May 13, 2013 Ann Arbor Council: In Progress
The Ann Arbor city council’s May 13, 2013 session of its May 6 meeting will begin with consideration of the site plan for 413 E. Huron St. – a 14-story residential building proposed for the northeast corner of Division and Huron streets in downtown Ann Arbor. Live updates will be filed from the meeting, and published “below the fold.”
Door to the Ann Arbor city council chamber.
The May 13 session – scheduled to start at 7 p.m. – will begin immediately with the agenda item on the 413 E. Huron site plan, unless the agenda is re-opened and amended in some fashion. None of the routine elements associated with the start of meetings, like public commentary reserved time, will be included. Those items were already dispatched on May 6.
It was around 11:30 p.m. on May 6 when the council decided to recess the meeting, and to resume it on May 13. At that point the council had completed eight public hearings and voted on a number of other items, before reaching the 413 E. Huron site plan.
While the 413 E. Huron site plan will be the first item that the council confronts, several other significant items appear on the remainder of the council’s agenda.
The council is scheduled to hear a first reading of proposed changes to the city’s public art ordinance. The proposal includes removing the requirement that 1% of all capital project budgets be set aside for public art.
Another ordinance change to which the council will be asked to give initial approval is a change to utility connection charges for undeveloped property.
In addition to initial consideration of changes to those two ordinances, the council will be asked to give an initial approval to rezoning of two different parcels – a property at 490 Huron Parkway and on South State Street. The property on Huron Parkway is supposed to be rezoned from R3 (townhouse district) to R1B (single-family dwelling) and would allow the currently vacant 1.22-acre site, located north of Ruthven Park, to be divided into three separate lots.
The State Street Center project is located adjacent to a new Tim Hortons restaurant, which opened last year. The rezoning request is from O (office) to C3 (fringe commercial). It would make the actual zoning consistent with the city’s official zoning map, which had been mislabeled. The site plan calls for demolishing a vacant 840-square-foot house and building a one-story, 1,700-square-foot building with a drive-thru Jimmy John’s restaurant facing South State Street.
An expansion to the Theta Delta Chi house on State Street is also on the agenda for approval.
The Ann Arbor fire department shows up on two different items – one to accept a federal grant that will pay for exhaust fume removal systems for fire stations, and another to appropriate funds to replace protective gear worn by firefighters.
And the University of Michigan appears in two different agenda items. One item authorizes a contract for the city worth more than $600,000 in connection with the vehicle-to-vehicle study – for which the UM Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) won a $14 million federal grant. The other item related to UM involves a right-of-way agreement for the placement of electrical conduit under Tappan Street, so that an emergency generator can serve a law school dorm.
Other agenda items include some resolutions necessary to impose a special assessment on property owners along Miller Avenue, to help pay for construction of new sidewalks. And the council will be asked to choose Coke over Pepsi as the vendor for Ann Arbor’s city parks. [Full Story]