Stories indexed with the term ‘library lot’

Ann Arbor District Library board meeting (Dec. 21, 2009): At its last meeting of 2009, the library board voted to move its elections to November, in response to a similar decision last week by the Ann Arbor Public Schools board.

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. [Full Story]

Two of the six proposals to develop the top of the Fifth Avenue underground parking structure – known as Library Lot – have been eliminated from further consideration.

At a Friday morning meeting, members of a committee that’s overseeing the Library Lot development cited insufficient financial benefit to the city as the reason for taking Ann Arbor Town Square and Ann Arbor Community Commons out of play. Both of those projects would put primarily open space on the 1.2-acre lot. Three of the other proposals include a hotel, with the fourth focusing on housing for senior citizens.

Developers of the four remaining proposals will be scheduled for interviews throughout the day on Wednesday, Jan. 20. It’s possible that the field will be thinned even further before then, depending on how developers respond to a list of questions that committee members have formulated about each specific proposal.

The Jan. 20 meetings will be open to the public. The city also plans to hold an evening open house on Jan. 20 for the public to meet with developers and give feedback on the proposals.

In addition, the committee on Friday discussed the possibility of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority paying for a consultant to help evaluate the remaining proposals. [Full Story]

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

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

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

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