The Value of Historic Preservation for Ann Arbor

One of the strengths of Ann Arbor as a community is its active historic preservation infrastructure.  Here is what the Ann Arbor Preservation Alliance has to say about that (from a recently published brochure, attached here with permission).

Vibrant downtown streets and lively neighborhoods, laced with a rich diversity of 19th and 20th century historic buildings, provide the backdrop to the sense of place Ann Arborites love and the quality of life they enjoy.

Since 1975, when Ann Arbor’s city council declared historic preservation a “public purpose,” citizens have helped create historic districts and advocated for the restoration and rehabilitation of historic structures in commercial districts and residential neighborhoods.

The brochure outlines details of the Historic District Commission (HDC) process.  The city currently has 14 historic districts.

Ann Arbor Historic Districts, from the Ann Arbor Preservation Alliance brochure. Click for a larger image.

In recent years, historic preservation has become controversial, as it has come up against development pressures.  While historic preservation does not prevent development, it institutes a review process and also makes demolition of structures in a district more difficult.

The importance of historic preservation to maintaining the integrity of areas with historic structures was never so apparent as recently, with the tragic chain of events leading to the destruction of seven historic houses in one of our city’s near-downtown neighborhoods.  The value of these Central Area neighborhoods to developers is a strong incentive.

As we outlined in detail in our previous post,  Heritage City Place Row, there are many community-wide reasons to maintain such structures.  One is, simply, economics.  There are more and more discussions of “placemaking” and the importance of “quality of life” to attracting “talent”, young professionals who will enrich us all by joining new start-up enterprises.   The tourism industry also recognizes the importance of historic areas in attracting visitors.  Here’s what we said about that in our previous post:

Perhaps most telling in these difficult times is the argument that all of Ann Arbor stands to lose economic benefit from the destruction of this attractive area.  Donovan Rypkema, who has spoken in Ann Arbor and many other places on the economic benefits of historic preservation, makes the point that over time the most successful urban areas (i.e. those that attract people who will lift the economic climate) are those that maintain historic and architecturally significant structures.  They are part of the “quality of life” indicators that attract innovators, young entrepreneurial and creative people who will help the region be successful.  Ask yourself: what do you see first in pictures of “lovely Ann Arbor” that seek to entice visitors and investors?  You’ll see pictures of our historic Main Street with maybe the Law Quad thrown in.

Unfortunately, the saga of City Place shows that sometimes the story just doesn’t end well.  The City Council failed on several attempts to establish a historic district for the area. The seven contiguous historic houses on South Fifth Avenue just south of William were demolished and two large apartment buildings that will probably house mostly students are now under construction.  Almost the entire block of that historic neighborhood has been replaced. (Photos of the seven demolished houses are on the previous post.)

This is now the uninspiring view along most of the first block of S. Fifth.

A view down S. Fifth showing the two remaining houses on the block.

One reason the developer was able to execute this so-called “by right” development was that he was able to assemble the seven contiguous lots into one lot for the purposes of producing a site plan.  Under provisions of the current R4C zoning, this development met most of the setback and other requirements.  (Actually, the neighborhood submitted an appeal [long text here] to the Zoning Board of Appeals, which for some reason failed even to consider it.)

Now we may be able to make changes in Ann Arbor’s zoning ordinance that would prevent a similar tragedy.  As reported by AnnArbor.com, the City Council has now received the report of the R4C/R2A Zoning District Advisory Committee.  (Download report here.)  We’ll have to hope that Council approves the changes in the zoning ordinance recommended by this citizen committee.    It is important to safeguard our Central Area neighborhoods, and the others where R4C zoning exists.

But if we are to continue protection of historic structures, and to obtain the benefits of historic preservation, citizens as well as council members must support the work of the Historic District Commission as well.  Their decisions have sometimes been controversial, only because the reasoning behind their guidelines is often not intuitive to some people.  (The recent kerfuffle over a rail fence on the Old West Side is an example.)  Their faithful monitoring of our historic districts has resulted in a better community for all of us.

To learn more about the Ann Arbor Preservation Alliance, send an email to historicA2@gmail.com.

New Local Food Page

Here are some new ideas.  Let’s grow our own food or buy it locally, preferably from small farmers and artisans, join a food cooperative, bake our own bread, learn how to cook without a half pound of meat per person, use a lot of fresh vegetables, make our own yogurt, cheese, pickles, jam, use lots of seasonings, often with ethnic origins, to make freshly prepared simple food delicious.

Oh whoops.  Those aren’t new.  That was my experience in the 1970s as a graduate student in Wisconsin.  We called it “pure food” or “natural food” then (the idea of “organic” was just getting wound up).  I read “Diet for a Small Planet,” spent some time volunteering with a group of people who formed a food coop (they drove a rickety truck to Chicago once a week to buy actual fresh vegetables, and got bottled milk from a local dairy), started a vegetable garden in a vacant lot behind my apartment, traveled to a small rural grocery to buy local cheese and meat, patronized farm stands whenever I could find them (Madison didn’t start a farmers’ market until about 1976), baked the bread, made the yogurt, the whole thing.  It felt real.  It felt organic in the classical sense.  We ate well on not much money.

So I was delighted to learn that all this was starting up again here in Ann Arbor.  Some will say it never quite went away, but it has a new lease on life with a new generation (and with the help of the previous ones; Al Connor, who helped start the People’s Food Coop in Ann Arbor, is still working on food policy).  I did some looking around in 2007 and wrote an article on the subject for the Ann Arbor Observer, “Meet the Locavores“.  Since then the Ann Arbor local food universe has expanded mightily.

I’ve revised and updated the page I have maintained on this subject, and The Local Food Page has a few useful links.  I’ll try to make it more comprehensive in the future.

Meanwhile, note that the Local Food Summit is on April 2 this year.  Better sign up if you plan to go.

Say What? The Mayor Speaks about Fuller Road Station

For many months, it has been hard to find out what is going on with the Fuller Road Station (FRS). One senses that behind the curtain, people are moving scenery around, but the play seems to be stalled between acts.  The University of Michigan was planning to have its Fuller Road parking structure ready for use by June 2012.  It is difficult to see how that can happen now, since construction has not begun (apart from the sewer and stormwater construction approved by the Council in June 2011).

Mayor John Hieftje added to the mystery with his open public letter last July.  That letter, as our post of the time describes, was more about the benefits of (rail) transit than about the proposed structure itself.  What has been planned to date is a parking structure for the University of Michigan, but the Mayor prefers to stress the eventual train station intended for the location.  This is most likely related to the difficulty in defending a structure built only to provide parking for the UM, as recent commentary at a PAC meeting indicated.

Mayor John Hieftje on CTN

Now the man behind the curtain has spoken again.  The mayor was interviewed recently (November 23, 2011) on “Conversations”, a program on Ann Arbor’s Channel 19 (CTN) conducted by interviewer Jim Blow (see recording here).    Just one minute of that interview dealt with Fuller Road Station.  Some parts are difficult to hear, but a transcript has been made.  (The interviewer’s questions were abbreviated slightly.)

Here are the relevant statements from the Mayor’s comments.

So what was that again?  The Mayor seems to be conflating the original Phase I (parking structure) plan for the site with the future train station when he talks of the match for the $40 million for the train station.  The Fuller Road parking structure has been reported by AnnArbor.com as estimated at $40 million.  A more accurate figure is likely $46,550,000, as approved by the UM Regents in 2010.  That figure does not include site preparation of approximately $3 million, which, as the UM memo notes, is borne by the City of Ann Arbor.  (Ed. note: Presumably this includes the sewer work now underway.)  Although concept drawings include a location for a future train station adjacent to the parking structure,  what is being discussed currently is a parking structure, as we detailed in our post, Fuller Road Station: It’s All About Parking.

The UM memo also notes that UM agrees to pay 78% of the costs of construction of the parking structure, with the city picking up 22%;  this is consistent with the original Council Memorandum of Understanding .  The UM memo authorizes only a total “not to exceed” amount of $36,309,000 and also notes that the City will pay for an environmental assessment.  That means that in order to pay for its share of the parking structure, the city would need to come up with $10,241,000 (in addition to the cost of site preparation and the environmental assessment).  But how does that reconcile with the Mayor’s statement that “the plan is that the city puts no money into this”?  No wonder that, as he says, “the conversation got a little convoluted”.

Additional hints that the process has been drifting askew were provided by comments at a recent Ann Arbor Public Art Commission meeting where, according to the Ann Arbor Chronicle, AAPAC commissioners were told that the public art for Fuller Road was being put on hold because the project was delayed by “as much as 6-12 months”.  But in an interview by AnnArbor.com, the Mayor said that “two to three months sounds more reasonable to me”.  The difficulty, according to that article, is that UM and the city attorneys are negotiating on a “construction, operations and maintenance agreement for the first phase” (i.e., the parking structure).

But it seems from here that there are two outstanding difficulties:

• The continued assertion on the part of the Mayor that we can move right ahead on the train station.
• A lack of understanding about where the city’s portion ($10+ million) of the construction costs is coming from.

Rumor and speculation hold that the city is trying to persuade the UM to make a loan of the city’s portion, to be paid for from parking revenues.  This idea was brought up by the Mayor in his letter of last summer,  but there has never been confirmation from the UM that this would be satisfactory.

Will Uncle Sam Really Make Us a Gift of a Train Station?

A puzzle all along has been that the Mayor has seemed to possess a blithe faith that somehow money will materialize to pay for the final train station realization of the  FRS. (The “$40 – some million of Federal money for the build-out of the train station” does not currently exist.)   And he continually assures us that this will not be at the expense of Ann Arbor taxpayers. But his assurance appears to be built on a poor understanding of current transportation funding.

Much of the belief in the possibility of a future Fuller Road train station seems to be based on an award received recently as part of a Federal grant to support Michigan high-speed rail between Dearborn and Kalamazoo (the line to Chicago).   As stated in Congressman Dingell’s announcement,  “The… funding will allow Ann Arbor to begin engineering and environmental documentation required to design and construct a new intercity and high-speed rail station, drop-off areas, rail platform and other work, including track, switches and signals.”  The crucial words here are “begin…documentation”.  In other words, this is only a grant for planning, especially to complete a NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) report, which is required for all projects seeking Federal funds.

In the announcement and description of the High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program (HSIPR) grants, details are given about what source funds for each grant come from, and specifically what they are to pay for.     Here is what the money awarded for the Fuller Road Station (title: Individual Project – Preliminary Engineering / NEPA) is actually to pay for.

This project is for the completion of preliminary engineering and environmental documentation required to design and construct a new high-speed rail station in Ann Arbor, MI to serve the Chicago to Detroit high-speed rail line.

Apparently just the fact that a Federal grant was bestowed for this very limited purpose is taken as assurance that the entire amount will be forthcoming.  In an email, the city’s transportation program manager Eli Cooper said,

The fact the FRA has funded the preliminary engineering and environmental documentation is the strongest evidence we have to date regarding the federal commitment to the Ann Arbor Station project. …to apply for final design and construction funding we would need to have completed preliminary engineering to have the information required in the application….a long standing practice that once a federal investment is made in the preliminary phases of work, and the funded work is completed satisfactorily, future phase(s) are generally awarded funding when applications are submitted.

But that is an erroneous assumption, and a frighteningly naive one.  All Federal grants are not the same.  It’s the source that counts.

Where the Money Came From

In President Obama’s stimulus program, formally named the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009  (ARRA), high-speed rail systems were given a special priority. As explained in this post from the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission,  the money made available for our Michigan high-speed rail enhancements were not originally designated for Michigan at all, but were part of a large pot of money ($2.4 billion) refused by the State of Florida.  Of this, Michigan received a lucky $400 million.  Most of Michigan’s windfall was prudently invested in improving our rail corridor between Detroit and Chicago (our important Detroit-Chicago Amtrak service).  There were rail improvements in the West Detroit area (signals, repairs), repairs to track along the corridor, and the state was able to buy a section of the track that had been owned by Norfolk Southern.  The freight company had not been maintaining the tracks for passenger service and there were many delays.  The “donation” from Florida helped Michigan to make many repairs and adjustments that will really help this important passenger rail route.  Several train stations were also renovated or, in the case of Dearborn, reconstructed.

Here is how the grant allocation breaks down:

There are several important points here.

• This was a one-time opportunity.  The stimulus program is over.  The rejection of a grant by Florida meant a windfall for Michigan.
• The money for the Ann Arbor station was only for completion of a NEPA assessment.  It was not for any aspect of actual station construction, unlike the other grants to communities along the Detroit-Chicago line.
• As Congressman Dingell warned in his September announcement celebrating the grant award, the High-Speed Rail program (HSIPR) was facing “recission” in the House of Representatives at the time.  This has become reality.  The President proposed $1 billion; the Senate proposed $100 million; the House agreed to $0.00 (and the House’s version prevailed).  (Summary of transportation bill amounts here.)  There is no more money in the program.
• Even if we were to get a Federal grant to build a full station, such grants generally require a 20% matching contribution by a local entity.  For most transportation projects, that 20% of the total has been paid by the State of Michigan.  (And the state has paid the matching amount for the $2.8 million planning grant.)  Here Hieftje seems to be saying that matching money for the train station would be provided by the UM.  Is he hoping to count the money that UM is spending on the parking structure as a “match”?  If so, what is the statute of limitations on that?  Can we use money that UM spends next year to match a grant for a train station sometime in the indefinite future?

It seems that now, as before, we have more questions than answers.

UPDATE: As suggested by the first commenter, I erred by saying the $2.8 million was only for the NEPA assessment.  It was also for some preliminary engineering and planning work.  (But not for any construction.)  We’re still talking documentation.

SECOND UPDATE: The impact of Troy’s rejection of its $8 million grant is unknown.  News reports say that the money will be “reallocated” (a Chamber of Commerce spokesman was quoted in the Free Press article  as saying it would go to other states).

Historical note:  See the January 2010 article in the Ann Arbor Observer where Mayor Hieftje suggested that the value of the land might be credited toward the city’s cost of the Fuller Road Station.  That idea has been dropped, evidently.

THIRD UPDATE:  A press release that is undated but was made public on February 10, 2012 announces that the University of Michigan is pulling out of the agreement to build parking at the site of the Fuller Road Station. 

“After months of fruitful discussions, we received new information from the Federal Rail Administration regarding the eligibility of monies for the local match. This information altered project timing such that we could no longer finalize a proposal under the current Memorandum of Understanding,” said John Hieftje, Mayor of Ann Arbor.

Note: Posts about Fuller Road Station and other transportation topics are listed on our Transportation Page.

Is Regionalism Really a Good Thing?

Regionalism has become the guiding force behind many initiatives – but is it good for Ann Arbor?

A group of happy people gathered last Monday (November 21, 2011) to hear an important announcement. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regional administrator Antonio Riley was there to announce a Sustainable Community grant award to Washtenaw County and there were a number of elected officials basking in the glow.  But the real star of the show was an idea, not a person.  It was Regionalism.

Many recent initiatives in Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, and Michigan have been organized around regionalism, in which the role of traditional jurisdictions like cities, villages and townships is diminished in order to operate within much wider boundaries.

The idea has a lot of appeal on the face of it. The reasoning behind it has several arguments.

• One is that certain functions, like transportation, naturally occur over larger geographical areas than the traditional political boundaries describe.
• A major impetus is that it is “good for business” because of efficiency in organizing and delivering services and administering policies (and business does not have to deal with “a patchwork” of regulations and politics).
• Perhaps the most persuasive to many is the opportunity to distribute benefits and services more evenly across boundaries, with less regard to the affluence of each locality.  It  is the basis of many of our Federal and state programs, where citizens are guaranteed certain benefits and protections whether in the poorest or most wealthy states or counties.

Tony Derezinski at a recent Ann Arbor council meeting. Courtesy of Ann Arbor Chronicle (photo has been cropped).

This last is a strong moral argument that speaks to “our better angels” and our sense of community when it is being broadly expressed.  It is an argument that lies behind some of the acceptance of the Reimagining Washtenaw Avenue project, which this grant is intended (even designed) to support.  The siren song of intergovernmental cooperation and collaboration speaks in part to our response in Ann Arbor to the knowledge that Ypsilanti (city and township) is our sister urban area that is not as wealthy as fortunate Ann Arbor.

One of the enthusiastic speakers at the announcement was Ann Arbor Councilmember Tony Derezinski, who has been the promoter of Reimagining Washtenaw Avenue since its inception.  CM Derezinski is also a committed supporter of the concept of regionalism.  As he said at the event, “We are a region, we are not just Ann Arbor”.  And then he misquoted (with apologies) poet John Donne in saying, “No municipality is an island unto itself”.  Here is the full quotation of the actual poem (really from a long essay).

In other words, are we not responsible for each other?  This is an easy emotional and empathetic argument which, unfortunately, runs into some practical and political brick walls on close examination.

If you examine the history of humankind even at a superficial level, you will note that it consists of waves of geographical consolidation, followed by periods of revolt in the name of self-determination.  The thing is that natural human communities are self-limiting.  Right now, Europe is trying to work out how much member states will take on in respect of each other. In the United States, we are still arguing the dynamic of federalism vs. states’ rights.

Michigan resolved this question constitutionally as Home Rule.  The  review of this principle by the Michigan Municipal League quotes the 1908 constitution as saying, “each municipality is the best judge of its local needs and the best able to provide for its local necessities.” As the review indicates, the principle of home rule for Michigan municipalities has been eroded in recent years by state law overriding the ability of local units (note that “municipalities” is a basket term for cities, villages, townships, and counties) to regulate a wide variety of issues.  Only this week, as reported by the Ann Arbor Chronicle, the Ann Arbor City Council was grappling with a proposed state law that would prevent Ann Arbor from extending anti-discrimination protection to people on the basis of sexual preference.  The ingrained belief in the home rule principle persists in the Michigan psyche, especially as it comes to taxes.  Some Washtenaw County townships still have a local tax limitation for local services of 1 mill, and they are proud of it.  (Charter townships may tax up to 5 mills.  Special ballot issues don’t count.)

So if we are to extend authority across established jurisdictional lines, two things happen.  One is that local control of just what services and options are offered is limited.  Another is that one jurisdiction may find itself paying, at least potentially, for services received by another.

With Reimagine Washtenaw, if it is fully fleshed out and enacted, four municipalities (Ann Arbor city, Pittsfield Township, Ypsilanti city, Ypsilanti Township) will surrender much of their sovereignty within the Washtenaw corridor to a new entity, a Corridor Improvement Authority. (For good reviews, see the Ann Arbor Chronicle’s report of a public meeting and coverage of a BOC working session.)

There are some other examples of regionalism that specifically affect the City of Ann Arbor:

The move to a countywide transit system.  We have a number of posts about this, including the most recent on “Where the Money Is” .  The decision was made a couple of years ago to emphasize commuter access to Ann Arbor rather than to optimize within-city service.  Now Ann Arbor taxes are being used to pay for express buses to Chelsea and Canton, as well as enhanced service to Ypsilanti.

The Governor’s transit plan. As we reported earlier, Governor Snyder has proposed a Regional Transit Authority that includes Washtenaw County.  If enacted fully, it would draw all Federal and state transportation funds to itself, contract local bus service to AATA and other local entities, but emphasize major routes for the movement of workforce toward the Detroit Metro area, probably by use of Bus Rapid Transit technology.  This would handicap the ability of local transit authorities like AATA to innovate and serve new needs locally.

The Urban County.   Ann Arbor was one of the first Block Grant communities in the state, and for many years was the only community in the county with Federal CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) funds to spend on human services and housiing.  Washtenaw County formed the Urban County to make CDBG-funded services available to other communities.  As described on the county website, the city’s Community Development department was merged with the county’s department and finally the City of Ann Arbor joined the Urban County.  One consequence was that Ann Arbor lost nearly $400,000 a year in human services money that had been grandfathered in.  As the memorandum provided to Council explains, this was to result in an increase across the Urban County of $100,000 in HUD-supplied funds.  But those funds would be directed toward other uses (not human services).  An increase to the county  of $100,000 in Emergency Shelter Grant funds was expected to offset this somewhat.

So while Ann Arbor formerly had human services money from a Federal grant and an independent Housing and Human Services Advisory Board to administer them, the City Council has been obliged to supplement human services from the Ann Arbor general fund in the last several budget years.  This has led to heart-rending presentations from non-profit organizations that serve the needy and their clients.  A search in the Ann Arbor Chronicle archives has many reports of such moments, including the one with paper cranes.  At the same time, general fund support for human services from Washtenaw County has also been cut severely in the wake of County budget problems.  In a triumph of bureaucracy, the County approved a Coordinated Funding model for distribution of services in 2010.  This funnels all funds, including those donated to the United Way, through a goals-and-objectives process that is supposed to be more efficient.  (An astonishing document prepared by Community Development touts the economic “return on investment” for nonprofit funding, quite a change in emphasis from human needs.)  One result was slashing the funds allocated to the Delonis homeless shelter from $160,000 to $25,000 (see the account by the Chronicle).  On an announcement that this would result in closing the “warming center” in which homeless individuals not in residence at the shelter can find protection on coldest nights,  both the County and the City of Ann Arbor found some stopgap funds, just for this year.

The A2 Success project and SPARK  This is regionalism on steroids.  The A2 Success project was begun approximately in early 2009 and has a number of economic development projects for the “Ann Arbor region” (which is essentially Washtenaw County with some incursions into Wayne County).  SPARK, which began as a merger of the former Washtenaw Development Corporation and the Smart Zone, now styles itself  “Ann Arbor, USA” and has been consuming ever more and more general fund support from both the City of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County.  Now a revived millage tax levied by the county will give SPARK over a quarter of a million dollars next year.

Regionalism Rules – but what about Localization?

Clearly the concept of regionalism has the support of most of our political leaders, and it has a powerful and persuasive voice.  But does it really benefit the community that we have within our City of Ann Arbor?  Or is it actually an effort to exploit the resources that we have, including our educated population,  our positive image countrywide,  our strong cultural environment, and most of all our tax base? In other words, is regionalism at the expense of Ann Arbor taxpayers supportable only for altruistic reasons?  Or does it bring our actual community actual benefits?

You wouldn’t expect a blog called Local in Ann Arbor to espouse regionalism, and you are right.  As we said in our first post, we support something of an opposite concept: localization.  In “What Does It Mean to be an Ann Arbor Townie“,  we tried to put forth the case that we have an unusually desirable place to live because of our special local character.  But it goes beyond that to a belief that a successful, resilient community is built on interdependence at a local level. To some extent, we must be an island  – and island economies are notably self-sufficient.

Localization is a world-view, a prescription for living, and a field of academic study.  I’m looking forward to the coming book on the subject,  The Localization Reader, by UM professors Raymond De Young and Thomas Princen.  You’ll hear more on this from us another day.

UPDATE:  This post is not the place for a full discussion of allocation of costs in AATA’s regional outreach.  However, the attached Report to the Treasurer from last year (it does not include the special service to Ypsilanti) shows the contribution of Ann Arbor taxpayers to the Commuter Express projects.  The University of Michigan does not contribute directly to this service (as stated in a comment below), but rather compensates employees for the cost of their fares.  The report indicates that 31% of this service (to Chelsea and Canton) is paid for by Ann Arbor taxes, and 26.4% by fares.  The remainder is picked up by State and Federal operating assistance.

NOTE: Readers of this post may also find discussions of governance in this post on regional transit plans and its sequel of interest.  The two posts discuss governance issues for regional authorities.

Transition Exits Ann Arbor

A little more than two years after Transition (a worldwide movement) introduced itself to Ann Arbor,  the local group has announced (via its email listserv) that it is disbanding.

After much deliberation and collective soul searching, we are writing to let you know that the initiating team of Transition Ann Arbor is officially disbanding.   We believe it is important to announce this widely so that we can release the effort into the hands of others, should there be a future groundswell of committed individuals.  

Some challenges we faced were the usual ones, such as personal time constraints and life circumstances. But there were other challenges that we didn’t anticipate, such as the fact that the Transition model has proven difficult to implement in a city the size of Ann Arbor without staff or a strong ties to an existing 501c3 nonprofit.  

We are excited to see the growth of Transition-related efforts in the Ann Arbor community and region. We continue to believe that there is a role for an umbrella organization that strengthens these efforts and develops cohesive plans, action groups, programs, and messages that help our community prepare for the long emergency–the impacts of peak oil, climate change, and economic instability. Unfortunately, we don’t have the necessary resources (or person-power) to make this happen. We have a wealth of accumulated knowledge and lessons learned from our efforts over the last 2 years, including the beginnings of an energy descent action plan. To improve future organizing, we would be happy to share our insights and resources with anyone interested in picking up similar work.

As might be understood from this statement, Transition was founded to support the worldview of those, such as former Environmental Commission chair and mayoral candidate Steve Bean, that we in Ann Arbor (the country, the world) are facing a future singularity in which conditions of life will change drastically.  (The reference to the “long emergency” is a direct reference to the dystopian classic, The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler.)  Transition Ann Arbor has been especially notable for its “reskilling festivals” in which such skills as sock darning, keeping bees, and other domestic crafts are taught.  According to the announcement, these will continue under the guidance of their organizer, Laura Smith (lolo730@yahoo.com).

A core concept that Transition and similar efforts are based on is “peak oil”, a belief that the world economy and our very way of life will shift dramatically once the cost of energy increases because of dwindling oil supplies.  The data for peak oil are fairly unambiguous and (discounting the possible effect of shale oil) it appear that the point at which oil supplies begin to dwindle is in the next decade (by 2020).   Lester Brown and the Earth Policy Institute have been promulgating news of this and related impending disasters (most having to do with resource depletion of various kinds) for years.  Yet there are doubters and deniers like Michael Lynch (though these arguments are rebuttable).  Problem is, a worldview in which a collapse is imminent definitely undercuts the current growth paradigm and interferes with business as usual.  We’d really rather not be bothered as long as it looks as though things will go along much as they have since most of us can remember.

We all got a bit of a wake-up call with the economic cataclysms of 2008 and 2009. Though Kunstler has not changed his views or his predictions,  what seemed so imminent during the few months following the crash of 2008 now seems to have retreated a bit over the horizon.  It’s a little hard to get excited over darning your own socks when socks made in East Asia are still available at discount stores at pretty decent prices.  Admittedly, lots of people are out of a job, but gas prices seem to have stabilized.  And though food prices have gone up a little, we can still get most of everything we want and the expensive restaurants in downtown Ann Arbor seem to be doing a booming business. This means that choosing “local food” and making your own still appears to be just that—a choice.

Since one of my own interests and concerns is community food security, I was glad to see that Transition Ann Arbor is passing along its modest treasury to Growing Hope.  But otherwise we are left with pale washed-out “sustainability” efforts like the Ecology Center’s 350.0rg  and the UM’s “M Planet Blue“, which basically tinker around the edges with time-honored environmental fixes (all good).  It’ll perhaps be a little while longer before we have a group in Ann Arbor that really sounds a singular alarm.  If that is going to be you, you are invited to contact Jeannine Palms (jeannine@wetmeadow.org), one of the organizers and a longtime community activist.

Fuller Road Station and the Mayor’s Letter

The story first broke on AnnArbor.com the night before, but by mid-morning on July 28 many Ann Arbor citizens had received a letter from Ann Arbor’s Mayor, John Hieftje.  The letter begins,

As you may have heard, the City of Ann Arbor is considering whether to invest with the University of Michigan and the Federal Government in a multi-modal transportation facility on Fuller Road—the Fuller Road Station (FRS). I write today to give you some important background information.

The news report has attracted a number of comments.  They help to make one point clear: Fuller Road Station is not just one issue.  It is a complex of issues, with separate histories, policy implications, visions of the future, suppositions, and mass of facts and details behind each one.

It is also emerging as a strong political theme in Ann Arbor.  Thus its future, and the justification for our city embarking on this adventure, have become enmeshed with the politics of the August primary, in which three candidates (two incumbents) question the venture and three support it.  The Mayor has favored the candidates who support the FRS and the timing of his letter just before the primary election (next Tuesday, folks) seems curious.

Our mayor very rarely writes us directly, and his letter deserves careful study and scrutiny.  But first, let’s consider the different issues.  (Listed in no particular order.)

1. Ann Arbor’s finances.  What is the likely effect of embarking on the long-term project of a “multimodal” station?  Will it prove to be neutral, more or less, a plus because of economic activity and other indirect effects, or a fiscal morass?

2. Parking and traffic issues.  Much of the immediate project is for a parking structure that will largely serve the UM Health Care complex.  Is this a good thing, from the viewpoint of transportation planning, and also for the city?

3. Ann Arbor parks and ordinances regarding use of parkland.  A ballot issue forbade the sale of parkland without a public vote, but this project skirts that by a long-term lease.  Should this be permitted, and further, is this a dangerous precedent for disposing of parkland by other means than a direct sale?

4. The future of commuter rail from Ann Arbor (the station would become part of the AATA’s Transit Master Plan that presumes commuter rail will connect Ann Arbor both to Howell and to Detroit).   To the extent that this idea justifies construction of the Fuller Road Station, is it likely to happen?

5. On a related note, what about “high-speed rail”  in Michigan?  Is that going to happen and to what extent does construction of the Fuller Road Station depend on Ann Arbor being part of such a system?

6. And while we are on that question, what is the position of Amtrak in all this? The current service to Chicago is popular and there is an existing station.

7. What are our hopes and dreams of a future transportation system?  As we have already noted,  trains have a powerful emotional pull.  (See Train of Dreams and Train of Dreams II.)  Our mental picture of what the future should hold for transportation that frees us from the automobile is a powerful driver in these decisions.

8. Our relationship with the University of Michigan.  We are very nearly a company town.  To what extent does “it’s good for the UM” also translate to “it’s good for Ann Arbor”?  Are there times when our interests diverge?

9. What is the appropriate public process for this decision and has it been followed?  (See What, Exactly, is a Robust Public Process. It isn’t about the FRS but addresses some of the points.)

The Mayor’s letter touches on many of these themes.  In the next post we will go through his letter point by point and attempt some analysis.

UPDATE: The post was edited to add the last point after publication.

 

The Library Lot, the DDA, and the Ann Arbor RFP Process II

The history of plans to develop Ann Arbor’s Library Lot goes back literally decades (see the 1991 Luckenbach study).  But most recently, as documented in our long blog series listed on the Library Lot Conference Center page, the effort to develop the lot hinged around RFP 743.  The first post of this series described the making of the RFP (released on August 14, 2009).  At the end, it all came apart, as mostly described in the last post of the blog series on the conference center.  On April 4, 2011, the Ann Arbor City Council passed a resolution that terminated the RFP and the sole remaining proposal from Valiant Partners was conclusively rejected.

But at the same meeting, Council established a new process for the downtown surface lots.  In a not-so-tacit recognition that the city-directed RFP process had undergone a fairly spectacular failure, the Council asked the DDA to take it on.  But the area assigned to the DDA was not the entire city, but rather the city-owned lots in the area south of Liberty.

City-owned parcels assigned to DDA for RFP process - click for larger image

The DDA’s Partnership Committee cheerfully took this on (even before the final resolution was passed) and began scheduling regular discussions at their monthly meetings, featuring different city officials and others, reviewing different aspects of planning.  (See our post, Ann Arbor’s Suburban Brain Problem, and the Ann Arbor Chronicle’s excellent summary of the June 2011 meeting.)

As the Chronicle details, the June meeting appeared to set the Partnership Committee up for a vigorous, proactive approach to a broad downtown planning exercise.  Doug Kelbaugh (a UM professor familiar to many long-timers as instrumental in putting together the Calthorpe process) and his colleague Kit McCullough submitted a brief proposal involving some brief but substantial public participation.  Peter Allen did one of his typically scintillating presentations (Allen sometimes seems to be several places at once when speaking to his elaborate schemes), based in part on his talks with many community leaders.  He emphasized the many community connections that he would draw upon and stated that he would like to see a 20-story building, to be the definitive Ann Arbor skyline object, on the Library Lot.  It seemed that Allen and Kelbaugh were competing to some extent for the job of the “consultant”.  Meanwhile, at the June meeting there was also some substantive discussion by Albert Berriz and others at the table (described by the Chronicle).  Susan Pollay stated that the July committee meeting would be an intense retreat-style meeting at which the group would make real decisions about setting the course for the process.

Today’s Partnership Committee played to a full house.  Not only were there many citizens in the audience, but McCullough’s UM class, Josie Parker of the AADL, Peter Allen, Kelbaugh and McCullough, and someone making a video tape.

The result was anticlimax.  The expectant audience waited for several minutes before a diminished committee took their seats.  The meeting was chaired by John Mouat  in the absence of both the co-chairs (Russ Collins and Sandi Smith).  No experts were called to speak and Allen, Kelbaugh and McCullough were never mentioned.   Committee members spoke in generalities and the entire meeting seemed conducted under water, so slow and vague each step was.  Mouat spoke admiringly of a couple of other recent plans (the Urban Forest plan and the AATA’s Transit Master Plan) as examples – and meditated aloud on how a community can reach consensus. He expressed a dislike of the very word “development” and said that he didn’t want the development community to be too closely linked to the process.

Some reference was made to RFP 743 (the sad example that put the current process in place).  Susan Pollay astonishingly characterized it as “an abbreviated council RFP process that never got very far”.  She also made a point that the city needs to indicate to developers what incentives will be available.  The Valiant Partners, she said, came in with lots of ideas of what the city could do for them “only to have the community recoil”.  Ably put, that.  Joan Lowenstein also brought out a very cogent point, which is that the city has tried to achieve every possible goal in past RFPs and that this is not realistic.

But in general, there was no instrumental discussion at all.  The group seemed literally to be trying to last out the clock.  They did succeed in instructing staff (Pollay and Amber Miller) to put together a timeline for a process of about a year.  The subject will also be added on to a working session that the DDA has already scheduled with Council for October (principally about parking).

What happened?  Clearly something has interrupted the headlong progress toward a comprehensive downtown planning process.  Audience members gathered in small groups afterwards to ask each other the meaning of it all.  We didn’t have answers.

UPDATE:  See the Chronicle’s more complete coverage of this meeting.

AATA Yesterday and Tomorrow

Last night (June 16, 2011), the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority board took the first step toward implementing its Transit Master Plan (TMP) for a countywide or regional transportation authority.  Links to pdf files of Volumes 1 and 2 of the TMP are available in the short notice on the Ann Arbor Chronicle. Volume 1 is a very large file; it is titled “A Transit Vision for Washtenaw County” but contains many full-page and full-color photographs from unnamed cities that are not located in Washtenaw County.  Volume 2, “Transit Master Plan Implementation Strategy”,  is thin on actual procedural steps and strong on sweeping statements about land use planning.

If fully implemented, the TMP will result in a new (yet unnamed) county-wide or regional transportation authority and the current AATA board will be translated magically intact into a new board, currently known only as the Act 196 board.  As we detailed in a previous post, AATA’s Uncertain Future, the objective is to incorporate under a different state law, Act 196.  Currently, AATA is incorporated under Act 55, which is for a local municipal authority.  They are able to offer service outside the city limits (and do) under Purchase Of Service Agreements (POSAs), by contract.  As an Act 196 authority, they can also offer service outside the county lines – as in commuter rail.

So what will happen to the old AATA?  Will it simply be left behind as a lifeless husk once the brilliant butterfly has emerged?  And most importantly, what will happen to the perpetual millage that Ann Arbor citizens currently pay?

It is worthwhile to recall how AATA began and what its legal basis is, in considering that question.  As we spell out in detail on our Transportation Page,  AATA was incorporated in 1968.  It purchased buses with the help of Federal money, helped out by a donation from the city Sewer Fund.  (Don’t ask me to explain that.)  Then, a citizen initiative, led by (of course!) the League of Women Voters, successfully ran a ballot initiative in 1973 that placed a 2.5 mill tax on Ann Arbor property in perpetuity to support the public transportation system.

But, as usually happens when money is involved, trouble was on the horizon.  According to the history recounted in a citizen’s lawsuit against the City of Ann Arbor, the acting city administrator sent AATA a bill requesting repayment of the city’s subsidy in past years. Further, he informed the authority that it would be levied a “municipal service charge” amounting to nearly 10% of the revenue from the millage. (Ah, how little things have changed.)

The enraged citizens who had supported the millage brought suit against the City in January 1974 and won.  The righteousness of their cause fairly drips from the brief.  Here is how the lead plaintiff described herself:

Sally Vinter, 603 Sunset Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan, is and has for several years…been a resident and a taxpayer of local property taxes and of state income, sales, and motor vehicle taxes.  She has been the chairman of a committee designated “Citizens for a Better Transportation System”, which successfully promoted the 1973 referendum to provide a annual 2 1/2 mill tax levy for mass transportation, as set forth hereinbelow.

In a series of partial judgments (January 10, 1975  ; January 29, 1975; July 24, 1975), Judge Patrick J. Conlin found for the plaintiffs. In a final partial judgment, he indicated that the parties had come to a settlement (we aren’t told the terms) and that no further action on the suit would be taken.

The AATA has been an independent authority ever since then, and the City Council and Mayor have been very little involved, except to appoint board members (who were often long-serving).  But in recent years, Mayor John Hieftje has taken a strong interest in transportation.  He laid this out in a remarkable document, the Mayor’s Model for Mobility, in 2006. As we described in an earlier article, it included a strong focus on two commuter trains, one to Howell and one to Detroit.

Hieftje has molded the AATA board to match his vision.  In a conversation some years ago, he specifically stated to me that he had appointed David Nacht (a Scio Township resident) to the AATA Board in order to promote regional transportation.  Under Nacht’s leadership as the then chair, the board took a straw vote in May 2008 to become a regional authority.  The TMP, if achieved, would complete that ambition, and fulfill many aspects of Hieftje’s vision of a complex transit system, with two commuter trains, in-city routes utilizing light rail or bus rapid transit, and major new infrastructure, including a new train station.

But there are many unanswered questions about the fate of the AATA as a city bus service, and about how that hard-won perpetual millage will be used.  They’ll be in future posts.

Ann Arbor’s Suburban Brain Problem

Suburbs are not getting really great press these days. They are properly a region outside an urban center and best known for the residential colonies formed outside major cities post-World War II (here is a Wikipedia summary).  The images of cookie-cutter neighborhoods, often with transportation malfunctions, come into play.  A little elitism and even racism is associated with the idea. (In Michigan, we especially think of “white flight” from Detroit and the resulting suburbs ring.  In Ann Arbor, a couple of UM professors have been critical of suburbs, including Matthew Lassiter and Jonathan Levine.)  Now, does Ann Arbor qualify as a suburb?  I say no.  Ann Arbor is simply a small city, 45 minutes or more from a large city.

Regardless, Russ Collins, the executive director of the Michigan Theater, has been chafing against the “suburban” mentality of Ann Arborites for years. (I’m pretty sure that I read this from him in a 20-year-old article, but see also DDA minutes and my report from 2005.)  He has often used the word as a pejorative, especially when he is talking about what downtown should be.  Just as mankind supposedly continues to operate with a “savanna brain” based in our origins on the plains of Africa, we neighborhood types in Ann Arbor evidently suffer from suburban brain, which leads us into imprudent and inappropriate yearning for green grass.

This was the main theme of the DDA Partnerships Committee on March 9 as they discussed parks in the downtown with City of Ann Arbor park planner Amy Kuras.  Kuras was there to help the committee in their project to plan for development of the city-owned lots downtown.  She was reviewing with them the PROS plan update.  As described by the Ann Arbor Chronicle, the plan was passed by Council on March 7.  One of the distressing (from the DDA’s viewpoint) facts made evident by the plan is that the Central Area is rather sadly deficient in parks.  The Central Area, which includes but is much larger than the downtown, is bounded by Seventh Street, Stadium Boulevard, Ferdon, and Summit Street/Huron River.

Central Area from city website

As the statistics in the plan make clear, even with the relatively large swaths of West Park and Fuller Park (soon to be a transit hub!), the Central Area is far below other parts of Ann Arbor in park acreage per thousand residents.

From PROS plan; click for larger image

Note that the chart indicates open space that is not city-owned as well, though the figure of 3.7 acres/1000 residents is calculated using only city parkland.  Ann Arbor resident Rita Mitchell, who has been following park matters very closely, made calculations based on addition of city and non-city open space and found that even including the additional open space, there were only 4.79 acres per 1000 residents in the Central Area. Compared to the city-wide average of over 18 acres/1000 residents, that’s not much.

Downtown has very few parks, as is obvious from looking at the map.  The most well-known (Sculpture Park, Liberty Plaza) are mostly concrete with some plantings.  A group advocating a “Central Park”  for the Library Lot make that statement forcefully on their website. But this doesn’t fit with the DDA’s push for development on all downtown lots.  So as the Partnership Committee discussed parks in the downtown, Collins’ frustration burst forth, with a statement that “the public doesn’t understand” the dichotomy between suburban and urban space.  “A suburban template drawn on urban space kills the urban space!”  He urged Kuras to “help us figure out how to communicate”. Kuras agreed that downtown is different qualitatively, that downtown residents “recreate” differently from “suburban” areas.  Susan Pollay pointed out that the public also misconstrues what a “park” should mean.   “We have to stretch the vocabulary.”  She said that the word “park” can mean different things – hardscape is also valuable. It doesn’t have to be green grass.

The group discussed different types of “open space” in the downtown.  University spaces like the Diag were brought up, and the proximity of West Park and Wheeler Park were mentioned.  But for those “recreating” in the downtown, Main Street is open space.  People throng down those wide sidewalks, dine at tables, sit on the planters.   And several times a year, Main Street is closed off to traffic, so the whole street becomes open space.  Kuras mentioned that contributions from developers are supposed to be used to support parks in the same neighborhood, but they are trying to find creative ways to use those contributions in the downtown.  Pollay described an effort to fix up “Transformer Plaza”, a wobegone stretch of concrete filled with electrical transformers next to the Forest Street structure.  They are hoping to place more amenities there to make it a place people can relax.

Another idea is flex space – maybe for some events, the Palio parking lot could be temporarily opened up and “activated”.  Library Lane could be closed to make room for book reading events.  Really, there are already so many open space possibilities in the downtown.  If only we can get those Ann Arbor suburban brains to take it in.

UPDATE:  Dave Askins, in his account of a recent DDA meeting in the Chronicle, captured Collins’ thinking this way:

“Russ Collins commented on a theme he’s often explored, namely the idea that Ann Arbor is ostensibly a suburban community and that when people talk about the downtown, often they speak of it as if it’s an urban area. But the types of parks that are effective in a suburban area, Collins said, are not necessarily effective in an urban area. In urban areas, he said, density, activity and noise are positive attributes, even though those features are considered anathema in suburban areas.”

SECOND UPDATE: The final PROS plan was adopted by the City Council in May of 2011.  Download it here.

Sustainable Ann Arbor: Georgetown Reborn

There are two competing narratives today about Ann Arbor’s future.  One is Metropolitan Ann Arbor.   In this one, “Ann Arbor” is really a significant fraction of mid-Washtenaw County, and perhaps even beyond. (SPARK calls this our brand,  “Ann Arbor, USA” and this includes a business incubator in Plymouth, Michigan (Wayne County). The actual city itself is the center of a growing nexus of enterprise and development, with high-density residential buildings springing up along transit corridors (Transit-Oriented Development) that use sophisticated rail or other rapid, high-volume transportation, centered around the University of Michigan (see also our post, Our Shining City on a Hill).

The other narrative is Sustainable Ann Arbor, where local (city) residents foster interdependence and build connections and resources that will support us as a community over the long run.  Sustainable Ann Arbor is focused on becoming ever more a walkable and bikeable community where local businesses (run by local people) thrive, food produced in the immediate area is sold in farmer’s markets and local eateries, and where a quality of life and special character that is “home” is fostered.  Yes, I am talking about localization and making our city work for its residents.

Now that the Council is underway with budget talks, these two narratives are competing for resources.  There is plenty of grim news for the Sustainable side of the story.  So for that reason, the news that the ruin that is Georgetown Mall might be redeveloped is very good news indeed. According to AnnArbor.com, the new development would be called Packard Square and, from the description, would cover a good deal more of the land area at the site than the current buildings do.  From comments attributed to the developer, it appears that this may be the first development to take advantage of the new zoning resulting from the Area, Height, and Placement project (see detail of changes to the previous sections).  Those changes increased allowable heights, but more importantly perhaps for this case reduced the necessary setbacks.  I haven’t seen the proposed design, but the article indicates that  “The retail space would surround a public square, with a small amount of park space and some benches… Beyond the retail space, the apartments would surround a pool area. Parking would be largely around the perimeter of the property, with a total of 450 spaces and some located under the basement of the apartments.”  That sounds much more attractive and people-friendly than the old huge front parking lot.

Aside from a more attractive appearance and functionality, this is very good news because of its location.  This development comes at a time that the Packard corridor has been undergoing a number of interesting changes.  There have been a couple of new businesses near the upscale Morgan & York gourmet food and wine shop.  Fraser’s Pub has evolved from a smoky bar to a family-friendly neighborhood hangout with good pizza.  With the business development at the corner where Food and Drug used to be (NW of the intersection of Stadium and Packard), the area has a deli, a good liquor/wine shop, a coffee shop, and still keeps its Dairy Queen for summer ice cream.  Do I sound like a booster?  Yes, I am, because this is exactly what a sustainable neighborhood should look like, with many different services available within walking distance.  And the Kroger at South Industrial, plus a number of other services, are not far away.

This last year I and my husband have been making an attempt to expand our walking range.  Thus I have taken to using a simple Google-map-based pedometer to calculate the distance to various locations within Ann Arbor.  I am pleased to discover that the distance from our house to the east side of downtown (and the west side of the UM campus) is only 2 miles.  Since we can now walk 1 mile very quickly without noticing it, and 2 miles with a little break at the end, this means that even when our local bus service doesn’t run, downtown is accessible to us without an automobile, at least in decent weather.

My definition of the good life (and the sustainable one) is being able to reach most of the necessities of life without climbing into an automobile.  Ann Arbor still has a very decent local bus system, though Metropolitan Ann Arbor is driving it toward service concentrated on commuters coming in from elsewhere.  Residents of the new Packard Square will be able to reach the intersection of Stadium and Packard by walking only 0.8 miles (perhaps 15 minutes) and the UM campus or downtown at 2 miles.  By bicycle, hardly any time at all.  And AATA’s Route 5 comes right up Packard every 15 minutes, 12 hours a day.

There will, of course, be some issues to work out, like perviousness (swales?) and details of the design as it affects immediate neighbors.   The preliminary plans call for 220 rental apartments and they will be “upgrades”, according to the developer.  There will also be a few additional service establishments. This is what urban infill should look like. No demolition of an existing neighborhood, instead a denser development within walking distance of downtown, in an emerging area.  And the neighborhood will no longer have to co-exist with a ruin.  The New Year couldn’t start off much better.

UPDATE: The Number One exhibit of  Metropolitan Ann Arbor’s tug on our city’s resources is the Fuller Road Station.  The recent article on AnnArbor.com, reporting on a recent working session about FRS, contains many pertinent comments from readers about this open sink for city funds.

SECOND UPDATE: Today’s AnnArbor.com story includes a rendering of the project.