Let's hope City Place doesn't become legacy of those who blocked a better project
These seven houses along Fifth Avenue, just south of downtown Ann Arbor, could be demolished if the City Place project goes forward.
For more than a year, these four have stubbornly blocked the Heritage Row proposal, an innovative residential project that would preserve seven century-old homes near downtown. Now, it appears the developers have just plain had enough. They say they’ve given up on the Heritage Row concept and will forge ahead with City Place, a much less desirable project that no one wants, but that the developers have every right to build because it meets the city’s minimum zoning requirements.
We have opposed City Place from the start, because we think Ann Arbor deserves better. We only hope there’s still some chance that the developers can be persuaded to reconsider — and that one or more of the hold-out council members will change their vote rather than inflict such a bad outcome on the Germantown neighborhood.
Potentially, this could happen when City Council meets on Monday. Though neither Heritage Row nor City Place is on the agenda, some council members have expressed a willingness to consider this issue one more time. And so they should.
Ann Arbor has long had a reputation for inconsistency and capriciousness in the way it reviews development projects, and Heritage Row is a prime example of that. It’s a planned unit development that called for the renovation of seven older homes on Fifth Avenue, just south of William Street, with three new apartment buildings tucked behind them. It went through stringent, even exhaustive review, and passed muster every step of the way.
The city Planning Commission recommended it by a vote of 6-2. The city planning staff endorsed it. In the most recent reader poll that AnnArbor.com did on the issue, nearly 700 readers responded and 70 percent said they were in favor of it. In June 2010, Ann Arbor City Council voted 7-4 in favor of it.
And yet it’s dead. Because residents in the Germantown neighborhood petitioned against Heritage Row, approval requires a “super majority’’ of eight votes on City Council, so it fell one vote short. And repeated efforts to revisit the issue have failed; the council minority wouldn’t budge.
The obstructing council members -- Mike Anglin, Sabra Briere, Carsten Hohnke and Stephen Kunselman -- have run the developers through a wringer. By continuing to oppose Heritage Row, they seemed to believe they could force further refinements to the plan, even though by any reasonable standard, the project was more than attractive enough already.
Ultimately, the strategy has backfired on them. Instead of securing something better, they have brought Ann Arbor to the brink of something far worse.
Heritage Row is the second plan put forward by developers. The first was City Place, an entirely unappealing concept that called for bulldozing the seven turn-of-the-century-era homes and replacing them with a pair of drab, boxy apartment buildings. Though City Council members — and just about everyone else — hated City Place, they were compelled to approve it because it met the basic zoning requirements and they had no legal basis to reject it.
Opponents of the project have long contended that City Place was never a serious proposal. They saw it more as a bargaining chip that the developers conjured up to build support for Heritage Row as a more attractive alternative when it was unveiled in late 2009.
Whether that was or wasn’t the case, it's clear that the City Council members who voted against Heritage Row overplayed their hand. The developers now seem dead serious about proceeding with City Place. Given what they’ve already invested, how much time they’ve lost and the way they’ve been jerked around, it’s hard to blame them.
Still, we hope something better can yet be salvaged here. And in fairness, we need to acknowledge that City Council did make an effort in February to revive the project, voting 9-2 to allow the developers to bring Heritage Row back through the city’s plan review process for a reduced fee of $2,000. Council members Hohnke and Briere voted in favor, as did Marcia Higgins, who originally voted for the project but cast a “no’’ vote in a previous effort to reconsider it in December 2010.
It’s not clear why the developers didn’t take the city up on that offer in February, or whether they’d be willing to revive the Heritage Row concept now. But we hope they’d consider it, and we call upon City Council to at least re-open that possibility by taking action on Monday.
That would require the vote of at least one of the four council members who put the city in this unfortunate position. It looks like more than one of them may now be willing to change their vote, and we can only hope that’s the case. Unless they want City Place to be their lasting legacy, they need to join their more reasonable colleagues and work toward the better proposal that’s been in front of them all along.
This is the approved plan for City Place, which calls for two apartment buildings with a surface parking lot between them.
(This editorial was published in today's newspaper and reflects the opinion of the Editorial Board at AnnArbor.com.)
Comments
snapshot
Mon, Sep 19, 2011 : 5:04 a.m.
We have students living in tinder boxes. Keeping them living in tinder boxes would be a crime. These "neighbors" aren't doing anybody any favors other than creating animosity and wanting to prevent law abiding employers from exercising their rights. For city council to even accommodate such frivolous interference in free enterprise should be a major concern for residents. It is the selective enforcement and administration of codes and zoning. It is not a failure of the codes and zoning it is the failure to administrate the codes and zoning in a uniform manner. That's wrong.
John Q
Mon, Sep 19, 2011 : 1:19 p.m.
Don't like it? Complain to Lansing. The city followed the rules set by state law.
John Q
Mon, Sep 19, 2011 : 4:07 a.m.
The failure is a zoning and development process that puts these older homes in the way of the bulldozer unless a developer chooses to save them. It seems the majority of people are wringing their hands about the likelihood of losing these homes. But the process puts no value on protecting these homes. After all of the noise is over, what's going to change to put a priority on saving homes like these?
snapshot
Mon, Sep 19, 2011 : 3:02 a.m.
The Ann Arbor political system has evolved into its own "special interest" cabol. I would advocate that the protesting neighbors start making "nice" with the new developer who is from "out of town" and not likely to take any crap from them. So funny that Ann Arbor strives to be world class but fails repeatedly due to pettiness. Maybe if there was a Masters or PhD program in common sense we could produce leaders who think instead of leaders who stink at thinking.
Mike D.
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 8:37 p.m.
Tony, I don't usually agree with you, but you're absolutely right here. I'll add that talk of making the block in question a historic district is absurd. The neighborhoods that are worthy of historic preservation have been designated already, and allowing a new historic neighborhood designation to block a specific project is unfair, capricious, and legally tenuous enough that a developer could overturn it in court. It is simply disingenuous for those in the Mike Anglin/Sabra Briere/Carsten Hohnke/Stephen Kunselman camp to claim that a historic district was ever a viable way of stopping this. Unless the plan is to make all of downtown a historic district and stop all development (ensuring that population is forced to sprawl outward), historic districts aren't the answer. A combination of stricter codes and a willingness to compromise would allow much nicer developments in he future, with the density we need to grow sustainably.
GerryD
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 6:02 p.m.
Long Time No See, Its pretty hard how you can see this as the developers fault. They stated early on they wanted to do Heritage Row instead, but due to it not meeting existing rules, they applied for a PUD. The neighbors complained and the council said no. The developers already owned the land and have to make the thing profitable, so they had to develop a less ideal plan B. They did not like it and said so, but they're only choices are 1) Develop the land in a profitable and zoning compliant way or 2) abandon it and lose their shirts. #2 isn't gonna happen and all these claims that #1 was blackmail are paranoid -- read the transcripts of the city council meetings and the published interviews and it's obvious the developers did everything they could to avoid #1. They are not a charity and they should be commended for a plan that supposedly encompassed all the A2 development ideals - historic preservation, downtown infill/density and sensitive aesthetics. Those who say it's their fault this is happening: What would you do? And simply rehabing those houses isn't an option -- there is no way even rehabed, the houses by themselves could ever break even on the costs already invested in the property. They own the land. They have to break even (well, they have to make some profit). They tried to come up with a "perfect Ann Arbor" development plan (repeatedly). They got shotdown repeatedly. They fell back to plan B and put in a less-ideal, but workable plan. What more could someone do? Blame the neighbors for being too obstructionist and mostly the council for overplaying their hand and coming up bust. Everyone loses.
Goober
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 6:02 p.m.
We keep re-electing city council and the mayor even though they have a track record of making poor decisions. So, this is what we deserve.
Old Salt
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 5:14 p.m.
An Old West Side Resident installed a nice split rail fence recently around his property and the Historical Society of AnnArbor is forcing him to remove it. but they will allow thsese beautiful historical homes on 5th Ave to be destroyed.. Wake up City Hall
Joe Kidd
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 5:10 p.m.
Ironically, another loser of sorts in this will be the tenants of whatever this evolves into. The original plan was a very nice building that by far would have been the best to live in and best in appearance. Better than the City Place design or the Heritage Row idea. The process this project went through is laughable and should be used in universities that train developers how NOT to do it. Let developers beware, doing business in Ann Arbor can take eons and lots of money for design work that will never be used.
MB111
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 3:37 p.m.
Feel free to blame the developers and council. but the real culprits are the neighbors, whose fear of change led to the rejection of Heritage Place - clearly the best alternative. They created the situation where council needed a super majority to pass the superior Heritage Row project. Let this be a lesson to citizens all over town - change is inevitable, don't fight every option and take the best available choice.
MB111
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 7:23 p.m.
Person X - the neighbors didn't want anything. Ecen today, Tom Whitaker is threatening legal action. At best, the neighbors got greedy, City place was apprved and the far superior Heritage Row was rejected for height??????
PersonX
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 5:56 p.m.
This has nothing to do with fear of change. Most of the neighbors were well aware of the fact that something would be built there, but wanted Heritage Row to be slightly lower and less intrusive. That was what the issue was about, not a wholesale rejection of the idea of change. There is plenty of blame to go around, but this horror should not be allowed .... It is not just the neighbors who lose, but anyone who actually cares what this city looks like.
Long Time No See
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 3:29 p.m.
I think it's kind of funny that people are blaming city council. It's the developers that are actually going ahead with this horrible project. It's not like they couldn't do something else. Sure, they tried to get people to bend the rules for them and they failed. Boo hoo. How about working within the rules *and* actually doing something positive at the same time? Plenty of other developers manage to do that, are these developers so incompetent that they are unable to do so themselves? Like a petulant child, they have lashed out when they didn't get the toys they wanted. I can't help thinking this has all been a calculated approach to shift blame for their own disregard for our community. By the way, where's our beloved local developer Mr. DeParry now? Oh, he's hiding his face now that he and his partners are going to leave a wound on our city that will never heal until long after most of us are gone. He doesn't want his "good name" sullied any more than necessary by his actions, so he now lets others be the public face of his dirty work. These developers seem to be acting like horrible spiteful people who seem to want nothing other than to profit from the destruction of our city. Sure, in the soulless mercenary approach to business that Tony and so many others here seem to support, the city council appears to have been out-played in this process. However, I think just because they were outplayed doesn't mean they weren't trying to do the right thing while the developers were just cynically trying to get what they wanted at any cost - to *us*.
fjord
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 3:36 p.m.
Did you miss the part where they submitted a second, far less objectionable plan, that preserved the houses, only to have it blocked by an alliance of neighbors and recalcitrant council members? I have a pretty good idea where the blame lies, and in this case it's not with the developer.
just a voice
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 2:20 p.m.
Ann Arbor city government sucks. This is the perfect example. Somehow, I'm guessing if this one one of the developers with closer ties to local government they wouldn't have had this problem (maybe one of the supporters could have sent a private email during a vote to help change their mind). This largely stems from our democratic super majority.
Susan Montgomery
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 2:17 p.m.
It would be such a shame if those houses were lost...
Joe Kidd
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 5:05 p.m.
Not really. They are in quite bad shape. They are not being used as originally intended so they have already been carved up. The back yards are unpaved parking lots.
MB111
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 2:19 p.m.
Those houses will be lost. Blame the neighbors for fighting any form of change. Heritage Row would have preserved the character of the neighborhood.
Olan Owen Barnes
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 2 p.m.
The council forgets there is a private sector that is interested in a profit and not the capricious city council. This is a teachable moment.
Grumpy
Sun, Sep 18, 2011 : 1:10 p.m.
typos, typos, typos....