. That will become clearer at the DDA board meeting on Wednesday, April 6.

The city’s negotiating position is based in part on the idea that the DDA is, as mayor John Hieftje has described it, “an arm of the city.” Hieftje’s view of the DDA as part of the city was further accentuated on Monday, when he announced at the end of the council’s meeting that he would be inviting the DDA to move its offices into newly-renovated space in the city hall building. The DDA currently leases space about a block south of city hall.

Also a part of Monday’s downtown-themed meeting was initial approval the council gave to a revision to the city’s ordinance on panhandling. That ordinance revision – which added some areas where panhandling is prohibited – will require a second reading and a public hearing in front of the council before it can be enacted.

An additional part of the downtown discussion came at the start of the council’s meeting, with a presentation on work being done to plan and study the 415 W. Washington parcel for future use as a center for artists and as a greenway park.

In non-downtown business, the council accepted a series of easements that will set the stage for TIGER II grant funds – already awarded by the federal government – to be formally obligated to the city. At stake is $13.1 million, which is currently still part of a continuing resolution for the federal budget. But that continuing resolution expires April 8, so the council was acting with some urgency.

The council also gave necessary approvals for a bus pullout to be constructed on Washtenaw Avenue, and authorized emergency purchase orders for furniture. And the council heard a presentation from Andrew Brix, the city’s energy programs manager, about efforts to increase the percentage of renewable energy that the city uses.

Library Lot RFP Termination

At its Monday meeting, the council considered a resolution to formally end the review process for proposals that had been received in response to a request for proposals (RFP) that the city issued in 2009 for use of the city-owned Library Lot.

A letter of intent (LOI) had been presented in draft form at a March 14, 2011 council work session, which would have called for the city to work with Valiant Partners over a four-month period to draft a development agreement for construction of a conference center and hotel at the South Fifth Avenue Library Lot site. The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority is currently constructing a roughly 640-space underground parking garage on the parcel.

The RFP review committee, which was charged with evaluating the proposals, had selected the Valiant Partners conference center and hotel proposal as the preferred one out of six responses to the city’s RFP. The name “Valiant” is an allusion to the University of Michigan fight song, which includes the line, “Hail to the victors, valiant.” The partners include prominent UM alums Fritz Seyferth and Bruce Zenkel. [Previous Chronicle coverage "Library Lot from Top to Bottom"]

Added on Friday, April 1 to the Ann Arbor city council’s April 4 agenda, the resolution to end the Library Lot RFP process was sponsored by mayor John Hieftje and councilmembers Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) and Sandi Smith (Ward 1). At Monday’s meeting, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked that his name be added as a co-sponsor of the resolution.

Library Lot RFP Termination: Public Commentary

Alan Haber opened by saying, “It’s nice to be here again.” He said that he was again there to address the council on the topic of the community commons – a proposal he’d supported as a use for the Library Lot. He also told them that he was again disgruntled.

Haber objected to the fact that the council was contemplating termination of the RFP process, when the process had generated a proposal for a community commons that he said never received a fair hearing.

Sign held by an audience member in support of rejecting the Library Lot conference center proposal.

[Haber had worked with a group that submitted the proposal for a commons as one of six responses the city received to its RFP for use of the lot. The commons proposal was presented publicly, along with the other five proposals, and eliminated early on by the RFP review committee. It was then reinstated for consideration by the request of the city council, then eliminated a second time.]

Haber told the council they should take a look at the proposal. He suggested that the council was simply embarrassed by the flawed process and was now throwing everything out. He allowed that the council was tired of seeing him, and that the DDA was tired of seeing him – still, he wanted to know why the council didn’t want to look at the proposal.

Peter Zetlin offered his support for the idea of terminating the RFP process. He criticized a “resolved” clause in the resolution that he said made the financial return to the city primary and the beneficial use secondary. He asked the council to consider the larger body of analysis that concludes that public space creates significant economic vitality. He suggested eliminating or amending the resolved clause.

Odile Hugonot-Haber tried to address concerns she’d heard from people who say they don’t understand the idea of a “commons.” She talked about growing up in France, getting woken up by the clanging of cowbells as the cows went off to a common pasture. She also spoke of heating the raw milk to kill microbes, using the pasteurization technique developed by Louis Pasteur, not far from where she grew up. The field where the cows grazed was a commons, she said, as was the knowledge used to make milk safer to drink.

Thomas Partridge looped the idea of a community commons into his remarks when he asked the council what Christ would advise – protect the most vulnerable of Michigan’s citizens by providing access to affordable housing and transportation, or follow the proposal of Gov. Rick Snyder. That’s the kind of question, he suggested, that would be discussed in a community commons, if the mayor were to wave a magic wand to bring one about.

Ali Ramlawi introduced himself as a Ward 5 resident and the owner of Jerusalem Garden. He ticked through a number of complaints about the DDA, citing attitudes and actions towards him that he characterized as indifferent, borderline illegal, and dangerous. He cited specifically the sinkhole that had opened up behind his restaurant two weeks ago. [Ramlawi's business is located next to the Library Lot where the underground parking garage is currently under construction. Due to a breach in the earth retention system some 30 feet below grade, a sinkhole opened up just behind the building that houses his restaurant. Other Chronicle coverage: "Library Lot from Top to Bottom"]

Ramlawi noted that Fifth Avenue had been closed for seven months now and that he had been deprived of the quiet enjoyment of the land where his business is located without compensation or consideration. He complained about the road congestion and the dirt and dust from the construction. Running his business, he said, has been a hardship due to interruptions in trash collection, recycling collection and electric service. All he’d received, he said, was a string of Christmas lights, some parking validation stamps, and a sign on the construction detour signs indicating he was still open for business.

In winding up his remarks, Ramlawi said that Jerusalem Garden is a part of what makes Ann Arbor Ann Arbor: “I don’t want to be another city.” He called on the city council to “keep Ann Arbor organic” and “let it grow on its own.”

Lou Glorie congratulated the councilmembers who’d sponsored the resolution to reject the letter of intent, saying the proposal was “dead on arrival.” She called on the council also to issue a “do not resuscitate” order. She said the main problem from the beginning was a lack of public process. The conference center proposal had a small group of boosters who supported it, she said, but it had no community support. She said she wanted to see public process made a part of the resolution. She figured it would take as long as a year for the community to weigh in before another RFP could be issued.

Jean King told the council that she wanted to talk to them about openness of the process for deciding the use of the Library Lot. She told them the process had not been open, and that the council had not been open to Alan Haber’s proposal. Echoing the same sentiment expressed by Peter Zetlin, King said that instead of measuring proposals in dollars, the council should weigh proposals in terms of the benefit to the city.

Library Lot RFP Termination: Council Deliberations

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) led off deliberations by saying he was pleased to be a part of sponsoring the resolution. He characterized the process has having “borne a fruit we’re not interested in consuming.” He characterized the resolution as a way to “call the question” on Valiant’s proposal – an allusion to the parliamentary move “calling the question,” which ends debate by a deliberative body. He stressed that this does not reflect poorly on Valiant.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) indicates he'd like to speak.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) noted that the RFP process had begun in response to the fact that with construction of the underground garage commencing, there had been an opportunity to alter the design of the underground garage to change the location of support columns – if a design were proposed that required that relocation. She said the whole financial world had shifted at the time when the city issued the RFP. The overall economic climate, she said, made it the worst possible time. As a result, she continued, the responses from proposers were along the lines of people just seeing what they could get.

Smith cautioned that stopping the process now should not preclude starting up a new process soon. She indicated some concern about the word “robust” modifying “public process” in one of the “resolved” clauses that sketched a path forward for determining how the Library Lot should be used.

Smith said “robust” is ambiguous. She pointed to the history of various city planning initiatives, starting with the Calthorpe study in 2005, through the A2D2 process and the adoption of the new Downtown Plan as part of A2D2 – this process included a vast amount of public input. She proposed an amendment to remove the word “robust.”

Taylor responded to Smith’s concern about the word “robust” by saying it was simply aspirational, not contractual language. Mike Anglin (Ward 5) read aloud a statement that essentially supported the idea that the process should involve a lot of public input, based on the fact that it’s public land.

Mayor John Hieftje said he wouldn’t support the amendment, saying that one of the resolution’s co-sponsors, Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), who could not attend the meeting that night, had been in agreement with the resolution’s language.

Outcome on “robust” amendment: The council rejected the amendment, which drew support only from Smith and Tony Derezinski (Ward 2).

In continuing the council discussion on the unamended resolution, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) noted that they’d heard from many of the speakers and sign wavers in attendance that they would have preferred a different procedure. She said the council had reached a novel conclusion – that as a council, they’d recognized a need to say they were not satisfied with the result of the process. She said it was a sad moment. She noted that Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) had said a year ago it was time to hit the reset button and that Smith had said two years ago that the whole area of the site needed to be master-planned.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5).

For his part, Hohnke said he was not a fan of the city taking on financial risk – he would be supporting the resolution.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) indicated he would support the resolution. He allowed that everyone knew of his disdain for RFP processes. He did have some concern about the last “resolved” clause, which stipulates that the future use of the Library Lot will be one that results in property taxes being paid. He worried that this might preclude public buildings that might be built as part of a public-public partnership involving the Ann Arbor District Library or perhaps the Ann Arbor Housing Commission.

Derezinski indicated that he was only in slight disagreement with Smith. Given the number of significant decisions in front of the council – the budget, city-DDA relations, medical marijuana regulation – Derezinski wanted to postpone the issue and let things cool down. He expressed concern about the message that the council’s action would be sending to the outside world.

In arguing for a postponement, Derezinski said the process had yielded a lot of questions to which no answers had yet been given. He pointed to questions raised at the council’s March 14 working session, such as: Could the financial arrangement with Valiant Partners be arranged as an outright sale? He characterized a decision against Valiant’s conference center proposal that night as premature.

Derezinski spoke of the way that people mouth wonderful things about the inevitability of change and the need for growth, but when an actual project comes, people don’t necessarily act.

Margie Teall (Ward 4) read aloud prepared comments that focused on the failure of the council to see the RFP process through to the end. Valiant Partners, she said, has been left out of the process to date. Valiant had not been given a chance to respond to the questions that had been raised.

Teall said Valiant was more than willing to work with the council, and that there has to be room for negotiation. Valiant had not been given a chance, she said, to modify its proposal. She said it was true that Valiant was free to come back and offer cash for the air rights, and she hoped they would, saying they are a great team. Teall said Valiant has the best interests of the city at heart – financial and cultural. She said if people did not believe her, they could ask Josie Parker, director of the Ann Arbor District Library. Valiant had worked to integrate their proposal with the library, she said.

Taylor responded to Teall and Derezinski by saying he disagreed with them, though their sentiments were heartfelt, earnest and reasonable. He allowed that the early termination to the process did raise the question of the message it would send to the outside world. The city’s devotion to growth, said Taylor, is in the $5 million investment in the lot [the cost of the foundations for the underground garage, which will allow it to support a substantial structure on top]. He said he was committed to the final “resolved” clause [stipulating the financial benefit for future uses of the lot]. It was not a matter of closing all doors, he said, but rather only this one.

As a counterpoint to the objections based on early termination of the process, Taylor pointed out that continuing a process that has little hope of success would amount to leading someone on.

Sabra Briere and Sandi Smith, Ward 1 colleagues on the Ann Arbor city council, chat with the audience before the April 4 meeting.

Smith acknowledged Teall and Derezinski’s comments, saying she appreciated the dialogue. She allowed that passing the resolution would not allow the process to go all the way to the end, and that there had been no opportunity for a counter offer by Valiant. However, she said it’s a strong negotiating point to say, No, you’re not anywhere near what we’re talking about. She indicated dissatisfaction with Valiant’s willingness to put something in writing that put the city in a subordinate position, no matter how ambiguous the city’s RFP might have been. She characterized it as Valiant testing the waters to see how desperate the city is.

Briere immediately echoed Smith’s point about how it was a problem to put the city in a subordinate position – the city needs to be paid first, ahead of any other bank or loan payments, she said.

Teall complained that she believed the negotiations with Valiant could be flexible and that Valiant was in the process of changing its position even last week.

Hieftje said he respected Teall and Derezinski’s point of view. He noted that the conceptual sketch that had been associated with the proposal was unlikely to have ever been built, because of changing circumstances. He assured everyone that there was never any danger of the city accepting risk. For him, the questions reduced to whether he had confidence that the concept would work – he did not. Given that the University of Michigan was not willing to sign on to use the facility, he didn’t think it would be financially successful.

He then touched on several general points that seemed intended to support the final “resolved” clause and to reduce expectations that the parcel would now become a community commons. He spoke of adequate parking as providing a powerful economic development tool. He described how downtown development authorities were created to give downtown areas an advantage. He reiterated Taylor’s point about the $5 million investment in additional foundation strength being built into the underground parking garage to support a structure on top.

There are other parcels, Hieftje said, for people who would like to establish a community commons. The proposed greenway park portion of the city-owned 415 W. Washington parcel was one possibility, he said. In any case, the commons did not need to be located on the most valuable piece of real estate in the city. He cautioned that the city already included 2,100 acres of parkland and that adding a greenway park to it would require finding a way to pay for it. He also noted that the Ann Arbor District Library did not want to see a large commons located next to it.

Derezinski wondered what would happens next – would signs appear with slogans like “No Conference Center,” no matter what shape it was? He wondered what would happen with the proposed Fuller Road Station – would the city back off from its vision there? “Are we always going to back down from our vision?” he asked.

Teall, Anglin and Hieftje each took another speaking turn, touching on their previous positions.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) weighed in, echoing the complaints by Teall and Derezinski about the early termination reflecting a problem with the process. Higgins focused on more technical issues. For her part, she felt the council should be taking action on some recommendation from the RFP review committee. She noted that during the March 14 work session, the council did not have a current draft of the letter of intent. That part of the process was disappointing, she said – she felt like the work session had produced a mish-mash of information.

However, Higgins said she felt there was not a prayer that the proposal would pass, if it came in front of the council. The final “resolved” clause gave her hope, she said. The council needs to be clearer in its process going forward, she said, especially on the point of when the council will insert itself into the process.

Smith responded to Derezinski’s point about the amount of work currently in front of the council, saying she felt another related factor is the imminent departure of Roger Fraser as city administrator, who’s leaving at the end of April. There would be no one to take ownership of the project to carry it forward, she feared, though she allowed that an interim administrator could do that. However, with any interim, she cautioned, there tends to be some kind of void.

Briere wrapped up the deliberations by saying that she’d teased Smith in an aside about using the word “dialogue” when the word they needed was “discussion.” The council should have a discussion to identify exactly the process for finding a use for the Library Lot. That evening was not the time for that discussion, she said, but she is looking forward to taking part in it.

Outcome: The council voted to reject Valiant’s letter of intent and to end the RFP process for the Library Lot, with dissent from Derezinski and Teall.

The final “resolved” clause, which was often cited by councilmembers and public commenters, read:

RESOLVED, That future planning and proposals for this site shall recognize that this is a valuable, one of a kind parcel, and that whatever future project is contemplated for this site shall compensate the city with fair market value and a positive financial return, contribute to the tax base by paying property taxes, add vitality and density to Downtown and provide appropriate open space for public use.

DDA-Led Plan for Downtown Parcels

Before the council was a resolution that would establish a process to develop alternate uses for city-owned downtown surface parking lots, to be led by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority.

The council had considered but postponed the resolution at its March 7, 2011 meeting, and before that at its Jan. 18, 2011 meeting. At the March 7 meeting, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) had complained that no revisions had been made to the resolution to accommodate objections made at the Jan. 18 meeting. [.pdf of the unamended resolution with the parcel-by-parcel plan] At that meeting, objections to the proposal included “resolved” clauses in the resolution that would (1) require placement of items on the city council’s agenda; and (2) under some circumstances require the city to reimburse the DDA for its expenses.

At its Jan. 5 board meeting, the Ann Arbor DDA board had approved a resolution urging passage of the council resolution, which had been circulated as early as the city council’s Dec. 20, 2010 meeting, when Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) had attached a copy of the draft resolution to the council’s meeting agenda, and alerted his council colleagues to it at that meeting.

DDA-Led Plan: Council Deliberations – Dissent

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) began deliberations by offering amendments to the resolution that among other things added additional language about public process: ”Solicit robust public input and conduct public meetings to determine residents’ parcel-level downtown vision.”

Taylor also added clarifying language that would require the DDA to account for its direct costs – those costs would have to be reported along the way, in order to potentially have them reimbursed. Those amendments were undertaken as revisions to the resolution at the start of deliberations.

Taylor said the process would respect the desire for public input and would task the DDA with being the workhorse for the process, but would not grant control to the DDA to create the vision for the downtown. At various times in the process, the DDA would come in front of the council to check in.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) addressed a number of specific questions to Taylor. For example, she wanted to know how tasking the DDA with this job would differ from hiring a consultant, like Calthorpe.

Taylor responded by stressing that this new endeavor was not meant to be redundant with prior efforts like the Calthorpe study. He allowed that using the DDA in the way described by the resolution is similar to hiring a consultant, but that it would tap the DDA’s energy and enthusiasm and understanding of what makes Ann Arbor work. It’s akin to consulting, he said, but it would be a consultancy among friends. The DDA would be better suited to the task, he said, than a private consultant.

Briere wanted to know why the city’s own planning staff could not undertake the work. Taylor indicated that the volume of work would exceed the city’s planning staff capacity.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) has served with Taylor on the “mutually beneficial” committee that has discussed the parcel-by-parcel plan with DDA board members over the last several months. Later in the council discussion he noted that the parcel-by-parcel process would not supplant the city’s planning staff, but rather would integrate it into the process.

Hohnke also emphasized that the city would not be ceding any authority to the DDA – the process would be a part of the mutually beneficial relationship.

Briere wanted to know if the DDA would be making any decisions. No, Taylor said, the DDA would make proposals, which would then be decided on by the city council.

Briere wanted to know if there would be any expense to the city. Taylor indicated that the work would be free to the city. The only case in which the city would wind up paying any costs would be in the event that a proposal was advanced to the final stage and was rejected by the city council for some reason other than that the project did not meet zoning code.

Briere posed a question that led to considerable back and forth between Taylor and Sandi Smith (Ward 1): What does the label “parcel-by-parcel” actually denote? Taylor portrayed the idea of the process as more like settling on a vision for all the parcels of downtown before prioritizing specific parcels for implementation of development. Smith offered a portrayal that seemed to allow for identifying first a specific area of the downtown to focus on, which could then proceed to development of specific parcels within that area – without necessarily master planning all the parcels within the downtown area.

[At a January 2011 DDA board partnerships committee meeting, Wendy Rampson, head of planning for the city of Ann Arbor, had led board members in a conversation about the midtown character district – part of the A2D2 zoning regulations – as a way to make more concrete for board members what the parcel-by-parcel process might be like.]

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) worried that the process would not be sufficiently public, and asked what the information distribution system would be like.

Taylor indicated that all of the parcels that would be part of the process were identified on a map attached to the resolution. He stressed that without some measure of consensus from the community on a proposal, the process would go nowhere. He said he anticipated “quieter times” with respect to public reaction, not because they’d be quelling dissent, but because there would be a consensus on whatever came forward. He adduced the example of Zaragon II, which recently won approval without opposition, as the kind of process that might be hoped for. That mostly residential building is under construction at the corner of William and Thompson.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) objected to the Zaragon II example, saying that the project met the new A2D2 zoning requirements, which made it somewhat different from city-owned property.

Higgins went on to state that she still had a problem with the idea that the DDA would be considering all of the city-owned downtown parcels. She noted that while it’s DDA money that would be spent, it’s still taxpayer money. She felt it was an irreverent use of taxpayer money, and she’d heard nothing to sway her to support the resolution.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) added a voice of dissent, saying that he, too, thought the proposal was too far-reaching. He didn’t feel like the DDA has the expertise to undertake the work – they’d simply be hiring a consultant. He suggested focusing just on the old Y Lot (at Fifth and William) and the Library Lot. He noted that the city faces a balloon payment on the Y Lot of $3.5 million. Those two properties are pressing issues, he said. He asked who at the DDA would be the project manager.

Taylor indicated that he didn’t understand Kunselman’s question. Kunselman clarified that when a project is reviewed by the city planning staff, it’s typically assigned to a specific staff member who takes responsibility for it.

Smith, who also serves on the DDA board, told Kunselman that the board’s partnerships committee would monitor the project. The partnerships committee, she told him, included two councilmembers, and regularly interacts with other government entities like the Ann Arbor District Library and the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority.

Kunselman said he could support the resolution if it were restricted only to the Library Lot and the old Y Lot.

DDA-Led Plan: Council Deliberations – Amendment/Consensus

Observing the clear dissent from Kunselman and Higgins, and possibly factoring in opposition from Briere and Anglin, Hieftje then indicated that he’d like to have a greater consensus and not pass the proposal on a mere six-vote majority. He seemed to float the idea of a postponement. Teall and Smith both indicated they wanted to see the proposal go forward that evening.

Smith then offered an amendment that added a resolved clause reducing the area subject to the process. The amendment reduced the area from the DDA district to a rectangle bounded by Ashley, Division, Liberty and William streets.

Light pink areas are all city-owned land. The red outline area is the DDA tax district. The green rectangle is the smaller area of focus proposed by Smith – bounded by Ashley, Division, Liberty and William streets. (Image links to higher resolution image. Map data is available on the city's website at a2gov.org/data)

Taylor was straightforward in stating his opposition to the amendment, starting with “I will absolutely not support this.” He noted that the proposal was the product of a great deal of conversation and that the DDA was very interested in applying a comprehensive view of all parcels in the downtown.

Hohnke also said he would not support the reduced area, but said he appreciated the effort to get a larger council consensus. He told Smith that she herself had been part of the conversation leading to the proposal that includes the entire downtown. He cautioned against trying to amend the proposal on the fly and said that the change would not be viewed as mutually beneficial by the DDA. It was too complex a task to be accomplished on the fly, Hohnke said.

Higgins bristled at the suggestion that the council should accept the proposal as it was, just because the city council and DDA committees had spent a long time discussing it already. She observed, “last time I checked,” a city council meeting is an opportunity for city councilmembers to add input.

Higgins observed that there are only four surface lots on the map that are not already built out – the Kline Lot, Palio Lot, Library Lot and the old Y Lot.

Later, Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) indicated that he would be inclined to defer to the members of the mutually beneficial committee who were doing the negotiations with the DDA.

Hieftje noted that Kunselman was trying to express a priority of where to focus and he thought that was reasonable.

Briere noted that the council had heard a presentation about 415 W. Washington earlier that evening, which was included on the map of properties associated with the parcel-by-parcel resolution. She suggested that what was needed was a way to politely modify the focus – not change the absolute priorities, but rather to change the focus.

Smith argued for her own amendment by saying that even the reduced area would be a huge undertaking, a big bite to chew off, she said. She didn’t think the DDA would be offended if the council said to prioritize the smaller area.

Taylor came back with the idea that the value of the parcel-by-parcel plan is its consideration of the downtown area as a whole. So reducing the area to the small rectangle does the process a deep disservice, he said. He offered an amendment to Smith’s amendment that essentially softened it to say that the city council believed the reduced rectangle likely represented the first opportunities for development. Smith was willing to accept the amendment, but Kunselman, who had seconded her motion, was not.

With his proposed amendment to the amendment not accepted as friendly, Taylor eventually insisted that it be put to a vote.

Outcome on Taylor’s amendment to Smith’s amendment: Taylor’s amendment nearly succeeded, resulting in a 5-5 split. Voting for it were: Hohnke, Smith, Derezinski, Taylor, and Teall. Voting against it were: Anglin, Hieftje, Briere, Kunselman and Higgins. Rapundalo was absent.

Returning to the deliberations on Smith’s amendment that would restrict the parameters of the process to focus on a reduced rectangle of the downtown, Hohnke said he felt it was oxymoronic to speak of “master planning” a subset of properties.

Smith countered by saying it allows the DDA to focus on a smaller area with the most opportunity.

Outcome on Smith’s amendment: The reduced area of focus to the rectangle bounded by Ashley, Division, Liberty and William streets was approved with support from Hieftje, Smith, Briere, Kunselman, Teall and Higgins. Dissenting were Hohnke, Anglin, Derezinski and Taylor.

In final deliberations after the amendment was approved, Hieftje noted that the council was giving away the process but not the decision-making authority.

Kunselman reiterated his view that the old Y Lot needs to be put up for sale one way or another. He was resistant to the idea that the city council should be trying to do economic development work – it should be left to organizations like Ann Arbor SPARK. He also observed that the Library Lot, the Kline Lot and the Palio Lot had been surface parking lots all his life.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the DDA-led development process as amended to focus on the rectangle bounded by Ashley, Division, Liberty and William streets.

DDA-City Mutually Beneficial Negotiations

During deliberations on the DDA parcel-by-parcel proposal, Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) described the process as part of the mutually beneficial relationship between the city and the DDA. He noted that the city was asking the DDA to step up during tough economic times by making a financial contribution to the city, and the parcel-by-parcel plan was another way they’d identified where the DDA could contribute in a mutually beneficial way.

During his communications time, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) reported out on the financial contribution the DDA is making. Specifically, he gave an update on the progress of negotiations between the city and the DDA on the parking contract under which the DDA operates the city’s public parking system.

[At a Monday, March 28 morning meeting of the two so-called "mutually beneficial" committees, the city council's team asked their DDA counterparts to convey a request to the full DDA board to reconsider the board's previous consensus, reached at a full-board retreat. That consensus, as part of renegotiating a parking agreement with the city, was that the DDA would pay the city a percentage-of-gross parking revenues – 14% in the first two years of a future contract, and 15% in years thereafter. The city's position since January has been that the DDA should pay the city 16% of gross parking revenues in the first two years of the contract and 17.5% in years thereafter.

At a Wednesday, March 30 DDA committee meeting, attended by 10 of 12 DDA board members, they reconsidered the city's request and reached a consensus that they could live with 16% in the first two years, and for remaining years as well. That is, they came to agreement on the first two years of the contract, but a 1.5% difference persists for remaining years. That translates to $270,000, based on roughly $18 million in revenues projected for fiscal year 2014, which would be the third year of the contract.]

At Monday’s council meeting, Taylor reported that on the morning of April 4, the two mutually beneficial committees had met again, and that city councilmembers had asked the DDA committee to take back to the full board a request to reconsider their flat 16% position and to think about increasing the figure to 17.5% in the third year and years thereafter. Taylor reported that the request would be taken back to the full board, which meets on Wednesday, April 6. Taylor had indicated some possibility that the increased percentage would need to be coupled with an increase from the length of the contract term to 15 years. [The city has floated the possibility of a contract as short as seven years, but in recent talks the term seemed to have settled on 10 years.]

Taylor indicated that they were looking forward to reaching an agreement in short order, which can then be incorporated into city administrator Roger Fraser’s proposed budget. Fraser will formally present the fiscal year 2012 budget at the council’s April 19 meeting.

415 W. Washington Update

The council received a presentation with an update about planning work that’s being done by a group tasked with working on an “innovative process of community collaboration to explore a greenway park and arts center” at 415 W. Washington. The parcel at 415 W. Washington, located across from the YMCA, is currently used as a surface parking lot.

The group was called on by a Feb. 1, 2010 city council resolution to provide a progress report on their work at the council’s first meeting in February 2011. [Chronicle coverage of the Feb. 1, 2010 council meeting: "Council Restarts 415 W. Washington Process"] The report at Monday’s meeting was in response to that resolution.

The Greenway Arts Committee includes: John Hieftje, Carsten Hohnke, Margie Teall, Christine Schopieray (the mayor’s administrative assistant) on behalf of the city council; Joe O’Neal and Jonathan Bulkley for the Allen Creek Greenway Conservancy; and Tamara Real, Susan Froelich and David Esau for The Arts Alliance.

David Esau of the Arts Alliance gave the presentation for the group.

Highlights of the work included a report out on focus groups conducted with artists. The committee also had made site visits to The Russell in Detroit, the Park Trades Center in Kalamazoo, and the Box Factory in St. Joseph.

The committee had secured a donation that had allowed a grant writer to be hired, who’d help submit applications for several grants, but none had yet been won, Esau reported. He said the next step would be to raise $100,000 for additional studies on the old buildings located at the site, which are protected by the Old West Side historic district.

DDA Invited to Move

During his communications period at the conclusion of the meeting, mayor John Hieftje announced that he and councilmember Sandi Smith (Ward 1) would be presenting the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority with an invitation to move its offices into newly renovated space on the lower level of city hall. Hieftje and Smith also serve on the DDA board.

That invitation will be made at the DDA’s Wednesday, April 6 board meeting. The DDA is contemplating signing a lease renewal for its existing space at 150 S. Fifth Ave., where the DDA currently pays $26 per square foot for 3,189 square feet of office space. Under terms of the new lease, the DDA would pay $16.75 per square foot in the first year of a 5-year deal, for a total of $53,415. After the first year, the amount would increase to $17.25, $18, $18.75 and $19.50 per square foot.

The DDA’s current arrangement with Weinmann Block LLC, which owns the building, ends on June 30, 2011.

Panhandling Law Tweak Gets Initial OK

The council considered a first reading of an amendment to the city’s code on disorderly conduct – the part dealing with solicitation, which is more commonly known as panhandling. To be enacted, the ordinance revision will need a second vote by the council and a public hearing.

The revised ordinance prohibits panhandling in one generally-defined additional location (in or within 12 feet of a public alley) and one specific location (within 12 feet of the downtown location of the Ann Arbor District Library.) [.pdf of revisions to existing ordinance as they were drafted at the start of the April 4, 2011 meeting]

The proposal to revise the law grew out of a street outreach task force, which was appointed at the council’s Sept. 20, 2010 meeting and charged with developing cost-effective recommendations for addressing the issue of downtown panhandling and the needs of those who panhandle. [Previous Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor Task Force Consults Panhandlers"]

At the council’s March 21, 2011 meeting, the council received a report from two members of the task force – Maggie Ladd, executive director of the South University Area Association, and Charles Coleman, a project coordinator with Dawn Farm. A recommendation contained in the report included revising the city’s ordinance on solicitation to prohibit panhandling in additional locations. [.pdf of street outreach task force report]

Sabra Briere (Ward 1), who chaired the task force, introduced the ordinance change, saying she hoped that the council would not need to discuss it too much, as it was the first reading.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) wondered about a specific point that had been a part of the task force’s recommendations – though not a part of the ordinance change. It had to do with the mayor’s downtown marketing task force as the agent for implementing some of the educational steps – providing people with information about alternatives to giving money to panhandlers. Smith wondered if it was a role that the marketing task force was willing to take on. Mayor John Hieftje indicated that it was.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) had a question about some phrasing in the existing language of the ordinance, which was not proposed to be changed: ” … from a person who is a person who is in any vehicle on the street.” She suggested it was redundant and should read ” … from a person who is in any vehicle on the street.” [The awkwardness could have arisen in the original due to a parallel with a different part of the ordinance "... a person who is a patron at any outdoor cafe or restaurant."]

Hieftje indicated he appreciated the rapid work of the task force.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to give its initial approval to a revision to the city’s panhandling ordinance.

East Stadium Bridges Project

Before the council were four items related to its East Stadium bridges replacement project: a road right-of-way easement from the University of Michigan for $563,400; two utilities easements from UM totaling $426,650; and an unrecorded water utilities easement.

The city was able to get TIGER II federal funds formally “obligated” for that first right-of-way phase of the project – city council held a special meeting on March 16, 2011 to sign the necessary agreement.

Mayor John Hieftje signs documents related to East Stadium bridges easements. Standing next to him is assistant city attorney Mary Fales.

The approval of the easements at the April 4 meeting will allow the city to proceed with getting an additional $13.1 million of TIGER II grant funds obligated that have already been awarded for the second phase of the bridge replacement project. A continuing federal budget resolution passed by the U.S. Congress – which would preserve the TIGER II funding – expires on April 8. Previous proposals by House Republicans have included cuts that would have eliminated the TIGER II funding.

The council is acting with some urgency to get the funds obligated before the program is eliminated – if, in fact, it is eliminated.

The urgency was reflected in the fact that the council took a brief recess immediately after the easements were accepted, in order for mayor John Hieftje to sign the documents that needed to be forwarded to the Michigan Dept. of Transportation.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the four easements related to the East Stadium bridges reconstruction.

Washtenaw Bus Pullout

The council was asked to approve the award of a construction contract worth $159,107 to Fonson Inc. The company will build a bus pullout as part of a bus transfer center on eastbound Washtenaw Avenue, east of Pittsfield Boulevard.

In a related item, also before the council was authorization for the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority for the city to manage construction of the bus pullout – the project will be paid for with federal stimulus funds provided to the AATA. The AATA board authorized its side of the MOU at a special meeting held on April 1.

The bus pullout is part of a larger project – a transfer center on the south side of Washtenaw Avenue at Pittsfield Boulevard, opposite Arborland mall – which will include a “super shelter.” For now, only a center on the south side is being contemplated, because topographical and right-of-way issues pose challenges on the north side.

Construction on the bus pullout is to begin later in April and be completed by June of this year.

The need for a transfer center at that Washtenaw Avenue location, of which the bus pullout is a part, stems from the termination in July 2009 of a previous arrangement with Arborland shopping center, which provided for a bus stop and transfer center in the Arborland parking lot.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved both items related to the Washtenaw Avenue bus pullout.

Furniture Purchases

Before the council were two emergency purchase orders for used furniture, but for different reasons.

The first purchase order was for $32,291 worth of used furniture – office cubicles and work stations – to be purchased from Steven C. Proehl Office Interiors. The furniture will go in the first and sixth floors of the city hall building, which are currently being renovated.

A staff memo describing the purchase order refers to a lease expiring for a Southfield, Mich. business, which has resulted in the availability of furniture at one-quarter to one-third the cost of furniture on the regular used furniture market. The emergency purchase order is being requested to take advantage of the savings. Reportedly, one consequence of the used furniture acquisition is that the old chairs around the council table will be replaced.

The second purchase order was a supplement to one that the council had authorized at its Dec. 6, 2010 meeting, for $39,000 worth of furniture for the 15th District Court, housed in the city’s new municipal center. The court had anticipated being able to use furniture it already owned in some areas of the new facility, but an on-site inspection showed that it was not usable as anticipated. The resolution passed by the council at its April 4 meeting increased the purchase order by $17,240, to $56,240.

During brief council deliberations, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) asked city administrator Roger Fraser to review the background to the emergency nature of the purchase orders. In elaborating a bit on the information provided in the staff memos, Fraser said that once the furniture had been moved into the new court facility, it was apparent that it would not be usable, without using something like a chainsaw to modify it.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve both emergency purchase orders.

Sakti3 Industrial Development District

At its previous meeting on March 21, 2011 , the council set a public hearing on the establishment of an industrial development district (IDD), which could lead to tax abatements for Sakti3. The company is a University of Michigan spin-off focused on advanced battery technology, headed by Ann Marie Sastry. The IDD would be established for just under an acre of land, located at 1490 Eisenhower Place. Sakti3 is reportedly considering an investment of $2.4 million in new equipment and hopes to hire five additional people.

At Monday’s meeting the public hearing was held – no one spoke.

Outcome: The council voted without comment to establish the IDD, which now allows for Sakti3 to apply for the tax abatements.

Communications and Comment

Every city council agenda contains multiple slots for city councilmembers and the city administrator to give updates or make announcements about important issues that are coming before the city council. And every meeting typically includes public commentary on subjects not necessarily on the agenda.

Comm/Comm: City Administrator Search

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), who is chairing the city administrator search committee, reminded councilmembers that they’d been asked for input on a job description to be used in the job posting. The target for completing that work is April 8, Higgins said.

Comm/Comm: Oxbridge Area Student Safety

Katie Rosenberg and Stephanie Hamel addressed the council, representing the University of Michigan Student Safety Commission. Rosenberg said that as president of the Panhellenic Association, she saw how safety is an issue that’s consistently discussed. She told the council that the Oxbridge neighborhood – an area east of Washtenaw Avenue, between Angell Elementary School and Berkshire Road – is packed with different kinds of student housing. In December 2010 and January 2011, two armed robberies had taken place in the neighborhood, which had involved four students.

The steps that Rosenberg said had been taken in response to the incidents included: creating the student safety commission, holding a safety forum attended by UM Dept. of Public Safety officials, and allocating some funding by a Greek Community committee to install some lights.

Hamel reminded the council how in 2008, when concerns were raised about safety in the Packard Street area, the city had responded by selecting that neighborhood as a pilot area for converting standard streetlights to LED lights – 58 conventional streetlights had been converted to the brighter, more reliable technology. She asked the council to extend the concept to the Oxbridge neighborhood.

Hamel said that the students wanted to partner with the city council on the issue, by beginning a conversation about how to make that student neighborhood safer and brighter.

During his communications time, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) noted that he served on the council’s student relations committee and had attended the safety forum that Rosenberg had mentioned. As the father of two 17-year-old twin girls, Kunselman said he could vouch for the fact that the safety concerns were legitimate. He said he was looking forward to helping out.

Comm/Comm: Reminder of MLK

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) reminded her colleagues that on the same day as the council meeting, April 4, in 1968 Martin Luther King had died. During a recess in the meeting, Briere told The Chronicle that on that day in 1968, she’d attended a speech given by Bobby Kennedy in Indianapolis, in the wake of the news about King’s assassination.

Comm/Comm: Energy Challenge Update

The council received an update on the city’s energy planning from Andrew Brix, the city’s energy programs manager. That included a report on results from a February energy challenge. The goal of the February program was for households to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5%. According to the city, the average Ann Arbor household has an annual carbon footprint of 40,700 pounds of CO2 per year, which translates to a reduction goal of 170 pounds of CO2 per month.

Around 130 people signed up for the challenge. Based on the online reporting tool provided on the website created for the challenge, participants reduced their carbon footprint by an average of 5.4% in February 2011, resulting in a total reduction of 250,441 pounds of CO2.

Brix’s presentation mentioned the February challenge just briefly, taking a broader look at the city’s energy policy, which includes a goal established in 2006 of 30% renewable energy. Mayor John Hieftje had initially set a goal of 20% in 2005. Brix reported that the goal of 20% had been met, though he allowed that they rounded up from 19.8%. The city achieves its renewable energy percentage through landfill gas capture, two hydroelectric dams and a green fleets program. They’re still working on meeting the 30% goal, which came from Ann Arbor’s energy commission.

Brix also noted that the city itself accounts for only 3% of all the energy used in Ann Arbor, so their efforts will also target households.

Comm/Comm: City of ONE

At the council’s April 4, 2011 meeting, a mayoral proclamation was issued, declaring Ann Arbor a “city of ONE.” ONE is an international group that works against extreme poverty and preventable disease by advocating for better development policies and trade reform. ONE’s board of directors includes Bono, lead singer of the band U2.

Comm/Comm: Medical Marijuana

Chuck Ream addressed the council about the zoning and licensing regulations that will be coming for final consideration at the council’s April 19 meeting. He complained that the legal department is “sticking a dagger” in the ordinance. He said that Michigan has a crystal clear law that a lot of people hate, but 79% of Ann Arborites had voted for the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act written just the way it is. He complained that the city attorney is trying to inject inspection and searches into the city’s ordinances.

Ream called on the council to separate dispensaries from cultivation facilities. Dispensaries should be included in the ordinance, he said, but cultivation facilities should not.

Present: Mike Anglin, Margie Teall, Sabra Briere, Sandi Smith, Tony Derezinski, Stephen Kunselman, Marcia Higgins, John Hieftje, Christopher Taylor, Carsten Hohnke.

Absent: Stephen Rapundalo.

Next council meeting: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at 301 E. Huron St. [confirm date]

The council rejected a letter of intent (LOI) that had been presented in draft form at a March 14, 2011 work session, which would have called for the city to work with Valiant Partners over a four-month period to draft a development agreement for construction of a conference center and hotel at the South Fifth Avenue site. The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority is currently constructing a roughly 640-space underground parking garage on the parcel.

The RFP review committee, which was charged with evaluating the proposals, had selected the Valiant Partners conference center and hotel proposal as the preferred one out of six responses to the city’s RFP. The name “Valiant” is an allusion to the University of Michigan fight song, which includes the line, “Hail to the victors, valiant.” The partners include prominent UM alums Fritz Seyferth and Bruce Zenkel. [Previous Chronicle coverage "Column: Library Lot – from Bottom to Top"]

Added on Friday, April 1 to the Ann Arbor city council’s April 4 agenda, the resolution to end the Library Lot RFP process was sponsored by mayor John Hieftje and councilmembers Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) and Sandi Smith (Ward 1). Voting against the resolution were Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) and Margie Teall (Ward 4).

A vote on a final draft of the LOI – which was scheduled for the council’s April 19 meeting, along with a public hearing – will not take place.

Just after voting to reject Valiant’s proposal, the council considered a resolution to establish a process under which the Ann Arbor DDA would facilitate the development of downtown city-owned surface parking lots, which would now presumably include the top of the underground parking structure. That so-called parcel-by-parcel plan – somewhat of a misnomer, because it envisions the master planning of districts of the downtown, not individual parcels – has been considered by the city council at two previous meetings, but postponed.

When this brief was filed, the council had not yet finished deliberations on the DDA-led development plan.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 100 N. Fifth Ave. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

The resolution – sponsored by mayor John Hieftje and councilmembers Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) and Sandi Smith (Ward 1) – would reject the letter of intent that was being prepared for consideration by the council at its April 19 meeting. From the resolution: “… City Council has decided not to select any of the proposals made in response to RFP #743, and that the RFP review process for the building site on top of the new parking structure at 319 S. Fifth Avenue that began in August of 2009 is hereby concluded;”

The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority is currently constructing a roughly 640-space underground parking garage on the parcel. In 2009, the city of Ann Arbor issued a request for proposals for the use of the space above the underground garage. The process of evaluating the six proposals yielded the Valiant Partners proposal as the preferred one.

At a work session on March 14, 2011, the council was presented with a draft letter of intent (LOI) that would have set a four-month timeframe for working out a development agreement with Valiant Partners. A vote on a final draft of the LOI was scheduled for the council’s April 19 meeting, along with a public hearing.

The public hearing and the vote on the LOI would not take place, if the resolution on the council’s Monday, April 4 agenda passes. [Previous Chronicle coverage "Library Lot from Top to Bottom"]

At a meeting of the DDA’s bricks and money committee on Wednesday, March 30, Hieftje hinted that he felt the Valiant proposal would not get approval from the council, when he told Sandi Smith (Ward 1), a councilmember and DDA board member, that he thought the space above the underground garage would be used as surface parking for at least the next few years. He was responding to Smith’s concern about the limited net gain of parking spaces that will result from the construction of the underground garage.

Also on the council’s Monday, April 4 agenda is an item that would establish a process under which the Ann Arbor DDA would facilitate the development of downtown city-owned surface parking lots, which would not now presumably include the top of the underground parking structure. That so-called parcel-by-parcel plan – somewhat of a misnomer because it envisions the master planning of districts of the downtown, not individual parcels – has been considered by the city council at two previous meetings, but postponed. 

Last Thursday, news of a breach in the earth-retention system of a downtown Ann Arbor construction site had reached all the way to Detroit’s Channel 4 News. Channel 4 sent a crew Friday evening to file a report. It was tagged on the Channel 4 website with the summary: “An Ann Arbor construction project is sinking, literally.” Chalk that up to the hyperbole of television news.

Top: View to the northeast along Fifth Avenue from Valiant Partners' concept for a conference center and hotel, proposed for the top of the Library Lot underground parking garage. Bottom: Breach in the earth retention system for the underground parking garage currently under construction on the Library Lot.

While the roughly 640-space underground parking garage, being built by Ann Arbor’s Downtown Development Authority, is not sinking in any way, a conference center and hotel proposal for the top of the underground structure might be sinking.

At first glance, the 190,000-square-foot project proposed by Valiant Partners Inc. seems like it’s on a path to approval by the city council. In November 2010, an advisory committee – charged with evaluating responses to a city of Ann Arbor request for proposals issued in late 2009 – finally settled on the Valiant proposal as the best of the six the city had received.

That decision came with the aid of Roxbury Group, a consultant hired to help evaluate the proposals and to negotiate an agreement with a developer. At an early March meeting of the advisory committee, a Roxbury representative presented a draft letter of intent, which had been worked out by Valiant and Roxbury, to be signed by the city of Ann Arbor and Valiant. The committee voted unanimously to recommend that the city council consider the letter of intent.

Then, on March 14, the city council held a work session on the proposed conference center. The council heard essentially the same presentation about the letter of intent that Roxbury had made to the advisory committee. The council is scheduled to consider the letter formally at its second meeting in April, which is now scheduled for Tuesday, April 19, to accommodate the first night of Passover. The letter of intent calls for a development agreement to be presented to the city council within four months of signing the letter of intent – which would mean sometime near the end of August 2011.

But I think it’s clear at this point that a development agreement between Valiant and the city of Ann Arbor to develop the Library Lot would not achieve the necessary eight-vote majority for an actual real estate deal. That’s why I think the city council might vote down the letter of intent – even if there are at least six councilmembers who would support going forward with the letter, which is all it would take for the letter’s approval.

I base that conclusion on remarks made by councilmembers at the March 14 work session, and regular politics as reflected in the council’s history – both recent and ancient. But before considering politics, let’s dig into some really ancient history – the kind measured in geological time – to gain some additional insight into why a pile of dirt spilled unintentionally into the underground parking garage construction pit.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach

On Thursday afternoon, March 24, a sinkhole appeared behind the Jerusalem Garden and Earthen Jar restaurants, on the north side of the underground garage construction site. Where did that dirt go? It had poured through a small breach in the earth-retention wall about 30-feet below grade.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach: Jerusalem Garden

When I visited Jerusalem Garden on Friday morning, owner Ali Ramlawi was preparing for regular business after the sinkhole had forced the evacuation of his restaurant the day before.

That morning, he seemed even a little more exasperated than he did in October 2010, when he’d addressed a meeting of the DDA board during the time reserved for public comment. On that occasion he’d ticked through a variety of concerns, including the underground parking garage, which he called the DDA’s “civil engineering project.” Ramlawi was also one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in August 2009 over the construction of the garage.

On Friday, Ramwali told me how one of his employees had driven over the spot where the sinkhole opened up, just 10 minutes before the earth gave way. He considered it just lucky that nobody got hurt.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach: Geology – It’s Sand, Man

So how exactly does dirt that far down pour through a gap that appears to be just a few feet wide?

To get a better idea of why that might happen, I talked to Kevin Foye. Foye is a Ph.D who works as a project engineer with CTI & Associates, a civil engineering firm in Wixom, Mich. How earth settles and moves is part of Foye’s specific area of expertise – he recently gave a lecture as part of the University of Michigan’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Geotechnical Engineering Seminar Series, called “Differential Settlement of Landfill Foundations Modeled Using Random Fields.”

As it happens, Foye had taken photos of the construction site a few weeks earlier, and was somewhat familiar with the site. He described how not all soil is the same – it’s some combination of sand, silt and clay. The Library Lot site in Ann Arbor, he continued, is a little different – it’s predominantly sand. So it’s going to be more apt to move through a slot like the one that opened up in the retention wall.

The make-up of the soil at the site as predominantly sand was also reported by then-library board member, and geologist, Carola Stearns in a presentation she gave to the board back in September 2010. She described the site as 55 feet of coarse, well-bedded, well-sorted sand and gravel – the product of glacial activity.

And at the end of the day Friday, I spoke with Pat Podges, the Christman Company’s construction manager on site; he also described how the dirt on the site would just run through your fingers when you pick up a handful.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach: Don’t Tear Down that Wall

On Friday, Podges also confirmed that the earth-retention system used at Ann Arbor’s Library Lot site is the same one the Christman Company had previously used in building an underground parking garage in Grand Rapids, as part of the Michigan Street Improvement project. The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority awarded the pre-construction services contract to Christman back in August 2009, partly based on the strength of that experience.

Site of the breach in the earth-retention wall at the site of the Library Lot construction. The view is to the north.

The earth-retention system was also familiar to Foye, who described what he’d seen when he’d visited the site a few weeks ago. Visitors to downtown Ann Arbor last summer will likely remember seeing the tall drill operating on the site and the vertical pieces of steel that were then pounded into the holes – down to the silt layer that the water table sits on. Those vertical pieces of steel were subsequently encased in concrete.

Between each pair of steel-beam reinforced concrete columns, additional inner columns were poured – but not reinforced with steel beams. Podges described how for most of the steel-reinforced pairs, two additional columns were poured between them, but for some pairs, three additional columns were poured. The idea is that the columns between the steel beams interlock with each other, wedging against the steel beams.

This specific earth-retention system, called a “tangent wall” system, is used on the north face of the site, but not everywhere. Podges explained it’s used there because it’s better at preventing water from entering the pit than an alternative wood lagging system, which is used in some other locations. In the wood lagging system, heavy timbers span the vertical steel beams.

Chronicle readers might remember that outgoing DDA chair John Splitt received a memento of appreciation for his service, which was fashioned from a piece of timber left over from the wood lagging system.

A bucket is filled with gravel before getting hoisted over to back-fill the sinkhole.

In addition to the structural elements of the basic earth-retention wall, additional supporting elements include: (1) “whalers” – steel beams that are bolted horizontally across vertical members; and (2) “tie-backs,” which are essentially guy wires installed into the face of the wall.

To install tie-backs, Foye explained that a small-diameter hole is drilled from the face of the wall on the pit side, around 30-50 horizontal feet into the surrounding soil. That hole is filled with high-strength grout. A steel rod is inserted into the hole and bolted to a bearing plate on the face of the wall. That rod is then tensioned with a hydraulic jack to the pressure that’s been calculated to be appropriate for that specific location, then locked off at that specified pressure. Foye said in these kinds of applications, the pressure would be in the tens of thousands of pounds.

When construction of the parking garage is complete, the retention wall elements will remain in place, even though they won’t actually be needed to hold back the earth, Podges told me. The floors of the deck, which are braced against each opposing wall, will provide adequate opposing force. The tensioned tie-backs nearer to the surface will likely be de-tensioned, Podges said, because if someone were excavating years from now and hit one of the rods, it would be best for it not to be under tension.

A construction worker prepares to release the load of gravel into the sinkhole. Note the safety tether attached to his harness. In the background is the Ann Arbor District Library building, to the south of the construction site.

It’s apparent, from looking at photos as well as at the site itself, that the element that failed was part of one of the inner columns in the tangent wall system. And it failed at a point just below a horizontal reinforcement (a “whaler”) that was bolted onto the face of the retention system. That whaler spans six of the steel-beam reinforced columns. Foye said that based on photos he’d seen, it appeared that for some reason, there was a loss of the interlock between the inner columns – it would take further investigation to figure out what was different on Thursday from all the days before, during the time the pit has been open.

Podges said that the analysis of why the breach occurred is being done by Soil and Materials Engineers Inc., the company that designed the retention system. But they’ve determined that the problem was isolated. They’ve checked all the motion monitors that are attached to various points of the earth-retention wall, as well as the surrounding buildings – and everything is still in the same place, Podges said. Visual inspection of the perimeter has revealed no obvious other problems.

By Friday morning, a Christman crew had begun filling in the sinkhole with coarse gravel. The night before, a concrete cap had been poured over bags of gravel that had been dropped in to plug the breach from the sinkhole side. Additional repairs will need to be undertaken to the pit side of the wall – they appeared to be partly underway on Saturday morning, when I passed by the construction area. A team of workers on a platform had been lowered by crane to the breach point.

According to a briefing email sent out early Sunday morning by Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, among other measures, ground-penetrating radar will also be used to check for any other voids that might have developed.

What Is the City Council Thinking?

The closest thing we have to ground-penetrating radar to detect any voids in the heads of city councilmembers is simply to pay attention to what they say, when they do their work in public view. And based on that kind of radar, I don’t detect any voids on the conference center issue – but it does look to me like there could be sufficiently solid opposition to doing a real estate deal, that the council could vote down the letter of intent before even getting to that point.

City Council: Work Session – Background

At the city council’s March 14 work session about the conference center proposal, the Roxbury Group’s David Di Rita walked the council through the draft letter of intent. He’d done the same thing for the RFP review committee at its March 8, 2011 meeting. Here’s how the 190,000-square-foot project breaks down, as described in the draft letter of intent:

(i) Core elements:

• 150 hotels units – 87,000 sq. ft.
• Conference center – 26,000 sq. ft.
• Restaurant/Retail – 6,000 sq. ft.
• Public space/Plaza

(ii) Additional elements

• Office space – up to 48,000 sq. ft.
• Residential condos – up to 22,000 sq. ft.

That square footage breakdown is slightly different from Valiant’s original proposal, which included 12 condo units compared to the six in its revised proposal. More significantly, the size of the conference center in Valiant’s revised proposal is 6,000 square feet smaller than the 32,000-square-foot facility in the original proposal.

At the March 14 city council work session about the proposed Valiant conference center: (left to right) Sandi Smith (Ward 1), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Mike Anglin (Ward 5) and Tony Derezinski (Ward 2).

The reduction in condo units and the size of the conference center is offset by the possible addition of up to 48,000 square feet of office space. [See page 27 of the .pdf for Roxbury Group's report, submitted in November 2010, for a breakdown of the contrast between Valiant's original and revised proposals.]

DDA board member Newcombe Clark has expressed some skepticism to The Chronicle that prevailing rental rates for office space in downtown Ann Arbor would be adequate to support new construction of office space. [Clark has worked in real estate, most recently with Jones Lang LaSalle, but is no longer with that firm.]

But it’s the revised configuration of the square footage that has allowed Valiant to eliminate from its proposal a request that the city of Ann Arbor issue bonds to fund the project’s construction. The use of public bonds as a financing tool has been described as a deal-breaker, even by the chair of the RFP review committee, Stephen Rapundalo, who represents Ward 2 on the city council. And Rapundalo is widely perceived as one of the strongest supporters of a conference center at the Library Lot location.

Remaining in the letter of intent, however, is a requirement that the city of Ann Arbor would own the conference center. Valiant has pitched this as a benefit to the city, but it carries with it potential for liability as well.

City Council: Work Session Views – Legal Ownership

It was the conference center ownership question that drew the specific attention of Sabra Briere (Ward 1) during the work session. She told the Roxbury Group’s David Di Rita that the whole proposal seemed to be predicated on a belief that the city of Ann Arbor wants to own a conference center. Di Rita responded in a way that suggested that the ownership question is not a closed issue and could be subject to further discussion.

Briere’s reply was fairly sharp. She told Di Rita that maybe there is stuff in the letter of intent that doesn’t need to be in there.

The city’s relationship to the conference center, as described in the draft letter of intent, is one of ownership. The city would have an agreement with the developer whereby the developer would manage the center. And just as long as the developer holds that management agreement, the city would not be liable for costs related to operation and maintenance.

The draft letter of intent also describes how the developer could itself use the money being paid to the city for development rights, to develop the conference center. That strategy only makes sense in a scenario where the city owns the center. It reduces to this: At least part of the compensation the city would get for allowing the developer to build the project – instead of a lease payment or property taxes – is ownership of the conference center.

But ownership does not translate directly to a financial benefit to the city, any more than ownership of additional parkland does. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) has frequently pointed out that continued acquisition of additional parkland, without an adequate revenue source for maintenance, has led Ann Arbor to a situation where it can maintain the parkland it has only with great difficulty. And the same principle applies to ownership of a conference center.

So far, Valiant has tried to make its financial offer more attractive to the city by eliminating the need for the city to issue bonds. It’s conceivable that the letter of intent the council considers on April 19 will continue that trend by eliminating the requirement that the city own the center, and that Valiant will find some other way to pay for that part of the deal.

But right now, we’re presented with a tale of a profitable project that even the teller of the tale apparently doesn’t believe. Frankly, I believe that a place where you can host a 1,200-person conference in downtown Ann Arbor without breaking a sweat would be a well-used and welcome facility. You could imagine some kind of center of intellectual inquiry – that’s not necessarily a university – sprouting up in concert with the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown location. Indeed, Valiant representatives have talked a lot about their desire to partner with the library.

But I don’t think Valiant really trusts their own narrative. If they did, we would not see a proposal for the city to issue bonds, or for the city to own the conference center, or any other creative approach to financing. Instead, we’d see a straight-up offer to lease or purchase development rights for some dollar figure.

What should that dollar figure be? Before the work session began, local developer Peter Allen told The Chronicle that a rule of thumb for land value would be 10-20% of the total value of the planned development. So if you’re planning to build a $54 million project, then $5.4 million would be a low-end ballpark number for the land value.

You might make a case that the city should accept a somewhat lower offer than Allen’s rule of thumb. An outline of that case might go something like this: (1) Look, this conference center of intellectual inquiry that we’re going to build is not going to be as profitable as, say, a project consisting of mostly residential units, and here’s why; (2) A conference center is going to have a greater positive economic impact to the downtown than just residential units would have, and here’s why; (3) You should be willing to accept a slightly lower direct financial return to the city of Ann Arbor’s general fund, in exchange for a greater positive economic impact overall, and here’s what that impact looks like.

If Valiant were inclined to make that kind of offer, however, I think they’d already have done that – between November 2010 and March 2011, when they negotiated the draft letter of intent with the Roxbury Group. But a simple, straightforward lease or purchase of development rights did not emerge from that negotiation.

The letter of intent is to be considered by the council at its April 19 meeting. Among the revisions to be added to the final draft of a letter of intent is language that makes clear that the city of Ann Arbor will not bear any risk. It’s not yet clear what linguistic form those revisions would take.

Work Session: Work Session Views – Ownership of Advocacy

Near the conclusion of the March 14 work session, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), who was chairing the session in mayor John Hieftje’s absence, floated a question about who would take responsibility for making revisions to the letter of intent. Here’s how she put it: “Who owns those revisions now?” City administrator Roger Fraser indicated that he felt revisions fell now into the category of “staff work” – the RFP committee’s work was done, he said.

Higgins question about “ownership” of a specific task – like revising a document – could just as well be asked about the entire conference center proposal. Up to now, the project seems to have been owned by Roger Fraser. He first introduced the council to the existence of Valiant’s proposal at the 2009 budget retreat.

Chronicle file photo from the January 2009 Ann Arbor city council budget retreat. City administrator Roger Fraser, left, talks with Christopher Taylor (Ward 3). They're looking at conceptual drawings for a possible conference center on top of the underground parking garage now being built at the Library Lot between Fifth and Division streets.

On that occasion, he’d announced the existence of a proposal for a conference center, and told councilmembers they could look at the conceptual drawings. But he would not disseminate the proposal publicly – at the request of the proposers.

Later, it was revealed he’d done that against the explicit advice of the council.

With Fraser’s departure at the end of April to become a deputy treasurer for the state of Michigan, it’s not clear who might take ownership of Valiant’s proposal on the city’s side to make sure that an acceptable development agreement is struck, based on a letter of intent. Even if Susan Pollay, the DDA’s executive director, might seem a logical candidate to champion the project through to completion, her remarks at the work session suggest she’s not necessarily publicly embracing that kind of role.

Pollay began the work session by telling the council that she was there as a city staffer. The RFP had been issued through the city’s community services area, and only a few months after the RFP was issued, the community services area administrator, Jayne Miller, left the city to take a different position. Because the project was of interest to her, Pollay said, she’d volunteered to help out as needed. But she stressed that the project is not a DDA project – she’s just assisting.

Before the March 14 work session: Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, and David Di Rita of The Roxbury Group, which acted as a consultant for the RFP review committee.

On the council itself, Sandi Smith (Ward 1) might be a logical choice to champion the project through to final approval. In fact, at least as far back as March 2009, Smith has pushed specifically for planning some kind of use on the top of the underground parking structure. On that occasion, she introduced a successful resolution at the DDA’s March 2009 board meeting that articulated the DDA’s readiness to support the planning process for the top of the structure.

But as recently as the March 21, 2011 city council meeting, Smith has demonstrated that she can be a fiscal hard-ass, who might give priority to the city’s near-term bottom line over long-term overall economic impact. At that meeting, she was the sole voice of dissent in voting against an amendment to a state grant application that prioritized support for a skatepark over improvements to the Gallup canoe livery. She had established during deliberations that the canoe livery improvements would necessarily add revenue, whereas the skatepark was a question mark.

With the current murky level of detail available, use of the top of the parking garage as additional surface parking might actually mean more for the city’s bottom line than striking a deal with Valiant. And at the March 14 work session, Smith described the conference center proposal as “one of the largest decisions that I will have had to make in my brief tenure here.”

So I don’t think Smith is likely to pursue the conference center with the single-minded bull-doggedness of purpose that would likely be required for its eventual approval. The project needs someone to champion it who is absolutely dedicated and practically blind to all other options, if it’s to win ultimate approval from the council, and I don’t think Smith is that person.

As chair of the RFP committee, Stephen Rapundalo would also be a logical candidate to take ownership of the project – even if the committee’s work is over. But to be successful, whoever takes ownership of the project will need to enjoy a certain amount of deference from the council as a whole. And based on deliberations at the March 7, 2011 council meeting, his fellow councilmembers aren’t willing to give Rapundalo that deference, even when he clearly has earned it.

On that occasion, the council voted, over his objections as chair of the council’s liquor license review committee, to allow the appointment of a single hearing officer for liquor license non-renewal hearings – Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) – instead of appointing the entire committee as the hearing board. Any councilmember who voted with Derezinski on that – which was everyone except for Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) – gave little weight to Rapundalo’s record of service on the council’s liquor committee since its very creation back in 2007. So I think the council is unlikely to show Rapundalo any deference when it comes to the conference center development agreement.

Work Session Views: Decision Time?

Historically, the Ann Arbor city council’s inclination has been, whenever possible, not to make a decision at all. The current status of the city’s Argo Dam is a good example of that. In early 2009, the city embarked on a public engagement process about the Argo Dam, which led the community to believe that the city council would be making a major policy decision that summer about leaving the dam in place or removing it.

But the council has never voted on the issue, which formally leaves the question open, though from a practical point of view, the dam is still in place. Margie Teall (Ward 4) and Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) have remained vigilant in making sure that subsequent decisions made the council – like approving construction of a portage-free bypass around the dam – don’t necessarily preclude the dam’s eventual removal.

From the time of the Library Lot RFP issuance, councilmembers were eager to stress that the issuance of the RFP did not represent a decision to develop any of the proposals that might be submitted. After receiving proposals, it was again stressed that the city was under no obligation to accept any of them. And after identifying Valiant as the best of the six proposals received, the RFP review committee stressed that there was no obligation to do a deal with Valiant.

At the work session, councilmembers again appeared eager to downplay the significance of approving a letter of intent. Sandi Smith (Ward 1) characterized it as a “going steady” phase, with a prenuptial agreement to be possibly realized in the form of a development agreement. Margie Teall (Ward 4) indicated she was satisfied with David Di Rita’s characterization of the letter of intent as an outline to get to a final deal, but not the deal itself.

But at the RFP committee meeting in early March, Eric Mahler indicated his skepticism that the letter of intent did not place an obligation on the city to see the negotiations through to the proposal of an actual real estate deal. Mahler, an attorney, represented the city’s planning commission on the committee.

And at the council’s work session, the same concern about the contractual nature of the letter of intent was expressed by Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), who did little at the session to hide his overall displeasure with the whole proposal. He stated flatly that he felt the arrangement being proposed was “very squirrelly,” and offered up his assessment that when the city went fishing for development proposals, “we catch nothing but leeches that want to suck on the public dollar.”

Even if Kunselman’s colleagues on the council may have rolled their eyes at his rhetorical flourish, they likely took to heart his point about the contractual nature of the letter of intent. It’s not “just another step” in the process where the city can take any action, or no action, for any reason at all. This is, in fact, a decision point of some kind that requires a proposal to come before the council.

What kind of decision point does the letter of intent represent? I think it’s somewhat similar to appointing a study committee to make a recommendation on establishing a historic district in a particular area. The council has a recent record to show that appointing a committee does not necessarily result in establishing such a district. At its July 6, 2010 meeting, the council rejected a study committee’s recommendation that a historic district be established along Fourth and Fifth Avenues, just south of the Library Lot. I can imagine that some councilmembers might even draw upon that episode as an analogy: Just as appointing a committee did not obligate us to vote for a historic district, we are not obligated to approve the development agreement that emerges in four months time after the letter of intent is signed.

But I think that for any councilmembers who appeal to that analogy, there will be others who are persuaded by a different historical episode involving the non-appointment of a historic district study committee – at the council’s Oct. 20, 2008 meeting. The committee in question would have studied an existing district, the Old Fourth Ward, to consider removing one property from the district. Then representing Ward 3, Leigh Greden argued against even appointing a committee, independent of what recommendation the committee might eventually make. Here’s how The Chronicle reported Greden’s sentiments:

Councilmember Leigh Greden suggested that if a recommendation came back from the committee to remove the property, he still did not imagine he could vote for its removal – acknowledging that he’d perhaps made that conclusion too soon.

Put coarsely, if you’re going to vote no later, you might as well vote no now.

At the March 14 city council work session: Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5).

I think some councilmembers might follow that same logic in weighing their vote on the letter of intent between Valiant and the city of Ann Arbor – a letter that is supposed to lead to a development agreement. An additional factor playing into that logic is that the real estate deal associated with the development agreement will need eight votes for approval by the city council.

So even if the letter of intent might have sufficient votes for approval, the real estate deal already looks like it will fall short of the eight-vote requirement.

Based on their remarks at the work session, Briere and Kunselman are likely no votes, as is Mike Anglin (Ward 5). At the work session, Anglin recited a laundry list of criticism of the project, from insufficient public process to the project’s lack of viability.

Anglin’s Ward 5 colleague, Carsten Hohnke, expressed his view at a 2010 Democratic primary election forum that the conversation about what should go on top of the library should start fresh, with a clean slate:

Hohnke said he is not convinced that any of the proposals that had been submitted are good ones, and it’s important to remember that a request for proposals does not need to be acted on by the city. If none of them meet the satisfaction of the community, there’s no need to accept one, he stressed.

Hohnke continued that he would like to see a renewed effort of community conversation – starting from a blank slate, with no preconceptions. What is the best solution for this vital parcel right in the center of our community?

Hohnke’s contribution to the March 14 work session conversation hinted that he was still thinking along the lines of starting fresh. He asked Rapundalo to review for the council how the RFP committee had winnowed down the six proposals to the final two proposals, both of which called for some kind of hotel and conference center. Among the six proposals that did not make the final cut was one for a community commons put forward by Alan Haber and Alice Ralph – who both attended the work session. [Chronicle coverage from January 2010: "Hotel/Conference Center Ideas Go Forward"]

Mayor John Hieftje’s vote could be purely political. It was Hieftje’s penchant for using the privilege of voting last in any roll call vote, to cast such purely political votes, that finally led the council in 2006 to change its rules for roll calls. The start of a roll call vote now rotates among councilmembers.

With four likely votes against the letter of intent – Anglin, Briere, Kunselman, Hohnke – there’s sufficient safety in those numbers that Hieftje could join them. With potentially five votes against the letter of intent, it’s hard to see how Valiant or other councilmembers would want to invest time and energy in putting together a development agreement that’s not going to meet the eight-vote minimum.

Certainly in the past, the council has been reluctant to proceed with only thin majorities. In early 2005, DDA board members were told that there were at least six votes in support of the 3-Site Plan to develop city-owned downtown properties – all the plan needed to go forward. But then councilmembers Leigh Greden and Chris Easthope counseled against placing the 3-Site Plan on the council’s agenda, in order to generate additional support on the city council. By late in 2005, the public engagement process had actually seemed to diminish rather than increase council support, and the 3-Site Plan never made it to the council’s agenda.

Conclusion: Get the Dirt out of the Hole

Besides offering a rule of thumb for calculating land value, at the March 14 work session Peter Allen also told me he thinks the entire Library Lot block needs to be master planned, before trying to develop that individual parcel. For a course he teaches at the University of Michigan, Allen assigned his students in 2009 to complete an exercise like that. [Chronicle coverage: "Column: Visions for the Library Lot"]

Restarting the conversation about the Library Lot – as Hohnke suggested back during his 2010 Democratic primary campaign – is a process that would be consistent with Allen’s suggestion to master plan the whole block. That conversation could take place in the context of a proposal currently being worked out by the DDA and the city that would assign the DDA responsibility to facilitate the development of other uses for downtown city-owned surface parking lots. That proposal, however, is currently stalled.

I think any use of the space above the underground parking garage needs to be considered as a coherent part of the city’s thinking, not just with respect to that entire block, but also in connection with the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority’s countywide transportation plan, the possible construction of a new downtown library – which has been put on hold, but might re-emerge – and even the current discussion of a corridor improvement authority along Washtenaw Avenue.

The sooner the city council votes down Valiant’s specific proposal for its conference center, the sooner we can settle into a process that might well produce a community consensus for a different kind of conference center – one that includes a real vision for the kind of inquiry and collaboration that might take place at the conferences such a center might host.

Valiant’s proposal is, I think, like the pile of dirt that poured through the breach in the retaining wall, piling at the bottom of the underground parking garage site. As a guy in a hardhat told me Thursday morning, the pile of dirt wasn’t hurting anything, but it was in the way. Valiant’s current proposal is like that pile of dirt, because it just needs to be cleaned out of the hole for now. If we need more dirt, there’s plenty more where that came from.

We shouldn’t adopt the attitude that if we let Valiant’s conference center proposal sink out of view, we’ll lose forever the opportunity to enjoy the benefits that a conference facility in downtown Ann Arbor might bring.

Why do I think that? It’s because I believe in second-hand learning. At the DDA’s January 2011 board meeting, management assistant Joan Lyke’s last one before her retirement, she addressed a few remarks to the board, summarizing what she’d learned working at the DDA.

On Lyke’s bulleted list was this: “If an idea is good, it will always resurface.”

And that’s what the committee voted to do – specifically, to recommend to the city council that a letter of intent (LOI) be signed with Valiant, the developer, which could eventually lead to a development agreement. The city council will receive a presentation on the letter of intent at a work session on Monday, March 14 at 7 p.m. at the Washtenaw County Board room at 220 N. Main St.

David Di Rita of the Roxbury Group addresses the Library Lot RFP review committee. Left in the frame in the background is local attorney Tom Wieder. Right in the frame is Vivienne Armentrout, a former Washtenaw County commissioner and author of the blog, "Local in Ann Arbor." (Photos by the writer.)

In the draft of the LOI unveiled at Tuesday’s committee meeting, the city and Valiant would try to strike a development agreement no later than four months after the signing of the LOI, with construction to start 15 months after the signing of the development agreement.

Attending the committee meeting on Tuesday was David Di Rita of The Roxbury Group, which has served as a consultant to the committee. In November, Di Rita had delivered a report to the committee recommending Valiant’s proposal over a similar project proposed by another developer – Acquest.

The majority of Tuesday’s meeting time was taken up with Di Rita delivering introductory remarks – a self-described “soliloquy” – and walking the committee through the main points of the draft LOI, or responding to committee member questions.

In his introductory remarks, Di Rita distinguished between the idea of analyzing the financial viability of a specific proposal – which he stressed that The Roxbury Group had not done – and the overall economic validity of a concept.

Key points in the draft LOI are the idea that Valiant would pay for the acquisition of development rights on the property, but could use part of that payment for the design and financing of the conference center. The city of Ann Arbor would own the conference center, and would not be held liable for its maintenance and operation costs, unless Valiant were to cease holding the management agreement. The city’s ownership could, according to the draft LOI, possibly implicate payments by Valiant to the city in lieu of taxes. The draft LOI also calls for reserving no fewer than 350 daytime parking spaces in the underground parking garage, currently under construction, for the hotel/conference center.

In addition to committee members, more than 20 people attended the meeting, filling the fourth floor conference room of city hall. Attendees in the audience included Ward 1 councilmember Sabra Briere; Ann Arbor District Library director Josie Parker; and AADL board member Nancy Kaplan. Several people who attended have expressed objections to the hotel/conference center project, based on either the substance of the proposal itself or the decision-making process.

Related to complaints about the decision process, the meeting began with an adamant request from local attorney Tom Wieder to be allowed to address the committee, which was denied by the committee’s chair, Stephen Rapundalo.

Rapundalo’s refusal to allow Wieder to address the committee was supported by city administrator Roger Fraser, who also attended the meeting, and who raised the specter of asking Wieder to leave. At that point Wieder ended his persistent requests, and was allowed to stay.

Wieder based his request to verbally address the committee on the city of Ann Arbor’s policy of handling all committee meetings under the requirements of the state’s Open Meetings Act – a policy that does appear to afford members of the public at least the reasonable expectation of being able to address committees during meetings like the one on Tuesday.

Background, Review

On Nov. 5, 2009, the city council first appointed a five-member committee to review proposals in response to the city’s RFP for use of the top of the Fifth Avenue underground parking garage – the so-called Library Lot. The city-owned Library Lot is located north of the downtown library, between Division Street and Fifth Avenue. The garage, currently under construction, is a project of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority.

That committee consists of: Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2 city council member), who chairs the committee; Margie Teall (Ward 4 city councilmember); John Splitt (DDA board member); Eric Mahler (planning commissioner); and Sam Offen (member at large). Offen also serves on the Ann Arbor park advisory commission.

The city received six proposals in response to its RFP. Of those, the committee eventually selected two for final consideration – both were for hotel/conference center-type concepts. [See Chronicle coverage: "Hotel/Conference Ideas Go Forward"] Not included in the final mix were either of the two proposals that envisioned the lot as primarily open space. Alan Haber, who had worked with a group to advance a community commons proposal, also attended Tuesday’s meeting.

Among those attending Tuesday's meeting were attorney Susan Morrison, who wrote a letter to the RFP review committee on behalf of Ann Arbor resident Mary Hathaway, and Alan Haber, who is part of a group that had submitted a proposal for a community commons on the Library Lot.

The Roxbury Group was hired to assist with the evaluation of the finalist proposals – from Valiant and Acquest. On Nov. 23, 2010, The Roxbury Group delivered a report to the committee recommending the proposal from Valiant as the stronger of the two. [.pdf of The Roxbury Group report]

The RFQ (request for qualifications) issued by the city of Ann Arbor, which led to the engagement of The Roxbury Group’s services, stated that the consultant should be able to “determine if the projects submitted to the City are economically viable and make financial sense in the Ann Arbor marketplace.” [.pdf of consulting RFQ].

However, Roxbury’s report indicates that it “does not include and is not intended to serve as a feasibility study for the concepts included in the two proposals … it is generally assumed that the overall concepts included in the uses for the Library Lot contained in each proposal are valid and supportable from a market and demand standpoint.”

Economic Feasibility: Committee Discussion

During his introductory remarks, Di Rita stressed that The Roxbury Group was charged with the responsibility of taking the two proposals, from Acquest and Valiant, and making a recommendation about whether to proceed with one, the other, or neither proposal.

Di Rita stressed that Roxbury had not been charged with the responsibility of evaluating the feasibility of a hotel/conference center. Later, in response to a question from committee member Sam Offen, who said he thought that feasibility was a part of the charge, Stephen Rapundalo read aloud from the RFQ for consultation services what was expected:

• Determine if the projects submitted to the City are economically viable and make financial sense in the Ann Arbor marketplace
• Determine if respondents are financially stable and have the capacity to complete their projects as proposed
• Determine what the likely timing for each proposed project might be following selection by Ann Arbor City Council, including design development, securing financing, and construction
• Help the City determine which project will provide the maximum financial return to the City
• Assist the City in working with each developer to improve their proposals and provide the City with competitive options that optimize desired features
• Help develop criteria for review, implementation and performance of proposals before and after recommendation for award
• Help the City determine which project will provide the greatest community benefits
• Help the City create a public process that encourages community input and involvement
• Provide information on the impact of similarly scaled projects in similarly sized communities
• Assist the City as needed in negotiations with the selected project team
• Attend, in an observatory role, the project interviews scheduled for January 19-20, 2010 and the evening open house scheduled for January 20, 2010

Offen allowed that the list did not specifically call out a “feasibility study,” but said he felt that Roxbury could have done more investigation to assess that the economic assumptions behind the proposals were valid and correct, instead of taking the word of the proposers. Earlier in his presentation, Di Rita had called the conversations with the developers the “beating heart” of Roxbury’s analysis.

Sam Offen enters the fourth floor conference room of city hall for the Library Lot RFP review committee meeting on March 8, 2011.

Responding to Offen, Di Rita said that the first thing to look at was the overall economic viability before asking the feasibility question. He said if the city were interested in the financial feasibility, absent a specific development deal, then there are people far more qualified to assess that than Roxbury. They wouldn’t know what to study, until they knew specifically what the details of the project are.

Roxbury had spent a lot of time on the stakeholder interviews, including meeting with representatives from the Ann Arbor District Library, the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor SPARK, Di Rita said. And there was unanimity of opinion among the stakeholders that yes, that facility would get used. What would make it a “game changing” facility would not be just that it could host a plenary session with 500-600 people, but that it could do so in the center of the city.

Rapundalo noted that the university’s conference needs are decentralized – perhaps even down to the individual faculty member. Di Rita responded to Rapundalo by saying that this potential user of the center – the university – doesn’t know its own demand or supply for conferencing services.

Di Rita concluded that the “ultimate feasibility study” is the ability of the developer to draw financing for the project. If the development agreement results in a financed project from lenders, then “the feasibility comes along for the ride,” he said.

Economic Feasibility: External Views

In the last few weeks, a November 2010 report written by Chuck Skelton, who is president of Hospitality Advisors Consulting Group, has circulated throughout the Ann Arbor community – it was conveyed to the city council at the end of January. Skelton concludes that Valiant’s conference center proposal would not be successful – based on estimated revenues of $42 per square foot against estimated operating expenses of $58 per square foot, which would lead to around a $0.5 million annual shortfall. Skelton calculates an additional $0.5 million shortfall due to debt service.

Skelton’s report has received considerable interest from Public Land-Public Process, a group opposed to the conference center proposal – opposition based partly on the grounds that they contend a conference center is not economically feasible. In a post on her blog “Local in Ann Arbor,” Vivienne Armentrout calls Skelton’s report an authoritative study.

An earlier national study from 2005 by Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at University of Texas at San Antonio, has also made the local rounds. [.pdf of "Space Available: The Realities of Convention Centers as Economic Development Strategy"] In Sanders’ paper, which is one of several he’s written on the topic of convention centers, he concludes that “if taxing, spending, and building have been successful, the performance and results of that investment have been decidedly less so. Existing convention centers have seen their business evaporate, while new centers and expansions are delivering remarkably little in terms of attendance and activity.”

Letter of Intent: Highlights

David Di Rita walked the committee through the 15 points of the draft letter of intent.

LOI Highlights: Project Description

Highlights included a description of the project:

(i) Core elements:

• 150 hotels units – 87,000 sq. ft.
• Conference center – 26,000 sq. ft.
• Restaurant/Retail – 6,000 sq. ft.
• Public space/Plaza

(ii) Additional elements

• Office space – up to 48,000 sq. ft.
• Residential condos – up to 22,000 sq. ft.

Given the lack of a square-footage number attached to the public plaza space, Sam Offen wondered what would guarantee that the project would have a significantly-sized plaza area. Di Rita responded by saying that the “stake in the ground” is the letter of intent, with the apparent implication that from there the two parties could eventually pin down the plaza size with more precision.

During his presentation, Di Rita had introduced the idea that the letter of intent would establish the “four corners” of the deal – the what, where, when and how. Margie Teall stated that the developer understood that the project “goes nowhere” without a significant plaza area. John Splitt noted that the underground structure design depends on a plaza area, and that if one is not included, then the underground structure would need to be redesigned. [Construction is already well underway, and such a redesign would result in significant expense and delay.]

LOI Highlights: Payments, Liabilities of Ownership

One kind of payment described in the LOI is some equivalent of property taxes to be paid to the city on the conference center, even though property taxes would not apply, given that the city of Ann Arbor would have ownership of the conference center.

In the committee discussion of payments in lieu of taxes, Offen said he thought that the University of Michigan had a payment in lieu of taxes program, to which city administrator Roger Fraser quipped, “To whom?” Fraser followed up by saying that even though UM does not currently have such a program, he thought that perhaps as late as the 1950s there was some kind of program like that in place. He noted that the idea is not to have Valiant duck taxes by having the city own the conference center.

Eric Lipson, former planning commissioner, chats with Margie Teall, who represents Ward 4 on the city council and serves on the Library Lot RFP review committee. Seated is Nancy Kaplan, board member for the Ann Arbor District Library.

In addition to some payment in lieu of taxes program, there would be some kind of payment made by Valiant to the city in consideration of the conveyance of the development rights – either to the city or a 501(c)(3) nonprofit designated by the city. But that payment could be used by Valiant to help create the conference center [emphasis added]: “The Developer will be solely responsible for the design, financing and development of the Conference Center utilizing both the consideration it will provide to the City as set forth in Section 3 and to the extent required its own funds, as set forth in the Development Agreement.”

In light of the ownership by the city of the conference center, the LOI includes language meant to address the city’s potential liability [emphasis added]: “Notwithstanding the ownership of the Conference Center, neither the City nor the 501(c)(3) will be liable in any way for any costs relating to the design, financing, development, operation or maintenance of the Conference Center so long as the Developer holds the Management Agreement.” The LOI does not address eventualities where the developer ceases to hold the management agreement.

Eric Mahler, an attorney by profession, expressed reservations about the idea of city ownership of the conference center, saying that he was leery of it – because you could not write an agreement that would cover all of the city’s liability. He made his support for the recommendation to sign the letter of intent contingent on the possibility of negotiating the ownership piece.

LOI Highlights: Timeframe, Reimbursement of City Costs, Approvals

The letter of intent sets forth a four-month timeframe from the signing of the letter of intent to the completion of a development agreement. City administrator Roger Fraser allowed that this was clearly an aggressive timeline. In order for the city to allocate the necessary time and resources to get to a development agreement within that timeframe, the letter of intent provides for a payment of up to $75,000 to the city for costs related to consultants and legal counsel. However, the letter of intent also states that the developer would not be liable for the $75,000 payment, if it fails to secure construction financing.

The letter of intent includes language to the effect that the various standard approvals required of the project would be those in effect on March 8, 2011, which was coincidentally the date of the committee meeting. That was an artifact of a previous expectation that the city council would have already acted, at its meeting on March 7, to authorize signing the letter of intent. Mahler insisted that the date would need to be changed – he assured his committee colleagues that as chair of the planning commission, he could say that several things in the city’s set of development requirements might change in the future. As a specific example, he cited the introduction of the new design guidelines for new downtown buildings, which the planning commission’s ordinance review committee is now working on.

The letter of intent also mentions a “dedicated representative” of the city to help coordinate the approval process. Mahler got clarification that this essentially followed the usual practice of assigning someone on the planning staff to shepherd the project through the process. Mahler joked that he just wanted to make sure it was not the city administrator who would be the dedicated representative.

LOI Highlights: Parking Space Reservation, Other Legal Issues

The letter of intent calls for 350 daytime spaces and 250 nighttime spaces to be reserved in the new underground parking garage in support of the hotel/conference center project. Offen wanted to know how many total spaces the underground garage would offer. Susan Pollay, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, told the committee that the new garage would have roughly 650 spaces.

Executive director of the DDA, Susan Pollay, exchanges documents with Stephen Rapundalo, who represents Ward 2 on the city council and chairs the RFP review committee.

The number of spaces allocated to the hotel/conference center is relevant to the financing of the underground parking garage. Why? The nearly $50 million in bonds used to finance the parking garage were federal Build America Bonds. In an April 14, 2010 letter to the city council, Noah Hall, then executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, outlined federal restrictions on how the bond proceeds can be used. Those restrictions could have an impact on the city’s ability to allocate more than a small percentage of spaces to a non-public use.

Other possible legal issues are outlined in a March 8, 2011 letter to the RFP review committee from Susan Morrison, an attorney for Ann Arbor resident Mary Hathaway. Those issues include a possible argument that Valiant’s desired subordination of rent payments to Valiant’s construction mortgage could violate the Michigan Constitution. A second possible argument is the idea that the arrangement with Valiant would constitute a “business enterprise” under Michigan’s Home Rule City Act, which would require voter approval before proceeding.

Next Step: City Council Work Session

Near the conclusion of the meeting, Rapundalo raised the question of whether the committee needed to take any formal action. Fraser told him it would be helpful to have a recommendation from the committee for the city council to consider the draft letter of intent – if the council recommends changes, they can be made as appropriate. Teall concurred with that sentiment.

Offen said he’d like to see somewhere a brief description of the financial benefit to the city, given that the tangible financial benefits were a major criterion for selection of the proposals.

It was Splitt who made the recommendation that the city sign the letter of intent with appropriate amendments. During the brief discussion, Offen said he’d support the motion, but only because the previous request by Valiant that the city issue bonds to support the project had been removed. Mahler wanted to make sure that the ownership of the conference center by the city was something that could be negotiated. Rapundalo expressed his support by saying that the letter of intent resets further dialogue under a framework. He allowed that financial feasibility would become a question.

Outcome: The committee voted unanimously to recommend that the the city council consider the letter of intent.

There will be a city council work session on Monday, March 14, 2011 at the Community Television Network (CTN) studios, 2805 S. Industrial Highway Washtenaw County board room at 220 N. Main St., dedicated to the topic of Valiant’s letter of intent.

Sam Offen makes an argument for bringing along Dahlmann's park proposal to the next phase of consideration – he was not successful in convincing his colleagues to do so. At right is Ward 4 councilmember, Margie Teall. (Photos by the writer.)

After the meeting, eight people crammed into an elevator on the sixth floor of city hall, where the committee had met. The eight included The Chronicle, two councilmembers on the committee (Stephen Rapundalo and Margie Teall), along with Alan Haber – who had helped put forward the Community Commons, one of the proposals eliminated by the committee.

As the elevator doors closed us in for the trip down to the lobby, Haber mused that here in the elevator, we had, for a brief moment, a commons.

The committee’s decision had come after two days of public interviews earlier in the week when each proposer was given 30 minutes for a presentation, 30 minutes to respond to questions from the committee, and 30 minutes to respond to questions from the public. The interviews took place on Jan. 19-20 and were followed by a public open house on the evening of Jan. 20.

At the Thursday evening committee meeting, Stephen Rapundalo, the committee’s chair, reported that the request for qualifications sent out by the city to provide consulting services on the remaining proposals – the hotel/conference center proposals by Acquest and Valiant – had resulted in seven responses. The next meeting of the committee will take place on Feb. 16 from 10 a.m.- noon. Letters will be sent to the three proposers whose projects will not be given further consideration by the committee.

Who Attended

The meeting on Thursday evening included members of both the RFP review committee as well as the technical review committee. In attendance were:

• Stephen Rapundalo – Ward 2 representative from city council and chair of the RFP committee
• Margie Teall – Ward 4 representative from city council
• John Splitt – chair of the board of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority
• Sam Offen – citizen at large and member of the city’s park advisory commission
• Eric Mahler – member of the city of Ann Arbor planning commission
• Kevin McDonald – senior assistant city attorney specializing in planning and development issues
• Wendy Rampson – the city’s interim director of planning and development services
• Jayne Miller – the city’s community services area administrator
• Cresson Slotten – a city senior project manager in systems planning
• Alison Heatley – a city senior project engineer
• Mike Pettigrew – deputy treasurer for the city of Ann Arbor
• Jessica Black – supervisor for the city’s parks and recreation customer service unit
• Susan Pollay – executive director of the DDA, which is building the Library Lot underground parking structure

Not in attendance were city administrator Roger Fraser and Matt Kulhanek, fleet and facilities manager with the city.

Process and Proceedings

Process and procedural matters came up in several different ways at the committee meeting.

Evaluation of the Interview Process

In light of the two days worth of interviews the committee had behind them, Stephen Rapundalo asked for some general comments on the process and proceedings.

John Splitt said he was satisfied with the proceedings.

With respect to process, Sam Offen said he thought it went very well. Half an hour was good – more would have been too much, he thought. He said he thought the presenters used their time wisely and that the committee questions went well. The technical committee, he said, had wanted them to ask some questions that perhaps they hadn’t. But everybody who had a question got their question asked, he thought. It was a good opportunity for the public – if it had not provided adequate opportunity, Offen felt, the committee would have heard about it.

Addressing the Committee

During the meeting, a procedural question came up after several members of the review committee had offered their comments on the five proposals.

Alan Haber, one of the proposers of the Community Commons, takes notes during the RFP committee meeting on Thursday, when the Commons idea was not moved forward to the next phase of consideration by the committee.

Alan Haber, who had sponsored the Community Commons proposal, rose and began to address the committee. However, Stephen Rapundalo, who was chairing the proceedings, advised him that the committee was not then entertaining public comments.

Haber replied that he had sent the committee an email just prior to the meeting, and he simply wanted to make sure that they had received it. Based on their comments thus far, Haber said, it didn’t seem like they had received it. Rapundalo assured Haber that the committee had received his email.

Revise the RFP Criteria?

Sam Offen opened the substantive discussion by the committee citing a letter they’d received from Mary Hathaway. The letter, Offen said,  goes back to the development of the request for proposals. It contends that the RFP didn’t get wide enough notice, and was created without sufficient public input. The letter questioned financial return as an inappropriate criterion, and asked the committee to reconsider the RFP criteria.

Margie Teall questioned whether the committee meeting was the right place to revisit the question of criteria. It’s going back to the city council, anyway, she said, adding that she was reluctant to stall the process at this point.

John Splitt said he wanted to see it through – the committee and the proposers have invested a lot of time already. Eric Mahler weighed in, saying that changing the criteria at this point after the proposers have developed their plans would be “wholly unfair.”

Offen acknowledged that it is not the committee’s place to rewrite the criteria. He suggested not changing it themselves, but rather suggested that the two councilmembers – Rapundalo and Teall –  take it up with others on council.

Mahler suggested that they might need a legal opinion. To change the criteria seemed “arbitrary and capricious” to him, and to do that the decision would need to be legally vetted. Senior assistant city attorney Kevin McDonald said he would not be providing legal advice in a public forum, but the request for proposals very clearly says that the city council is the deciding body – the council is not required to choose the best and move forward.

The request for proposals, said McDonald, provides a broad reservation of rights to the council. With respect to the requirement that there be a financial return, he said, this was just one aspect of the criteria. Rapundalo  concurred with McDonald that it was just one of many criteria, but that it was a key one: “You gotta tell us how you’re going to pay for it!” The development of the RFP language, said Rapundalo, had been vetted by the city staff, and looked at closely by two council members [likely Sandi Smith and Marcia Higgins, who had sponsored the council resolution directing staff to develop the RFP] then shared with all of council.

Committee Deliberations on Proposals

In presenting the committee’s deliberations from Thursday, we’ve grouped the majority of the comments proposal-by-proposal – although the bulk of those comments were actually made member-by-member as they gave their observations about each proposal. Separately, we’ve drawn out as separate chunks a few themes of more general interest.

Community Commons

Sam Offen: He said he found it “too amorphous.” As active as the proposers might be, he said, they just didn’t have the experience to pull it off.

Margie Teall: Teall said it was a great idea and that it was proposed by a really passionate group of people. She suggested that she thought it might become a reality and that she would hope that the group would begin to look at other sites in the city for realizing the vision. [Supporters of the site have contended that the Library Lot is the only site where this vision could be realized.]

Wendy Rampson: Rampson said that she could not visualize what you would actually see there.

Mike Pettigrew: Pettigrew characterized the Community Commons as having a donation model of funding – for building and maintaining it. He therefore had concerns about that, saying it was a risk. There was a difference, he said, between the cost of a park and the cost of a parking lot [which is a possibility for the top of the underground garage, if no proposal is eventually accepted by the city council]. That difference had to do with maintenance and revenues, something that John Splitt of the DDA confirmed.

Kevin McDonald: For the Community Commons there would be a completely different process for proceeding, he said – a comment that reflected the general sentiment that what the Community Commons had proposed was not a project, but rather a process for arriving at a project.

Dahlmann

During the interviews, Ben Dahlmann indicated that the features depicted in their proposal would cost between $2.5 million and $5 million. They were prepared to commit to a $2.5 million donation to the city.

John Splitt: From Dahlmann, Splitt said, he’d wanted to know what the $2.5 million would pay for – it was clear that it was a $2.5 million donation with no hard numbers about the specific elements of the park.

Sam Offen: The Dahlmann proposal was interesting, Offen said. He had learned a lot about it, more than he knew before, and he felt it had some merit.

He liked the fact that it had a fixed dollar amount and that Dahlmann was saying, “I’m in with $2.5 million – if it’s going to cost more than $2.5 million, then we’ll talk.” Said Offen: “It’s a reasonable starting point from their perspective.” There was no market analysis – but there was no market analysis from anybody.

Offen at that point introduced one way of framing the alternatives, namely, what is Plan B? He said he felt there was a minimal cost if the park failed. On the other hand, after building a hotel/conference center, failure meant an empty building. Offen allowed that it was a negative way to look at the question. He also acknowledged that there were security and maintenance concerns, but overall he concluded that the Dahlmann proposal had more merit than he originally thought.

Margie Teall: Teall said she would feel more comfortable about the Dahlmann proposal if they were offering to purchase the property, using the vehicle of a conservancy. She did not like the idea that the city would accept the burden of organizing the conservancy.

She noted that there were seven specific detailed features of Dahlmann’s proposal, but there were no numbers for any of it. She described it as feeling like a student presentation from one of Peter Allen’s classes. She said that she felt Dahlmann had not listened very well to the Ann Arbor District Library’s concerns.

[During the interviews, Splitt had asked Ben Dahlmann to characterize their discussions with the Ann Arbor District Library. Dahlmann said that they'd heard from the library that theirs was not the library's favorite proposal – due to concerns about vagrants entering the building. When he looked to the library's director, Josie Parker, to confirm that he was characterizing their conversation accurately, she replied, "You're not." Asked to clarify by Rapundalo, Parker went on to talk about how the downtown library welcomed over 700,000 of all kinds of people to its downtown location every year – seven times the capacity of Michigan Stadium. She said that the library's concern was the resources that were required to program and maintain a space of the size of the Library Lot. The library, she said, had experience in programing and maintaining a large public space, and in their experience, people did not necessarily clean up after themselves.]

Eric Mahler: On the two open-space proposals, Mahler said that only the most extremely well-thought-out open space would work in an urban setting. Of the two open-space proposals, he liked Dahlmann’s better. But he noted that the multitude of features would be difficult to maintain and that he “could not get with that if it can’t cover its costs.”

Stephen Rapundalo: About the Dahlmann proposal, Rapundalo said he learned, like Offen, a lot more about it. He was disappointed that they wouldn’t say what elements in their picture would cost what amount. Was it $2.5 million or $5 million? They were not able to explain the gap. There was not even a semblance of an explanation, he said, and that was a concern.

Rapundalo said that he was very hopeful that the two open-space proposals would take the opportunity to provide more specific cost analysis and that Dahlmann had fallen short. He said it could have been done and that he was surprised and disappointed that Dahlmann hadn’t done that, because he believed they had the capacity to provide that information.

Wendy Rampson: She said that as an urban place, the Dahlmann proposal was delightful to review and that JJR had created a really wonderful design. She expressed concern about the ability of a park to survive with the current edges – there was nothing currently to the west or east to serve such an edge.

Mike Pettigrew: The city’s deputy treasurer liked the $2.5 million donation from Dahlmann but noted that the difference between $2.5 million and $5 million was a big range. He had concerns about ongoing maintenance costs and said he would prefer to see $2.5 million put towards ownership of the parcel, with Dahlmann then taking responsibility for implementing the vision. Teall questioned whether that should be done without a commitment to actually build the park. Pettigrew said he simply felt that it was a “cleaner” approach from a financial point of view.

Jessica Black: About the Dahlmann plan, Black expressed skepticism that the city needed another outdoor ice rink, noting that it was a lot of work to program the space at the city’s Buhr ice rink. Black said she found the idea of having an open-air shelter with restrooms a good one.

Kevin McDonald: He responded to a question from Sam Offen about whether the $2.5 million is tax-deductible. McDonald said he was not going to evaluate whether it was deductible or not. But he said he expected that probably Dahlmann was looking for it to be deductible. About the Dahlmann proposal, McDonald said they were “a specific cost proposal away from a reasonable proposal.”

Jarratt Architecture

John Splitt: Splitt characterized the proposal as “an architect looking for a developer. There’s no meat on the bones.”

Jarratt Architecture's Library Lot proposal.

Sam Offen: He agreed with someone else who had described it as “all fluff” commitments. He said he was not impressed with their proposal.

Margie Teall: She said it was great architecture, just not in the right place. She said that Jarratt was not ready to build a team and had not considered at all the pedestrian interest – there were few connections from the site to the surrounding area.

Eric Mahler: Mahler described the proposal as “very thin.” However, from a design perspective, he thought it fit in the best of all the proposals.

Stephen Rapundalo: He concurred that there was “not much meat on the bone.” He said he thought that Jarratt could make it happen, and had the experience working with development teams to do so, but described his reaction as “kind of disappointed.” Rapundalo said they appeared to have started with a hotel, and built everything around that. They should have started with the public space and let the building design follow from that. With respect to that principle, Rapundalo said, Valiant came closest.

Wendy Rampson: Rampson said she didn’t see anything that she liked in the proposal. She especially did not like the driveway, which Teall had pointed out as pedestrian un-friendly.

Mike Pettigrew: Pettigrew said the Jarratt Architecture proposal had no financial aspect that he could look at.

Kevin McDonald: He said he would set aside Jarratt, citing capacity issues for doing the pre-development part.

Acquest

John Splitt: The two proposals for hotel/conference centers had some merit, he said, with a potential positive return, but it’s hard to tell what’s there.

A rendering of the Library Lot proposal by Acquest.

Sam Offen: Acquest and Valiant, Offen said, appear to be similar, but they had significant differences. He said he was bothered that Acquest wanted to purchase the air rights to the Library Lot, but did not want to pay anything until a conference center was built on the old YMCA parking lot, at the northwest corner of Fifth and William.

He acknowledged that Acquest was willing to negotiate, but felt that it was a bad starting point for them. [The starting point of the negotiation was something Offen pointed to for Dahlmann as a positive: Here's $2.5 million, if it costs more, we'll talk.]

Margie Teall: Teall said there was no impact analysis or a market study. She had concerns about the expectation that the city would develop a conference center on the site of the old YMCA.

Eric Mahler: Mahler said he liked the design, but that the conference center construction required at the YMCA lot was almost a non-starter. He also questioned whether the lofty statements about environmental benefits had not been thought out at all, and were too vague and off in the distance.

Stephen Rapundalo: He said he had concerns about the design, which he described as somewhat “hulking.” However, his biggest problem with the Acquest proposal, said Rapundalo, was the quid pro quo that it required for development of a conference center on the YMCA lot. That gave him pause, he said, and was a red flag.

Splitt chimed in to say that this could be seen as one possible advantage with respect to the potential “white elephant effect,” namely, if you split the hotel facility off from the conference center, then you might still have a useful piece of real estate. Rapundalo acknowledged that one complaint among real estate developers is that there’s not sufficient floor plate in the existing inventory to support the location of a bigger company headquarters downtown.

Wendy Rampson: She expressed concern that the Acquest proposal, with its blocky design, would possibly change the dynamic along Liberty Street.

Mike Pettigrew: Pettigrew said he did not like the idea of offering to pay X but later pay X + Y. He said he was not sure that it didn’t violate the conditions of the RFP to propose a contingency like that. Mahler chimed in to say that Acquest would have simply been better off if they’d left that contingent part out of the proposal.

Jessica Black: She said she looked at the proposals from a park/event perspective – she oversees special events in the parks. She said that Acquest’s 5,000 square feet of meeting space, which would fit 500-800 people, was still a very large space. She said she received calls quite frequently for 200-300 people spaces.

Kevin McDonald He was most concerned about the “buy in” from the city required for the YMCA lot, which the developer had asked the city to accept on a “mini master plan” level.

Valiant

John Splitt: Grouping the two proposals for hotel/conference centers, Splitt said they have some merit with a potential positive return, but it’s hard to tell what’s there.

Valiant's design for a hotel and conference center.

Sam Offen: Offen said he was not crazy about the way the Valiant proposal looks. He said it had a lot of good points to it, but the biggest question is that it counts on a demand and need that he just didn’t know was actually there. It’s a big building with a lot of space, and it could end up as a huge white elephant, he feared.

Margie Teall: She described Valiant as having an experienced, well-managed team that did not just have out-of-state members but also had local participation. She said she thought they had a heartfelt commitment, and that of all the proposals they had the best ideas for partnering with the library. Their idea of a joint research facility with a library was fabulous, Teall said. She liked the striking design – and cited a positive reaction of her 16-year-old daughter in support of it. She said she liked the rooftop garden and the floating design, and described the project as imaginative architecture.

Eric Mahler: He stated that he was not crazy about the Valiant proposal. He described it as looking like a tornado had blown through there, with things hanging off the edge. He was concerned about the perception of the building from east and west, which would be a nondescript white column, and from north and south, with the view simply a slab of glass. He worried about the 32,000 square feet of conference center space, which would be there forever. He wondered how they could move forward based on the word of 60 people that the Valiant proposers had interviewed. They needed to do better than that, Mahler said – some of the people interviewed need to step forward and put their face on that.

Stephen Rapundalo: He reported that he didn’t have as much of an allergic reaction to the architectural design as Mahler had – he allowed that it was more bold. Teall, he said, had raised a decent point – in and of itself, the design could be a draw for people downtown. Responding to a point Mahler made about how realistic it was for any proposer to have their financial arrangements lined up, Rapundalo said that Valiant went the farthest towards that. It was not realistic to expect someone in the current economy to have 100% of the financing. He said he did share people’s concerns from the standpoint of an appropriate amount of risk. However, he said he would stop short of dismissing further consideration just because it requires future public contribution.

Wendy Rampson: She described the Valiant proposal as successfully mimicking the roofline of State Street and Main Street, while at the same time providing a visual landmark visible from a greater distance. She liked the idea of taking the conference center right up to the library and how it might overlap with the library’s space needs. She was less enthusiastic about the idea of taking the entrance to the library and putting it on Library Lane. She said that she saw the potential for Fifth Avenue to become a real spine, and for that reason she was not a fan of Library Lane – she was “not wild about it.” But she allowed that it was a decision that’s already been made. She thought that the connections up to Liberty Street were good.

Mike Pettigrew: Pettigrew said that of all the proposals, Valiant’s was the most complete from a financial point of view, noting that the design is growing on him. One concern he had was that the lease payment to the city would be subordinated to the first lender. In response to a question from Teall and Offen about whether that practice was standard, Pettigrew stated that the city had the legal right to be first in line, and that Valiant was proposing that the city sign away a right it already had. And that reflected some amount of risk, he concluded. The second point Pettigrew made as a concern was the $8 million worth of bonds the city was asked to issue.

Kevin McDonald: McDonald said that subordinating the city’s right to first lien adds a certain amount of risk and he wondered what the actual guarantee would be. Regarding the $8 million in bonds, he said, Valiant would likely be looking to finance that through the tax increment financing from the DDA district.

Deliberations of a More General Nature

Some of the commentary was either not tied to a specific proposal, or else provided interest independent of a proposal.

Down Economy: Nonprofits

In connection with the two open-space proposals, there was some skepticism, given the current economic climate, that the community had the capacity to support a downtown centrally located park through a conservancy of some kind. Sam Offen, responding to a remark that Stephen Rapundalo had made during the interviews about the fact that even the Leslie Science Center was struggling, told Rapundalo that Leslie, by the way, is doing fine.

Rapundalo pointed out that Leslie Science Center was still asking for support from the city, to which Offen responded that they were simply trying to hold the city to what it had promised. At that, Jayne Miller, community services area administrator, chimed in: “We didn’t promise anything.” Choosing a somewhat less controversial example, Margie Teall pointed out that even the Michigan Theater is struggling. She also pointed out that with the departure of Pfizer, all nonprofits in the area were struggling.

Demand for Gathering Space

Jessica Black said that the interest she heard now was in having a unique space to stage an event – she saw that in the way that people were using the city’s parks. For example, there were four weddings at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market last year, Liberty Plaza had been used for a “chalk the park” event, and from West Park a live radio show – Radio Free Bacon, had been broadcast.

Infrastructure

Cresson Slotten, a city senior project manager in systems planning, said he saw himself primarily as providing answers to any questions that people might have. Wendy Rampson asked him about sewer loads. He said that the two open-space proposals would not have any significant pull on the water or sewer load. The key, he said, was to use the storm water in an interesting way. He stressed that the parking garage itself had been designed to retain storm water, so from that point of view, none of the proposals should have any effect. He said he had held off on trying to quantify anything until the proposals became less nebulous and the sizes were more clearly known.

Margie Teal and Susan Pollay queried about the installation of new water mains. Alison Heatley, a city senior project engineer, confirmed that the infrastructure on the immediate site was being brought up to the levels needed to provide for more intense development. Heatley did say that any potential problem with the sanitary system would be downstream, but that it could be addressed.

Framing the Question

Kevin McDonald of the city attorney’s office said that the way he would be looking at these proposals was at the level of contingencies and who controls the contingencies. Deputy treasurer Mike Pettigrew said that for his part, the most important consideration for people to ask themselves was how much risk they were willing to accept.

Density: View from the Downtown Development Authority

Susan Pollay, executive director of Ann Arbor DDA, said that she gave heavy weighting to the previous experience of the proposers. She suggested that anyone should be taken off the table who wants to use this as a chance to learn how to do development.

Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, suggested that any project for the Library Lot needed to complement and support the library, not leech off of it.

She felt that no thought should be given to any proposal by someone who hasn’t done this kind of thing before. She characterized the parcel as “the hole in the donut” – it was an opportunity to create density, she said. It was important to have Josie Parker of the Ann Arbor District Library at the table, and that there should not be a project built that would “leech off the library” – the project should add something to support the library.

The library, said Pollay – that is a community gathering space. In the 26 years she’d lived in Ann Arbor, Pollay said, the 100,000 people who live here tend to congregate in groups 20 or 30, and not in large gatherings. When they did come together in large throngs, it was at events like the Top of the Park – which she noted took $1.5 million to program for three weeks out of the year.

She concluded that she did not see big gatherings happening. But she noted that there is a need to get together, and in Ann Arbor we get together in smaller groups – people want to brush by each other, she said, like at the sculpture park in front of the People’s Food Co-op, at Fourth and Catherine. She said a good project would not simply take advantage of the 600 people who are going to park their cars in the underground parking garage. So for Pollay, there were only two proposals that came into consideration – the hotel/conference centers, which were proposals that might help activate the library on evenings and weekends.

Density: View from the City

Jayne Miller, the city’s community services area administrator, began by saying: “What do I have to lose?” [Miller is leaving her post with the city in mid-February to take a job with Huron-Clinton Metro Parks.] Miller said there had been five years of effort towards developing a plan for downtown density. And part of that effort, she said, was the greenbelt millage to improve the viability of the plan to increase density. She said she shared the concerns about possible financing of a hotel/conference center, but that was why they needed a consultant and that the consultant would do the due diligence on the finances.

With respect to the ice rink included in Valiant’s proposal, Miller described it as “absolutely ridiculous.” That prompted Sam Offen to ask why. Miller’s one-word initial answer: cost. From 20 years of experience, she said, you don’t make an ice rink facility profitable based on people coming to free skate.

Deliberations on Going Forward

It was Offen who then floated the question of whether the committee was going to limit the number of proposals considered. He expressed concern about ending up with “too firm a plan” that night. There was some discussion about whether to discuss which proposals to bring forward, rather than approach it from the bottom and discuss which proposals to eliminate. In the end the committee decided to put forth their rankings of the various proposals from top to bottom.

Offen’s rankings: Valiant, Acquest, Dahlmann, Jarratt Architecture, Community Commons. Teall’s rankings: Valiant, Acquest, Jarratt Architecture, Dahlmann, Community Commons. Eric Mahler and John Splitt: Valiant and Acquest (tie), Dahlmann, Jarratt Architecture, Community Commons. Rapundalo: Valiant, Acquest, Dahlmann and Jarratt Architecture (tie), Community Commons.

With it clear that Valiant and Acquest were everyone’s top-ranked proposals, Offen raised the question of whether to advance two, rather than three proposals to the next stage. He made an argument for the Dahlmann proposal by saying that it was still very early in the process and that they had a duty to look at something that is different.

Rapundalo questioned Offen’s contention that there was a duty. Why was there a duty, he asked. Said Offen, “Because I represent the citizens of Ann Arbor.” At that Rapundalo replied that the committee had “already knocked those two off once and you agreed!” Offen allowed that yes, he had in some sense changed his mind.

And part of what had changed his mind was a memo that Sabra Briere (Ward 1) had distributed about a conversation she had with Chuck Skelton, president of Hospitality Advisors Consulting Group, in which Skelton had expressed skepticism about the market for a hotel. Offen said he simply felt it would be useful to have a third alternative.

Teall expressed concerns about raising the expectations of proposers who would be advancing to the next page. Mahler told Offen that the consideration he was asking for had already been given. To offer a second bite at the apple, said Mahler, does a disservice to the proposers and the community.

Mahler was not enthusiastic about bringing Acquest along, either, because of the contingency related to the YMCA parking lot. Teall agreed with Mahler on that point. Splitt weighed in saying that he wanted two proposals to go forward. Mahler said one thing that weighed in Acquest’s favor was the permanent residents that would result from the condominium element.

The committee reached a consensus that they would give Acquest and Valiant further consideration.

[Link to city website with downloadable .pdf files of all proposals and other information related to the Library Lot development.]

At Monday night's board meeting, the annual report by Ann Arbor District Library director Josie Parker was made as a video presentation. (The video report is available on the library's website at www.aadl.org/aboutus/annualreport.) In the foreground: board members Prue Rosenthal, left, and Rebecca Head. (Photo by the writer.)

Library board members also discussed their hopes for a development next to the downtown library. The city solicited bids for development atop an underground parking structure being built just north of the library, on land stretching between Fourth and Fifth and Division. The library has a vested interest in that project – as board members noted on Monday, the development there will affect their decision about what to do with the downtown library building.

No representative from the library is on the city’s review committee that’s currently evaluating proposals for the site. But two members of that committee did attend Monday’s board meeting, and library director Josie Parker plans to meet with city officials to convey the board’s feedback.

Bottom line: A place that’s active and that attracts a diverse group of people around the clock would be best for the library. Also needed, board members said, is some master planning for that entire area, which includes the former YMCA lot and the AATA’s Blake Transit Center.

Moving Elections – Even or Odd?

At a Dec. 16 meeting, the Ann Arbor Public Schools board voted to move their elections from May to November, and to hold them annually. Because of the library’s historical links to the school district, the library board is required to hold their elections at the same time as the school board. [For more background, see previous Chronicle coverage: "School Election Change Would Affect Library"]

The library board now must hold their elections in November, but they are not required to hold elections annually. So at their Monday meeting, the library board explored three options: holding elections 1) annually, 2) on even-numbered years, or 3) on odd-numbered years. Currently, elections for library board are held on even-numbered years – the next election had been scheduled for May 2010.

AADL director Josie Parker explained that the library wouldn’t have to pay for the election, regardless of their decision. There would always be another governmental unit on the ballot that would foot the bill.

Board members quickly ruled out the option of holding elections annually. Ed Surovell cited a huge advantage in having the elections on odd-numbered years – on those years, library issues wouldn’t be competing with congressional or presidential elections.

Margaret Leary proposed a resolution to hold elections in odd-numbered years. She then presented arguments against that option. One concern was the nature of the electorate during those off-year elections. There’s a much smaller turnout on those years, Leary noted, and those people likely would care more about the school board elections. Elections with a larger turnout might be better, she said.

Another argument in favor of even years is that it’s simpler, Leary said, since that’s already the schedule that library board elections follow. Terms for Barbara Murphy, Jan Barney Newman, Carola Stearns and Ed Surovell end in 2010. Terms for Rebecca Head, Margaret Leary and Prue Rosenthal end in 2012.

Leary also contended that it would look better to the public if terms were extended by just a few months, not 18 months. Board members whose terms expire in June 2010 would have to extend their terms until the end of the year, if elections were moved to November of even years. If elections were held in odd-numbered years, those terms would have to be extended through December 2011 for this cycle.

Outcome: A vote was taken on the resolution proposing elections in odd-numbered years, and received no support. Prue Rosenthal then proposed a resolution calling for elections in even-numbered years, which passed unanimously.

[Aug. 10, 2010 is the deadline for filing an affidavit of identity and a nominating petition (or a $100 nonrefundable fee) to run for library board. Candidates can file with the Washtenaw County clerk.]

Library Lot: What Should Go On Top?

The city of Ann Arbor has solicited proposals for a development to be built on top of an underground parking structure currently being constructed by the Downtown Development Authority on what’s known as the Library Lot. Six proposals were submitted by the mid-November deadline. At a Dec. 18 meeting, the city’s review committee removed from consideration two of those proposals, saying that they did not provide sufficient financial return to the city. One called for a plaza and ice rink, the other proposed a community commons. [See Chronicle coverage: "Two Library Lot Proposals Eliminated"]

At the beginning of the library board’s discussion on Monday, library director Josie Parker clarified that they were not intending to act in lieu of the city’s review committee. Rather, the purpose of the discussion was to provide feedback to the city about what types of development would serve the library well, and what might harm it.

Parker also reviewed the history of the library’s own efforts to develop its downtown building, located on the northeast corner of Fifth and William. In 2004, the board adopted a strategic plan which included an objective to renovate or replace the downtown library. In late 2007, discussions began about how to proceed with that project, looking at three options: 1) building a new library on top of the proposed underground parking structure, 2) renovating part of the library’s existing downtown building, and demolishing and rebuilding part of it, and 3) demolishing the entire building and replacing it.

It’s because the board explored the first option – build a library on top of the Fifth Avenue parking structure – that they know so much about that project, Parker noted. Constraints on leaving or selling the property where the library is currently located – tied to an agreement with the public schools – was a major consideration for not building on top of the parking structure, she said. Another constraint was the footprint they’d have to work within, if they had pursued that option.

After conducting cost assessments on the other two options, board decided to demolish the existing building and replace it. However, that project was halted in late 2008, because of the economy. [See Chronicle coverage: "Citing Economy, Board Halts Library Project"]

Board Discussion

Rebecca Head, the board’s president, kicked off the discussion by saying she had concerns about the viability of the proposed projects – not just their ability to come to fruition, she said, but also their long-term ability to survive. Related to that, Prue Rosenthal questioned whether Ann Arbor could support a hotel and conference center.

Margaret Leary said she liked the idea of a hotel and conference center. She then spoke more generally about the kinds of things that would affect the downtown library. It’s crucial for the library to know what’s going on top of the underground parking site, she said, because it will affect how the library designs its own building, when that project is ready to move forward again.

And it’s not just the underground parking site, Leary added. The library will be affected by what happens to the surface parking lot at the northwest corner of Fifth and William – formerly the site of the YMCA – and by what happens at the AATA‘s Blake Transit Center, adjacent to that parking lot. What’s needed is a master plan for the whole area, she said. [For background on the AATA project, see Chronicle coverage: "AATA Board: Get Bids to Rebuild Blake"]

Talking specifically about the underground parking site, Leary said it was important for the library to keep the element of Library Lane, a proposed east-west street that would run north of the library building. It’s needed as a drop-off and pick-up spot, she said, and as a way to break up what is otherwise a massive block.

Further, whatever goes on top of the parking structure should foster economic growth for the city as a whole, Leary said. It should be a destination, drawing people 24/7, of all ages and income levels, with a variety of uses. Architecturally, it should clearly mark the site as the center of downtown, visible to pedestrians and people in cars. The site’s landscape architecture is important too, she said, and part of the area should serve as a public gathering space. That said, she added, the city needs to think hard about maintenance and programming for such a space. The analogies that others have made to Chicago’s Millennium Park or New York City’s Central Park aren’t quite right, Leary said, but those two cities do have ways to support those parks.

Barbara Murphy elaborated, saying that Central Park was in bad shape 30 years ago. It took the creation of the Central Park Conservancy, a public/private partnership, to turn things around. Murphy said the analogy that mattered wasn’t the size of the city, but rather the way a city took care of its property.

Rosenthal noted that the library doesn’t have a vested interest in exactly what goes on that site, but it has a huge vested interest in the success of whatever ends up there. If the venture fails, leaving a large, empty building next to the library, that would isolate the library from the rest of the city.

Carola Stearns said she had concerns about the proposals for a conference center. She didn’t understand the business model, or what the city would get out of it. The project has to be a money maker, she said, not a money sink.

Ed Surovell – owner of Edward Surovell Realtors – weighed in on the issue, saying that conference centers weren’t highly profitable. Its value would be that it serves other interests of the city and state, he said. In Michigan, you can count on one hand the number of places that are suitable for a conference, he said, especially a large one. There are locations in Detroit, at the Ritz-Carlton in Dearborn, in Grand Rapids, and to a lesser extent in Lansing, Traverse City and possibly the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti Marriott at Eagle Crest. Because of its proximity to Detroit Metro airport, Surovell said, Ann Arbor would be a good place for a conference center, “and the state really does need one.”

But Stearns questioned that premise. Travel budgets that are being cut because of the economy could be reduced permanently, she said, replaced by videoconferencing. “The kinds of conferences we might be used to might not be the ones we have in 10 years,” she said.

Rosenthal wondered whether the former Pfizer facility, now owned by the University of Michigan, would be available for conferences. An auditorium there seats about 400 people, and a large cafeteria could accommodate meals for several hundred people.

Head returned to a more general theme, describing how the library has been an advocate for sustainability, and that a component of the proposals for the underground parking site was infill and density. The city has been good about developing the greenbelt and its parks, she said, but there haven’t been good infill projects. One of the tenets of sustainability is having a dense urban core, with appropriately located open spaces. But again, she said, were the current proposals financially viable?

Surovell hearkened back to his days on the city’s planning commission, and said that whenever someone wanted to kill a project they’d start talking about its economic viability. Making that judgment isn’t the role of the library board, he said. Rather, their role is to think about how the proposals affect the environment around the library, its patrons, and future investments in its own building. He reminded his board colleagues that whether they renovate or replace the library, either way it would likely be a $70 million project. And if something inappropriate is built on top of the underground parking structure, “you’re going to wind up with a sorry mess for a library location.”

Surovell returned to the issue of master planning, agreeing that development of the former Y lot and the Blake Transit Center were also important to the library’s future. The streetscape, the kind of people who’d be attracted to that part of town – all of that will factor in, he said. As an example, the block currently goes to sleep fairly early in the evening – there’s not much activity after 9 p.m., or earlier – while a hotel would be awake 24/7, he said. A hotel would need to have responsible operators, he said, but it could serve a quasi-public function, in a way that a municipal building, for example, would not. In general, he added, single-use facilities weren’t desirable.

He also criticized the design of the municipal building currently under construction by the city at the corner of Huron and Fifth. “Those are the people making the decision right now” about the development on the underground parking structure, he said.

Adding to the topic of single-use buildings, Leary said that ideally, whatever gets built would be constructed so that it could be adapted to other functions in the future, if the market changes. A hotel, for example, might eventually be turned into condos or offices. She said she’s often wished that parking structures were built with that in mind, so that when our society becomes less car-centric, those structures could be adapted for housing.

Leary summarized, saying that the discussion reflected the need for a project team on the underground parking structure site to include a superb architect, landscape architect and urban planner.

After the meeting, Parker said she’d be conveying the board’s feedback to city officials. Also attending the meeting in the audience were two members of the review committee: Susan Pollay, director of the Downtown Development Authority, and John Splitt, the DDA board’s chair.

Present: Rebecca Head, Margaret Leary, Barbara Murphy, Prue Rosenthal, Carola Stearns, Ed Surovell. Also: Josie Parker, AADL director.

Absent: Jan Barney Newman.

Next meeting: Board meetings are typically held on the third Monday of the month, with the public portion of the meeting starting at 7 p.m. in the library’s fourth floor meeting room, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Their next regular meeting is on Monday, Jan. 18, 2010. [confirm date]