001foreign alrighty welcome to the May 2nd 2023 regular meeting the annivers Planning Commission for detailed information please look at the agenda that's provided um Mr Leonard or mix Kelly will you call the roll commissioner Gabe Randall president commissioner Abrams here commissioner Soviet here commissioner Mills here commissioner Hammerschmidt here commissioner dish here commissioner Lee here commissioner Clark commissioner white here we have a corpsman thank you we will move on to the approval of the agenda item number three may I have a motion commissioner Lee and commissioner Mills any discussion none all those in favor say aye aye motion passes already minutes of the previous meeting we have uh April 18th from 2023 may I have somebody move that commissioner Mills second in by commissioner weich any discussion of the minutes none okay all those in favor
002please say aye aye aye okay motion passes alrighty we are on to item five which is reports um from uh Administration City Council planning manager Planning Commission officers we will start with you I couldn't find anything that was really of direct interest to Planning Commission you might be interested to know that we did vote to dissolve the brownfields plan Review Committee okay let's see yeah um staff report uh no report from norport still finalizing your work session agenda for next week so it'll be a surprise okay be waiting with baited breath I'm sure did I see commissioner Abrams for reports yep yeah I just wanted to say that the ordinance revisions committee met last week and discussed revisions to the ordinance surrounding clubs conflicting land use buffers and the commission will be seeing some proposed
003revisions coming to you in the near future all right any other committee Liaisons or reps no all right uh okay well we will move then on to our opening public comment which is item number six this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about an issue that is not listed on the public agenda uh we'll call First on people who are in the room and then we'll move to remote participants to speak during this public hearing remotely press star 9 if using by phone or use the raise hand feature if you enter the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 and to unmute press star six City staff will sell out colors at a razor hand using the last three digits of your phone number or
004by name of those are accessing through the web link you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background song so that we may hear you clearly is there anybody that would like to speak who is present not looking like anybody so we will anybody in the queue remotely we do [Music] call her with the phone number ending with five three four you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission hello this is I want to mention a few things I'll begin with my support of the resolution that you received from the righteous Commission in support of an ordinance to that actual gas connection new construction and major Innovations one of the hats that I work with is
005at a landlord I participated in that capacity on the Green Restaurant we haven't seen the final plan for implementing that in the housing code yet but my small company has begun doing Energy Efficiency in anticipation of that we've been doing things like investing in upgraded electrical samples swapping out gaps water heaters gas water heaters gas dryers and gas stove Etc we installed an EV chart at our office that was offered free of charge to any of our tournaments with the help of our tenants that are in the school or environment sustainability we installed a rainbow and we'll be doing more we intend to do our part we support regulations to hold us to that we hope the city will support regulations for new construction and major Renovations as well the deficit a carbon deficit a
006new projects that aren't sustainably built but it did make it so it's very difficult for us to fall out of that hole by 2030. I'd like to wish the target planner Jessica Hahn all the best I did notice something in the news article about his retirement that he helped develop a plan for lowercase that called for a mixed juice or the village and it says a vision now realizes well the first half is correct I participated in that conference plan process about 20 years ago and I'd like to compliment Jeff and other staff who did an excellent job and we got a very good comprehensive plan is developing two-thirds developed and one-thirds trying to do later unfortunately the Morningside plans apply with the comprehensive planner that Jessica Hahn did such a good job we didn't
007get an excuse Urban Village as the article continued we got a token less than one percent in the words of Staff reviewing the Morningside project quote the development is expensive 30 more seconds a single use residential with an accessory retail space end quote now we'll be talking about that later but I do want to mention uh some of the other puds that have been brought in with affordable housing benefits you and we know that the puds are indeed file with the number that Kenyan have come in and provided both affordable housing excuse at the time of the Lower Town application it was said that easy same thing your time is up Mr stahlberg I'd just like to provide that thank you anybody else in the queue no other hands raised okay we will move on
008to item number seven which are public hearings for the next meeting on May 16th we have two new public hearings scheduled for the May 16th meeting I would note that that um or I know that it's May 16th uh one is um uh the city of Ann Arbor petition the state of Michigan to approve the annexation of a number of Township Island Parcels in Ann Arbor Township the state of Michigan Licensing Regulatory Affairs Department recently improved the annexation of 11 Parcels 2775 Newport 2737 Newport 2466 Newport 2318 Newport 2354 Newport 2108 Newport 1375 bird 1429 bird 2114 Victoria Circle 2118 Victoria Circle and two one two six Victoria Circle the city of Ann Arbor is now initiating the rezoning of these Parcels to r1a single family detached zoning District the second public hearing is for
009South Town rezoning site plan and Street vacation at 1601 South State Street this is a project with three petitions to develop the blocks surrounded by South State White Street Henry Street and Stimson Street a petition to rezone a block of 10 Parcels from r4c to c1ar with conditions with an offer to reduce the maximum height limit to 100 feet set a maximum vehicle parking limit of 0.25 spaces per dwelling unit and set minimum active open space requirement of 50 square feet per dwelling unit second a site plan for city council approval to construct a two hundred and twenty thousand square foot mixed-use building with ground for retail office and child care space and approximately 215 apartments and third a petition to vacate the public alley in the block site the site includes addresses 1601 South
010State 1605 South State 1607 South State 1609 South State 1611 South State 1606 white 1608 white 1610 white 16 12 weight and 714 Henry the site is 1.7 Acres currently zoned r4c okay thank you for that plethora of addresses that we got with both of them I'm sure we will all remember that for next time so we are on to item number 8A which is 999 Maiden Lane site plan and rezoning for city council approval this is a project including a rezoning petition to amend the conditions of the C1 AR campus business residential with condition zoning designation by removing the condition that the property shall only be developed as the 1140 Broadway plan project site plan as may be administratively amended because two of the three approved buildings have been constructed and a site plan
011application to construct a hundred and eighty thousand two hundred twenty two hundred square foot seven story residential building on the parcel B of The Beekman on Broadway development replacing the previously approved building with similar dimensions in this location zoning district and development site site are 6.4 Acres Building B site is 1.4 acres addresses include 1100-1200 Broadway Street with 999 Maiden Lane okay we get to have a petitioner presentation for up to 10 minutes so you all can step up to the microphone and I'm assuming you all have worked out the digital presentation well good evening I'm Ron much I'm a principal with Morningside group and I'm joined tonight by my partner David Strasbourg seated to my right he's the president of Morningside also via Zoom we have the rest of our Consulting team we have
012our zoning attorney Bob Carson from the Carson Fisher law firm we have our civil engineering and entitlement consultant Tom covert with Midwestern Consulting we have our transportation engineer Julie Kroll with fleece and vandenbrink and we have our project architect Adam Toma with hcam Architects and we would be pleased to answer your questions this evening thank you thank you okay give me one second not completely prepared um before you this evening are two are actually two petitions let me make sure loud enough um before you are actually two petitions um one is uh 1140 Broadway rezoning it's considered a rezoning even though the designation on the map will remain c1ar with conditions more in a second and there is a site plan um project name 999 Maiden Lane a site is located on the north side
013of Maiden Lane between Broadway Street and Nielsen Court there's a location map in the staff report for the zoning a tiny bit of background the site is 6.4 Acres um as mentioned and in 2017 it was zoned c1a r with conditions there are three conditions um one um there we go here's the good there are three conditions that have been offered accepted and are now in place one is at the height of any part of a building or structure on the property is a maximum of seven stories and 91 feet which is further restricted in the area most close to Trevor Creek Four stories and a maximum height of 60 feet second condition is the maximum height limitations in more specificity about that they include architectural features such as the parapet walls but exclude structure
014certain other structures there is a cap on that the excluded structures still do not extend more than 20 feet and there is currently a condition that the property shall only be developed as the 1140 Broadway planned project site plan as approved by Ann Arbor City Council on December 4th 2006 December 4th 2017 as well as any administrative amendments to the site plan that phrase administrative amendments is the key for this evening the applicant is um it's considered a like I said it must be processed as a rezoning but the request is ultimately to strike the third condition to take it can be explained as to rezone from c1a slash r with three conditions to c1a slasher with two conditions um the first two would remain the height restrictions and the specificity about what's included in
015the height restriction but the requirement that the property shall only be developed as the original 1140 Broadway planned project site plan with any administrative amendments be struck what is proposed for development than the site plan petition um the the 1140 Broadway zoning district has been developed it has three components to it it has a building a which is a multi-family apartment building which surrounds like a donut a parking structure it also has a second apartment building in the C position and then it currently has a vacant site which had an approved apartment building um that was constructed with a square base and then an L-shaped building on top of that square base square base of parking the proposed development is specific to that building C it would not be a building with a square base
016and an L-shaped building on top of it but it would be an entirely C or u-shaped building the development would have no parking of its own on its little site but it is part of the larger development which has access to a 400 some space parking structure um notable features of that site plan are that it is set back a minimum uh the proposed building is set back a minimum of 14 feet from Maiden Lane and 17 feet from Nielsen Court the internal streets which are considered uh which are private streets they're actually not meeting the definition of a street but for discussion purposes let's call them a street they have been named Gordon Lane and Charlotte Lane um the proposed building is set back 14 feet from those uh 14 feet from one 20
017feet from the other standard five foot wide sidewalks are located on in the public side on Maiden Lane and Nielsen Court as well as on the private side adjacent to Gordon and Charlotte Lanes there's a class a bicycle parking storage area inside the building one for each unit and a few additional ones are provided outside um for just this Building B Spot there will be 15 new sparking spaces installed same as originally planned they are parallel or perpendicular to the private streets and this makes for a total of 30 spaces exterior surface spaces and I was wrong I said 400 it's 579 parking spaces in the structure there'll be two EV Chargers installed with these new spaces exterior adjacent to building um adjacent to Building B we have reviewed the site plan for the standard
018standard development standards review and it meets all of the applicable development standards um including the proposed conditional zoning statement of Second Amendment conditions if accepted um there are at the time the staff report was written there were a few comments or outstanding issues from staff there was a comment provided by our sustainability office a comment provided by The Parks and Recreation Department regarding the parks contribution requested increase to match the proposed number of dwelling units the applicant has agreed and there is at a restatement of the development agreement attached that will be forwarded to city council to reflect that um the transportation department unit had not completed their review at the time the staff report was written verbal discussions indicated that the issue was related to the um validation of the traffic impact analysis I
019know that the applicant has provided um a letter just today I was not able to check in with our transportation staff but this project the Planning Commission is a recommending body for this this project will still move on to city council and depending on the outcome there is time to verify that and schedule and keep following the process there um regarding the site plan nope I didn't mean that regarding the rezoning um our staff analysis or staff opinion is that um the the site is mostly developed and so the purpose of this condition has largely been satisfied the condition to match the site match the development with the um site plan and there does not seem to be a compelling reason to to continue that condition particularly the um proposed site plan the style is
020in is in keeping the all the architectural elements are in keeping but the change did exceed the administration what could be approved with an administrative Amendment which is now called the site plan for Planning Commission I'm sorry planning manager approval um and we think that the unified development cone standards for any development in the c1a slash R District um should apply without any further modification or um um or condition we are recommending conditional approval as a whole of the rezoning and the site plan subject to verifying those outstanding staff comments and I'm happy to answer any additional questions and I know the applicant and his team is also here as well um so we often hear from the developer first and then from you but I presume that was kind of your analysis that we're
021not going to hear anything else from you in terms of your report okay so we still have yet to hear from the developer then or no that was the extent of their presentation that they wanted to provide they're available for any questions okay I get it okay alrighty okay so we then will move on to the public hearing this is an opportunity for a person to speak up to three minutes about the 999 Maiden Lane site plan and rezoning for city council approval we'll first call on participants who are here and then remotely to speak during public hearing press star nine if listening by phone or use the raise the hand feature for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-663-41226 to unmute press star six City staff will select callers that'll raise their
022hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name you'll hear an automated announcement the host is allowing you to speak for either method please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anybody present who would like to speak at this time come on up to the front just state your name and address and you have three minutes good evening my name is Dawn mccleskey I live at 1306 Pontiac Trail at the corner of Kellogg um I walked here I grew up in Ann Arbor on the west side and I lived away for half a lifetime I moved back in 2020 after about 20 years away I've lived in San Francisco Washington DC and a very large city in Russia that nobody has heard of um so
023I can see coming back that the area around Ann Arbor has fallen into significant sprawl and I also perhaps too generously interpret the downtown the current Downtown Development as of response to that to try to um limit the footprint of of ourselves on the earth bring people in make it more pedestrian and non-motor dependent pedestrian friendly non-motor dependent and I I see those goals as deeply Ann Arbor and I appreciate that um what I see in the actual development as it's unfolding however is an entrenching of suburban social isolation there is not enough opportunity for people to congregate and without the Shops and and mixed use that the original plan of this development promised what we're seeing is basically a place where people will only be able to go and be alone in their Apartments
024the people on the first floor with a 14-foot setback that's less than this they will never be able to open their windows or their curtains in their Apartments I was trying to walk up Swift the other day yesterday actually made full eye contact with somebody who's just doing um homework on his floor and trying to hang out with his cat and he was really startled by the closeness of my presence the little warehousey things at the point of more and Swift so I strongly encourage you to not approve the residential only aspect of this plan social is dystopia in the making it is built you might as well build a warehouse to store people in because they will only be enclosed in their homes um people need shops we the residents of the neighborhood we
025need shops we need cafes we need sidewalks that invite us to come out and congregate in places where we can be together okay after the pandemic we are definitely knowing that being together is important and especially with the with working from home I work from home I would love for there to be places for me to go without my car which we only have one of because we believe in not cars so please don't approve this it's a bad idea thank you is there anybody else present that would like to speak come on up hi my name is Steve Kaplan I live at 406 North Division um and um I have so some I pay attention to development in the area I pay attention to I've been involved in some development in the area the
026idea of what we want from development and what it should what should be included in that development to get what we want it is an ongoing discussion with every single one of them and I think everything I just heard from the person before me I couldn't agree more with I think that you know we're we're struggling with a need for density in this town and getting room for people to be closer together and able to walk to the places where they're employed so that they don't use cars and I think we're doing a good job and I think this this particular development does an excellent job of that um but I also think that some of the other goals that we have are facilitated by these developments even if they don't integrate these things and
027what I mean by that is retail and community space don't necessarily have to be in a building for that building to help facilitate them you have to have a certain amount of critical mass of density to be able to support the store or the restaurant or the shop or the Gathering space they don't they don't sustain themselves otherwise I've seen too many of these where we want to have this empty space in the building because we're you know we we envision what's going to go there but we aren't the ones that are going to open that shop we aren't the ones that are going to pay the rent on that and if we don't have enough people that'll go actually sit in that place and buy the coffee or buy the croissant or do whatever
028they don't they don't sustain themselves especially now when there's a dramatic shift in what we're demanding from retail and office in Ann Arbor where that's in dramatic flux it is a it's an it's an unfathomable risk to ask a new developer to say hey just speculate on this empty space even though there's a bunch of It kind of morphing everywhere in town right now um what this building will do these buildings will do even without a big space to congregate is bring the people that will support anything that comes next here and this part of town as well as other parts of town they are iteratively developing and this is the perfect first step to get the next things that we need because now those people are there to actually support these other things that
029we want that I want as well thanks thank you come on up to the front take this off so you can hear me better do I have to do something with this for short people um you can probably push it there you go great I know there is little we can do to stop this thing please identify yourself yes I'm sorry I'm Laura Stroh I live at 1327 Broadway thank you um I know there is little we can do to stop this third building from being built have you seen the first two buildings they are ugly with cheap looking panels they are way too large for the neighborhood moreover they have resulted in many losses to the neighborhood we now have a wind tunnel on Broadway and the third building will probably exacerbate the wind
030tunnel on Maiden Lane that was caused by the erection of the second building instead of enjoying the Sun as we walk there we are in Shadow for a good part of the day the view of the Broadway Hill is compromised as you travel from downtown we no longer have a view of the river valley and The Greenery in the skyline on the other side of the river because of this building these buildings that have already been built not to mention the loss of seeing the sky is this all petty no these are human desires to see this guy and the landscape and feel the Sun this project has created an aesthetic desert in our neighborhood it is a shame that our City's master plan doesn't prevent this kind of development the humorous thing is that
031the city allows such things to be built and then asks us to be enthusiastic about public art as if that can compensate us for the blight of huge unattractive developments except this project might urge you to include more amenities before giving the final building your approval they will ask for more so-called affordable housing for example and you might be willing to try to push the developer on this issue however the Damage Done to the City by this development cannot be ameliorated by a trifling number of apartments that must be rented to people who earn less than 60 percent of the median income those aren't even poor people likewise the environmentalists cannot be appeased by laughable concessions as Morningside has made like heating the tiny swimming pool with solar panels neighborhood activists want more retail and
032with several hundred more residents in these two phase in these last two phases we surely could use it the developer will boast at an Asian grocery store will be opening in the second building and of course we are really happy about that but his refusal to include retail in the third building is just Unforgivable so how do we justify approving projects such as these they are ugly they impact negatively on our lives they adversely affect the environment and they and they don't adequately address our concerns we are told that we need more housing to expand the population to support our infrastructure I've read my marks so I know that capitalism requires constant expansion of the economy we want and deserve more than we are getting in this drive to keep growing we need to figure
033out how to have a city with a healthy economy and decent housing for all without ruining its livability in the process what a boon it would be if you would make a stand for livability and not approve this final building in the Morningside project thank you thank you is there anybody else present who would like to speak you can just come on up thank you Mary Mary Underwood from 1219 Traver and could I ask that that the members who speak in microphones I'm sorry but I didn't hear much of was what was discussed as as about the project when when you spoke um earlier I'd like to agree wholeheartedly with Don and with what uh Lori just Laura just said um I I I don't know if I'm more alarmed at the what the developer
034is trying to do or what the city is trying to do if you really are trying to meet the sustainable goals you can't do one thing for a developer and then do another for another one you can't be led by developers you have to do the leading yourself and tell the developers what we want for this town the priority is we decide what we want not let the developers run with the lead for this and that's really all I'd like to say and remind you of thank you thank you was there one one more yeah sure Andrew stroe 1327 Broadway I'll keep this very short I hope you're planning and not merely approving developments in the city on a piecemeal basis larger issues should affect your thinking and decisions for example you might require that
035this building involve mixed use or you might require that the building be all electric you have to start sometime if you're going to achieve carbon neutrality you can't keep putting it off that the developer made a bad choice by putting in some of the infrastructure for gas should be irrelevant here well perhaps you could address affordable housing in this building is affordable housing just housing that's affordable to someone require that some units be set aside for truly affordable housing and make certain that those affordable housing units are filled thank you anybody else present yeah thank you chair good Randall my name is Ken Garber I live at 28 Haverhill Court um yeah I agree with Miss Underwood about the need for consistency and holding developers to standards when it comes to environmental impact I want
036to speak this is the sustainability features of this project they fall way short you know that um Mr Leo alluded to osi's latest memo they're recommending that the building's use of gas be minimized to back up in critical systems only if this 180 000 square foot building uses gas heat throughout I calculate that it will generate an annual 1 238 metric ton CO2 equivalent emissions just from gas combustion this would be partially offset by reduced commuter emissions of 349 metric tons four net annual emissions of 889 metric ton CO2 equivalent from natural gas combustion I've in past meetings I've detailed how I arrive at these calculations um to me that three years into the a20 plan this is unacceptable um I would think a vrf system variant refrigerant flow would be ideal vrf sends varied
037volumes for refrigerant from a central air source air source heat pump to evaporators that control different spaces in the building meaning the heating needs of each space individually they're now routine in buildings of this size including in areas in similar climates or even colder also it's not clear to me how much solar the project will will include I remember that as of January the petitioner wasn't intending to install any I think it sounds like based on the staff report they had changed to some extent I just don't know how much Switching gears I have a technical question about the affordable housing I've read that the petitioner will be adding six arguably affordable units a 60 Ami to the 15 already agreed on for the the whole project three buildings for a total of 21 units
038County Brownfield coordinator Nathan vote also cited the 21 number recently the 15 original units were folded into the Brownfield plan my question is where are the funds for the six new units coming from the existing Brownfield plan allocates 2.5 million for this um medc guidelines by the way didn't allow for Brownfield funds to be used for this purpose of the final plan switched the 2.5 million to the parking structure which medc does allow um but I'm still left wondering where where is the public money if any for the six additional housing units coming from but that's a small point it's mainly the big issue for me is again that the building go with electric HVAC and avoid gas as much as possible um Mr Leo mentioned conditions on approval I couldn't tell whether she is
039including the OSI recommendations in that condition I hope I hope that is actually one of them thank you thank you to anybody else present who would like to speak do we have anybody in the queue virtually thank you Tom stalbert yeah three minutes to address the Planning Commission hello again in Ann Arbor this application does not apply with the comprehensive plan nor with current planning and conditions a different as far as sustainability I find morningside's response to the staff recommendations unsatisfactory and frankly insulting I think Ken Garber did a great job so I'll skip it to parking this parking is no longer required for any project in the city of Ann Arbor sustainable if that option hasn't been supersede warning sign would have had to provide those community community benefits in exchange for eliminating parking
040now that UDC changed it's crazy it's part of a positive changes that came out of the lawsuit Power by The Neighborhood against the city over this development I continue with the plant project part of the UDC that was not an applied how many affordable housing units could we have had we not superseded that UDC change that lasted the comprehensive plan calls from the excuse Urban Village the previous approval and the current revised application those are 100 residents that's this application does not apply with the comprehensive mixed use development especially at the locations such as this are part of our City's current and initiated in my opinion that should be adhered to at this location the choice was only Justified because of that zone capability but there were zero new excuses and only a half percent
041has Allah possible well you can't pencil out there's [Music] they should include excuses thank you we have other people in the queue we do Daniel Adams you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission hey good evening um Daniel Adams 1016 Daniel Street um I think that you know the math here is really 200 Apartments versus 80 condos that's what I understand um to be at stake here with the resilient request relative to the changes that are being proposed to the originally approved plan that's Matt and that's the strongest argument in my view to approve this project um we have a housing crisis and I don't think we can afford to turn down that kind of um density proposition given the current situation that we're in um I think a lot of folks who have
042spoken tonight um I understand why my argument doesn't resonate um many of these folks um you know bought their homes decades ago um the local Landmark just spoke um he acquired a lot of his rental properties decades ago um to them the considerations that they spoke of sunlight when um you know I get all that I understand aesthetically why that's troubling to see some of the changes that have happened um you know to me I bought my house in 2012. I've lived here um my entire life in the area um and I remember what this what this area of lower Town looked like in particular this Parson looked like before the beacon project began um this has been a tremendous success for this area it was it was a dead zone um the reason why
043retail couldn't survive was that you know it just was not a vibrant thriving uh neighborhood in terms of the amount of density and the people living I understand that the neighboring Africa sort of demanding retail but um you know they were either insufficiently enthusiastic about it when it existed uh decades ago or they were they were insufficient and numbered to sustain and the way to reverse that in the way that the way to create the demand um to call um you know retail back into this this area of this community and sustain it is to take um take the proposition that's staring that's in front of you tonight to honor an apartment versus 85 minutes um that's the map please approve this thank you no other hands raised Okay so emotions which I will read
044together the anniversary Planning Commission hereby recommends that the Marin city council approved the rezoning of 1140 Broadway by accepting the offer to amend the conditional zoning statement of amended conditions to the room to remove tying development into the district to the 1140 Broadway plan project site plan and subsequent administrative amendments and accept the conditional zoning statement of second amended conditions the second motion is the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission hereby recommends that the Marin city council approved the 999 Maiden late site plan subject to addressing outstanding comments from engineering and transportation and First Amendment to 1140 Broadway development agreement okay we have moved by commissioner dish talking to by commissioner weich we are in discussion anybody want to kick us off so maybe maybe I'll start with the kind of retail concerns and I am
045excited uh with the contract that's been approved for comprehensive planning and specifically Nina gret Partners is part of that comprehensive team that even during the interview process was able to pull up metrics for our area for our city looking I think tc1 is kind of a very kind of vibrant discussion right now about the ratios of retail to housing um I can't I'm not the professional in this exact category but really some of the early feedback that we got prior to them really digging in is that not everything can have retail the critical mass is not there for every project to have retail and we've seen that with the George as well and so it really is kind of right sizing all of our projects relative to the amount of beds adjacent and sometimes it's
046the cart and the horse and really we need to see more housing before we see that critical mass of retail to follow um kind of I'm excited to see like there are other things coming in right like Lower Town bars coming to the corner uh which has also had to go through the zba we're right at the you know Crossroads of that process of removing parking minimums and it really they needed to request to have zero parking to make that project feasible as a local small business owner so I think we understand within this neighborhood it's really difficult um with our current policies to even make those projects work and they have to go through additional hurdles to find the feasibility so I I understand that there's like always desire for more third places right
047that's a lot of what makes our communities but we have them here I mean plate Sushi like just a name drop all my favorite little spots like right around this area um are there and I think that it would be great for them to have more customers um in a walkable radius um and through that momentum we can see more development right we've got the Broadway development right at the riverfront that we can see both momentum and add more retail too so um I don't really have concerns in losing the retail I think I agree with one one uh commenter about exchanging of larger condos a smaller quantity of them for apartments relative to the access and affordability of just adding more units to our housing stock and as I read it right like we're
048looking at c1ar looking at the conditions here but everything else we've moved away we do not have planned projects anymore so that's also kind of how I review this project plan projects don't exist and we're a body both recommending here but reviewing this relative to the conditions of our UDC yes we want things we want electrification but we cannot like require them of buy right projects uh I know that this one has a little Nuance to it I believe but uh it's not in the Pud category of measuring some of those exchanges in the same way uh and so for that understanding that this is meeting the intent of the original plan uh I just I guess I kind of want to speak like make I have two two-fold to kind of wrap up this
049comment one comprehensive planning I think is going to engage the whole community in understanding better what our retail to housing ratios really should be not what we think they should be with professionals running those numbers um which can help us strategize some of this zoning and those expectations better so that these conversations don't come kind of at the last minute saying I wish I could but nobody actually stepping up to the play we wish we could see this but nobody stepping out of the plate to say I'm gonna put my money there and start the business um and I think part of that comprehensive plan is really going to help everybody be enlightened to what that mix is um and then my review is that being so closely related to C1 AR so um robustly
050kind of developed to this point I don't see like a lot of deviation relative to what we're looking at today uh that I don't have discomfort relative to approving this project so I don't really have further comments but I wanted to kind of add that plug for conference plan thank you commissioner dish so I want to thank all of the ward one residents who've come out to speak both for and against and to express concerns and uh uh realistic hopes for the project um I I want to highlight some of what I see as the benefits of the project but I also want to take some time to ask a couple of questions to allay some of the concerns because I think that reasonable concerns have been raised so I'm really pleased I'm sorry I
051realize I'm not let me use my use my public speaking voice so everyone can hear me I'm pleased to see you convert what you had expected to build is an 80 condo project into what is actually an infill project that's where we get greater density where there's existing infrastructure and uh so you've converted this into an infill project that will bring 196 units of rental housing to a site that's within a stone's throw of a major employer which is the hospital and in walking distance of shopping entertainment and central campus this proposal fully Accords with the city's current policy on parking which is that we no longer require parking minimums we think there are better uses for land than car storage and we regard that as a desired element that people reduce parking that's why
052we do not require a developer to trade us something we want for providing fewer parking spaces as if that were a privilege we're happy to see that they are willing to experiment with fewer parking spaces and in this case it I I think we may have a little bit more than speculation to go on to be confident that the parking will be okay but I did want to ask you about this and so can he go yeah okay so um I I wanted to understand you were originally zoned for 0.9 spaces per unit and what's been the actual demand you can yeah yeah I'll be up and down I don't have to bend over this way okay so to answer your question right the original is only required one space per unit we worked with
053the zba to lower that to 0.9 per unit realizing that given the multimodal kind of location proximity to employment that um that that would be proper we thought it was maybe a little heavy but you know we didn't know what the real demand would be but now we have the benefit of operating the first building now for two years so it's a very unique situation to have what we have the parking deck built in the first building you can operate it before the other phases are developed so what we found is is that the actual demand for parking in this particular project is 0.6 spaces per unit and just to clarify something so that's particular to this project in this location I wouldn't suggest that that's uh you know you throw that metric around and
054start using for other projects if you're in the CBD you might look at it differently but just for our unique circumstances that's the that's the ratio and if it continues at that rate you would have sufficient capacity and there's is there any reason to think it won't continue at that rate well we um there's no reason to think that it won't continue at that rate we do have even the lease up happening for the second phase that we're going to deliver soon and even that ratio is coming in around that number even a little bit lower right now so we're encouraged by that I would say that given the number of spaces in the deck and on the surface parking 0.6 times the 736 units there's enough parking in the deck and on the surface
055to not only accommodate 0.6 but to leave a reasonable buffer not just for guests and for handicapped accessible stalls but also for the retail parking and for it to the extent when the ratio fluctuates a little bit over time it's not a static 0.6 thank you I know some of my constituents are concerned that because you charge for your parking which not denying that you ought to but because you charge for your parking there could be over there could be folks who are actually not purchasing your parking but parking in the neighborhood are we seeing overflow in the surrounding neighborhood no and if and if there were we would see it already if people didn't want to park in the deck because they didn't want to to pay for it they would have to park
056their car somewhere so to my knowledge there is I don't see any of that happening okay and one is to the question of solar and I noticed that you had proposed to install solar on the top of the parking structure perhaps the first time this went around and that wasn't approved sure I could speak to that and some of you may remember this this was back in 2017. I wasn't if it indulged me I could kind of refresh everybody's memory or tell everybody what happened so during that entitlement process I was approached by several city council members who they came to me they said Ron we'd really like to see solar in the project we know how difficult it is how expensive it is could you please make a good effort to try to analyze
057it and figure out how to incorporate it so the fundamental problem we have is we just don't have any land for solar we have the buildings you have the roads you have the Trevor Creek setback and the public access seasmen and all these different things and I was thinking well how could we create land and then it dawned on me we can reclaim land if we can build a roof over our parking structure now for anyone who knows the parking structure in the first building it's it's has a very large footprint it's almost thirty thousand square feet and it's an open-air parking deck part of our commitment to sustainability is not to heat that parking deck obviously the big expense of gas and carbon all those things and it's a continuous parking ramp so we
058came up with an idea that if we could build a roof over the parking structure now we would have enough real estate that not just to add a few solar panels just to add them just so we could say we did it but we could do it in an efficient way and actually you know generate meaningful solar as a result of it we worked with a third-party consultant that I paid for and the proposition I made with the city and I thought we had great traction I thought this was going to happen was that we would use the Tiff to pay for the cost of the of the roof over the parking deck in other words to create the real estate so that we could create the the solar PV array and the the math
059I believe supported it happened I mean obviously there's fluctuations in terms of what the market prices for the electric and whatnot well we we went to the city Brownfield committee and the then CFO of the city really didn't like this idea and I respect his opinions he didn't see the world quite the way I did and when we were sitting at the table to talk about whether or not it should be approved let's just say he was more persuasive than I was and he convinced the committee to vote it down so we tried very hard to comply with the request thank you and it was the city that decided not to do it there's no hard feelings and we tried we did what we were asked to do and by the way we were never
060compensated for the third party Consulting expense but I'm just neither here nor there I honestly didn't know that story so I was curious about that um the uh you have met the terms of the current agreement which called for 15 units of affordable housing at 60 Ami and you've committed to adding 9.99 Maiden Lane to the terms of that previous agreement which would increase the count by approximately six units at 60 Ami are you required to do that two things on that we are not required we voluntarily offered to incorporate that building into the terms of the current agreement that we have and also to answer a question that Ken Garber asked about how are they getting compensated the answer is they're not thank you I was going to ask you that and then I
061wondered another question has come up which is how many of the current years current 15 so they filled up quickly so the the first building they're all filled there's eight in the first building there are seven in the second building last I saw in the leasing I think six of them are already rented okay and you haven't opened the second building yet we've not opened yet thank you um uh I I think okay so uh I I think that I have raised some of the major questions that my constituents raised so thank you and uh as commissioner sovay mentioned we've heard a number of um questions as to why we aren't requiring electrification of this project and again the answer is because this is not something that we can require if State Building Codes allowed
062us to do that every single project that that came before us would be electrified but we can't require that and you have your heating infrastructure in the ground and so we would not impose an inefficiency on you and ask you to make a hybrid something or other I don't even know what that would be when you already have the infrastructure in the ground so I think that's all you know as much as I can allay concerns and thank you for your answers okay thank you commissioner Mills thanks I want to follow on to the comment about solar if you ran the numbers in 2017 I would imagine that they're they're quite different now and I'm curious if you've run the numbers again in part just to look at what this looks like for the the
063common energy usage I mean it you know sometimes if you um sometimes in in apartment buildings there can be tricks or a particularly in condo buildings um but it seems like you probably have a decent amount of energy use across the site just yourself so I'm just curious if you've run those numbers again to re-cost what it might look like now and whether that's if if it makes sense especially if you're going to own these buildings sure the um so the answer to that question is the um it's not a function of re-running the old numbers what's lost is the opportunity to create the real estate which was that the roof of the parking deck so um there's talk about whether you can put them on the roofs of the residential buildings and you see
064projects where it happens I would just tell you in my experience in David's experience we've been doing this I've been doing it for 30 years so I understand something about building a construction and um and this is no comment on the desirability of solar or whether it's an important city priority I'm just speaking about construction but residential roofs especially in high-rise buildings are very difficult places to construct efficient solar now if you said you were going to condition your approval on us put in a couple solar panels on the roof of the building we could do it but we don't want to do it in a green washing kind of virtue signaling way we'd like if we're going to do it we'd like to do it the way we were trying to do in 2017
065whereas it's really going to work you know there's an array there's an efficient amount of land um you think about a roof on a building I just I made a few notes you have roof scuttles you have to contend with you have HVAC equipment gas piping in the case of our buildings because of the soil contamination is vapor mitigation equipment we have rooftop anchors that people tie off to when they're going to work on the roof we have setbacks for safety and circulation so you can move your way around a roof also when you when you install solar panels and some kind of frame system you have penetrations you have to put through your roofs or every one of those is another spot that gets flashed that potentially could leak you have structural considerations because
066the the the panels are like sales you know they pick up the wind and you have to work against uplift not to mention many times that the geometry and or Terracina roofs becomes problematic so the the issue is it's just it's very inefficient to try to put them on the roofs of the buildings I won't do it now unless you really wanted me to I could speak to sustainability across the project in general and I I hope that when we do that we can talk about more than just solar because I would argue that the sustainable features of our project are profound I don't think there's any argument about I I will spare everyone that speech unless you really want it but I we've done so much and we may not be hitting the mark
067on solar the way some people would like and there's a wide range of opinions on on how much to do and which boxes to check but I would just argue that overall if you look in aggregate across the three phases our project is remarkably sustainable can you talk a little bit about the efficiency standards to which you're building your buildings I'm not sure I like are you exceeding the state energy code in terms of Energy Efficiency like oh sure sure I could speak to some of those things so I mean specifically you're talking about Energy Efficiency so yeah the first thing is remember that um so much of the energy code is codified so it's not even a matter of if like when Lisa was the commission commissioner dish was talking about you know if
068it was required well believe me Energy Efficiency is required in the envelope of buildings The Architects know this so our entire building is is foam insulated the windows the glazing is insulated um we have we have to comply with the energy code submit calculations Again The Architects speak to it if we want to get sort of granular on it but we have that we have the open air parking structure which is a consideration we're not heating the deck so it's a little less comfortable convenient for tennis on the other hand we thought that doing so works against the sustainable initiatives of the city and we have many other minor things that we do in the construction of the building which probably aren't worth listing all but we're related to indoor Quality Water efficiency material usage
069energy and atmosphere so we do a lot that's just with respect to the construction of the buildings themselves I mean if you'd like I could go on no that's I was just trying to see if there was anything beyond kind of what the energy code requires in terms of the um you know air changes per I don't know all of the things that I don't know but how tight the buildings but that's okay um I I on future projects I just again appreciate you looking at it in 2017 understand that the ship has sailed I spend a lot of my day job talking to people about what has happened to renewable energy which is that the prices have really come down so I just encourage you to look again um for the future projects um
070you talked previously about your experience with vehicular parking I'm curious about your experience in the existing buildings with you you've provided a lot of bike parking so if you could tell us what those bike rooms look like and also where they are in those buildings because I'm intrigued by where your bike parking is in this proposed building right I'm glad you mentioned that maybe I could piggyback on what you were just talking about with the sustainability in the buildings because I would consider all of these Transportation initiatives we've taken they all are in the building so we already talked about reducing the vehicle parking I don't have to recap that but I do want to point out two things to answer your question about bike parking in 2017 in vast exceedance of the code which
071requires a nominal amount of bikes we decided we would provide one bicycle space per unit we've adhered to it for every one of the buildings we'll do it again for this current building even though it goes beyond what the code requires because we understand that our tenants in this particular location want the ability to bike to work they want to bike to the hospital they want to bike downtown carry Town wherever they're going to be Recreation also we haven't talked about it yet but in terms of EV charging I will also say that well before the EV charging requirements were put into the code we put EV charging stations in our parking deck it wasn't a function of whether or not the code would require it we can see where the future is headed it's
072unquestionable that the vehicle Fleet is going to convert from gas to electric over some period of time I suppose we could debate how long that would take but we wanted to get that ball started so we know we have some tenants that have electric vehicles and we already have a couple EV charging stations in the deck and we fully expect that over the course of time because it's scalable in the deck that you will start to see those EV charges proliferate you know throughout the deck and that's something that won't it's not in the it won't be a zoning requirement we have to adhere to it's catering to the needs of our tenants and providing a valued resource your electrical services scaled accordingly it is allowing for that the expansion of that service we have
073the ability to expand it to a point and then beyond that we would have to upgrade but for where we're at for the present and for the foreseeable future we have enough capacity to add to add charges the foresight in terms of of making sure that your electrical capacity is ready for that I think is really great and again these buildings are going to be around for decades thinking about you know what that looks like for future electrification of other parts of your building I think is really useful so that's good to know um do you find that you have are people locking their bites up outside like the reason that I'm asking is because there's a the experiences that you have right like providing the bike parking where people want it is really important
074and so I'm curious about what the experience has been I realize I did not answer your question you asked where the bike rooms were located and I did not answer that so let me answer the question they are conveniently located on the first floor with direct access to an exterior area of the building so one of the things we wanted to do in addition to again meeting the demands of our tenants multivodal to uh use of bicycles we also didn't want to have tenants bringing bicycles up and down in their units it's uh it's it's it takes a heavy toll on common areas of the building it's inconvenient for circulation it also takes a toll on the units I mean occupies space that you want to have storage or usable space to live in so
075now those rooms are on the uh on the first floor is there's racks in those rooms so you can lock your bicycle individually okay and I based on the site plan it looks like there's an entrance from from the exterior like on the on the I guess this would be like the north side yes um is there any do you have to go and lock your bike up and go back outside to get upstairs and how does that compare to kind of where the how it works in the other buildings right so you would enter that room that's where you lock it up and then from there you have so you have access to the room from the outside you also have access from the room to the corridor of the building so you can
076walk and generally speaking the rooms are located reasonably close to elevators so you can walk into the common area and get onto elevator to get to your floor certainly in this building it's right near an elevator okay um I mean I and part of this is not it's also just to see how things are functioning in the real world right if they get used that it's not in the basement that it's at ground level that it it's accessible from outside and from inside I like that suggests to be something that gets used but I'm I'm I user experience here um the the you know that you already have some buildings functioning like seeing how that's working it's just helpful for us to think about um how this works in other developments and what where we
077should be pushing for things sure so um I I could commissioner still based comment about retail and and the balance I can't say it better the only other thing uh that I would say is my recollection and this is for staff my recollection of uh the discussion of this site back in 2017 this wasn't really the the building that was so heavily discussed the what I recall from this building was really the cladding on it and I don't know if this was just a commissioner milstein talking about brown or if it was materials but it I mean it's pre-covered so it's all it feels like decades ago but yeah go ahead I can tell you because I remember making a comment that I thought it didn't relate to the rest of the development very well
078and that you all said that you were kind of looking for contrast because it was condos and not and not rental clearly it's a different kettle of fish now in terms of you know that that it's much more consistent with the rest of the project but it was it was tan brick I do I remember this and yes commissioner milstein did have an opinion about that too so yeah but I think things change years now right um I usually am pretty skeptical of when plant when folks come back in and want changes I think that the key things that we were talking about on this site have already happened to the plan that was originally developed and if anything from my opinion this is actually this is a this is a a better building than
079what we saw then as part of a whole again that was mixed use in whole with some with some retail components um I think the increased number of uses without adding the additional parking giving time to figure out how much parking you're actually using is really beneficial um and so I'm I'm comfortable um with this project moving forward okay anybody else commissioner Hammerschmidt I just have a couple I think easy questions for you um the building a is a building that's currently yes it is how what percentage least up is that building is it completely full um it's essentially full it fluctuates a little bit as we get to the leasing turns they happen at this time of year but essentially full okay then just just curious I probably know the answer to this but
080what sparked the desire to want to change from condos into this third building also being well the condos just didn't work so when we went through the approvals in 2017 we we made a commitment that we were going to lead off with the condo development and we did and um you know the short answer is we just we could not generate the sufficient pre-sales we needed to move the project forward we could have long discussion I'm happy to even talk about it afterwards the reasons why I wish if I could write the algorithm we you know David and I would have gotten it right to begin with but um it didn't work and so then we were considering you know what the various options could be to successfully develop the property and it became clear
081just given the market dynamics and our own experience with the first two phases to date that this was seen to be The Prudent approach and and then the two principal changes which we keep coming back to the increase in density and the reduction in parking they work there's a complete alignment I mean those changes allow this phase to be successfully changed to another kind of residential use and they also align with the city's priorities so it seems like an excellent fit keep hearing it over and over and you're seeing good demand for the isability Building C that's currently okay um I really do appreciate the kind of phased approach because in understanding that this is really like just for your property and we can't necessarily extrapolate it but like kind of seeing how the demand
082has been for parking it's just kind of like a good gut check I think for us right so well it's a unique it's Unique circumstance to have that and obviously it came with a lot of risk because the parking was all built with the first phase so if it didn't go well that was a risk calculator risk that David and I took um they had this ancillary benefit of being able to gauge the real demand and help us out so I think so it makes sense that you're not seeing as much demand for parking as maybe we might have thought thank you anybody else commissioner Lee go ahead sure just wanted to cite uh c1ar's um District intense statement which is the districts intended to encourage the orderly clustering and placement of high density residential
083and complementary commercial development near the campus business district so um in Reading that's just objectively it does look to place high density residential I will go back to retail as the component of public benefit or place making benefit and just wanted to ask simply have there been considerations during the process and what led you guys to say I'm not sure that's going to work but that's a great question and this goes back to for those of you who are in the discussion of 2017 you'll remember there's a wide range of opinions on how much retail should be in this development there are definitely people some spoke tonight I completely respect their opinion that they'd like to see more there are also many people that think that what we've provided is appropriate it really becomes a
084function of the shopping center was a desired amenity until it wasn't and there came a point where it it couldn't be sustained if it could have been sustained then this project wouldn't be developing there would be a successful Shopping Center um the next iteration of the project the one that failed before ours was very heavily commercial hotels retail office the whole thing it could never get off the ground conveniently it was blamed on the recession if that project had started construction it would have been a white elephant everyone would have been very unhappy it was not sustainable when we took our opportunity to work on it really thinking about how do you make retail successful and it wasn't about how much to provide as much as how do we provide whatever we provide let's make
085sure it's successful successful meaning that it can be released at a market rate and that you have high quality tenants that demand the space and so as you would know this is what you do every day you have to see it it has to be in an area that has significant traffic around it not just foot traffic but especially vehicular traffic and you have to be able to park it has to be convenient it just so happens that that intersection of Maiden Lane and Broadway and and Plymouth Road that's where Broadway has surface parking it's not included in our parking counts but that surface parking is a very important part of why we hope that that retail can be successful there free for anyone who knows those streets it's a bit circuitous you drive down
086Maiden Lane it's like how do I get there and you have to sort of learn that you have to go on Plymouth and cut around Broadway now for Destination retail believe me people have found plate everybody loves that restaurant we're very happy to have Jane Kim as our tenant she's great and she's the proprietor of orange market that's going to open up soon so people will figure it out but it's not easy you know so we hope that the combination of the parking and the visibility can offset some of the circuitous nature as far as the number of square feet we had it set up so that we could have three retail tenants the Market's going to combine two so we'll end up with two spaces we think based upon the interest in the site
087right now that we've we've got the right amount of retail space could somebody argue that there could have been a little bit more you know we could have those debates I would just argue that if you look at our portfolio we are a mixed use developer across our projects some projects have grocery anchored shopping centers as the retail component some have grade level commercial it varies if we believe that there is demand for however many square feet of retail we would develop it not only because it would be successful but frankly the more successful the retail is the more valuable the apartments are right the extent that you can walk downstairs and consume some valuable service like orange market for example it'll be invaluable so there's no reluctance to create retail it's sometimes I I
088think the way it gets expressed is somehow we consciously chose not to build retail it really wasn't that we'd be happy to have much more if there were demand for it what I argued at the time and what I see happening I think someone mentioned about iterative development but you know there's the Strip Center on Broadway there's the new retail we're creating there's information entropy there are properties As you move down Broadway toward the bridge you have the gas stations or the repair shop you have the North Side Grill block things are afoot there you get a little farther to the bridge you have DTE and you'll start in Lower Town proper is already under construction you know right on that North Side block so that is what I predicted is that rather than try
089to accomplish it all in one development and say we have to have twenty thousand feet let's say just because that number of bare Summers resemblance to what the some percentage of the shopping center we said let's do what's successful and we see that permeating down Broadway the last thing we wanted to do we wanted to avoid the mistakes of the George so I assume everyone was well intentioned from the for you know all the parties involved but you know that retail completely failed in every way and you know it's for all the reasons you know it's below grade circuitous access there's no signage there's too much of it it's deep into the site and we didn't we didn't want to repeat those mistakes thank you for that um it's important for us to recognize the
090people that made time to come here and comment so I certainly did want to Echo and really kind of talk about those concerns so I appreciate your response with respect to retail um other question I actually had and this is actually for staff we did here actually there was comments regarding wind tunnels and I was wondering if there's ever any discussions or analysis related to wind tunnel creation I mean we're I mean it's windy today it's May in Michigan but um just just wondering if there's any kind of considerations towards that and what the built environment as we get towards more densifying um if there was any kind of considerations towards that thank you um what I have is only anecdotal there has been one project in the city in my tenure that there was
091significant wind tunnel concerns I think that staff and that applicant tried to reach out and find a someone who could study that I know that Steph took a shot and contacted folks in the Chicago planning department there is no science for settling wind tunnels as they relate not like you can do a shadow study for a building and even if we had a wind tunnel study it is not a standard of approval for for better or worse but it is not a standard of approval um it's I'll leave it at that so I don't have science for that and I don't have a standard of approval to include that as a factor gotcha thank you just again it's important to me to recognize the comments it's made again I know it takes a lot to
092come out here and civically engage so thank you for that um based on again my reading of the district intent um encouraging orderly clustering and placement of high density residential and complementary commercial development near the campus business district I believe this complies with that particular intent statement um I think the addition of additional units is important thank you again for your explanation regarding retail um it is tough to find operators that can operate at a good healthy ratio we generally try to Target five to eight percent of gross sales if Market rates will be 35 40 triple net that means they have to generate five to six hundred dollars a square foot in sales so the question is can you find an operator that can effectively work at those and do you have the absorption
093readily available for for that so I certainly um am satisfied with the the petitioners thought process regarding considering retail for this particular area aside from that I believe I've covered most of these so I think that's pretty much it for me thank you Mr Abrams thank you um I want to start just maybe with a personal anecdote which is that I lived for five years at 1216 Broadway which is a few steps from this project both my children were born in that house literally um and I can tell you that as a resident of that street I ask myself you know how would I feel about walking down that street um and encountering what was when at the time I lived there and a huge empty chain-linked lot um to what it is now and
094I I honestly can't say that I would be happy about it um but I but I just want to so I guess I want to say I kind of relate to the personal feelings and emotions and reactions around things that that get built in your neighborhood and the way that changes the character of the street that you live on and how important that is to your daily life said I feel like my role up here um is to like weigh the costs and benefits weigh the pros and cons I think it's almost never that we vote up here um without any without understanding any trade-off there's almost always a trade-off for what we're voting so in this decision um I think that on the kind of benefit side The increased density is a huge benefit
095to our community so the additional units in the switch from condos to Apartments and I think although not as many as we would like I think the addition of six affordable units that would not exist otherwise is also a benefit um on the on the on the kind of cost side I mean I think what I'm sensing from the community and I you know like commissioner Lee really appreciate everybody who spoke both kind of with with concerns and also with um in support of this project is that there's a tremendous amount of residual frustration and anger about the history of this project and I don't think that uh voting down this third building is going to remedy um the the kind of harm that has already been caused by that so I'm aware of that
096and I see that but I think the things that um we're being kind of asked to consider that we should be demanding of this project like additional mixed use or additional commercial or building electrification or actually outside the scope of what this body can do we can't require building electrification this is not a PUD and I think we were just given a reasonable explanation for the amount of commercial that is going to be included in this project so um I think I support the motion but I also just want to acknowledge um that I do that I understand that there are trade-offs and I wanted to make my rationale transparent thank you commissioner white uh I think I have a couple of questions um that I would like some clarity on Mr Barber talked about
097the affordable housing units the 15 and then the additional six I guess that are coming and then commissioner dish asked you about it and then you answered uh can you just clarify what what you understood Mr garber's Question to be because he I heard him ask where is the public money for the affordable housing and then I didn't understand your response to that but everybody else did so I I was confused that's okay so the um the answer is there is no Public Funding for the additional six units for the additional six units but the Public Funding is through the tith are have paid for the 15. right okay so you are donating or allocating as the developer the additional six yes okay thank you uh the second question was about the um sustainability via
098the solar panels and obviously uh commissioner Mills spent some time with you there but again I was confused because I think I heard you say uh that you weren't able to get the funding for the roof through the TEF and 2017. correct but then were there other barriers to prevent you from building it yourself well the other economic barriers I mean 2017 to again to I'm talking about now I think I understood what you were oh right your answer was so the barrier now is the you can't the building's built so so you cannot build a roof no on top of the parking structure to get the 30 000 square feet no we can't be no okay okay I think that's it thank you anybody else okay I just have a um I know we
099can't legislate the electrification but I would like to make you uncomfortable I guess that's what I'm saying um because uh I know we can't make you do that I know also that you're in a unique position and that you had this go through before and that a lot of your infrastructure was put in before which in my mind is a different thing in some ways than other projects and so that's part of why I'm not going to be quite as vocal as I usually would be on this because I am aware of what it means to go through this process and the planning that is involved in order to be able to make that happen so um I'm wondering what can be done um like you know do you have gas stoves or do you
100have electric stoves are there ways that your hot water heaters can I mean I think there's a reason that Mr stahlberg said he's changing hot water heaters and um you know things like that because that's pretty low hanging fruit and easy to do he did not say that he is converting all of his Heating and Cooling to Electric in the unit city has because that is a much harder lift to make and I get it that like some of the infrastructure is already put in for some of those things and likely your panels sized for certain things too but I'm just wondering what you can do within the confines of like us not being able to ask you but in in terms of making you do anything but are there things that you can do
101in terms of other ways even if it's not the heating and cooling piece which is I know a very heavy lift in terms of how you structure the building and things like that but in terms of some of the other things are there ways that you could become more Electric in terms of the the what you're drawing from our system in terms of gas sure well I appreciate the question and we do have for example in the units we use electric dryers so that helps they're not gas fired we already do that and I did talk about how in the parking deck we fully expect that that will scale up over time and you will see very significant amounts of EV charging and the deck over time so those are a couple ways that we
102can make meaningful steps toward that what about all I mean there even from two years ago there's a huge amount of press around the safety of gas stoves things like that I think people are I think it's a really different world than it was when you came through in 2017 with some of these things and frankly the whole sustainability piece I think has changed a whole lot since when you came through before but I think there is public concern and public kind of curiosity and way more public acceptance of induction versus gas and I'm just wondering like what you know what are you seeing from your end and are there ways that you could I think it's a good question I hope what I've conveyed I hope I've done a good job of conveying it
103is a landlord to be successful we have to cater to the needs of our tenants and their desires so we talked about the EV charge animals but as that's demanded we'll have more of it to the extent that we were to see that the tenants were to demand the induction cooking versus the gas ranges that's something that if the tenants if there was a human cry to have that kind of amenity we would we would do that we haven't seen that yet we've seen tenants that are pleased with with the appliance packages and the systems that we have in the building but for anything that we do I mean ultimately the what the tenants really if there's a if there's a demand from the tenants that they want something we very strongly consider how to
104give it to them we want them to be happy we want them to choose our building over other buildings where they could choose to live one of those things that is actively evolving very quickly right now in terms of that I mean just in the last year I think there's just been a huge amount of press that was like silent two years ago or very much at the fringes you might consider yourself being a leader with that in terms of providing some of those things for people because I think a lot of young people are and this is I'm assuming who most of your tenants are are people that are working at the hospital and and students that are there and things like that that are in the medical school um I think that's where
105things are going and just from a from a marketing perspective that's something that could set you apart frankly from other buildings that are around in terms of your package you know with some of those things I have an induction stove it works great you know it boils water so much faster than any gas stove does so it's something to to again we can't make you do this stuff but it's something that you all should really consider I think it's actually an opportunity for you in terms of who you're marketing to to think about some of those things and um again like hot water that's something that you might be able to consider too with electric electrifying that so again I know we can't make you do these things but I do want to push the
106envelope and just see what is possible and perhaps you all can kind of think about this between now and and City Council in terms of some of these considerations um I'm generally supportive of the project I think that we totally need density in this area I completely get the retail thing I appreciate commissioner sove's kind of summarization of that I'm supportive of it in many ways it's one way I just wish that you could be leaning a little bit more with some of those things and again I think you're kind of in a different category in terms of where you fall in the approval process so I'm cutting you some slack in terms of my intensity around some of this stuff um but uh I would ask you to think about some of those things
107because you know right now you know you haven't bought the stoves likely you know what I'm saying it's like there or maybe you have I don't know but there's some thing there's some opportunities there that I think could work for you too in terms of where this is going you were you were thinking ahead on the the EV charging I think this is an area where you actually could be thinking ahead in terms of some of your appliances okay understood thank you anybody else okay um are we ready for a vote I am if you are everybody any nothing Brewing nothing Brewing okay listen alrighty uh let's uh so the motion as presented commissioner Lee yes commissioner clerk yes commissioner White yes commissioner Gabe Randall yes commissioner Abrams yes commissioner sovay yes commissioner Mills yes
108commissioner Hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes motion carries okay we are on to item number nine which is the downtown premium evaluation oh I have to recuse myself for project interest in the district area sounds good thank you welcome thank you I'm not as tall as the gentleman who went before my name is Megan massiminock I'm with Carla Wortman Associates I was here before you um about a month ago to talk about downtown premiums and what we're going to do what we'd like to do tonight is to go over assumption agreements and goals that and policy approaches that we revised based on your input and then talk about what policy approaches should be discussed with stakeholders and who those stakeholders should be so and then there's a PowerPoint queuing up but I can also riff without
109it in um one thing that was in the PowerPoint that will be up soon is the map of eligible properties for premiums and wanted to start our discussion tonight with just a reminder that this is a small area of the downtown overall there are a lot of properties that aren't eligible for premiums at this point and then also last time we had talked about how zoning is a bit of a blunt force tool and just to keep that in the back of your mind as we're going through this because you're talking about maybe how to change that tool but it still has the limitations in it being zoning so I hope we can all agree to that see not all right next slide we've already gone over the agenda let's go on the next one
110this is the map and so the brown areas are and the brown and green areas are all the areas that are Zone D1 and D2 the green areas are those that are eligible for for premiums at this point and the ones that are in Hatch so they're green but they're hatched out just a little bit those have been developed in the past 15 years and so when we're looking forward probably those aren't going to be eligible for premiums because those buildings likely will not be redeveloped yes yeah of course um can you just quickly remind me what makes a property ineligible for premiums yes absolutely um it is ineligible if it is in historic district or if it is in the flood plain and in terms of the flood plain it's even if one square
111inch of it is in the flood plain um Alexis did I miss anything because I know that you're the expert on it okay then commissioner whitecheza yes on the floodplain um there's a lot of the city that sits in that yes and is that a UDC restriction or is that a state restriction I don't know if that's you or staff um that is sorry that so that you understand where I want to go with the question can we change it uh yes okay um it is a self-imposed restriction I believe we can remove it yes okay um I would only qualify that um no no qualifications thank you we have we have chosen to say um any part of the site touches you are not eligible and I think that was a conscious choice not
112to put any pressure on development in the flood plain uh I think we can change that um we can change that those parameters but I don't think we can just uh promote or allow development literally in the flood plain when it's prohibited but we can modify um our premium regulations to say maybe as long as the building is not in the flood plain or something along those lines so I guess I did a walking tour and the I always get street names wrong when I try to recall them from my head so where Blank Slate is yeah that's um first and that first in Liberty that whole section is like in the flood plain yeah even if it's 15 feet above grade like you know we can't even go up because any part of that
113property sits in there and that's what I'm asked that's what I'm trying to understand it sounds like we've imposed a restriction on ourselves yes on something that if you just look diagonal you'll see the why and it's sitting up on you know 12 or 15 feet and it's built right there and we just discussed 415 Washington which is going to be in not in the flood way way but in the flood Fringe and so I just want to like in this part of the conversation I it would be helpful like whatever you bring back to us whenever we see it that there is some acknowledgment that this is a self-imposed restriction and that if it's in the UDC it can be amended now there may be reasons why we don't want to do that there
114may be people who would say not to do that I think all of that comes at the appropriate time I just don't want to say hey all of this is off the table because it's in the flood plain when in fact we could build above you know whatever the state whatever the the federal laws would be to make it safe so and we can't build in the flood way so there's a distinction there in terms of what commissioner white is saying the floodway and the blood flaring each of them have different restrictions commissioner dish I guess I appreciate very much what commissioner watch is bringing up and maybe it would be helpful to have another kind of cross hatching for uh Parcels that a little bit of it touches the flood plain um because I
115think anything that's entirely in the flood plain it's going to be a hard sell to put a tall Residential Building in there on stilts um okay so I'd be interested how you know how many is that really true of that it's just a little bit right so what I'm hearing from you is when we come back one of the things that could possibly be on the table is what makes a par a parcel eligible for premiums and can the Restriction that's currently dealing with floodplains be alleviated or lifted entirely and what would those what would that look like in terms of mapping scenarios it is what I am asking for I don't know that I have authority to ask you to do it I feel like you and I might be asking for different things
116yeah I think you're asking for two different Maps what you're asking for is is the you know is it possible to lift that restriction entirely in terms of floodplain and what I hear from you is that it would also be interesting to see um and to see how the floodplain affects each parcels and which Parcels are entirely in the floodplain and which is it only a portion where possibly a building could be built outside of the flood plain yeah okay because we again one represents the whole city and there are people of and I am one of them who feels that climate change is upon us and the biggest effect not to speak from anecdotal recent weather evidence is that more and more rain is going to be how we have climate change in Michigan
117and I think in terms of future proofing our city I don't want to go selling our our floodplain overlay District which we just passed and say now oh buyer's remorse we didn't mean to you know we really don't mind if people's houses flow float away so uh not that we you know ever said that but it but I think it's a difference no I I was not saying that you were saying that um I was attributing that to ourselves on Council you know oh no I didn't know I was doing um but I do think that the way you specified it that if any part of the parcel touches the flood plain there's a difference to me between a parcel that is in a flood plain and a parcel that is 25 or 10 in
118a flood plain and there we've seen we see that difference reflected in the way we are the city is currently developing city-owned sites so I wouldn't find that inconsistent with our practice okay so um great thank you for the input um and we'll we'll fold that into the process as we go forward um and in terms of going forward really the purpose of the meeting tonight if you could go to the next slide please um again is to discuss what policy options should be shared with stakeholders because that's the next step and who those stakeholders should be so that's where we want to spend the meat of the discussion tonight but we spent a lot of time with you last month and wanted to report back and make sure that we got things right in
119terms of assumptions and goals in the next slide so we revise the assumptions um and I can read them off if that would be helpful and then what we really want to know is um are does this reflect what we talked about and are there any changes that are needed in order for us to go forward in the process so the first assumption is that an equilibrium of development types and land uses in downtown is important and residential office and Commercial are core uses to be continually balanced in the downtown I'm going to pause after each one and ask for comments so any comments on this one all right next one developing the downtown is more difficult and more expensive than elsewhere in the city since the last amendments to the premiums in 2019 the
120affordable housing millage provides dedicated funding source of excuse me provides a dedicated funding source for necessary affordable housing but millage funds may not be sufficient to be the sole source of affordable housing funding and that we changed based on your input from last time and can we pause I thought I saw some movement down there after after the um the second one is that commissioner Lee did I see you yeah no I'm just looking at the the format basically I was saying yes okay board their land is a little more expensive staging is more expensive so oh let's just saying oh okay I wasn't sure if uh and just try to get the format correct as far as like engagement purposes but I agree with both of those points on the first one my question
121is going to be you know what does equilibrium really mean right what does balance mean and I think that that's kind of always a trick is you know how much Civic um spaces are appropriate what what does equilibrium truly mean as far as retail offices support retail uh you know a lot of the restaurant tours said hey we don't have office population back due to hybrid so you know we have decreased lunches so um how much residential is appropriate so I think striking that balance I agree with the statement I think the Assumption holds the the trick is going to be really what constitutes equilibrium and and that that's going to be continuously morphing so great thanks okay it's also kind of interesting to think about if there are a lot of people that are
122working from home do we need to start thinking about neighborhoods in different ways in terms of some of those opportunities for commercial just a thought that's outside of what this is but just kind of a bigger a bigger conversation for us to think about because I know that that's I've heard some things in California around that work like San Francisco it's like all of a sudden the neighborhood Cafe thing is getting a lot more intense use than the downtown one was because people are wanting to get out of their homes to be able to interact with others so again not part of this thing but I think it's something for us to kind of be thinking about in terms of that whole balance piece that you brought up yeah thanks all right uh assumption number
123four a significant number of properties in the downtown are ineligible for premiums okay see nods all right um current downtown residential development is either high-end low-scale residential buildings or student housing the current market does not support building of attainable high density housing downtown and that was a change way I see nods and attainable I'm assuming you mean sort of like maybe maybe like a very writings exactly yeah yeah so that kind of yeah um attainable technically means usually um anywhere I think up to a hundred percent Ami um that 60 to 100 Ami that you can with one third of your income you could afford purchase housing which is a different definition than what affordable housing is under that Federal definition and this was where last time it said missing middle and we were like
124yes yes good at it okay I still don't know about the comma in the first sentence the second comma but I don't anyway oh okay it's two things right skill resident residential it's either it's high-end low scale that's it's there's two things right so no comments maybe is there a slash in between them is there could you just change it and say student housing or high-end low yeah I'm a low-scale residential buildings flip-flop it and then it makes a lot more sense yes aren't you glad you're playing tonight I love grammar and I am fine with it right no but I am fine with the group helping I did comedy and proving College I can handle it all right um so uh attainable density in the downtown not only provides places for present and future
125in our rights to live but also influence influences Regional sustainability by providing access to housing in a walkable mixed-use place okay the last phrase isn't clunky okay great um and then current premiums are not being utilized due to a variety of reasons pretty simple yeah pretty okay so we can all agree to these assumptions going forward and as documentation happens these are the justifications for the reasons of taking any action that results out of the process all right great work all right if we can go to the next slide also last time we looked at a variety of goals and you slimmed them down to these three increase the portability of housing downtown increased sustainability including Energy Efficiency in the downtown and increase equity in the downtown so I wanted to again make sure that
126these three are correct in terms of what you wanted in terms of goals and then also do welcome any copy editing all right I'm seeing nods and usually I take silences agreement but I see a thumbs up and then I see a finger yeah in a very nice way not not that um so I know I just want to make sure that this would be encompassed in this where we're thinking about potential um maybe Regional isn't or District um wide like geothermal or things like that that they kind of could like I don't know if that is part of how we think about any of these things or is this all private development and not like because I know the DDA is doing some sort of study on that um I would be I just
127think that it would it's interesting to think about how we could help facilitate that within the private sector if we were able to have some public infrastructure that made it easier for people to be able to make good choices around things I don't know if that's completely outside of what we're talking about here but everything is a little piecemeal thing that we do so I would love to like think about some bigger things that could tie some stuff together I think it's part of increasing sustainability but I think that what you're getting is sort of part of the conversation of with stakeholders I mean that's some of the feedback we want to hear right what are the obstacles from those Property Owners being able to successfully do so and so um I sort of see
128that as maybe part of that conversation is what Beyond regular the regulatory framework what are the infrastructure items that the city should be thinking about in order to accomplish that yeah kind of we're getting necessarily to the degrees kind of thinking of how we can be set things up for set people up for success I can I want to jump in with a comment um I feel that your that your comment is encompassed in the goal yeah but you have a detail of how to accomplish that goal that there's ways to accomplish increased sustainability in downtown by doing it privately for your own development on site but perhaps one of the options one of the premiums would be somehow contributing whether it's land or something contributing a piece so that could be joined with other
129pieces um so I don't I I think that's like the next step but I think it's a great comment but and I think that the the Nugget is in the goal but what you're fast forwarding to is maybe a um implementation strategy I totally agree with that and I kind of invent it in that way I wanted to make sure that the way that we're framing it allows for that kind of thing to even be considered I guess is what I'm thinking of so that um you know who knows maybe all these areas in the flood plain could be used for geothermal Wells you know what I'm saying it's like there there may be some ways for us to kind of think about how synergistic opportunities come up for things like that that um you
130know we're not we we're not putting the building on it but we can you know stuff it for geothermal and that somehow the city is part of that and again I I know that that's a strategy not a goal but I just want to be able to kind of make sure that we're not just thinking of our little piecemeal things as we're going along private site by private site but also not ignoring potential ways for us to encourage people to be able to um have sustainable practices in their building and designing oh thank commissioner Lee okay um how about uh as far as revised goals how about just increase housing like period uh just wondering if that that for discussion because obviously I think there's overlaps right increasing Equity also means improving affordability it means
131so so I mean there's there's a lot of overlap um the question is should one of the goals related to premiums be just pure add more housing I don't know or just simplify but just throw that out there can I piggyback on that um because and I I don't know if this is already if this is encompassed in equity or affordability or not but I think it's important to increase the diversity of housing like different kinds of housing so that it isn't all it's not just that there's either expensive student Towers or expensive low-rise condos but it's also that there just isn't there isn't multi-family housing yeah of you know any sort of accessible right other I mean a condo that's not multi-family it's not large-scale multi-family is what I'm trying to say and not
132getting out yeah yeah I would 100 be friendly with that concept of increase diversity of housing so housing and diversity yeah well so what I'm hearing are three things number one is it the volume of housing is it the sheer number of units is it the diversity of the types of units also that and is it the affordability of the units that ties in with both I think right like it could and it could not it depends on how you look at it in terms of you know does affordability mean that it has to be subsidizer that they have to be affordable in perpetuity because if you're just increasing the number it could increase the affordability at that time in the market but 20 years later it may not be guaranteed um and when we
133went through this round before I remember when we were talking about affordability stakeholders were very concerned that affordable units that were built now wouldn't be so in 20 years so I think you have three concepts amongst you I think it's important for you to Define what's what's important or whether you want all three of those discussed with stakeholders so I do want volume and diversity and I'm a little bit torn no I'm very torn about affordability because if it's affordability strictly speaking I'm not sure that we're going to get that out of what we're trying to do here which is make a difference to our premiums in downtown not saying that we can't you know we are developing affordable housing on city-owned sites that are in downtown but I'm not sure if that can be
134achieved here and one thing that I've read which I never know is true but I liked it when I read it was that the things that you build today as you know nice attractive Market housing in 20 years they're less expensive than what you're currently building and so some of the ways that we get housing in a more reachable price range is simply through the Aging of the stock that was built and that probably does not hold as true for single-family homes that can hold their value in a place like Ann Arbor where Supply is tight but for the rental housing at least some of the student stuff that we built that was built 10 years ago is relatively less expensive compared to the new things so so their volume and constant stuff in the
135pipeline would be giving us affordability the volume part would be giving us affordability there so would it be then increase the diversity and number of dwelling units downtown downtown yes okay that makes sense to me so I I hear yes here yes yeah I would like to go back to commissioner Lee's original recommendation which was just increasing housing downtown I think the affordability and the diversity of the housing can be captured in the equity um and then my other comment on the revised gold since this is from a planning point of view the do we need to are there Provisions in Michigan's planning law that allows us to create Heating and Cooling districts so when we get into the sustainability are there things that we would need to change in the UDC to permit those
136possibilities so like Detroit has its steam system right yeah provides Heating and Cooling to like 30 square miles in the city is that managed at some level with a planning overlay no usually what happens is it's a city ordinance that would require or usually require that anything in that District hook up to it um so like for instance that would be out of scope for us that would be out of school that would leave our table Yeah so in this sustainable sustainability and Energy Efficiency then all we're looking at is the development I wouldn't say that that's necessarily true so let's say the DDA is successful in creating a um geothermal a geothermal a geothermal District which they create essentially what's a utility um let's say for some reason um it's an optional it's an
137opt-in one of the things you could do is then to use the premium as a way for as the carrot to get them to opt in now that's like three hops that's three what ifs but I wouldn't say that you should close the door on looking at the premiums being a place where you can incentivize some things like that if you can't require them it would be better to require um I guess what I'm what I'm trying to figure out is ultimately we heard from the DDA that the thing that they need in the DDA are people and the landscape that we live in has radically changed that is to say people they lost between three and six thousand persons in the downtown through office and if what we are ultimately trying to do is
138replace just for a placeholder those three to six thousand people then I'd like us to be clearer that that is our goal if our goal is more than that then we that this is what we're doing but in order for the downtown to be viable they need people and housing doesn't replace the sheer density of people the way an office does so we'd have to build a lot more housing than what is currently permitted and what is currently available in order to achieve the sheer number that they lost because of covet and so that's why I was asking like in the scope the issue really is we we need more housing we need to be able to permit more housing downtown and I I want to be clear that that is our goal and I
139feel like these other things are going to restrict us from achieving that goal unless that's not actually our goal to your point of what these revised goals look like and and then I'm trying to understand like oh is the sustainability the heating and cooling because then that is inside planning so we would say here's a heating and cooling overlay District that is here but like I I'm trying to get rid of all of the the menu of items because everyone continues to say that too many menu options make it difficult to figure out what to do and I think we heard from Miss DeLeo at a meeting where she was like developers are confused and they're just like can you explain this can you explain this can you explain that and we're now getting to
140a point where we're trying to permit the thing we want to do unless I am I mean I could be over here on the island all by myself but this is what I'm what I'm sensing so I think if I may which is probably on the next slide like the idea of or in the in the um staff report the report that you prepared for us right like there was the voting results from last time the small menu or no incentive and just increase density I think I know which Camp you're of I think that there's also some people that are saying small menu so I think right now this is a smaller menu than what it was before one of them I think though because the that that no incentive increased density this doesn't
141get at the just more housing units and so I think that that alone probably makes sense as as its own goal because I think that that's one of the things that like is a goal and then what I heard from before and you guys can tell me if I'm I'm making this up is that the increase so that make that the first one maybe the sustainability I want that still be on the menu because even with geothermal like there's more efficient buildings are going to use less of it okay so and then but the third one The increased equity in the downtown what I heard was affordability and mix of units get us towards that like that that can fit in there but that's actually one of the questions that I started with is what
142do we see in increasing Equity downtown that it like I see I see overlap maybe not complete overlap but I see some overlap between that and affordability but I'm just trying to think why they're distinct so now if we go towards the just more units sustainability and accessibility like affordability attainability you actually use that in the previous one if that's what we mean by Equity then I think that that those are the three things that I thought we were potentially going for here so let me throw something out yeah based on what you said is um the first goal changes to increase housing downtown very simple second goal remains the same and third is increase equity in downtown through accessibility attainability and diversity of units and diversity of housing types does accessibility mean affordability or
143something else accessibility usually means that there's barrier-free assuming like okay I see yeah uh Universal Design okay do we need affordability and attainability attainability in there does attainability include affordability and attainability usually includes affordability it could be either or we could take out accessibility and have affordability attainability and no I think I think we should leave in accessibility yeah I think affordability can be subsumed in attainable attainability okay and I think I'm going to just bring up what uh commissioner dish said the last time we had this conversation is you actually mentioned um uh sort of intentional exclusion of individuals having access to the downtown and so you were thinking of initiatives like in Grand Rapids where they have um a black business district or something like that as we were making these changes I
144don't know if you wanted to bring that forward into this part but that was a part of what I heard you say about Equity I don't know how that gets us to housing and that I'm just really trying to make sure that I know what we're talking about and what we can do at this table Yeah and and this seems to be all about permitting things and so we want to make sure that we can permit as much of what we want and I just want to be clear about what it is we want that I mean Equity means so many different things so like what are we actually trying to achieve with this right is my big question I think I know but I think in the effort of not trying to be confusing
145right and so I think if we have those qualifiers after increase equity in the downtown through accessibility attainability and diversity of housing types that speaks to what the equity means in that sentence well maybe um I mean are we talking racial Equity are we talking social Equity like like so all of it the what you turn in your microphone please the phrase by means of helps specify the equity so we're talking about maybe I don't know I I mean I don't yeah but also know the limitations of the tool so it's part of zoning and so really you can open things up in zoning but in order to repair harm where cities have been most successful is there in addition to opening things up through their zoning to make sure there's not barriers there's programming
146that repairs the harm or evens the playing field and what that wouldn't be a zoning ordinance Amendment because it's it's not it's not equipped for that what you could do if you felt that that was important is as you developed amendments you can make recommendations to city council to say we feel that it would be important or to the DVA to have programs that go along with this I mean so it's more about I mean we we could say increase Equity through those things you just said we could get the exact same type of people that we have living downtown like living in those units so I'm I'm just like I'm stuck on the word equity um without like qualifying it couldn't we also have um like I've heard there there have been things that
147have come to the table where a developers said I'm building this but I'm also doing a student project to teach Trading for these this development for a passive house I think maybe the division house guys right and everybody was like oh that's a really great thing um but I don't know how that comes into play with a a UDC amendment I could see that in the development agreement right like oh this development is going to sponsor this program which is a way that we get to equity because folks who have been intentionally excluded from this trade are going to learn this skill as they develop this house and that's you know sort of a laudable goal that we have but I just don't I'm struggling to see how we do it in the UDC so
148maybe one suggestion would be to just say increase accessibility affordability and diversity whatever and just take the equity out of it with an acknowledgment that those are the tools we have and yep it's maybe more yes we can't guarantee that we're actually gonna like yeah I'm struggling with that word I think it's an important word we have to Define what we mean right right so in 1970 the city was designing one acre lots to exclude black people from buying so a equity response to that is like all right here's how we're going to fix that but we have to Define that and I don't think that's what you were proposing I don't want to speak for you no that's not what I was that feels like so maybe that goes back to staff somewhere to
149say how do we write the historical wrongs in our planning as we go forward so that we keep that um an eye on that right like Bank of America just announced that they're helping people with closing costs in Ann Arbor because the cost of housing is too high I was just like oh like that seems very practical whether you like Bank of America or not but that's like a way to sort of level it and it's only available to people up to 94 000 of household income so it it's exclusionary in one sense but it's helping others in another sense but I don't hear that that's what you were proposing no that's not what I'm proposing and as a planning consultant I would say that the most appropriate place for that is in your comprehensive
150plan and to have deep Community discussions and conversations about what Equity means and how the city wants to go forward right so I think one one option would be to strike Equity I think another option would be if people felt it was important to have a kind of value declared in the third goal would be to say anybody who wants to live downtown can live downtown or something like that which includes kind of accessibility attainability and different types of units which what's that I'm sorry it's just not really true in our current landscape their goals but how would we achieve that how could we measure so what are the measurable ways that we would know that we've achieved that so let's just strike it always and just increase accessibility yeah so the third goal goes
151to increase accessibility attainability and diversity of housing types you literally mean accessibility in terms of ADA because that is already in the building right like we don't need to say that because it's already mandated it's been mandated for decades all right so how about everything has to be done like you cannot build well is it adequate right I mean it hasn't been at the table we've asked for additional things that one development on Miller we we set the whole thing back and had engineering redo it so that you could access it from the street even though it was on that pitched Hill and where does for Universal Design Within units that's not required necessarily by Ada but Interiors where the you know you don't have the door jambs or things like that and The Hollies
152are so kind of beyond what we require by by building code yes what we're getting at yeah okay so just so we realize that means your units get bigger it means you're I mean it it's so just again like just so that we have our eyes open about what that means it's it's like all of the everybody we all want so many different worthy goals this is the this is the hard part so do we have everything be accessible and that all of those door jams are wide and all of the bathrooms are bigger so that no the wheelchair can turn around okay so does that then mean that we are like saying that it has to be more than whatever like the percentage of accessible units are more than what I mean I just
153think we need to be aware of what we're actually I think we can ask for that I think we could account and then with the goal of increasing it we could see whatever we decide whether the count increases after we set sort of these goals I hear you I hear you saying like make sure you understand what you're what you're actually saying and I don't think we're saying every unit has to meet a baseline standard outside of the building code I see this as we want to make sure that what commissioner Abram said anyone who wants to live downtown can and that they're not just permanently excluded because of what's being built and so forth so I I'm I'm comfortable with it but commissioner Mills here and we can always return to these later tonight
154sure or later in the processary worthwhile conversation we need to separate them out because if there's actually all this discussion because those three things are different and different people are going to feel differently about those three things that we've now put together in one goal and so I just wanted I want to name that and I don't know that we have to solve it I mean you tell us if we have to solve this tonight no you don't have to sell this tonight you have to solve it by the end this is actually a really important thing because again what we're talking about here is not any requirements weren't talking about incentives so it especially going to the next thing I'm trying to move us along menu versus no menu right like this is that's
155a fundamental thing and if we like I'm guessing that the universally accessible thing would be done in a different way you know like how you would do that than a mix of units or affordability or a attainability um if you will like right like so I just wanna I wanna I thought we we might need to separate them out and now it's getting to be a long list and then problematic but we can take a longer list to the stakeholders and get feedback and there might be things where we would hear from developers to say that's going to be really confusing or difficult or going to um another border commission within the city and hearing no that's yes that's absolutely one of our priorities or no can you think about this um so why don't
156we for right now move over to the policy approaches feedback talk about stakeholders and then we're going to circle back to goals at the end does that work that's good okay so thank you next slide so when we had a discussion last month at the very end I asked each of you to tell me to tell us small menu large menu no incentive um and there was not a lot of support for the large menu which is the status quo um there was a fair between the two between the Commissioners there was more some more support it seemed for a small menu than no incentive at all and um so in our memory we kind of fleshed out maybe what those would work look at look like and also suggested a hybrid model so that
157if you were going to look at not using the premiums at all an option then is to just increase That Base far to the current far premium maximum and so that's 900 far for D1 and 400 far for D2 and these are just examples to have you think about it to give you something to work off of or you could keep the density as it is and offer a small menu um for those premiums again within those same ranges another option is also to do both is to increase the base far A little bit let's say 600 in the D1 and 300 in the D2 and then still keep that small menu for the things that you know that you can't require and that you want so our next step is to go to stakeholders
158and talk to them about this what I wanted to know from you is of these policy approaches and different options what do you want us to talk to them about and I think we can take all your ideas and meld them together I don't think we need to have the whole group agree to one list if that's okay with you okay so do you want to just do it popcorn or go work from one way to another word we'll start with you and work this way commissioner yeah so I I really appreciate you hearing me and I I saw my comments reflected in your menu and I was like oh that's exactly what I wanted which was uh the maximum far at 900 and the maximum bar at 400 without the incentives and I think
159um for me the thing that I was wrestling through was if the goal is to get more housing in the downtown then I want to do the the thing that does that the best and if I was hearing the feedback correctly the menu approach is confusing for Developers so okay I vote for no incentive I like the the far but you know if we had to get to a consensus the hybrid also works because you increase the far and those two districts and I've also wondered why we just don't extend the D1 across all of D2 but I don't want to cause any more Flames at the table tonight so all right commissioner Clerk so I don't actually have a whole lot of comment on this although I do prefer probably no incentive and just
160making it as clear and straightforward as possible um so yeah uh no incentive but I might have more to say later okay any particular question for both commissioner and commissioner Clark that you would want to ask to any one of the stakeholders I mean I heard and I asked the DDA this I heard developers say they don't want to build affordable housing for the city so is that is that true that they they want that done through a tiff or through the millage or as a city process they don't want to be responsible for doing that I think a more clarifying thing to say would they don't want to manage it is a big piece no it was what I heard was stop asking developers to build your affordable housing so can I just kind
161of build on that question um I guess my question would be to stakeholders like how much does having them subsidize developments raise the cost of other units and maybe it's a broader question than like a stakeholder engagement but for developers specifically I'd want to know what the price margin difference is going to be if they're having to absorb those costs um I worry about creating two different without subsidies from a larger pool of funding State Federal even County I just worry about subsidizing that direct level and I'd want to know what increase it cost to be and if people would mind if the market would be able to absorb that higher price I don't know if that's what we're talking thank you okay um not entirely comfortable with uh merely increasing the base far and
162no premiums but the hybrid model I don't think increases the base far enough I think that it keeps it where we are now which is that we will not see development because the base is too low to make Financial sense in a city where most development is Redevelopment and so they've already got a three or four story building that's giving them something so why would they knock it down if they have to pay a premium to get over six stories so at one point as a base far makes Financial sense yeah I'm starting to get really close to the current premium but I mean it I would think I would like to see it increase to 700 or maybe even 750. can you do that 750 12. I could fabulous I would also suggest that
163this would be a great to your point that might be a stakeholder question where would you where would you need us to put the base far so that you weren't just so that you could still be enticed by premiums but not just stalled right so that would be a good question that's what I'd like to hear I'd like to hear how they'd craft the hybrid model and I would ask them if they have a strong preference for the ability to give 100 payment in lieu in place of building affordable units on site okay got it so yeah in other words I really like offering them The Tweak the hybrid model and then asking them how they would tweak it foreign ly like the hybrid model I I actually don't know that that would increase the
164F that base fa are that much because this is what I I like the question like where would you what would entice you to just build anything and then what does it take to actually get us either more affordability and so I think that the question that commissioner dish asked about payment entirely or again what would the what would the bonus need to be what would the incentive need to be to get us a much more efficient building like that's the thing that they can give you numbers I think that would be really useful but of everyone and I don't know that all of your audiences that you're going to would answer that from everyone what I would really I think would be really helpful this Pros cons like expected and unexpected or well maybe
165these are not unexpected consequences like these are the expected you know this yeah I think would happen I want them to edit this like I wanted to know what they think would happen like the pros and cons of each of them I think this is pretty solid but that's what I if you could explicitly ask them like what are we missing with respect to our goals and even with respect to other goals that people know our city has that we're not thinking of I think that would be useful okay thank you for I so but do ask us all three because I think that's yeah thank you you're welcome you just said exactly what I was going to say so there you go um yeah so I'm I'm I like the hybrid thing too and
166I want to know where we land um the other thing and this may have nothing to do with it but I'm just curious and who knows if this gets answered but um with attainable how big is that unit I just be curious like is that a 500 square foot unit is that a 400 square foot unit like for the kind of like what you know our average median income what is the size of that I just wanted like is there a way that far is one thing can we say units or unit size or some other way of thinking about it so that we can get people to make smaller units or things that aren't just the five six bedroom business or the 2 000 square foot luxury business so that's asking somebody to run
167numbers for you I don't know if that's something that you can do first or not for sure if that's like your wheelhouse or not um but that would be an additional question that I would have because that's what I that's part of what I really want is to figure out how to get regular people to be able to live downtown okay like people that are like in this community that so that it's like anybody can live downtown like you're yep that's diversity of housing type that's diversity of housing type to me you know yeah and and then so if we have some sort of Baseline for now anyway then we know maybe we want to be able to incentivize even smaller so that people who aren't just in the average can also have a chance
168to I think like right now what I see from my other life outside of Planning Commission is that the math seems to work better for the luxury condo thing and so I want to know how we can make it better for people to not do the luxury condo thing and so whatever tools we have to be able to make that happen great thanks um I guess I would add I know we're not talking about who the stakeholders are yet but I feel like most of these questions are directed at developers which I think is only one of the eight groups so I would maybe just encourage us to think about questions we might have for the other potential stakeholders um which would be like DDA or housing and Human Services Advisory Board Housing Commission Etc
169um I I am interested in both the no incentive and the hybrid model I think I am not quite sure how the no incentive model achieves the goals that we just were passing out so I guess that's my concern um and then I'm wondering why or can we talk about going higher than 900 and 400 I don't see that on the table like is their version of the hybrid where we increased to eight and four and then offer premiums yeah for 1200 or whatever yeah I okay it seemed like everyone was talking about 900 as the ceiling and we have to kind of move within that that is my base 900 is your base okay yeah and and that was also a facilitator trick not to rock the boat out of the gate for the
170discussion we could just talk about that and not the other things yeah um okay I don't think I have anything else that I need to add them okay I had similar thoughts about how the no incentive option would meet either of the other two goals besides increasing housing so I think for me I like the hybrid option but would I mean I'm not going to say anything new I'd want to hear from stakeholders like what are the premiums that would actually convince you to take advantage of being able to add more far like what are the things that that you would be willing to do and I think understanding like the numbers will really help um I think you had said this before we talked about it we were talking about the goals but are
171you if you're planning on sharing the goals to sort of Bounce them off of the stakeholders I would I would love for them to try to prioritize them it would just be interesting to see like forced to prioritize these things because we cannot have everything how would each of these different groups how would you prioritize them a commissioner I don't know no one's asking me I'm asking you right now um well I don't know what the third goal is yet I don't know what we landed on so I'm afraid that I can't it's kind of unfair question I want to know what you stakeholders say because I don't know what I would say I want it all and I can't have it all I I was I was thinking thinking more question when we started
172this and I guess one of the observations I will just have is that I get I get the balance of the things that we desire as a community and the things that we can't require as a community but I think to a person at this table we want more housing downtown and I would just observe that it's interesting that we would in what circumstance if that's our goal would we require an offset for that so that's taking the small menu off the plate the table so only talking about the two options I've I I think it is maybe bifurcating the goals to what extent is housing a goal here housing is Big Goal diversity of housing maybe that's a sub goal maybe sustainability is a sub goal so um it's not to go aside on
173this conversation but I think it's just an observation that I'm hearing that when when we come back with this feedback about what's viable and the like you know just another observation that sometimes communities get caught up when they have a land asset and they want to offer that to the development Community through an RFP or something to that effect and a lot of times communities can start trying to solve every problem I think you heard some of this with the 415 West Washington and um it's this is not that far from that one we if we don't provide options and we require layers we are doing that same thing we're going to be layering requirements that we're probably not going to get any of the things that we desire so um I don't know I
174just I am hearing housing and I'm hearing that elevated in a higher outcome desirability than even potentially sustainability and diversity of housing I know that I'm not trying to belittle those as goals but increasing housing supply downtown helps all of that period can I add like one more question that as you were talking because I think it I think that's true but I also think it's like adding the right types of housing so I would be curious to see like from all these different stakeholders perspectives like what do they see as missing and like critical so what is missing in housing downtown yeah I mean I think I know but I would just like to sort of okay see how how the different groups might respond to that right commissioner Lee um I have some
175feedback on actually who should we talk to okay that's next okay gotcha and I think the conversation's great because uh it always brings me back to planning school and planners triangle right it's we have to balance Economic Development sustainability and social justice and those are the three themes that we are consistently kind of revolving around um and my question is is premiums only limited to far or can they be temporal and you know and in the past we've talked about like Expediting reviews or something along those lines I don't even know if that's legal like where you prioritize you know where everything should be given kind of like just um you know time and review so um are there other dimensions that are valuable um that which could be used to induce certain you know
176so not just density because I think we all want density to a certain extent right and there is a diminishing um return after you hit certain height so for example stick build five stories 120 and 150 bucks a square foot that's kind of where it ends you get to Podium with stick on top you get one with maybe up to six and so you have and that that's probably like 160 170 a foot and then you get the light gauge steel you can now get to 10 stories um so there's these kinds of like specific segments of costs and returns that you can hit but then there's also again areas where you have diminishing marginal returns um so you get a type 1A construction you want to go up super you know high but now
177you have to have a lot more costs you know associated with that so um I'm wondering if it's not if we're only hyper focus on far and if there's different areas of premiums that again like hey um I don't know fees I mean we talk about fees when it came to U of M Credit Union or we talked about um so I don't know if speed costs those kinds of things can be considered in the premium discussion I uh again not not at a not to try and create more complexity but temporally right um time is money in real estate like literally leasehold interest what occurs on the productivity of land time is money so can that can that be you know a dimension that we could tackle as a premium just throwing it out
178there I think that's an excellent question to ask yep yeah I was just going to say I think I agree I think that's something that you could incorporate into those stakeholder conversations I but I will also give you my speculation that um adjustment to our fees to process and time are not the big cost factors in a development and I I don't know that drastic changes to those are going to overcome the Delta between a mixed fuel building and an electrified building that that's fair uh that's thank you yeah that's a good point okay before we move on yes yes okay I just I want to respond to Mr Leonard um your statement was increasing housing supply downtown helps all those goals and commissioner hammerschmidt's response was well I'm not sure if the types of
179housing doesn't matter and I want to underscore that I really do think that that's a question that we're wrestling with which is a meaningful one because I hear all the time that residents are really tired of the student Towers going up downtown and I think that the market would be inclined to give us all those they would give us a lot of those wouldn't it or I know that I wouldn't think we had a healthy downtown if that's what it was full of it's not that I do not have I have abs I love students I teach them but they they do things they go away in the summer they have exams they don't uh you know the a city looks different when it's trying to cater to just that market and that doesn't feel
180like a city that has a mix of kinds of people in it I I would say that is part of the housing challenge that we have here there those are constructed because there is demand for those units and I it this is hard right because we're wrestling with our community experience of the housing that we see we see student housing and we see high-end Condominiums being developed and I would I would put forth that building more of both of those will help with our affordability and it'll help expand the SEC the diversity of housing types across our community because those are the first things right now that are penciling out and what steps can we do to make more of those pencil out to help fill those Market needs and open up the space for
181other types of housing as well and so I I don't I am reluctant to dismiss student housing is not being developed that's part of our housing inventory challenges um right now the the cards are stacked against every other project type I don't think those are inherently bad though I want to be clear and I don't think you're saying that either but that is part that is part of increasing housing Supply in this community to help across the board it's not trying to stop that development it's trying to how can we open up this Market through what small ways can we adjust our regulatory framework so that more can happen across all price points oh God oh Sarah you had your hand up first and I was just gonna say maybe this is taking to us
182to our next slide um I think we at this table might see housing and housing alone as helpful maybe not all of us do but I hope that the people that we're talking to I want to question that because I mean we certainly had people that come before us that we pick up from certain groups where it's not housing in and of itself is a good it's housing so long as it has these characteristics and sustainability is one of them that we regularly hear and I think that we need to have that conversation before we increase far we need to hear how others feel about that and so I I think that that's really important to get out of this and I'm I'll go to the next thing I'm really glad that the energy commission
183for example is on that list and that there's a bunch of housing folks commission folks housing Alliance on that list okay so is everybody good with going to that list of stakeholders and talking about that yeah okay there we are great oh no go back we didn't get to talk okay so we have a horoscope up to eight groups we've listed them here um it could be a combination or if you feel that one might be it might be worthwhile to talk to 20 developers than one or two of those others has to fall off the list but if again I think we'll go this way this time so we'll start with commissioner Lee about who we should be talking to and we do kind of need resolution on which eight before we walk out
184of here tonight um sure I I thought um civil engineers and Architects that's brought the most number of petitions in front of us might be useful to talk with as they kind of understand both the constraints and kind of the nuances of utility traffic and you know everything else so to talk with somebody who has frequency and petitions that they bring forward I also wrote down failed petitioners people who actually brought like petitions forward and it never got off the ground that is also kind of interesting to hear their perspective I really appreciate when um Doug Selby came and told us to our face yeah this is how I see that process that is valuable feedback for us so um it's not Sego call up core spaces uh about you know but I mean basically
185it's what I'm saying is maybe it's uh worthwhile to see you know who's brought you know frequency of petitions and and chatting with them so I guess that kind of focuses on local developers and civil engineering and Architects I do think the Housing Commission is obviously imperative as well as the energy commission um the the question is also one of you know is um maybe that's not necessarily the right question but um the other thing that I might uh actually uh recommend as far as within the local developers is there's a group called sgaa I think um and I think they they're called themselves uh smart growth Ann Arbor so they're just uh real estate um leaders throughout the community so might kind of knock out all five ten individual firms if you just talk
186that one group so um but yeah failed petitioner civil engineering Architects that have the most amount of frequency and familiarity with our processes um and and both local and National folks that have brought things here and the national can give us guidance on how we you know match up relative to other communities that have tried to use levers of premiums so I think it's not only important to have those with local flavor but also the national purview so thanks thank you I love that I was second that um we definitely do see a lot of the same like engineering firms and Architects come before us they're often the ones presenting things and talking to us about sustainability particularly Architects so I think you know that local developers category could maybe not just be developers would
187be sort of that like professional um category I this is my own ignorance I guess but between like the Washington housing Alliance housing and Human Services Advisory Board Housing Commission I just don't know enough about like the differences between those three like maybe we do need all three of them I just don't know like I don't know if it's possible if we come up with like a different eighth I don't know if it likes swapping one of those out makes sense I just I don't know um and I'm wondering like if it and like you know Avalon is a non-profit housing developer I don't know if if a non-profit housing developer a non-profit affordable housing developer would make sense to talk to mm-hmm okay thank you I'm gonna second what was already said I don't
188think I have anything else to add thanks my only similarly to to commissioner Abrams the only thing is um whether the citizens advisory Council of the DDA and the DDA I don't I mean I know this is about downtown so you're trying to figure out kind of um we used to have representatives of them come forward to us quite a bit and we just haven't had that and so I don't know if they're still actively meeting and things like that are they yeah they did I mean Ray deterrer used to be a regular fixture here and uh and we just don't hear from them since covet basically it seems like so so the feeling is maybe they could be combined possibly yeah okay I agree I don't know that I don't know which of the
189housing groups is the appropriate and I wouldn't say that we only have to have one I was actually thinking like do we it I don't think the environmental commission is the right thing I think it is this is an energy commission thing but I was thinking if there's something similar like a couple of different flavors of kind of environment but three might be too many on that particular topic but I defer to others so I I did want to suggest maybe if Washington housing Alliance and housing and Human Services Advisory Board could be brought together I think Housing Commission is both a developer and it does so many things that I would keep it it seems to me like we doubled the local developer category because of the things that were put into it which
190I think was valuable so we do need to take some things off I agree about collapsing the CAC to the DDA with the DDA I think that would be fine the only so I've offered two ways of collapsing one way of expanding the other thing that's not here that might be important is the renter's commission but I would take advice from staff on that only because they are relatively new now they represent a group that is 50 of the city and is a very internally diverse group certainly um and whose needs are not necessarily being wonderfully met but they're new so I don't know how well they've gelled as a deliberative body and so um it's all but they are you know it's important their representation is important I mean you could just beg city
191council I mean I really think you could they will have their chance to give input okay and you want to talk to stakeholders there aren't a lot of city council members who pay enough attention to actual nitty-gritty of development so I was glad to see a nod I thought that was gonna light people's hair on fire as we have heard um so I guess I would also like to hear from professional groups that represent a more diverse uh group that haven't been included in our developments I'm going to suggest the organizations like the Urban League of Southeast Michigan Michigan minority contractors Association Capital impact Partners has their Equitable Development Association Sedum the community developments Association of Michigan developers that are a member of that Consortium would be good to weigh in a lot of them
192are non-profits and Community groups that work in communities directly adjacent to Ann Arbor it would be interesting to know why they're not more people aren't getting a piece of the development downtown like why and I think that I just want to make sure that along with stakeholders that have been petitioners that people that have been excluded from being petitioners would be really useful to hear it from and I also think they might be have some insight to the market demand and things that we might be overlooking so I'd really like to see those associations are some you know combination of Professionals in that section so a question and then and then an answer um the is the goal of these stakeholders people who would come before planning yes and no the goal of the stakeholders
193is to yes to talk to the development Community or people who would be bringing petitions but I think also to talk to other stakeholders who share the same goals and have ideas about how to implement them and whether the policy options you're looking at would be helpful to them as they go forward so not only talking to applicants but partners because I I think the the nature of the question for me is then like I as I look at the list that you have my screen is flickering if you're wondering why I'm turning um the the people that I see missing are the people who aren't downtown so those are the renters those are the people who want to live here but can't and I I don't know that they belong to an association that
194you can contact to reach them so for the Washington housing allowance Alliance that gets everybody who is doing supportive and affordable housing in the county so Avalon to commissioner hammerschmidt's question would be subsumed inside the housing allowance Alliance and then on the housing and Human Services board you're going to get a cross section of Ann Arbor rights who either rent or own but are aware of the housing needs and how the availability and the lack thereof impact and then to some commissioner either Mills or dishes comment probably dish on the renters it would be great to hear from them but if it's around how we change our policies to permit more housing I don't know like is that a good use of their time so that's why I was asking the question of who the
195goal is because having the renters commission come well they're going to tell you everything about everything but it may not help us figure out what we need to change in the planning so if the goal are the professional class of folks who would either come to the table or be adjacent to the table then I think as commissioner Lee originally said hearing from petitioners who had their petitions rejected hearing from developers who because of how difficult our process is for permitting or building decided not to I would love to to sort of hear from them and even with the earlier petitioner I was going to ask like why do you keep developing in Ann Arbor it's this seems kind of onerous and difficult and you've been around here this table for six years why are
196you back here again and I think it was to Mr Leonard's comment that you know student housing or Jason student housing is what pencils right now and so that's why we're getting a lot of those or the high-end million dollar condos because they work so so I it's a mixed bag from me but if you if you give me more clarity about like I want to talk to the people who are going to be impacted by the decision that we make that might change in my recommendation and then my question back to you is um we're acting as your proxy to go out and talk to stakeholders so what information do you need to hear from which stakeholders in order to be better prepared to make decisions about this policy change so again if if
197I think my answer is is our goal to build more housing because if our goal is to build more housing then I want to talk to the people who build housing okay but I don't I'm hearing a mixed bag from the table you know you have the energy commission here because of sustainability because that's a sub goal you have all of the the housing Supportive Services folks because affordability is a sub goal you have people who live in the DDA because the DDA is sort of the the the umbrella for this area so you want to make sure that we're hearing from them so that that's your three sort of groups and then everyone else's who builds because the Housing Commission builds right the Washington housing allowance alliance members they build um I think it
198would be religious groups as well because they're building and they're building in the downtown we just had the treasure Mark is you know that just changed hands and you're going to have a a church that builds uh in Cary town so so like where I would just say we want to talk to as many Builders who are interested in the downtown as is possible but again I think it changes depending on like what is our actual goal yeah okay so to summarize what I've heard and I think I have it down to eight nine groups is um number one take city council off the list um combine the DDA and the citizens advisory Council into one group so that's one Washington housing Alliance to housing and Human Services Advisory Board is a different one three
199local developers and included in that is also civil engineers and architects um Housing Commission energy Commission um the renters commission and then as the eighth I think that the failed petitioners is really interesting maybe that can be part of the developers group but so I really think we swelled it right can you put your my gosh I forget about the people at home I take commissioner White's weiche's point that maybe not the renter's commission I don't know do others how did others respond to that good point and I think in terms of the failed the ones that didn't work I'm going to leave it up to staff because I I'm sure you all know there's people that come through there's like you know that was a stupid idea that's never going to flop right and
200then there's the people who are like wow that was a great project and it didn't work because of some whatever it is and I'm sure you all have those in your pocket of things that have happened yeah I was going to suggest we can just try to identify a couple of those examples um as part of that development Community probably maybe some that just never proceeded for bears and some that were approved and never got built right okay I just wanted to throw out there too that I guess I would want stakeholders too that have a breadth of experience in in policy and development and from an equity and impact lens and I just want to throw out there really quick that like for example Sedum um I think there is a tendency to overlook
201experience with with this in other areas and developers that there are developers that wanted to come here and you know like the number one goal listed on sedum's agenda is expand accessible affordable quality housing options for all Michigan residents their second one is strengthen programs that promote inclusion um and then locally yes so I just think that there's a lot of overlapping goals there and the stakeholders going to them and saying what policy recommendations have worked what what exclusions would be really good they were actually the one that I was going to mention Ninth and come in so I I think if folks feel like the renters commission maybe we take that off the table and talk to see them and set instead um because they have they also have a breath and policy across
202the state and um knows that affordable housing community development context within planning and zoning laws in Michigan and what other communities have done I'll make it quick um on the professional advisory side maybe Uli or usgbc or something along those lines but um if you feel like you got it covered on the professional advisory side that's fine the other one I was going to throw out there is some something like the Main Street Association or the state treat Association um while they're not necessarily the ones using premium levers right because they're not the builders but they are the aggregate of business owners and operators and the ones that kind of give Vitality to the DDA and they make their livings there so their their value sets and voice I think is also a helpful balance
203so that we're not just hearing from the people that have to use premiums but rather the folks that may either benefit or you know have have direct kind of feedback as to what they'd like to see I mean is housing what they want is is better transportation and of goods what they want right I mean it would probably go and but I the the Main Street Association State Street Association might be helpful to talk maybe I'm throwing that out for consideration well let us talk with staff and see maybe whether those things can be combined with the DEA and have a larger group um something like that go ahead all right um well the next steps is for us to go off and consult with these stakeholders working with your staff and then coming back
204to you so I would expect us backs probably sometime in July ish and want to thank you tonight for the discussion and all of your time really do appreciate it thanks main customers first customers [Laughter] okay let's move on to item number 10 which is public comment there's opportunity for people to speak up to three minutes if you want to since we likely don't have people in the room that are going to be speaking I presume not no uh the the small Miss Mills does not want to get up and chair she no there's there's another one is still there um that it would be people calling in um and for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 to unmute plus press star six City staff will call on you um please state
205your name and address at the beginning of your comments for your three-minute period is there anybody virtually no hands are raised okay then we will move on to commission proposed business nothing nothing alrighty a German motion to adjourn commissioner Abrams seconded by commissioner white we are adjourned