Arbor Update

Planning Students Sponsored Mayoral Forum Summary, 10/29/04

30. October 2004

My notes from Friday night’s forum. Notes are close to comprehensive, but shouldn’t be considered an accurate transcript—don’t try to directly quote candidates off of this.

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HIEFTJE

One of the major issues in the area is rail transport, which we came close to having a few years ago. Transportation in general is a major concern. Madison/Boulder have 6x bicycle ridership of Ann Arbor; with so many people working downtown, we ought to be able to support a decent cycling population.

In Washtenaw, there are 28 autonomous governments; can’t force solutions on them. H. formed Washtenaw Metro Alliance to establish a compact between local governments to do collaborative planning, regional services (fire), zoning coordination. Greenbelt good first step towards this; greenbelt commission up and running.

Why would Ann Arbor choose density, if there wasn’t a way to preserve greenspace in the area? Now we do have a way to preserve greenspace, it’s time to create some sustainable density in downtown Ann Arbor. NYC is the “most environmental” city in the country, due to the compactness and the energy savings.

LUMM

Realizes she’s a layman, so bear that in mind; doesn’t have a lot of technical planning knowledge. Learned from time on city council: planning most important process of government, expertise needed for planning, planning and politics don’t mix(?). Complex processes requries robust processes and the professionals to administer them.

City recently made large changes to the planning department staff and reporting structure—planning staff now reports to the city council and administrator rather than the planning commission; this is an inappropriate mix of planning and politics.

Topically, growth and density are hot topics-density is necessary to ensure economic viability and to prevent sprawl. Requires balance to increase density while preserving ann arbor’s character. Need to evaluate projects on a case by case basis. Support recommendations of the downtown residential task force, but they don’t replace the downtown area master plan. No hard lines on what building height is too tall-where tall buildings are appropriate, leadership should fight for it.

QUESTION

With land prices so high in A2 and with greenbelt, how can we create affordable housing, and is that a priority or shall we leave it to the market?

LUMM

We have various committees that make recommendations on this, and we’ve been doing a good job of creating affordable units. We’ve been doing a good job of creating units for 30-50% median income range; not a good job for 50-80% of median income range. Have made changes to PUD ordinance that gives developers choice to build affordable units or to pay into a pool for the city to build them. Building affordable housing downtown is very difficult—can’t make anything at $100k range downtown. Rehab is more cost-effective than new construction, a mix of the two is best.

HIEFTJE

Have made some changes recently to allow developers to pay $60k/unit instead of building the affordable units, allowing city to build things like Stone School Townhouses. Council last year approved a 900-bed private residence hall adjacent to North Campus, with 125 of those beds marked as affordable. We’re working on creating new units at the upper end fo the affordable range, $220k-380k. We can use the money in the trust fund to create housing immediately outside of downtown, where building costs are cheaper.

QUESTION

As far as the PUD changes go, might not the costs prove to be an undue burden on the developer and the peopel who want to buy housing downtown?

HIEFTJE

DDA has the authority to give up 25% of the tax-increment financing (TIF) to encourage downtown development. The previous question asked about the greenbelt—it shouldn’t push up home prices. We should see development on smaller lots in the townships; the WMA is working on that.

LUMM

The cynic might say that developers would choose not to do PUDs. Something like seven different zonings in the downtown; city thinking of adding one large overlay zone. Developers might choose that new zoning rather than doing a PUD, not paying into the housing fund. Development community does think they’re carrying more than a fair burden, and think burden should be spread community-wide. That’s a decision for the community to make. Tax revenues offset loss of other revenues—Ann Arbor has a strong tax base, growing at twice the rate of inflation for 15 years. A lot of downtown property is exempt from Headlee Amendment and Proposal A (which both limit tax revenues), allowing tax revenues to grow.

QUESTION

If we put affordable housing outside of downtown, how does that help working families who need to work downtown? What about a neighborhood fix-it-first policy to encourage rehab of aging properties?

HIEFTJE

Allowing developers to pay instead of including units effectively doubles number of units provided due to differences in building costs. Plan proposed sounds like an interesting one. (points out that questioner is historical district coordinator.)

LUMM

City has striven to do that for a number of years, and there are several non-profits that are working on similar things. LISC leverages grant money to provide rehab affordable housing.

QUESTION

What changes were made to the planning staff and planning commission, exactly, and what were the benefits/disadvantages of those?

LUMM

Need to keep the elected officials at arms-length from the planners; the planning commission should act as a firewall for the planning director and staff, and the recent changes removed that. City has over 60 boards and commissions, but planning is most desireable; recently we’ve been removing people who were talented whom we should have kept. Removing some planning professionals just a short time later hurt things even more.

HIEFTJE

Changes in structure were made to make things run more smoothly; the planning developer left and was replaced by a “planning and development director”. the change was unanimously approved by the city council. This didn’t politicize things; the city administrator had the power before this change to fire the planning director. A key point on a development should be the neighborhood the development is going to go into; their voices should be heard.

LASSITER

As a matter of philosophy, should neighborhoods have veto power over developments that the planning staff think should go into that neighborhood, however widely the neighborhood chooses to define itself?

HIEFTJE

Bringing the neighborhoods in is an essential process—several projects have become move neighborhood-friendly by involving the neighborhood. Sometimes a project does have overwhelming merit that needs to override the neighborhood, though.

LUMM

Veto power, no. If the developer has followed to the letter every land use/zoning/building/etc regulation and the project is not approved, that’s grounds for legal action, and not something neighbors should be able to force. City has always been good at involving the neighbors and getting notice out early, with some exceptions. The North Main Condos were an exception-which the planning commission killed, rightfully so-they made it to the planning commission without the neighbors feeling the developer had made any effort to hear their input. Neighbors were saying they wanted project to die and go away, and it did.

QUESTION

Last week planning faculty was in portland—density increases in portland haven’t been restricted to the downtown, but have been shared and scattered throughout neighborhoods. Why is discussion of increased density in Ann Arbor limited to downtown.

HIEFTJE

Makes a reference to Frankenstein’s pitchfork weilding mob. . .sometimes the planning commission’s hearings can have that feel. Neighborhood density needs to be a community choice, and the will isn’t there right now. There are some pockets where lot sizes are smaller, some multifamily has been included, and we can slowly increase density that way.

LUMM

The Northeast Area Plan—the northeast area has the greatest amount of vacant land in the city, and the new master planning process has considered that vacant land. The process has taken five years, because, at every step, neighbors have been advocating for lower density. Staff weren’t going crazy, but final recommendations fell 10-20% below staff’s recommendations due to neighborhood protest.

LASSITER

A number of the people here were at a recent hearing for the northeast area plan—about half the people there were in favor of the plan, but the other half were planners or planning students, and said the plan was a good start but not enough. As mayor, would you support the current plan, or push for more?

LUMM

I’ve been working on the plan for 4.5 years, I’d stick with it. We can always upgrade specific project densities later if petitioners come in and staff feels it’s appropriate.

QUESTION

Some people over the last few years have not wanted the downtown to expand at all—what about expanding, perhaps along the river?

HIEFTJE

Don’t support destroying houses, but the city is working on it—the Broadway Vilalge project will bring a lot of good development to that area. Wants DTE to move out of that area to allow access to that section of floodplain as a park. The river’s one of the prime assets of the city, and want to preserve that. Talk of converting a quonset hut at Argo(?) into a restaurant so that you could canoe over for a beer and a burger. Broadway Village will almost make a new, smaller downtown, though. Also working to move more transportation money to non-motorized means to support downtown-style activity. Also need to look at opening up Allen Creek into the greenway.

LUMM

There are various proposals to take better advantage of the river; the Lower Town area plan addresses this a lot. In the 1980s there was a proposal for North Main-that’s an entry into the city “that’s always been kind of a dog”. There were various suggestions for how to improve that area, and maybe we can do something similar to the Lower Town area. Can (and have-Broadway Bridge area) leverage university in cooperation.

QUESTION

Lumm mentioned streamlining regulations to make it easier for developers to provide more housing—a little concerned about unintended consequences. What can we do to encourage affordable housing carefully?

HIEFTJE

In the city’s new system, individuals will be assigned to projects to walk them through the entire process, rather than passing the project from person to person and losing things in the process. Also working to make sure all concerns get addressed at right stage, rather than things coming up at the last minute and causing problems. Developers think this is a good system—we want to say “yes, do a good devleopment sooner” without saying “yes, do a bad development” in the process.

LUMM

Streamlining of regulations was recommended by a group of stakeholders, including non-profits. One of the recommendations was for accessory-dwelling units, and that’s an issue that the council has shown no courage whatsoever on. Lumm is biased because she was not on council, but was on the task force that studied it—council told them to study it. Found other communities do it, it helps homeowners stay in their houses, the chamber of commerce approved it, and that Frankenstein effect came up and the idea just evaporated.

LASSITER

We’ll let the mayor respond to the “no courage” charge on ADUs.

HIEFTJE

ADU issue was at the planning commission; a bipartisan group of councilmembers and mayor asked the commission to drop it. We were hearing outrage from the neighborhoods—I don’t think it was as strong a threat as they thought it was. The reason council decided to drop it was that council was told the city would get at most 5-6 units per year out of this. We didn’t think it was worth it to enrage the neihgborhoods for only 5-6 units a year.

QUESTION

People tend to misunderstand certain terms, like density; when the public has a lot of misconceptions, what is the mayor’s role to educate the public? (second questioner:) In the ADU issue, there was a distinct racial dimension arising, and I expected my city councilmembers to stand up and say that wasn’t appropriate.

LUMM

This plan was allowed to wither-it should ahve been allowed to proceed through the planning commission and then have a full hearing at the council level. And some people really did want this to passelderly who couldn’t afford to keep their homes on their pensions and could have used an ADU to help pay for their house. We didn’t do the job we needed to do to bring people on board in the proper way. Idea seems natural to people who didn’t see the process-it was a good idea.

HIEFTJE

The neighborhoods overreacted; the measure to drop that was brought forward by the two republican city council members who asked me to cosign. We were getting lots of outrage, and we can’t shove things down people’s throats without an overwhelming public good.

QUESTION

This goes to the heart of NIMBYism—I’m sure it happens even in places like Portland that people initially respond with fear when development is proposed. What can the city government do to allay these fears, perhaps by changing the public process to inform the public earlier, so that these issues can be resolved, rather that just cut off?

LUMM

We have lots of citizen groups—the adus were just one small piece of the affordable housing task force. The successful groups are the ones that go to the neighborhoods early to get input, and we should try to do that.

HIEFTJE

We try to involve students at every step—the northeast area plan is being run by a citizens’ group. We do as good a job of allowing citizen input as any place.

QUESTIONS

Communities have been sued sometimes for overly restrictive zoning—is Ann Arbor vulnerable to that?

HIEFTJE

The city council has been sued once in a while, and occasionally projects have been approved for legal reasons. But the process works; the Broadway Village project, for example, had a lot of opposition, but we worked to overcome those objections. Probably nobody can sue us in general, but if they complied with regulations and were told “no”, we could be sued.

LUMM

It can happen when we ask them to do things, too, like when we ask them to make improvements to offsite intersections or to contribute to parkland. Developers say we can’t require them to do some of these things, and we can’t, but sometimes they’ll go along with things that aren’t legally enforceable in order to get the project approved. Ann Arbor is pretty demanding/exacting community, and we rarely get sued.

QUESTION

The rail link to detroit sounds like a great plan, and I take it you’re both in support of it. Would you approve increased development around the rail station in preparation for that?

HIEFTJE

We have to pursue the rail line—we don’t know yet about development. Broadway Village would be fairly close. We have worked to make the connections to the rail link, such as providing shuttles to pfizer/campus from the station and arragning the same on the dearborn end. Having people live right atop the train station is a great way to minimize their commutes.

LUMM

Seriously doubt that we’ll see a lot mroe development. There are a lot of older homes that that would be hard to remove. Given what happened with the bluffs, which were acquired as a park in response to development right in the same area, there would probalby be a lot of heavy resistance to development around the train station.

QUESTION

The greenway proposal mentioned seems to be pushed by the Sierra Club—they want a park at first and william where the DDA wants to consolidate parking. What would you support for that site?

HIEFTJE

Working on a regional vehicle serviceyard with Pittsfield, which would allow us to move out of several city sites currently in use, which has produced this conversation. The first/william site would be expensive; there’s a lot of contmaination there. There’s also the railroad there; if we could obtain the railway right-of-way, it would open up that corridor. It would be nice to get some nature in close to downtown. Whether all the sites people would like to see turned into parkland happen or not is yet to be seen.

LUMM

Joe O’Neil has written a very good viewpoint on the greenway, and it would have been nice to talk about that holistically in conjunction with the greenway. A lot of people didn’t know about the greenway until the parking at first/william came up. The city is looking to condense parking, so this wouldn’t add any space, but to consolidate it to free up space elsewhere, and the first/william site is the best place to put it. To attract people to living downtown, we need some open space—and the greenway would be a good way to do it. But, it would require removing a lot of homes, but that would cost money we don’t have. It’s a good vision we should think about. The Ann Arbor Railroad has been looked at as a route to provide transportation from downtown to briarwood and beyond; the dda and aata have looked at that.

HIEFTJE

The idea for the rail line (very hard to work with the railroads) is to use a vehicel that can both ride on rail and function as a bus. Amazingly fast—ann arbor to saline in 12 minutes.

QUESTION

What is the basis for believing a successful downtown (Broadway Village) can be created through a single development?

HIEFTJE

It’s not an attempt to replicate downtown, but to achieve some of the cahracteristics of downtown—density and mixed-use. Fairly confident it’s going to happen.

LUMM

Woudl be a nice complement to downtown, and redevelopment of an area that’s been allowed to lie fallow for a while.

QUESTION

Planning has long-range or permanent effects, and some have said that students, as temporary residents, shouldn’t be involved in that process. What should be the role of students in participation?

LUMM

When she was on council, mostly only heard from students about “party patrol”-recently the issue is couches on porchesbut students generally not very engaged. A few neighborhoods that are very good at working with students-north burns park. A lot of student community service projects and people working as neighbors.

HIEFTJE

Students are permanent residents—face may change but the slot stays the same, and students deserve the same access as everybody else. Happy to appoint students to baords and commissions, if they have a commitment to be here year-round.

QUESTION

What do candidates think of tying up-zoning/density bonuses/etc to public benefit—provision of affordable housing, for example. Rather than giving developers tax benefits or zoning changes for free, make them give back to neighborhood.

LUMM

Currently, we have various demands we put on developers—to provide open space, to produce trees, etc. These are all important things, but they all have costs, and those costs get passed through, and maybe it’ll make housing a little less affordable. It’s a question of community values and what the community is willing to trade-off.

HIEFTJE

Ann Arbor doesn’t have a regular habit of giving money to corporate sector—has only happened once or twice. These suggestions are worth looking into.