001welcome to the April 4th 2023 meeting of the animal Planning Commission for detailed information about the meeting you can consult the agenda down usually at the end at this end my teacher what's that oh sorry um let's see next Kelly will you call the roll or Mr Leonard whomever makes sense yes I'm actually going to ask uh planning manager Leonard to do it I was supposed to go the other way [Music] commissioner Gibb Randall present commissioner Mills here commissioner dish here commissioner Clark here commissioner white here commissioner Abrams commissioner sovay here commissioner Hammerschmidt here commissioner Lee here we have a quorum this evening thank you alrighty approval of the agenda can I have a motion by commissioner Mill seconded by commissioner dish any discussion on the agenda all those in favor say aye aye motion
002passes um okay minutes of the previous meeting item number four we have two so I'm going to take them together this is from January 24th and March 21st of 2023 very fourth not 24th oh January 4th 24th fourth sorry typo in my end um let's see moved by commissioner sovay seconded by commissioner Lee any discussion of the meeting minutes none already all those in favor say aye aye motion carries all right item five which are reports from City Administration City Council planning manager Planning Commission officers things like that why don't we start with city council commissioner council person dish I answer to both the North Maple rezoning and development agreement and site plan were warmly and enthusiastically passed by Council last night that was the final approval and I don't think anything else was relevant
003to you but maybe uh let's see anything from planning manager uh just a couple updates for our working session next week we're anticipating a presentation from the Ann Arbor DDA who had recently completed a downtown market analysis kind of a snapshot of the state of downtown post covid and the like so we'll be uh just a brief presentation during that working session next week and um I just do want to note I know that there's a Communications uh section on the agenda we have a fair number of handouts for you this evening we endeavored to pull a lot of the communications from the previous meeting where this petition was scheduled and it had to be postponed due to some weather related events and some uh due to the weather the catastrophic weather and so originally
004we had pulled those meeting materials but in front of you you have a series of Correspondence that the commission had received prior to that meeting um relative to that petition again the commission's already seen all those but we did assemble those and print those off so that's based on the volume this evening perfect okay thank you any other commissioner offices or Liaisons go ahead commissioner sovay or steam it last week we discussed how the UDC measures Building height as well as grade plane so we're evaluating um that a little bit further right now for consistency and I have something to report from environmental commission and commissioner dish you should feel free to add into this if you'd like there is a resolution that's being put together on prohibiting natural gas connections um for that and
005I know that there's uh you know movement afoot on staff and to be researching that however there was another element that I thought might be interesting for us to consider because we you know we've heard how stymied you all have been in terms of legal and things like that and you know issues that you're running into we you know get reminders on a weekly basis from all the people that are trying to sue us on things on things like this so one of the things especially on both sides of that issue yeah right right yes we that's very true um but one of the things that the the second part of the resolution um was around things that we have more control over so potential for restructuring of fees or priority processing or being able
006to give tax credits which clearly wouldn't be our purview to be able to do but that will be I'm heading towards uh city council has not been passed yet but it'll be heading towards city council so if this were to pass and then city council were to pass it then it would come back to us so I just wanted to give you all kind of a heads up that that's in the works and um and if we you know are feeling like the pace of this other this other momentum is is feeling kind of frustratingly slow because of a lot of things we can't control here are some things we actually can control so um I just wanted to put that in front of all of you to be able to think about that as
007we're moving forward okay on to item uh number six which is public comment this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about an issue that is not listed on the public hearing on this agenda so anything tonight for the credit union would not be now that would happen later when when we're discussing that so we'll First Call in people who are present here and then we'll call on folks who are remote and to speak during this public hearing remotely press star nine if listening by phone or used to raise the hand feature if viewing through 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 select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your
008phone number or by your name if you're viewing 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 place so that we can hear you clearly for either method please state your name and address at the beginning of um of your comments is there anybody here that would like to begin public comment on things that are not on tonight's agenda making sure give Randall Ken Garber 28 Hammer Hill Court you can guess my topic you already introduced it the gas ban ordinance um yeah you just said that we're getting all these legal threats I've been carefully reading the correspondent by any Commission and I've only seen one threat from the law firm of McClellan and Anderson for the Home Builders Association
009of Michigan or hbam maybe there have been others but I've missed them this same law firm and age Bam are also threatened the state legally over new Energy Efficiency standards in the state energy code which is under revision hbm is a very backwards looking organization which local Builders broke away from many years ago to form their own group I know you can't entirely ignore legal threats but hey consider the source here hbam um I've been meeting with developers on this issue and what has most struck me is frankly the complete absence of any sense of shared responsibility for the climate crisis joining our Collective effort they say it's not their problem or imply that I know they have their proformas but most don't even pretend to care so we really need this ordinance we're not
010going to get voluntary compliance except a huge cost to the public purse um perhaps we can work out an incentive structure as chair give Randall just mentioned but um I'm not optimistic I mean did we really think that we could do this without upsetting people invested in the status quo it doesn't work that way the a20 plan three years in is unraveling because it's coming up against powerful forces that are violently resistant to real change that includes the construction industry and many developers not all but the answer is not to back down over 90 cities and Counties have now restricted gas and new construction there have been a few lawsuits but those cities are holding firm in your packet you'll find petitions with 125 signatures in support of a gas ban ordinance from new construction
011I ask you to stand with everyone who signed this petition and all the others who would have and against those who seek to continue the insanity of locking in new fossil fuel infrastructure for decades to come you know there are there are those who oppose the gas ban and the assumption that developers will flee the city for the townships worsening sprawl lowering density I don't think that's going to happen okay but let's say it does this is like saying gee these companies want to discharge raw sewage into our River but if we ban that they'll just go across the border where sewage isn't regulated and we'll miss out on all the benefits these companies bring so forget the rossly woods ban this is not how change happens this is how you perpetuate the status quo
012change happens when you take a stand against the harmful activity [Applause] thank you anybody else present who would like to speak for three minutes okay we will move on to item number seven which is public hearings for the next business meeting or I'm sorry we never even went to the virtual thing yes we got to go to the virtual thing sorry about currently No Hands raised see I knew that I could just sense it um anyway so on to uh public hearings for the next business meeting uh we have one a new public hearing scheduled for the April 18th meeting it's a proposed unified development code modification this is a proposed amendments to permitted and accessory uses in the tc1 transit Corridor District a proposed amendment to chapter 55 section 515 table 515 primary use
013table and the accessory use table and use specific standards to allow some automobile related uses in the tc1 zoning district and some tc1 Building height modifications all right thank you so we are then moving on to our regular business which is item number nine on 9A so this is for the University of Michigan Credit Union site plan and special exemption used for City Planning Commission approval this is a proposal to build a new 4740 square foot building with three drive-through lanes and 22 parking spaces on this one acre site located at 2929 Plymouth Road the parcel is zoned o for office a special exemption use is requested for the three drive-through teller Lanes the staff recommendation is approval we're going to start with a petitioner presentation for 10 minutes evening commissioners my name is Ted
014Hirsch I'm with Midwestern Consulting we are the Civil consultant for this project um here with members from the the ownership University Mission Michigan Credit Union the the project architect Hobson black and the general contractor JS Vig so I think everyone or most people are kind of aware we're the project is just to give some context um here West to US-23 and Plymouth Road just east of Huron Parkway and just getting a little more granular see that m city testing facilities to the southeast and we have Prairie Street on our east of the the site Thurston Elementary to the north providing a little more context here from a zoning and future Lane use perspective just highlighting the the existing zoning map showing that we're Zone o office and the future land use element of the comprehensive
015plan being consistent and showing that is office as well um just to give a little background on the the characteristics of the project so University of Michigan Credit Union does have space in the Traders Village Center a little bit West of this project site so part of what this project accomplishes for the owner is it allows them to to move into a larger space than what they have in this rented space or at least space the expansion of the building and area gives them things like a conference room things that they can use to better serve their their members provide stuff like Financial education mortgage facilitation the the site plan does include a drive-through something that has been basically requested and by their members and something that they felt is an important facet of the
016the project to include again this this site in the expansion of the the the building area gives them better opportunity to serve their members purchasing the property allows them an ownership of the land rather than a lease situation that they currently have and then just kind of highlighting the fact that there's no rezoning no variances requested or required for the for the project as proposed it does include a land division So based on the the evaluation of their needs and the chosen location does provide more Site Area than uh what they need to accomplish their goals so um the lane division provides opportunity to to allow them to accomplish that and then provide potential uh area for future development there is landscape modification included with the project um based on the street tree placement along
017Plymouth it's kind of an existing condition where existing Street trees along that stretch are located outside of the right-of-way and um a few of those many of those are Landmark trees that we're intending to maintain and again just kind of maintain that existing condition the staff is recommended approval of that modification so and obviously as mentioned before the drive-through that's included with the the site plan would require your approval of a special exception use moving on to the the site layout so um here you can see that there is kind of the the modest building and uh parking fields and and drive Lanes uh the drive-through located behind the building kind of tucked away um and then this second parcel uh left it'll be cleared of you know all the existing building and parking area
018and then um left just in a vegetated situation so there is access from both Plymouth Road and Prairie Street currently the Prairie Street approach for the existing site that's to remain in that in its existing place the the approach on Plymouth the existing approach is a little bit further west and that'll be highlighted a little bit earlier that that's getting moved a little bit further east again with the intent to allow for future development of that resulting split parcel um in in this kind of central dry vial to act as shared access Ingress egress um the the proposed layout does move this new building closer to the road than um the existing building kind of creates a little bit more of that pedestrian scale layout the it also increases the setback from the residential to
019the north there's 22 proposed parking spaces which is the I should say was the minimum required at the time that this was submitted there was a minimum of 22 spaces and a maximum of 28 so um they felt that ownership felt that the 22 was something that they could certainly um initially move forward with um and adequately serve the site there are four deferred parking spaces at the northwest or I'm sorry the northeast corner that are included the project includes six proposed electric vehicle installed parking spaces um for the requirements at the time that is more than double the the required um I believe it was two that were required um for EVR parking spaces are included uh again just slightly over the the required minimum and then from a kind of multimodal perspective there
020are additional bike hoops bike parking spaces that are minimally required for the development so as I mentioned before the the existing curb cut on Plymouth that approach would be removed and essentially relocated towards the center of the the entire parcel and then with that split it would would lie along the Eastern edge of this resulting second parcel again the existing curb cut and Prairie to remain there is an existing bus stop that would have to be shifted just a little bit to I think 30 feet to the east 75 feet to the east uh 30 feet east of the new approach um to accommodate that relocation and that's been something that was coordinated um with the Trans the Transportation Authority and they uh kind of provided Direction on that location from a utilities perspective pretty
021simple there's adequate existing infrastructure from water and sanitary as well as storm perspective this slide highlights the water and sanitary so out in Prairie Street there's both available water and sanitary Mains the water being 12 inch is adequate size no no need for upsizing um there would be a relocation of the the Taps for the leads so new leads would be accommodated on that main and that would be the same for the Sanitary Service as well we'd make a new tap for that currently the existing site doesn't have any detention facilities or really any stormwater management quality or any other facilities other than conveyance there's some catch basins on site it's all parking and building impervious surface that drains into the catch basins and then directly out to the city storm sewer and Prairie Street
022so the project the project provides underground detention here in the North End some new storm sewer to capture as much of the site runoff as possible um there's no infiltration opportunity so the the volume provided is 120 percent of the 100 Year Storm Volume in addition to all of that although there's no infiltration there is a proposed rain Garden kind of in the center of this drive-through Loop in which the is that my time if you just want to wrap it up wrap it up real quick so uh got the building here um just a couple of different views um highlighting a couple of things here the the walk-up ATM that we do have I think that was something that was um maybe not as well pronounced on the site plans just wanted to make
023sure that that was identified um the drive-through we had kind of discussed with planning staff that the the owner is willing to accommodate are open to accommodating whatever it kind of means to to provide bicycle access through that drive through whether it's signage or what other special accommodations there might need to be um it does have um energy efficient Sustainable Building Materials probably during discussion the project architect from Hobbs and black can speak a little bit more to that so I can wrap this up so obviously our goals for the meeting are to to review the details of the project discuss with Planning Commission address any questions concerns comments um and I know there's been significant communication from residents that I'm sure all you are aware of so to address your questions as well as
024theirs and um and then get actions on the special exception use the site plan approval and the landscape modifications that's uh the long and short of our goals for the meeting thank you thank you Mr Chang anything to add uh tissue did an excellent job of giving a pretty good overview of the site just a couple of things just to highlight there is a walk-up ATM machine also as part of this proposal at the northwest corner there's also conflicting land use buffer that's 30 feet wide the required minimum is 15 feet wide which will screen from the residents to the north otherwise I'm available for any questions you may have thank you okay we are going to open the public hearing so this is an opportunity for people to speak up to three minutes we'll
025call in individuals first who are present and then we'll move virtually to speak remotely press star nine of listing by phone or use the raise the hand feature through the web link 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 have raised their hand or by name if access into 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 is there anybody present who would like to speak on this project you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission please state your name and address first hi thank you good evening my name is Stephan Aaron basic I'm a Ward 2 Resident of Orchard Hills at 2142 Yorktown Drive I
026want to voice my opposition to these proposals as a resident of Orchard Hills I believe that this project makes little sense first umcu already has a suitable location over on their existing building in Plymouth Road demolishing a building that is in good and usable condition is wasteful and short-sighted second the special exception use of adding drives through Lanes is not conducive to a2's a20's climate-friendly Vision as this will encourage more driving and increase idling emissions right next to our neighborhood pool dolphin pool speaking of the pool this situation could also create a potentially unsafe environment where unscrupulous individuals may link may be lingering within a few dozen feet of young children at play moreover this land could be better utilized with mixed retail or gentle dense City housing I would appreciate if we could put
027a stop to this proposal and eliminate umtu's wasteful plans to expand a bank that is simply not needed also just to note I am a umcu member thank you very much thank you anybody else present who would like to address the Planning Commission on this project thank you chair Gabriel Ken Garber again I don't live in the neighborhood so I don't have I have a different perspective I look at this and I say another new gas burning building I mean really we can't Electrify a single Story 4 800 square foot bank branch that sits on 1.73 Acres I know we're splitting this into two parcels but why not put in a geothermal field now across both to serve this building and maybe a future one um the contractor was JS Vig I know they have
028experience with geothermal Wells um I'd love to hear their explanation about why they can't do this as indicated in the staff report maybe we'll hear that I hope we don't hear the thermal the thermal degradation argument that circulating cold water through the ground will freeze it over time that's been disproven even in colder climates than ours as long as you're also running hot water from Air Conditioning during the summer um as always I calculated the greenhouse gas impact and natural gas combustion uh I'm gonna go through the boring figures you can ask me later comes to 44 metric ton CO2 equivalent emissions a year a couple of solar panels and a rain Garden do nothing to reduce this and I'm not counting on necessary emissions from Vehicles idling in the drive-through Lanes other cities are
029Banning drive-throughs altogether in 2019 the Minneapolis city council passed an ordinance banning all new drive-throughs including for banks because they increase greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution the petitioner's framing of this drive-through as a public health measure is just silly um so we already heard from One Credit Union member I also own the number I want to remind anyone who may be listening that despite the Credit Union's name it's not owned by the University rather it's a member-owned Cooperative I'm a member and so and this gentleman and of course many others we all own the credit union not the you and not the executives who came up with this plan according to the Credit Union's December 2022 call report uh the umcu has member deposits totaling 1.15 billion dollars representing 85 percent of total liabilities
030that's our money so if you're listening and you remember join me at the Credit Union's annual meeting on April 25th three weeks from today to protest this plan any member can attend the meeting takes place at the Jackson Road branch and starts at 5 PM hope to see you there thank you anybody else present who would like to speak on this project do we have folks in line virtually we do there are currently seven hand raised and our first color is ernan Roca you have permission to speak hello I am my name is Hernan broca I am one of the neighbors that whose property is divided just by things from the proposed project and I would like to raise a concern besides several other concerns that were already stated I would like to raise a
031concern because I didn't hear apparently heard that they are they are projected charging stations electric charging stations for cars besides the the drive-through which I actually opposed to um that would create a significantly higher traffic in that area and actually I didn't hear that the proposal considers to in case it gets approved which I I mean I don't know what would be the final the final approval I didn't hear anything about building a privacy things that separate the houses there are just next to the to the I mean to that project building because as you can see these cars will come with lights with with noise with everything I think and it doesn't have time it could be in the middle of the day it could be in the middle of the night so that
032we create a huge disturbancy for the neighbors that live just I mean that that lead just next to that property and I also post this increase of driving because of the of the already stated things related to the pool that is near this this property which is a a public pool for the neighborhood which a lot of traffic from children and everything else so it actually is a danger in my view and so um in case of these are approved they finally I still think is important that the builders consider at least a privacy fangs they are tall enough and compact enough to reduce the disturbance to the private neighborhood houses there that's it our next caller is Adam yes you have permission to speak hi this is Adam jaskiewicz 1430 Las Vegas Drive I
033spoke to you some time ago about a drive-through bank and the West Stadium Corridor at the former car dealership lot I urge you not to allow a drive-through bank at that location fortunately you did not however a few years ago Planning Commission approved a drive-through for another bank across the street on the old car wash lot development has now started on that bank so it appears the First new development since zoning the West Stadium corridors tc1 is going to be a drive-through Bank lovely if we are serious about our goals as a city we need to do better we are in a climate crisis we have pledged to cut vehicle miles traveled in half we are in a traffic violence crisis we have pledged to eliminate KSI crashes a20 Vision zero we won't get there
034if we keep building car Centric developments we won't get there if we don't get serious about Transforming Our strodes into livable spaces usable by people with all modes of transportation another drive through bank does not get us there we are also in a housing crisis there's got to be a better use of this land than yet another drive-through Bank you have the discretion to decide whether or not to allow drive-throughs please deny the special exception use for this drive-through Bank thank you our next caller is Eric the car you have permission to speak hi this is Eric Zucker from 2435 Prairie I'm adjacent to this project on Prairie Street I'm also calling to oppose the seu for the three-lane drive through here as the last caller said we're in a climate crisis we are in
035a housing crisis we are not on this side of town in a drive-through Bank crisis we have seven within a one mile stretch some of them are vacant that umcu could have repurposed but instead they're choosing to build this one on a neighborhood street at the community engagement session held previously uncu did not send a representative just a representative from The Firm that's building so they were unable to answer our questions as a community contrary to what the staff report States the drive-through meets none of the requirements of an seu which I'll go through Point by Point uh first it says will it be consistent with General objectives of the city master plan the answer is no a new drive-through runs counter to our stated missions a20 Vision zero goals number two will it be
036compatible with the existing and playing character of the vicinity no there's no other bank here with the drive-through which exits onto a neighborhood street especially one with an elementary school in a neighborhood pool within sight number three will it be consistent with the character of activities no Prairie is a residential street people walk and bike through this area and walk to the pool there we do not need to encourage more Auto use on Prairie Street four will it be detrimental to the peaceful enjoyment of the neighboring property this is a pretty obvious yes all the neighborhood all the neighbor are speaking with one voice and telling you that it is oddly the staff report rementions that the drive-through is behind Plymouth Road from the bank so it's not visible from Plymouth and won't detract from
037peaceful enjoyment but it's pretty visible from Prairie and pretty visible from folks backyards so I'm not sure why that was ignored but the sight lines along Plymouth were prioritized in the staff report and five will it be detrimental to the natural environment well it encourages driving idling our use instead of the current bank where people use it as a walkable Bank uh it's closer situated to the north campus a lot of students use it and also this site was requiring the removal of two Landmark trees so yes it is detrimental this area is already a prime example of a 15-minute neighborhood the existing umcu Branch down the road is a good part of that adding a drive-through Bank creates more problems than it solves and we'd be better off with none of the current drive-throughs
038here but if there are to be drive-throughs umcu could just repurpose one of the vacant ones next door thank you our next color is Jacob kitsman you have permission to speak hello my name is Jacob Pittston my wife kids and I live at 2851 renfre Street in the same neighborhood as this proposed development my son attends Thurston Elementary School and we frequently walk and bike around the neighborhood including to the pool that's about a few hundred feet within a few hundred feet of this velvet we strongly oppose this development it offers no potential benefit to the neighborhood as it stands you can't swing a cat without hitting a bank here you've got the existing Credit Union branch PNC Bank the Huntington Bank the Key Bank the bank of Ann Arbor Comerica Bank Flagstar Bank Hans
039bank and Chase Bank and possibly more that I've missed within a mile stretch we do not want and we do not need any more retail Banking locations the consultant spoke of the site layout offering a potential for future development however this is entirely unspecified and may not be fulfilled this development itself would represent a major missed opportunity to add office space retail or potentially housing along a vibrant Transit Corridor that is that Services the university and in fact the entire city nevertheless the Planning Commission must rule on the narrow proposal that is presented here not on the big Promises of some future development the addition of this drive through would bring additional traffic from a high-speed arterial Road onto Prairie Street this threatens to worsen congestion near an elementary school in a neighborhood pool at
040times when there is a high density of both vehicle traffic or pickups and drop-offs as well as parents and kids on foots on foot bikes and scooters it appears there has been no serious study into the potential impacts of this proposal upon pedestrian safety as you've heard it runs entirely counter to the city's stated Vision zero goals and the a20 carbon neutrality plan this project appears to come from a 1960s mindset not a 2023 one it does not Merit a special exception use and I urge you to reject this application thank you our next speaker is Libby Benton you have permission to speak and there are four more hymns raised after Libby all right sorry hi my name is Libby Benton and I live at two three five nine Prairie Street which is just up
041the street um from this proposed drive-through bank I have two kids ages two and six um and we are members of the ohap pool that's just across the street from this site um where we swim and there's a lovely weekly outdoor yoga class in the summer um and we um walk bike and Drive by the site daily and I am asking that the Planning Commission deny the request for a special use exception um this drive through um having adding the drive through here does not fit with the current character of our neighborhood or the future plans um our neighborhood is already remarkably rockable um we're able to walk to some middle school and Elementary School pools a hardware store pharmacy Library grocery store um and that's really what drew our family and a lot of
042other young families recently to this neighborhood um and the city has already made investments in helping make our neighborhood um walkable including bump outs along Prairie uh um a roundabout on Nixon and Plymouth bike Lanes along Nixon and um in the city's overall goal for this the city's overall goal for this neighborhood and participant but in particular and the city in general just doesn't align with a a drive-through the city is committed to you know expanding and improving 15-minute neighborhoods and our neighborhood is already well on its way to being a 15-minute neighborhood and we need to make more investments in neighborhoods like ours to keep them that way and expand them and this city is it you know is committed to increasing density along Transit corridors to reduce driving and this is just an
043ideal location where I'd love to see more retail commercial housing so that more people more families can access the great amenities that we're able to um and the city is committed to making places roads like Plymouth Road safer in areas like this safer for walking and biking to encourage that over driving and approving a drive-in in this location goes in the exact opposite direction um because you've got people swinging in off of uh Plymouth who are just driving through coming onto our residential street um and I'm really and I'm really concerned about um you know the kids there and the potential for these roads um so I would really ask that you deny this special use permit and I look forward to city council and the Planning Commission moving in a direction that makes it
044even easier to build more density here thank you our next caller is Michelle Hughes you have permission to speak hi um so yeah I have a lot I have the same opinions a lot of these people that the this drive-through is a terrible use of this land having a single story building here is a terrible use of the land and I would rather see something that is um going to advance some of the city's goals rather than going directly against them um I uh I'm sorry I work at that existing building for 10 years and um that um Plymouth Road is a horrible nightmare Strode there um it's definitely Car Land and I think that rather than acquiesce to that we need to be going against car culture at every opportunity um I would uh
045so there's a bus stop directly in front of the building but there's a bus stop you know if you're coming from the other direction there's a bus stop across the street and you have to cross Plymouth Road which is a horrible nightmarest Road and uh there's no help there's no um mid-block crosswalk there there's no safety Island um and so um you know it would be scary to approach this Credit Union location whereas the current Credit Union location there is a mid-block crosswalk with an rrfb um the um I used to walk from uh 299 Plymouth to you know the Plymouth Mall in the Traver Village to do lots of stuff get lunch go grocery shopping and stuff like that and um you have to cross um you know you have to you have to
046walk down the sidewalk in front of a gas station and a bank and uh neither of them ever shovel the sidewalk in the winter so um basically the whole neighborhood right right around you know that it's just it's um it needs to be improved for pedestrian safety is what I'm saying and putting another uh bank that you have to walk across um that's going to be far removed from everything is a terrible plan a drive-through is just going to encourage everyone to drive um and people who are currently going there using other methods it's going to make it difficult for them um so yeah this is the opposite of what we need please deny the um special exception use for the drive-through we still have four hands raised there were a few joiners our next
047caller is Michael Anderson you have permission to speak hi I'm Mike Anderson I live at 2844 Briarcliff I'm about half a block away from Prairie uh right near where the uh the dolphin pool is and right around the corner from where this location that we're talking about is um I just want to uh reiterate and emphasize a couple of things that people have said the first is is it true that there was no traffic study conducted with the Plymouth Road and Prairie Street I mean I find that hard to believe because you know during the school year at rush hour in particular that is a very busy place not only with cars with people dropping off uh their kids in the morning but also with uh with people walking with their kids to school and
048kids walking by themselves so any uh reasonable person would expect there to be a traffic study done to measure that during the school year but there should also be a measurement of it during the summer when oh when the dolphin pool is going on because it's not just people a few at a time over the course of a day wandering into the pool there are also lessons being held and it being from a half a block away and then a person who walks his dog I can tell you that when that happens uh again there's a lot of congestion there's car spikes and lots of kids lots of uh of very young kids and that's something that one would hope would be taken into account before he's citing an issue like this but I understand
049that there's been no traffic study done uh finally the the and I won't take all of your time but the other thing is uh this the the dolphin pool has been there for a long time I started going to it when I moved here in 1973 uh that was a while ago and Ann Arbor at this end of town looked very different then if you went up Nixon Road in those days you found Farms now you find that Nixon road is busy with lots of traffic because there's a lot of construction up that way that too asked the traffic uh through Prairie as people try to get around getting on to Nixon from Aurora which is the street a block away from there and instead cut down streets like Briarcliff and exit onto Plymouth Road
050from Prairie so it really really can be a mess which you would know if there had been a traffic study which I understand there hasn't been so anyway I uh I hope that nobody moves forward on this until a proper study is done and the safety of children particularly children is taken into account thank you very much our next caller is praveena ramaswami youth permission to speak hello my name is pravina ramasami I am a umcu member and a resident at Bromley which is the neighborhood that backs on to this proposal I will say that many of the people have called and have the same concerns I do I am wanting the Planning Commission to really evaluate this area if you go and see uh from a traffic studies proponent from Plymouth Road the backup
051will go from Huron Parkway all the way down that center lane this morning I saw it go all the way down to Georgetown Street it was backed up fully morning when school starts you'll start seeing people trying to turn left and right out of Prairie and on to Prairie from Plymouth Road so this intersection that has a 45 mile per hour Lane you'll see a lot of congestion just from the existing traffic and then to know that there is a proposal for three lanes to go on to a neighborhood street onto Prairie they come on and off that will cause even more problems I have counted seven buses from this Ann Arbor School District that come down Prairie in the morning and leave at three o'clock so these are all areas that are already highly
052congested um also a concern of mine is this is the space that you're proposing a single-use building in a community that's in a community and in a T1 Zone where it's a Transit Corridor for very few people to potentially use we are in 2023 in a digital world I don't understand why we need another large Bank second umcu it currently is in a great location from an accessibility standpoint it's a near the students near the bus lane it's walkable it's bikeable it's accessible I'm not opposed to UMC coming but I would love them to be part of a community where there's more use of that space where there's a daycare center retail what not to make it more part of the community rather than the cookie cutter bank that you see throughout the city that's
053just a single-use large building with three huge Lanes going into a neighborhood so I really asked the Planning Commission to really think about what the future of Ann Arbor is what the future of Plymouth Road is and really think about how we want to move forward as a city and as a community and the people that live here we we want it to be bikeable walkable and we want to make sure that it's safe from a traffic perspective so please do a traffic study and understand what happens every day on that street and how many near-misses I have seen and I have actually almost had so please reconsider or consider not proposing going forward with this proposal thank you our next speaker is John pork you have permission to speak everybody [ __ ] you [ __ ] this
054I muted that collar due to vulgar language and we're going to move on to our next caller which is Brandon Currington you have permission to speak foreign Currington you have permission to address the Planning Commission I will come back to Brandon Carrington Alex Lowe you have permission to speak hi this is Alex 340 phone would happen Commissioners and frequent views are probably familiar with me from their regular calls in favor of approvals of pretty much every new development including the Avalon development on the old Ann Arbor Gary site and the proposed houses on platform so with that in mind I'd like to say no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no this looks terrible this honestly seems that like uh uh the
055Planning Commission version of a homework assignment rushedly done it uh in class with uh before the teacher the teacher picked it up we and it I I can I can I can see why someone would uh I would want to do that rather than thinking through more fully if they don't uh uh want to uh to uh have to fulfill the obligations of tc1 when it inevitably comes uh uh to this corridor so instead they just sort of rushed through half her project in uh in hopes that uh that they could sneak under the uh their their radar before tc1 so that that's that kind of throws me the wrong way already but then there is so there are so many other things uh that I think are ridiculous about this and having to move
056the bus stop and all of that why why is there even a coconut on Plymouth for this rock the current curb cut is right next to another uh another curb cut workout deal with PNC Bank they have plenty of uh of of space and there's uh on on their lights they're the tiny little uh Bank building is a postage stamp in in a sea of that of asphalt and and what and there's already there's also a code on on Prairie Street but do you need two curb cuts for uh for this yeah why not why not just uh have have one and what about all of that parking geez that is a lot of uh uh uh parking for uh for somewhere that uh that these days sell them uh has many uh uh people
057in all in all this seems like just just at a terrible idea let's put some mixed use in there instead thank you I'll try one more time for Brandon Currington you've permission to address the Planning Commission uh hello my name is Brandon Kerrington can you hear me because my mic wasn't working last time I'm wondering if y'all can hear me we can hear you all right I'm uh Brandon kirkton I'm a deputy and I live on North Flagstaff um I I have an issue regarding regarding the mosques in the area there's just a lack of mosques and um I just generally think that we should build more mosques uh uh thank you and uh thank you that was your last caller okay I'm going to read their proposed motion and then we will go into
058discussion there are two so I'm gonna take read them together the first one is the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission after hearing all interested persons and reviewing all relevant information finds the petition to substantially meet the standards in chapter 55 the unified development code section 5.29.5 special exceptions approves the umcu special exemption used for a three-lane drive-through Bank facility with the following condition this approval is based on the following findings number one will be consistent with the general objectives of the city comprehensive plan of office uses in the area and number two the proposed use will not adversely impact traffic pedestrians bicyclists circulation or Road intersections based on the location the proposed use is consistent with other surrounding uses traffic impact the second motion is The Honorable City Planning Commission hereby approves the umcu site
059plan subject to number one demolishing the existing structure on site number two dividing the subject parcel from the parent parcel and number three a landscape modification for the location of Street trees outside the public right-of-way as required in 5.20.10 of chapter 55. that is the motion moved by commissioner dish and seconded by commissioner Mills we are in discussion commissioner weich um because the seu is in the motion that we just did could we split them out that is to say to deny the Su but approve the site plan or because we've read the motion together we would have to vote both down you can take the motion separately but then the site plan is not going to comply because the SCU would be required but yes you could you could take them separately okay great
060thanks commissioner Lee thank you a quick question on the topic of electricity electrification in the report the comment was that various operational and maintenance issues that would almost certainly be realized of a fully electrified building were to be incorporated could you expound on that and like what kind of various operational maintenance issues that you guys were anticipating from a fully electric system Phillips I'm cops in Black Architects um the issues are are really operational as well as cost and maintenance so the non-uh electrified system that's been referenced frequently or is uh requires significant more maintenance and operational cost than than the traditional system for a facility of this size and so it the decision on which direction to go with the system is more about the system itself than the actual fuel so that's an
061ongoing discussion but at this point we have not designed the mechanical system although traditionally we use a boring we normally use a more traditional field system that the bank is is uh more comfortable with and is is both economical and something that's more maintainable there isn't actually a like a list of things I'd like to be able to give you like a a list of like problems with for example heat pump systems there really isn't anything like that it's more of an opera a facilities operation question that each business has to uh has to address okay um thank you I'm okay thank you does anybody else want to expound on that sure I think a few of us would commissioner dish yeah okay so I guess we could start there since we just started there
062but so I don't mean to be ungenerous but did you just say that because we are not accustomed to electrification we didn't explore it and we don't think it will work it I mean that sounded like that was your answer um I would say it's not about whether it'll work or not it's it's just a it's way Downstream of planning so that this is a facilities operation question as opposed to a planning question so when it comes to engineering a building uh we get into into a lot of issues uh that make up the facility in general so it's not a matter of it not working it's a matter of it functioning for the for the business in question in this case we do have of clients that have used all electrical systems and uh
063are are are happy with those but it it's it's not a one-size-fits all it it's easy for for to kind of generalize and and want to say that that one particular system will fit any facility that you want to apply it to but that's not the case and I think that's one of the things you're finding across the community where where various business owners are finding that that there isn't a one-size-fits-all electric solution for everybody if there was then this would be a no-brainer everybody would just say sure you know that that's not an issue but it is a concern and one that each business has to address so then your emphasis is more that you haven't designed the Mechanicals for this building yet we have designed a we've done a number of buildings for
064the credit union and so our our inclination is is to to continue with systems that have worked in the past however that is accurate we have not designed the the system for this building yet that is true yeah because you were saying that this is a I think you said it's a building thing not a planning thing well that's that's subjective of course I probably shouldn't have said that so it it's it's it's a it is a building engineering issue though for sure sorry I'm confused so I'm going to let someone else follow up because I must not be trying it seems to me when I look at this building and I've worked on several that are all electric and that have heat pumps and solar and things like that that this building is actually
065particularly well set up to be able to have a system like that um I'm a landscape architect I'm not an architect but I will just say I've been associated with many projects that have these kinds of systems you have a one-story building you have a ton of roof area you have an area of green area in which you could do some sort of you know underground system for this too whether they're a loop system or or Wells and it gets harder as you go up as your energy demands go up and as you have less area to be able to set up solar so um it seems to me based on sort of reading between the lines and I guess I just sort of want to understand it seems to me that it's because you
066all didn't kind of start thinking that way from the beginning that you've ended up where you are rather than you know it it it didn't seem like that was one of your goals and and I think that part of what we've been hearing from the community um and also what we've been discussing here for months years is that we want people we are trying to um there's a lot of things about the direction of this Corridor that feel like are just not being addressed here at all there's a lot of things about the the direction of where a city wants to go it feels like it's not being addressed here at all so I've been on Planning Commission for seven years now I would say if this had come through seven years ago I would
067have a different opinion about it but it feels like it's just not hitting it's it's I don't know how staff informed you around drive-throughs but we've been rejecting them for years now so it just feels like this is sort of falling like that you all haven't been listening to what has been discussed at this table um so there's a lot that I just brought up there around energy and around um use and around kind of our goals but uh and we understand that we can't mandate you to do this I just find the response lacking in terms of it's going to be hard for us to take care of when I know of many projects that are doing just fine with that that are using these kinds of systems quite well hi I'm Deanne Ramos
068I'm with the University of Michigan Credit Union just to let you know I wanted to make mention that we have two locations where we did do the heat pump system and we did that back in 2015 and maybe 2018. so it isn't a system that we did explore we would consider exploring it again when we did it at that time the technology wasn't quite there we were far ahead and so those systems have not worked properly and so that is what kind of has made our decision to go revert back to the traditional mechanical systems so it doesn't mean that we're not willing to go that route and look at it again if that's something that the Commissioners would request that we do but just to let you know we did consider that for this
069location but because of the difficulties we did have in the past is why we've looked at going backwards so I hope that helps a little bit clarify some of that okay thank you commissioner Lee and the follow-up and it was mostly out of curiosity because I did find that description of various maintenance and operational issues would likely be fully realized it would just seemed vague to me so um I appreciate that you guys have done heat pumps in the other two locations um and that's but you guys have had bad experiences with them so far so that that is helpful it doesn't mean that the technology hasn't improved and we wouldn't consider maybe looking at something different for this location sure thank you you're welcome um I I was planning on actually asking questions about
070something else unless somebody else wanted to ask more questions on this topic okay um one of the things I wanted to say that I really liked about this is the rain Garden the storm water retention so I just didn't want to positively note that this currently is a you know an asphalt site of a parking lot and that the the fact that this can actually retain water is actually very helpful the other question that I wanted to ask was what's happening with parcel 2 would it remain office and what are some of the discussions around from a continuity of urban form standpoint what are some of the thought process behind the remaining 42 percent of the land on parcel 2. great question and thank you for asking we have not had significant conversations about what
071would happen and what we would do to either develop or look at what could happen or a developer developing that site at this point we are trying to kind of break it in almost two phases let's get through phase one and then we'll consider what we what happens with the the second parcel going forward Scott got it understood uh thank you for that and then let me get to the Salient one that I think a lot of people have called about which is we talked electrification I will eventually come back to that the other one I want to talk about are the drive-throughs um I wanted to ask about utilization as well as the petitioner's thought process in why they're requesting this given obviously the discussions that we've had about drive-throughs in the previous sessions
072here and so if you could tell us a little more so we can understand from your perspective this is the utilization rates that we expect or things of that nature that helped us to better understand why three lanes are included in something that is again turning off of a residential kind of area to our actual new sweater teller would a system member or car driving through so there are three lanes but they're not the same type of three lanes for the drive-through from our perspective especially going through the pandemic our operation was only open for drive-through traffic as though as was many other businesses throughout the world I guess the country for sure you know that's how we operated and served our members was that way and so we feel um should anything like that
073happen again in the future it's definitely a way to still serve our members to help them you know and keep everybody safe the members and the team members in the building in addition it's about choices for members ultimately is how do you like to utilize your financial institution do you want to drive through do I have kids in the car am I just had a surgery can I not get out are there things that are restricting me from walking into a financial institution so there's lots of reasons behind wanting to have the drive-through service to really be able to provide that to our member base so gotcha thank you well it's really always helpful to hear from the petitioner about the rationales of how it's being utilized and for who you guys are thinking that
074of um to add on to that I think the concerns that we have and that we we Voice or it adds additional conflict points between non-motorized transportation and obviously auto-centric vehicles to that effect I wanted to ask just about the design orientation intent of having the front facing west and I wanted to just get a sense of I'm not sure that I saw a elevation from the Prairie side but what the experience of a pedestrian on Prairie might feel like on that corner huh thank you thank you so so they'll they'll look at basically drive through Lanes in the rear of the building because that's the it's basically a two-sided building it faces both Plymouth Road and it faces West as well this is the orientation towards the office or the uh kind of the
075functional aspect of the facility so correct got it um understood I think a lot of folks have expressed some concerns about kind of the communal field of it it also stands to reason that Plymouth still is an auto-centric Corridor of which the community divisions are intended to be again uh more non-motorized Transit as well as a additional we've talked about porosity of non-motorized Transit so um thank you I talked about design electrification I would also add that uh with the concern Express about vehicle traffic and so on if you're aware the existing facility has 146 car parking lot and we're proposing 22. so and that is in the same orientation same location facility where also if you look at the the site plan as it exists now and as for proposing it it's significantly uh
076less dense less porous in terms of open space and green space and so on it has a much lower profile both facing the neighborhood and facing the both Street fronts so those are some of the assets that we viewed this facility over what is existing there gotcha thank you and I would like to say that I did receive the Midwest trip generation report in which I believe to quote after applying the pass by traffic reduction the proposed Bank is expected to generate 31 less trips during morning peak hour and approximately the same traffic as the existing office during the afternoon peak hour so that's something I did want to mention we do have in our possession uh the trip generation report I think I've taken up uh plenty of time I'll yield the rest of
077my time thank you commissioner dish I have just a question that follows from that if if I may speak for the lay person as the representative who represents laypersons I I actually I don't know what passed by traffic reduction actually means I mean I could probably make a stab but yeah all right so the pass by reduction accounts for vehicles that are already traveling on Plymouth or in the vicinity that aren't this isn't their destination but because they pass by and see that this is an opportunity that they may be able to take just because they're in the area so when we look at trip generation and we're comparing this proposed use to the existing use of an office building those are the the office building itself that use generates you know a certain number
078of trips uh dedicated you know AM and PM peak hours uh the same with the bank but there is that reduction because the bank has a little bit there's not as many compared to an office use of people that are just happen to be driving down Plymouth that see an office building and think hey I'm going to stop in there whereas you know a member might be driving by to a different destination on Plymouth but see that hey there's my bank and I might be able to make a another stop in there okay so the thing that is confusing and again it might be me is that it's actually an attractor the bank is an attractor I pass by I think oh I can zip by that ATM and pick us some cash whereas with
079the office it's not I mean unless I had a specific reason for going there I'm not going to spontaneously go so it's a pass by traffic it's called a reduction uh right and I think it's more in relation to um evaluating traffic on those streets right on Plymouth Road and on Prairie so there's there's an evaluation of how much traffic is being generated on these streets so that reduction happens because those a percentage of those vehicles are already traveling down Plymouth or Prairie I see I see so they didn't they were they were going there anyway they were going to a different destination they were going somewhere that wasn't the bank correct so they don't count as traffic as added traffic as added traffic okay that's interesting but from the perspective of conflict points it
080seems like they do count as added traffic okay then I'm I feel clearer commissioner Mills while we're looking at the traffic study I just want to make sure that I understand this right so and to refresh my understanding of how this is used in the context of our code so typically the level of service and stuff is generated at the like we look at the peak hours is that right from the staff perspective that's correct okay so and and then those Nets kind of the uh what what was just discussed was kind of the Nets during the AM and PM Peaks but one of the things that I want to make sure that I'm reading this right is in the column that's weekday 24 hours so not just not just at the at the peak
081times um it looks like overall a bank use is more even though the square footage is 1 8 of what it was before is that am I looking at I mean this is an activity to to commissioner Dish's point where there's lots of more turnover of cars throughout the course of the day it's not necessarily you can correct me if I'm wrong it's not necessaril in the peak times right because it's not like everybody's starting work at the same time they're coming and going throughout the day is that am I reading that right right so um I and I will I understand that that's likely the case with that specific column there that you're probably reading that right I would want to consult with our traffic engineer just I'm not the expert on that sure
082specifically but yeah um the standard is to look at the peak hour volumes and you know it's so that's more of what I'm familiar with but um yeah I can great come back to that well and I would I would just point out that this is this is the standard this is it's been a while actually I feel like since we have the commission talked about what is our standard that we regulate for um and kind of what it is that we're looking at one of the points I think commissioner dish that you just brought up that I wanted to highlight because we've talked about it before is typically I mean these traffic studies are done for looking at the intersections and the level of service in the intersection and they don't always take into
083account like the people coming and going at the driveway or like at the sidewalk right in the how many times that driveway is being used is that fair um from a staff perspective am I my articulating kind of what the how we think about the traffic studies in the context of our deliberations kind of so so just to to a very high level of your referencing the code we rely on data that is very industry adapted it's it's the ite manual and based on land uses that predicts a trip quantity for a use that we haven't experienced yet and it's based on data from around around the United States and I think perhaps even larger and it sort of Aggregates use experience of things like Banks and things like drive-throughs and it is and it
084attributes a certain number of trips to those it takes into account how that use becomes a destination you know this use can changing from an office which might have was as was mentioned more of a turnover it might be more of a destination a bank I'm not that's not to say it's not a destination for some but it also at times is going to have sort of passed by traffic that that is sort of the nature that's one of the reasons that Banks invest in corridors because they want to capture people driving by and say oh wouldn't it be really great for my bank to be there in the future so that I can just take care of things on my way to school or such and such so that that is a gateway into
085traffic study or not traffic study then does those things where it looks into modeling once it goes over a threshold and that's 50 Peak trips per hour once it exceeds that we require a traffic study that is where you're getting into plugging that projected trip generation into the existing um computer model of our Network and that in that case the traffic engineer for the petitioner is going to work with our Traffic Engineers they're going to make sure that that is being inputted correctly they're going to make sure that the assumptions are right it's going to rely on traffic counts and it's going to project things like okay with this development than the average wait time for a person at this intersection is going to be increased by and it's typically like 0.4 seconds or by
086eight seconds or something like that in this case that trip generation didn't get to that that said you're talking about how it relates to driveways and connections that review happens as well the transportation and our project Engineers are working to look at the site layout just from and how it intersexes with our right-of-way how are the visibility how how are pedestrian routes impacted both on public rights away and others so I just want to make sure that there's a distinction even though a traffic study is not being done for a project that falls below that threshold professionals at the staff with technical expertise Beyond Chris and I's planners are looking at specific aspects of the details of those curb cuts and how they interact and looking at things like how is that curb going to
087rate to relate to visibility of the road that it's going to so both of those are happening and I just want to you were sort of aggregating a few things and they actually happen a little bit separately thank you for that for the clarity on that and part of this is because we have so many people listening who maybe have not had all these conversations so I think it's helpful for people to understand and thank you for staff um for explaining kind of how these things all work together like making sure that in this case bus stops are put in a way in a place that is not making things unsafe for people making turning movements making sure that there's visibility on the sidewalk all of that stuff is there what i is it also
088fair to say though that we don't necessarily like based on this there couldn't be more cars coming in and out of the driveway and like there's not something like that's not a standard that we have that's saying like hey I mean for the the movements themselves they're safe but but at least as I'm looking at this it looks like even in the 24 hour period there may be more cars coming and going here there could there could be of data we cannot approve a plan that says hey you can build this so long as no more than 75 cars enter that driveway on a at a time period so we have to do our best to predict what that is um yes it could result in increased traffic and I would take that a step
089further I I don't profess to know the detailed history of this office we heard some callers who have experienced that my perception is that office has not been used to its full capacity for some time and so even though this is a smaller building When comparing some of that data that data is somewhat blind to the actual utilization of that office it is an office square footage number that is applied from us trying to find measurable data to consider whether that office frankly is fully occupied or it's a tenth occupied because the potential is there so that's another piece of it when you're comparing this there are some changes into both the info the Peaks but you're also talking about a lot different a smaller square footage just for this portion of the site so
090it's complex that gets to the next part that I was like the next case that I was making and so just for people too who may not have this study like it's comparing it's suggesting that over the the 24-hour period general office at the size of what's currently on the site generates 436 trips where as like for the bank it's 476. so really close but because this the this building is so much smaller like that's where overall this is a very trip intensive um use and particularly like I I just think that is an important thing to name here it's a you're gonna work we have left square footage now but it just tends to be a use that generates more trips um and so that's one of the things that I'm thinking of particularly
091in this site I think the other thing that's related to kind of traffic associated with this is was there any consideration giving to close given to closing the Prairie Road Prairie Street what is it um exit entrance since you since you have the one off of Plymouth so I I think that goes back to um one of the criteria that Mr Leonard had Leonard had alluded to is that you know that not only the the trips and the generation rate but the the curb cuts the locations and things like uh multiple access points for emergency um vehicles and and safety so I think that's another reason why that second curb cut was maintained um and then again back to the the options right so putting everything out into one on onto one access point on
092one street really makes things a lot more congested and with the two access points um yes people might be and probably are more inclined to come off a prairie to use the drive-through but certainly have the option of going out to Plymouth rather than going back out onto Prairie um so there's a few things that yeah and I I so I guess this is a question to for staff if you know Mr Chang if during the conversation are the two curb cut something that fire department asks requests like how does like how what does that tell us what that looks like I didn't ask that specific question to the fire marshal as far as access around the site I did have an extensive conversation with the transportation engineer today and I think Mr Leonard actually
093covered a lot of the the items um that I spoke with with the transportation engineer and I'm going to generalize this but the curb cut off Plymouth Road will operate similarly as it does now so they have moved it 100 feet to the east he says that that's going to operate similarly he also stated it's a fair assumption that that more traffic will be using the Plymouth Road entrance and exit than they will the Prairie Road he's just making that assumption and it is confirming that that is correct they'll be using the Plymouth Road curb cut more often than they would on the Prairie um as far as the west side of the site yeah without knowing what the hours or what type of use it is it's it's really impossible to figure out what
094kind of study that you could do with a vacant site but he said it would be much more detailed with once they find out what type of use is being proposed on the West Side um and then oh and I think maybe to commissioner Dish's point I think it was already answered regarding you know uh the question about reduction or uh pass by he simply said you know if you want to use kind of a phrase it's an errand trip this isn't something that you actually are going to visit specifically it's an errand you're going out you're going grocery shopping you decide I will go to the ATM and get it so it's not and he estimates that probably one-third of the trips um are probably Aaron trips I mean again estimates I don't have
095it in writing but he's stating that you know one-third of the trips I probably drive by or somebody who's not specifically thinking about going to the bank is their sole destination which comports too with that passed by reductions that are slightly different in AM and PM but overall that same one-third kind of thing um okay that I mean because particularly I thinking about the other curb cut right like limiting the number of of opportunities to intersect with pedestrians particularly one that in an area that's across from a Recreation Area like I think that that that would maybe eliminate some of those concerns but I'm going to put this in a bigger context to say that honestly the overall like well in addition like it seems moving in the wrong direction to given that we we
096are a growing place to be instead like on like having less building here and so again I maybe this I'm just too used to making myself unpopular or with everybody because I think that I mean this is a lot of this there's a lot of vehicle trips for this very small footprint of a thing and I think that honestly something that has that has more intensive use of this space on this Corridor which may actually mean that that there's there may be more traffic but if it's serving a bigger function like uh I I um it may be um I'm not I'm not a hundred percent driven here like by by the trip generation it's more that this is really really Auto intensive like a lot of trips were very small footprint so that's one
097of the things that I'm that I'm grappling with in this situation I want to applaud the petitioner and staff for listening to things in the past and having a walk-up ATM that's really like um and thinking through what could potentially make this palatable it's still like very difficult for me and I'll Reserve things later on to say like where our drive-throughs because we have this this is like Groundhog Day or whatever that thing is like all over again um so I don't anyway that's I'm I'm interested in other folks comments commissioner White um I I'm just gonna tell you I I can't support this um as it is um so just to preface that so you know where I'm coming from um from that standpoint I did have a question for staff if this was
098in tc1 what would the setbacks be oh miss DeLeo is here so great this is perfect timing no she she's been here for a while but I didn't want to address her because she's for later I think it's zero to ten feet but yeah zero to ten right zero to Fifteen zero fifty nine zero maximum and we're at what are what are we at this week I'm dead we just took it down from Prairie it's about 19 feet yeah so there's no activation of this site to The Pedestrian and um we've heard from I think like 42 um commenters and a majority of them are talking about the 15-minute neighborhood that they walk and here would be an opportunity to do something really uh creative and what we're getting is something that fills out of
099out of scope with where I think the city is going and so I think commissioner Lee tried to ask this sort of earlier around like or maybe it wasn't commissioner Lee maybe it was someone else who's or maybe it was a chair give Randall that's just like how is this being envisioned and what we're seeing at the table um because it just doesn't feel like you're proposing something that matches the direction of where we're going in the city and so then it feels hard to say like I get that it's by right uh you know because of the office except for the drive-throughs and so maybe that's the piece and I and I don't want to make aspersions about why this is coming I think a caller did which was interesting but it just it
100does feel sort of odd to see this development in this way on this site I just want to make sure that Mr garber's Question got answered about why you're not installing geothermal so if I could repeat what I thought thought I heard which was you tried it it didn't work and you didn't want to do it again is that correct no well see that that's what I was trying to distinguish because it's actually not useful to not do geothermal with heat pumps and so did you do your previous development was heat pumps without geothermal oh so they were oh okay so then then did Mr garber's Question get answered then about um geothermal his question can it be repeated I'm not quite sure I know what questions I mean if if chair come on up
101Mr Garber if you would thank you my question was you have a 4 800 square foot single story building on a 1.73 acre lot your contractor Joe Vig has experienced successful experience putting in geothermal systems why not and I think what I heard you say is it's just a preference at this point like this is a choice that you're making I just want to make sure that's all yeah I don't I don't know that it's clearly been decided that we wouldn't do it so I believe that his question has been answered okay um we have done it at two other locations but it didn't work you want to go back to gas correct so we would have to go and really evaluate um the operation of them today and so that's the another thing that
102just feels discordant with what we're seeing at the table we're we're seeing all electric developments that are you know we just saw what was it a 12-story all-electric development which we didn't have agreement about but at least they came to the table and said we're going to do all electric right and and we've had the maple uh development was all electric we had one on Stadium that was all electric so again this just feels very discordant with where we are in the city and and the initial answer just I don't know it rubbed me the wrong way it was just like that's our prerogative kind of thing and I guess it is but it doesn't make it easy for us to sit here looking at a development that's going to be here for 50 to
103100 years and say yes let's just go ahead and approve that so I don't know if if you want to address that but I just want to disclose to you um that at least this is a part of why I can't support what I'm seeing at the table like looks like there's three rows of solar you have all that surface area to put solar in um to sort of do that that would have been great there could have been some other Innovative uses there but I don't know maybe it's a cookie cutter type of thing I just don't know and I'm I'm trying to understand like give us your pitch you're here like absolutely convince us to approve so part of it is our brand you're at you're you're absolutely correct in that and a
104big portion of our brand is the the roof in the blue system so I assume uh maybe I shouldn't but you've probably seen our other locations around town and they look very similar so when when we start building one or when JS big does um most people know that it's the umcu credit union because there are specific characteristics and design aspects of it that reflect the brand that we have created and part of it is significantly in the roofing design of it in the Blue Roof and and the pitch of it so okay so that's really I mean just to be quite honest with you that's really what that no that it represents like like commissioner Lee it said it's really helpful for us to understand like why you're making absolutely some of the decisions
105um with regard to this so in 2014 uh Mr Leonard the Planning Commission had this conversation about drive-throughs they seem to move it into a special use exception what was there any other contacts that you have to give us was there like a sense of hey we want to kick this down the road because the cop plan was coming before covet and so we're going to be able to get rid of these drive-throughs through that method like why is it that this has to be this stop here because it doesn't feel like it's a part of our future but we're having to have this stop and it and to me personally this just feels um harmful to the developer because they spend all this time and money building a site doing all this work and
106then they get to the table and the folks at the table are like you're putting on a drive-through we're not going to approve a drive-through and and I just feel like it's a waste of everybody's time and so I'm just confused as to like how we are here at the table having this conversation in this way and maybe that's just too direct and if I'm on the East Coast so you can blame that I'm not being Midwestern nice tonight this is not about the east side or the West [Laughter] um as for 2014 I honestly don't know I don't know if uh planners Chang or DeLeo have that background that was Prime prior to my time I think that was an incremental step towards trying to move our community and recognizing that we want to
107move towards more Transportation options I would speculate at the time it was not um a policy goal to eliminate them it was just as they are manifested in our code today that it was um to raise attention to them to make sure that they're functioning in a well a good way to make sure that they are not creating adverse conflict points more than necessary um time has passed at this table over the last couple years you have approved drive-throughs you've applied approved drive-throughs on this Corridor we have a code that permits drive-throughs we frankly advise I I was not in every conversation between city planner Chang and this product team but I'm confident that they were made aware that the Planning Commission doesn't look at these favorably um we think it's a tough road however
108um with all due respect to the Planning Commission it's a free country people can ask for whatever's in our code and to your point it's because we have prioritized other changes to our code first in short all right thank you I I appreciate that it's just helpful and I think I the only correction I would make to the comment that I made earlier is since I've been at the table we haven't approved a drive-through so so we can both rewrite then commissioner Lee thank you just stepping us stepping back a little bit I do think it's a bit of a slippery slope to say because this will be a different Zone at a future time I think we need to evaluate it on the current Zone that it is because until it goes through the
109procedural due process of going through all those steps it is still zoned office So based on the form based on the dimensional standards and based on the permitted use this complies and there is the parking it complies at 4.6 spots per thousand the maximum allowable is actually the cap is 5.55 spaces it's a spot per 180 square feet so I do want to be careful now the point of my concern about the drive-throughs and the point of conflict is that there's a bus station that is kind of right at the front on Plymouth and so I think about the folks that will get off the bus and start walking into that neighborhood right I try to think about that pedestrian experience and that thoroughfare and so that that was kind of the core point it
110isn't necessarily this uh and then the the fact is regardless of the fit um the special exception used does provide us with the ability to Simply say hey we believe this fits or doesn't fit with the character of this particular neighborhood so just you know I do want to caution us about you know citing what it may be in the future um that being said we are supposed to be good stewards uh and I I frankly personally am a little bit torn because the materiality the overall architecture um all due respect I think it was Alan Dao that constructed this um I do think that this is a higher quality building than what we would expect to see continuing with 29.29 however it is those conflict points the continued um perpetuation per se of auto-centric
111Reliance although and and I totally hear you I think it's also very important for us to consider uh folks that are sick have coveted or have kids or have uh walk up you know basically some level of disability that makes it difficult for them to walk to a bank um so I do want to say we we should consider all those things and it was just the point that saying what it may be in the future is not necessarily the best Reliance so um but right now as a group we have to decide whether this special exception use of a drive-through is appropriate for this particular intersection thanks commissioner survey I'll take that one and counter it because I absolutely do believe and voted on the last one based on tc1 coming at West Stadium
112denied the drive-through because the special exception use has five points to consider the context of what our community goals are and is this in the special exception does it deserve an exception to be here based on our community goals which are drafted around our comprehensive plan our vision documents which are the same documents that guide the adoption of tc1 for Transit corridors that is projected and discussed and outlined to be here so I think that those things absolutely correlate and we can't live in the now or the past we need to make decisions for the future and idling cars and a density of one one car trip per 10 square feet is not the future so I mean I I can't I'll just move beyond that but I just needed to address that I'm actually
113going to stand very much on the other side of that um it's hard for me to find praise points in this project I really good job everybody else for finding something uh but the drive-through arguments were convenience to your customers and their choice nothing about that discussion talked about the benefits to the community we are trying to make decisions for the community nothing that I heard in that justification showed that having a drive-through was a benefit to the community that that was the exception that we needed to make for this project um a few things the Ingress egress if we go back to traffic 22 and a half inches I think that's a typo but it shows the lack of thoroughness of this project both in understanding our community goals and engineering so we have
11422 and a half inches slash feet of Ingress egress on the Eastern side of the parcel the idea is that we do not have a curb cut for parcel 2. parcel 2 if the reasoning is similar to this parcel may need two curb Cuts but the Ingress egress does not extend to the Prairie curb cut so if we're talking about how trash and fire trucks need to move that Ingress egress needs to continue all the way around so it's short-sighted that parcel if we do if we do rezone to tc1 parcel 2 now has a conflicting land use sandwiched between two drive-through buildings so we have 15 foot conflicting blend juice on the east side and the West Side we've got the 30-foot woofer in the back plus you've already overlaid a 10 foot easement
115maintenance so that adds up to 40 feet along a narrow parcel that is undevelopable if we prioritize residential use I'd rather see that for this whole parcel this parcel is perfectly Suited for tc1 and specifically for a mixed-use project of over 200 000 square feet 100 square foot feet a hundred spaces of ground floor parking with commercial on the corner and can make 200 800 square foot two bedroom units I drew this thing it took me 30 minutes did not take a lot of effort to say what does what would this community look like if I paid attention to community goals and could our bank may be fit in the ground and then maybe because the drive-throughs go and like through that covered parking can we do more but none of that happened so like
116I'm just seeing a very difficult point where I voted this down before it's clear I'm going to vote this down again based on our goals our published goals that we've adopted for years and that it doesn't deserve an exception this is not exceptional and I really look forward to seeing uses that benefit the community on the site commissioner dish so this is I think my second special exception use case and so again to be honest I'm not clear on the criteria and I I do have the UDC pulled up and I read all the points but I I wonder if those could be if someone could put them in other words than there then are in the UDC uh I it is um as as commissioner Sobe indicated it is um by definition special exception
117uses warrant an additional level of review by the Planning Commission subject to these criteria so to start these I I would generally say these are not black and white answers these are gray answers they might be black and white to you on one side or the other but I don't think that they are data driven answers the way a site plan is is the building needing the setback is the building providing the appropriate curb cut width is the building meeting the height requirement so with that the standards that are are proposed are um is it appropriate to its location and this is why special exception uses run with the land um you might because this is only your second other Commissioners can probably tell you of uh over the last five years now a great
118quantity of marijuana related uses that were all configured as special exception uses and because of the because of the convergence of the cap on the total number of those and the requirement of special exception uses at a staff level we get a lot of inquiries saying hey I have one of these can I move it somewhere else and the answer is no because special exception use is considering a proposed use in the context of its very specific site it's surrounding its environs in this case is this proposed in the case we're talking about a drive-through is it consistent with the general objectives of the city's master plan is what are what our UDC says there was reference here to other goals and Visions I would urge the Planning Commission to measure it against our adopted
119comprehensive plan that is our guiding policy document when making land use documents will it be designed a constructed operated maintaining a manner as compatible with the character of the general vicinity that is a judgment um obviously staff has concluded that it is that an office to a bank is a similar use this is a area where you have a different character of land use on the Plymouth Corridor than you do some of the property behind it which is primarily residential um that answer could be different saying that man we don't think office and banks are appropriate for Plymouth it should be something else is it consistent with the general character of the neighborhood considering population density design scale and bulk and the intensity of character I think you're getting to some of this with the
120questions around traffic you're getting to some of this with questions about how does it relate to the street what presence we heard terms about presence so the site is being designed in a way that is consistent with the office District which is not a pedestrian running to District it is a Suburban District it is bigger setbacks and so that has costs to the sidewalk its relationship but that is what it is zoned today so those are some measurable yes no does it satisfy this or not um will it be detrimental to the use or of neighboring property or the neighborhood area in general again this is this is uh applying what that neighborhood is does this propose use fit there um I think it's consistent we have a lot of instances for again from the
121staff perspective we have a lot of instances of these type of uses along a quarter where you have residential uses of budding it we have a lot of land use pattern throughout the city that follows this um Planning Commission in this case can definitely conclude no it's not compatible but from a stat perspective I can say that it's at least consistent with a lot of other examples throughout our community in a lot of different corridors um will it not have a detrimental effect on the natural environment generally I would say no we have this proposed site plan is meeting the code requirements that we stipulate that answer that things like storm water things like how you deal with Landscaping things with open space and the like again from a cipeline perspective you anybody can have
122Fault With Our codes I'm sure that there are those at the table who have followed those codes but the site plan is our Provisions for site plan review that's how we defined whether or not you are satisfying that standard akin to we don't approve a plan because we feel like it won't create a harm to Public Safety welfare we enact ordinances that stipulate how we measure that and if you meet those ordinances that's how we determine that you are not adversely impacting public welfare I feel like I'm just restating them and not actually putting them in layman's terms but that's what that's what I do in my day job is restate things over and over and and on the third time they usually sink in so that was very helpful I will say that um
123I am I am taken aback by the one-third of the trips are errand trips that is worrisome to me especially because of the proximity of this uh this site to a recreational area and to schools um I am I am not persuaded by the answers about electrification um but I don't yeah so that's that's what's sitting hard for me right now and I'm trying not to take a stand on whether this meets the zoning that I wish had already been enacted here or not I'm trying not to take a stand on that um I could but I'm not going to do that I'm trying to think it through without that commissioner Lee thank you um and just in quick response to commissioner Solvay I do think that it's very important for us to be able
124to express dissent or disagreement in a respectful manner so thank you I really appreciate your comments uh and I think it's it's again very important for us to be able to listen and to understand where everyone's coming from and as I as I heard that I I still personally maintain that there is some concern that I have by saying the corridor is going to be such without having gone through such due process that being said um I also when I look at the special exception criteria consistent with the general objectives of the city's comprehensive plan the vision zero and again the the comment that I made particularly about the bus stop and its potential conflict areas uh I I find a little bit of concern there the land use planned from 2009 is probably going
125to designate this year area is office so I don't I don't think that that's currently been updated I know it's in the process of being updated but as I think through there there are conflicts inherent within but it's the vision zero which I think is the most recent um one about again minimizing having Zero fatalities really minimum and increasing safety for transport that I do find this one uh that that's Point number one design constructed operating maintained in a manner that's compatible with existing and planned character uh of the general vincennity and again that's that's where the context and I think commissioner Salve you you talked very specifically about context and it's the it's a speculation or I guess it's the um temporal context of saying in the future it shall be this that I'm
126having trouble at least grabbing my mind around but there is also the geographical and physical context um while on the south side with them City and things of that nature there's all there actually is just a general sense of auto-centric research essentially um that being said to the north there is a neighborhood there is a pool um and mostly I think that a lot of folks would be again this is hypothesizing I've been to that pool before but I think I drove there so um but that to be said design constructed operated maintained in a manner that's compatible with existing character of the general vincennity I think that North Area and the intensity that's where I'm trying to see if there's compatibility you know in the overall kind of continuity of the urban form to
127have three drive-throughs that are totally visible in that Eastern Front um I had some concerns with um detrimental to use peaceful enjoyment and I'm just going through again I'm thinking through so but the core point that I was trying to make is it's so important for us to know learn and better better disagree with others gracefully and so I do appreciate your comments and I hear them and I'll uh I'm still processing so so thank you I appreciate that commissioner Hammerschmidt and just say that I am very curious to hear what you have to say because I know you live in this neighborhood I look close to this neighborhood okay but I'm also trying to be very objective um so I have a question first for staff so while I think we all wish that
128this parcel was already zoned tc1 um they could apply for a rezoning right tc1 is an available option in this area okay just wanted to confirm that um I don't even know where to start here so I understand the brand um although I've seen you know not I've been looking at maps of all the branches they don't all look like the way that this looks um but as a city we have goals for climate and housing that to me are more important than roof angles um you know this is the exact same bank that exists on Carpenter Road like it's exactly the same so it just feels like a copy and paste so I guess my first question is did you consider the fact that tc1 is desired for this area did you consider the
129larger City goals when you propose this project or is this literally a copy paste it is not a copy of Carpenter Road it looks similar it it's it's designed in the context of the brand which is to bring in a lot of sunlight into the into the building and to make it a very pedestrian friendly uh building as well design um so yes the city's goals were were definitely considered in the context of that the brand of the building um and the solar panels are a direct result of that as is the rain garden and the other features that aren't necessarily required by code so we were we were tasked with um following your zoning ordinance uh criteria and it can be alarming to an applicant to hear what we what sounds like commissioners going
130off in their own Direction and departing from the zoning ordinance that we are required to follow yeah I understand that um I mean I think this comes down to the drive-through because of reasons that have already been stated and I'm not persuaded by the need for especially a three-lane drive-through you know like I think we've learned a lot from covet if there's another pandemic I think people will mask up um I I agree with commissioner sovay on the you know not considering when we're talking about that special exception like it's maybe maybe it's convenient for your members but like thinking about the people that live in this neighborhood um and if people need a drive-through there's a drive-through on state there's a drive-through on Carpenter if you're already in a car I don't want to
131add bmts but there are other options and so at this point I'm not willing to um approve the seu and I guess I just have to I I know and we've all said it already a lot of us have said it already it's just like I just feel like this is a huge step backwards and I mean you some of you said it yourself it's like you're going back to gas because heat pumps didn't work 10 years ago and it's just really frustrating my first Planning Commission meeting was the Pud have I said this before from the pre-pod meeting for Viridian and I was so excited we're like we're looking to the future with this project there's housing it's mixed use it's like fully sustainable and it just just feels to me like this is
132a project that we would approve approved like 20 years ago and that piece is especially frustrating but I think you know we have to focus on probably the seu part because it's pyrite okay I would just rewrite that the drive-through was there has been a lot of discussion about serving Ann Arbor residents um and the credit union is serving in our residents and these are customers of the credit union who live in Ann Arbor who are going to enjoy propose that we are proposing will enjoy the drive-through as an amenity to the facility and in the context that it's been described this evening so it is about it is about residents and serving residents and and providing amenity for those and our residents so I mean certainly some can be chosen over others say we
133like you know some residents more than others and we want to serve those people more but we're trying to to offer a facility that serves a lot of different types of folks so I had an ad that we heard from three of your customers who oppose this so in terms of who you're catering to in uh the convenience of the drive-through it's not your customers either relative to this neighborhood those that are in this neighborhood or in this community are not interested in this project so I still think that there's a lack in both directions as to the exception and why this would be exceptional and it's neither I would add too that with the past drive-throughs I voted for a couple of them with the very clear um direction that I felt like it
134was unfair to petitioners who had submitted before we made this big kind of philosophical shift that they were in the pipeline and how could they know basically you all I mean you it didn't it doesn't take a lot to look back at our at our past meetings to understand just how much controversy there has been around drive-throughs that's not hard um and it's at our discretion and so I feel like similarly to commissioner White's that it's like I mean it was your risk to take but the writing was all over all of our past minutes around our trepidation with drive-throughs and I know that you know staff may feel differently about this but the discussion at this table has been pretty against them you know all the way through so I hate to I mean
135it isn't an enormous amount of time and investment and I get that I go through it on the other side too but I also feel like you all just need to do your homework I mean the the discussion has been very clear that we've been trending away from this so I I I feel bad that you've spent a lot of time you know investing in something that was a frankly a big risk I think in terms of finding sympathetic a a majority of sympathetic members of the Planning Commission a couple of other pieces is that I feel like I totally get you have fire requirements stuff like that I know you pretty much need two entries at this point to be able to deal with fire I get that however this is a self-imposed restriction
136that you are using on cutting off part of your site you could be using this entire site you could do some sort of you drive that is focused only on Plymouth Road and just completely not have the um the access off a prairie that this is your this is your choice to limit yourself to this piece so that you are ultimately kind of forced into using that Prairie Street um access point so you know that may be part of what's making the math work for you so you guys can sell this up to somebody else but I also feel completely agree with commissioner sovay that you know we very quickly here we are going to be encouraging a large amount of residential in this area and you are going to be required at conflicting land
137use buffer and because of that this site is just going to be really narrow and very difficult to develop so I know you're not in the business of managing apartments or housing but boy that's what we really I think would be much more supportive of is to have some sort of mixed use on this site I get it that we need to work with what's there but what's there is office you can go up five stories and do housing above you are completely entitled and encouraged to do that within our current zoning you are not limited to just only having an office use here um so I I feel like the use fit is tough here because of the drive-through traffic that's coming um and the the direct I actually disagree with what the transportation
138guy is saying I think many people will be coming off a prairie because the direction of the drive-through is really coming off Prairie not coming out you have to kind of loop around when you're coming up in Plymouth so I think more people it's more direct to come in off a prairie and then to go straight through it's the drive through we're going the other direction then I can totally see that but I think that it's not that intuitive it's like you're looping around within the system to be able to use the um the drive through when you're coming off of Plymouth so because like what commissioner Mills is saying it's a very small footprint for a for more traffic that is going to be used there I feel like there's going to be more
139in and out that's coming off of that street and you know I just know even when I'm driving around and I like bike and walk everywhere it is just so easy to you know pull out of there you're taking a right to get back out onto Plymouth you're looking to the left you don't see the people that are coming from the right when they're when you're pulling out on a prairie it's just just a super typical thing that happens all the time with cars and because of this use of this sort of constant people driving in people driving out people driving in people driving out which is very different than the office use I think I feel like there is more risk on Prairie and oftentimes we aren't necessarily to be perfectly Frank super sympathetic
140to traffic arguments I think that people you know bring to us but in this case we have discretion here and this is a place where I feel like we have discretion so as you can probably guess I I will not be supporting this tonight um I feel like there's just a lot of ways that you all could have done your homework and uh really thought about what the kinds of things we want to see and I feel like you chose to go your own way and that's the risk you take commissioner dish I'm sorry I feel like I've been talking a lot but I just have two more questions of Staff if that's okay please um okay so one is there was a comment and one of the communications we received from the public that
141there is an existing concern about the Prairie Plymouth intersection already I noticed there is a crosswalk there already and I didn't I don't know how to interpret the letter writer's claim that there is a concern that this is on some sort of list of problematic uh Crossings yeah it's what the person said okay you're squinching um and then there's a specific question to the transportation engine okay so that'd be all right but I'm happy to follow up yeah um and then just the other thing is I just want to ask um again due to my unfamiliarity with seus when we I just want to be clear on the distinction between a PUD and an seu um and when we're evaluating a PUD we are looking for um it has to be warranted by serving public
142goods is is that the standard of an seu I mean it it's a special exception use which means we look at it hard before we say yes but does it mean that the project needs to be there needs to be something exceptional about it it doesn't have to be exceptional it has to satisfy those criteria to the satisfaction of the Planning Commission anybody else okay if I could please and not the this sway anyone's decision but I just did want to address a couple of the comments about traffic and and pedestrian movements so um you did mention um the fact that we have the Prairie Street approach as well as the Plymouth and question whether we could have dual access on Plymouth so there are criteria for separation from that curb cut to the intersection
143of prairie in Plymouth that probably presents a problem for having both curb cuts on Plymouth and so and then in addition to that part of the reason we have this designed as the single um entrance that would be shared for an adjacent development is to you know um minimize curb cuts on that on that road as well so and then the other thing I will address that commissioner dish mentioned is the existing crosswalk that crosses prayers Prairie Street at Plymouth a number of residents mentioned the the community pool that they frequent and I just did want to mention that there is that existing crosswalk for people that are looking to walk or get to the pool via sidewalk and then further north to the next neighborhood street there's a crosswalk there that doesn't force them
144to walk North and South along the sidewalk and on the Prairie Street Frontage so just wanted to address those couple of things Mr Mills just thought I'd chime in thank you for bringing up the comment and before about kind of what's going on on Prairie in Plymouth I I'm also thinking about the Tome of uh documents that that constitutes our comprehensive plan and that includes the moving together towards Vision zero and on page 33 of that it looks there's a DOT showing where um non-signalized uh or um just a minute let me get the The Heading of this it it's a take it's a map showing new uncontrolled crosswalks that are proposed and it's on Plymouth and it's just east of Huron Parkway it looks to be at that intersection so this to me suggests
145that this is a place where we are expecting somewhere in that you know at Prairie um additional like it's already a need for additional pedestrian Crossings so I think collectively I mean this is among the reasons that this doesn't seem like the the right place for a use that has lots of comings and goings um like this so but I think maybe that may have been where that came from page 33. this is a great document check it out folks are we ready for vote a roll call vote on the motion as presented council member dish no commissioner Lee no commissioner clerk no thank you commissioner Mills no commissioner weish no commissioner Gib Randall no commissioner survey no commissioner Hammerschmidt no that motion fails I suggest that we take a a break why don't we
146come back at 9 30. are on to item 10 which is other business and on to 10A which is the unified development code downtown premiums discussion to establish assumptions and to prioritize goals so I don't know if we're we're probably getting a presentation from you all yes thank you please hopefully not hearing a whole lot from us but more hearing from Roma um just for background I'm Ben Carlisle from Carlisle warm Associates with me is my associate Megan massimonic also from Carlisle album Associates and it's really nice to be back in front of you again tonight we were last year in February um before I start really our presentation I just want to say I found the discussion earlier really appropriate and kind of teed us up really like really well into this discussion actually
147I turn to Megan go this is perfect um because and and then Ben used to sit over there once upon a time [Laughter] you know and I I just some of the some of the things I heard was you know not efficient use of the site a greater mix of uses site creativity or lack thereof um discussed by the overall vision of the Gold city and then how do the overall goals in the vision seek get manifested in the development proposals that come from you and I think commissioner white said um you know why are we here um and I think it's a great framework for where we want to go tonight um because we can provide you with many policy options and Zoning amendments and other things like that but if we are not
148all on the same page with regards to assumptions and goals um we may have some of the same concern and confusion that came in front of you tonight and so that is the focus um Can this move forward or you have to do it perfect can you move forward um that's the focus of what let me move the next one to focus of um what we really want to talk about tonight um is really talk about assumptions agreements goals and policy approaches um but before you get to that part which Megan is going to lead I am going to go over some real boring basic housekeeping items we are in front of you in February and at that time we had kind of given you our initial dive into some of the development data that
149we received from the city as well as some just kind of high-level analysis of what we perceived based on that review at that time you had gave us really good Insight good feedback at the mean and ask for a few additional data uh requirements as well and so break into the next slide um we've done that and so um the the four items that were really asked for was data on build projects by policy change dates data on build projects by change in the city council comparison of density with case size of other communities and lastly a map of property eligible for premiums I'm only going to focus tonight on the fourth item the map but were there any other data or any questions on the data we gave you the additional data that you
150had requested okay perfect then we will move on the next one next slide thank you um we found this map to be extremely interesting and applicable to what we're going to talk about tonight this is a map of the D1 in DT D2 zoning districts the parcels outlined in green are Parcels that are eligible for premiums based on the current code those Parcels outlined or colored in in light pink or very shades of pink are properties that are Zone D1 or D2 but they are ineligible for premiums so we actually did some analysis of what that means so approximately um over 50 48 I think it is of parcels that are Zone D1 or D2 are not eligible for premiums and that actually equates to over 50 of the total land area in the downtown
151and so um we're not creating more land in our downtown so we need to be really thoughtful in terms of how we develop that Parcels that are eligible and do we need to look at eligibility as it's part of the discussion with regards to to the the premiums option so um we just want to tell the story as well as that um this is where we heard a lot from a lot of the stakeholders was a lot of the parcels are already not eligible and so it actually really does show itself in the in these Maps moving forward next slide so tonight again um really again I wanted I think the earlier discussion was so appropriate for what we want to talk about tonight because we want to hit these first two really hard is
152talk about assumptions and talk about your goals now that will lead us and help us craft policy approaches as we move forward we are tonight we're gonna have those discussions and then we're going to come back to you one more time to kind of frame this a little bit tighter and present some potential policy options that we then take to the stakeholders to get their feedback as well so this is not your only by tonight we will come back one more time before we go to the stakeholders and so again we want to hear from you tonight what the purpose of your assumptions that we're going to talk about uh your policy and goals and then how does that lead to approaches to to address those goals Etc so with that I'm going to turn
153over to Megan who's going to lead us in that discussion thanks Ben he always leaves the easy part to me so again thank you for having us um and um I want to also thank your staff for working with us to bring all of this information and report to you and the presentation tonight we wanted to start off with assumptions because we've thrown a lot of data at you and fairly thick reports and wanted to make sure that these assumptions that are listed here are the assumptions that we're all working on we all agree on so I'm going to go over them orally and then I'm going to ask you the question are there any here that you don't agree with so one is that there's a balance of land uses in the downtown as
154it is important and residential is a core use in the downtown two is developing in the downtown is more difficult and more extensive than elsewhere in the city three since the last amendments to the premiums in 2019 the affordable housing millage provides dedicated funding for necessary affordable housing four a significant number of properties in the downtown are ineligible for premiums five current downtown residential prop development is either high-end low-scale residential or student housing the current market does not support building of attainable missing middle housing downtown or six and six the current premiums are not being utilized due to a variety of reasons we want to make sure that these assumptions capture what's going on in that we agree that we're working off of this basis so is there anything in that list that I read
155out and that's been presented to you that you do not agree with okay um do you want to call or do you want me to oh no you go ahead okay go ahead yes I saw a commissioner swallow these hands first and then I saw two so we're going to work this way oh okay okay um I had a I guess the first one was like the balance of land uses and the term balance and what was intended by that um so the the idea of balance is that there's a variety um and that they work in they work in synchronicity with one another and so you have to have the right balance for the downtown to work well and residential is a core component of that so does that mean like kind of on
156a metric scale like the there's ratios to the amount of office commercial like as an industry practice that balances out that they work yeah and the office snapshot the downtown snapshot that you'll have the work session on um at your next meeting um that report we get a preview of it that will dig into that and actually if you look into that what they say is that residential and downtown Ann Arbor as compared to several other college cities downtowns the city does not have the same ratio a lower ratio of residential than most of these other towns so um that makes residential that's right we said it's a core use in the downtown and therefore when you look at that data you might also be saying to yourself maybe then this is what we need
157to concentrate on in terms of making sure that that use is the the balance of the uses is right okay I just want to clarify that I guess there's two concerns I think the balance on the metric to be able to measure is good I think the other assumption at least for me so I'll kind of open to the discussion is if we're trying to make eligible building to kind of right size the one missing piece instead of letting everything kind of grow in Balance together so I want to make sure that like we're not saying like just enough to get it balanced but maybe that we're okay with a little bit more of everything as long as it's consistently working towards like balanced zoning instead of using kind of all the different uses together
158if that makes sense um okay which kind of leads me to my second one I have concerns about which is the market and missing middle in downtown because missing middle I don't think is the density goal of downtown between D1 D2 and then tc1 I think missing middle is all that space in between it um because missing middle at least to my definition is kind of low density uh multi-family housing where I think what we're talking about is more high density development in the downtown and then kind of mid to high in the tc1 so that that's at least a concern for me so I want to put that on the table for discussion as well as high-end residential and I think this is a word that gets thrown a lot around a lot um
159I actually don't see much high end except for maybe the condos townhouses near like on Kingsley like the for sale but a lot of that student housing is not high end or luxury apartments so okay um to clarify I think when we said high-end low scale residential that that means the townhouses and okay together okay comma and then the student housing is a different group of housing I didn't want to think that like high-end housing it was a bottle okay so I feel better I feel a lot better about that one because I was really concerned like I think we're actually seeing quite a bit there okay so Ben can sit down [Laughter] I think I'm good with high end in this context I still I want to open a discussion to missing middle um
160and what we mean by kind of balance to more of everything or more of something to get it balanced or kind of the two points okay so on discussion to balance and then missing middle versus um is that is that the description the right density for downtown D1 D2 correct got it okay um all right all right I will just uh say again I wanted a definition of missing middle because I had the same question in my head what I think of as missing middle is not necessarily what I think of as downtown appropriate so okay welcome to that discussion all right um I believe commissioner clerk you had your hand up same question oh yes yeah okay so um yeah the missing middle thing I would say that I'm interested in market rate rental
161that's not designed literally architecturally for students in mind that's what I think that we're missing in the downtown is rental that is you know that's exactly what I said on a new reset that um and so uh the other thing is yes we have dedicated I've changed a little bit or I've learned some things that make me nervous about the affordable housing piece and I agree that the affordable housing millage provides dedicated funding for affordable housing but we are being made aware from our Housing Commission that the millage isn't going as far as we thought it would go because of the increase in costs which we don't know if that's a temporary post pandemic thing it's probably not entirely it may be partially it certainly does have something to do with Supply chains but I
162am fearful that if after the when it comes time to renew this millage if we weren't able to deliver on close to the number of units that we promised people will not be willing to vote for a millage again okay they'll say you didn't spend it right so and so we have a dedicated funding source but I think that that and I had been thinking earlier that maybe we could relax on that a little bit and Orient our premiums otherwise I still think that that those millage funds need supplementing because they aren't going as far as we thought they were and we're talking about assumptions here so does anybody feel like they want to say wait that doesn't make sense to me or um yeah I I yeah on the affordable housing I I guess
163I would want Clarity I guess on the word provides needed yeah just because the um in the the first year I think of the millage it received 6.5 million and our housing leaders told us that they're able to build permanent affordable housing at about four hundred thousand dollars a unit which would mean we're only creating 16 units of affordable housing annually from that tax revenue just from the millage okay well I understand that they leverage it to to get more but just so so I would just need Clarity on how this assumption is working into what we're trying to accomplish so I assumption is re is is added on to in that since the last amendments to the premiums in 2019 the affordable housing millage provides a dedicated funding source for affordable housing however it
164can't solely be relied upon as the only funding source for affordable housing in the city Okay so we captured that so we've captured that and is there any other um any anything else yes that you don't agree with not that that's in this it's just Nuance or questions so ineligible does that mean permanently ineligible or is there something we could do to turn some of those pink things green you could turn the pink things green by zoning ordinance Amendment so options could be that premiums are allowed in the historic district option could be premiums would be allowed in the in the floodplain um so however I don't think we're ready to unpack those yet that's the next section and so some of those I just wanted to give that as an example but we want
165to have these assumptions set and then have goals then that go into it um so just one other nuanced thing on the missing middle thing is I and this may just be a matter of sort of how we're using terms I'm interested in what you're talking about but I'm also interested in small units downtown that like a young professional could live in that doesn't cost four thousand dollars a month or whatever it is you know I mean so that so that um you know somebody who's somebody who works at my firm somebody who's like a teacher or something like that they may live in a tiny little postage stamp but they have the opportunity to live downtown it's not just student housing or huge townhouses so I I kind of I want both yeah I
166want one so I don't want to just um eligible for far there you go yes further right right that's further down the line but I think also what we could do is on um number five but it's good to be thinking about that because you know as we all think in different ways some of us think big to large some of things large small some of us think in circles so we need to have a good discussion um but I think listening to what you're saying I think if on number five it's current downtown residential is either high-end low-scale residential comma Oxford comma for student housing the current market does not support building uh attainable housing downtown that is suitable for young professionals and non-student households middle class yeah yeah it's like middle and no
167sense of like middle class right middle class so I think I think we can we can take that and we can rewrite these and we would of course bring them back to you when we come to back to you to the next session so I we talked about the missing middle um and really change that Focus so it's not so much about the building form it's about what type of units are being developed in the buildings downtown and and who they can be purchase rented by and lived in by um and then what I'm seeing in my list that we haven't touched on that commissioner Suave asked was on the balance of land uses and this does something needs to change in these working assumptions which hopefully will be agreements by the time of our
168our next session that does there need to be something more around that balance description in that first assumption yes I'll just kind of like another way might be to think about it as like a balance of land development in uses because I think what I guess what I'm trying to get at is making it very clear if one of the assumptions is that we want to balance where we're at or set a new bar that everything reaches in balance if that makes sense right like if we up Zone it's not just housing because then we're off kilter with the other mixed uses are we interested in up zoning everything as a proposition which means we're interested in as we Upson making sure we maintain a balance that they work together or are we interested in
169right now it's unbalanced because we don't have enough residential are we just interested in the assumption that our goal is to get a balanced amount of housing to match the current amount of Office restaurant mixed use other things if that helps anybody I'm in the earlier category right like up Zone and add a bit more of everything um but I I want to put that out for everybody to consider like is everybody like working on the Assumption and goals of upzoning versus but getting the residential into a balanced line more office though yeah yeah right well I think that's where the metrics tell us how it gets balanced and if I can throw out one thing I think that's an excellent question I just want to add one layer to the conversation of that question
170keep in mind that we're talking about zoning which is a very specific tool it's a bit of a hammer it's hard to have it be very fine-grained um and have it be adaptable to every situation that's really where your master plan your comprehensive plan comes in and looking for those and setting the goals to me and what you Zoning for is to very specifically say what you want and then and then ask development to give that to you um as things are built in your city um so while that balance is great sometimes the zoning may not always be the best tool or know that you need to amend it as you have done with premiums right every five to seven years all right so go back and discuss commissioner suave's question because I saw
171um I I saw the city councilwoman dish had a comment and then also planning commissioner Mills commissioner dish let me go first so um commissioner sovay thank you for bringing that up I think and and I'll answer by like how I feel about sustainability this is it's going to get to to the answer how I feel about sustainability elements within residential versus non-residential it's quite different honestly because of because we are out of whack with how how much non-residential we have compared to residential and so I know that I also know the part of like the sustainability elements along with overall just more housing units right are part of this discussion so I am much more comfortable particularly if if everything going forward doesn't have to have both of those if I I'm totally cool
172with the like we know we're out of whack we don't have enough residential so increasing that I'm I am not 100 sure honestly how I feel about like increasing it all if it doesn't also have if if those the non-residential elements don't have all of like the super strong sustainability things that we that we need so I so I I don't think like so I'm much more comfortable with the I think what I heard you say um Miss which was like yeah right now we are out of balance and um rather than to write something that like adjusts over time that maybe we I I'm much more comfortable with like the hammer of like what is it that we're lacking right now um overall in that in that context I guess the other way to
173think is it are we okay with building more housing that we're out of balance the other way but still allowing more space to kind of rebalance that makes sense yes okay so that's the kind of like balance up to our current max if we still have developable area left to get balanced versus up Zone and you know partially let the markets but in terms of how our zoning is going to allow oh yeah so like more housing than what the ratio would suggest yeah yeah did you see what I'm saying like setting a certain limit versus growing yes and I think when we get to goals yeah we're going to suss itself out yeah it's yeah it's getting a little into the Nuance but yeah like okay that's different than what I thought you were
174like build a little bit of everything no like like I want to keep it yeah build equals of this ratio so yeah okay okay we're good okay so yes so I just want to put in a word and that is restaurants I think they are also a core thing and I would be sad if we built a bunch of housing and all the restaurants were knocked over and couldn't come back yes yeah absolutely I mean a part of this is you got to make it fun right um people don't want to live downtown if it's not fun that's the whole idea you want close proximity um but one of the challenges of restaurants I hear very frequently is access to labor right the folks that actually work at the restaurants are living in Ypsilanti they're
175living the peripheries so um by bringing what we talked about balance of different housing uses we can also help the bolster I think restaurant uses the let me I'm going to switch gears just a little bit on the assumptions portion it does say current premiums are not being utilized to a variety of uses seems a little um Broad and I I wonder because you guys have this chart it's on page six all the way on the bottom is that true because I'm looking at a total of constructed Ann Arbor downtown projects by CPC approval date with and without premiums and what I see are one two four four projects using premiums and four projects not using premiums so is that an accurate assumption what is the data telling you I mean I'm just looking at
176this chart for the first time in a actually Ben and I had a discussion about that today um when we were looking at him and Ben said had the observation that you did is it that it doesn't seem like they're not being utilized they're not being utilized but I what the way I I looked at it is when the change was made in 2019 mm-hmm to really focus on affordable housing and Link that to residential premiums that there's an assumption that that would shift what happened but if you look at the Historical patterns um you didn't get a whole lot more bang for your buck with that policy change and if your goal is to increase affordable housing and you're still just maintaining at this level you go up and down yeah and I think
177some of those could be argued that you go up and down um through there's economic shocks like the Great Recession and also the pandemic and you can see that but also um to use a sports analogy if anybody watches the Premier League football um you'll know that whenever yeah thank you whenever they get a new manager they win for the first four games and then they go down and it seems like you have that with your policy changes when you make a policy change then all of a sudden somebody figures it out there's like probably two two people they figure it out they go like crazy um and then talking to Alexis she's actually said like what her observation and Alex says you can reel me in if I'm wrong is that go like crazy
178and then all of a sudden everybody goes whoa we got a lot going on this is too much we need to stop or we need to change it and then we don't ever keep going up so sometimes it might not be a matter of time or and then also there's some things where you've got you also give your developers a lot of choices right even with the stripped down model there's a lot of choices and staff gets emails from developers saying I don't understand it and when developers don't understand things they don't take your bait um and so that's part of I think what's going on so you've got a lot of stuff going on but again we wanted to make sure that so I think that's what goes into that assumption that there's a
179variety of reasons um and that you're not getting what you want and you've had these spikes and go back and spikes and go back but you haven't ever had something where you felt like wow this was successful all the way through and you can see that ramp up do you feel that that's inaccurate can I just jump in just for a quick thing I think as someone who has been outside of this process coming into it the thing that I observed was that's what I meant by the policy maker change ah okay and what I observed was what you were talking about and then there was a voting shift in the community and those elected change the policy and now we're in another one of those shifts so we just had a whole new slate
180of candidates who all campaigned on housing but we still have some of the past policy decisions that were restrictive in housing all the way down to how it affects our actual documents so the original a20 plan had in it in its Housing section the missing middle by right that got struck and so it hasn't been put back and now the comp plan is coming and it's sort of so that's what I was getting at like from my observation so I don't know if it's a maybe it is the manager and the manager of the team or the electives and it was hey there's just too much development that's happening in this space so that that was my that's why I asked for the policy uh shifts to be added to your data because I think
181the electeds who set the policy also influence what we see in these zoning areas okay so back to assumptions so we had two edits that I think everybody agreed to um is there anything that you feel that is missing that has to be a core assumption as this discussion goes forward I don't know how to say this so I'll just quote someone the mayor said that Ann Arbor needs more Ann Arbor rights and I just I I just feel like that has to be some somewhere in how we're thinking about what this looks like because and I don't know you all can check me but I hear a lot from folks who come to this Podium and they'll say things like Ann Arbor is full because they have a vision of the city that says
182I don't want this kind of development like you're changing the character of the city that I made a decision to move to 30 years ago and it is unrecognizable and I don't like that and I just feel like there has to be somebody who is saying somewhere that we're moving in a specific Direction and that policy follows that vision because otherwise we're doing this tug this back and forth tug all the time and I don't it's exhausting for me but it's like oh well I'm here at the table so I'm going to vote for housing but it's frustrating I think for residents because it's not a clear articulation that the city should grow and one thing to look at is in 1970 when they were having a similar conversation like this they were projecting but
183one they were excluding black people like myself so that I couldn't live here but they were projecting that the city's growth rate would be nearing two hundred thousand in the early odds and we're nowhere near that no right and that's because those there hasn't been this Clear Vision that this is a direction that we want to move it and why she wait thank you wait um I think when we were talking about um number five that the current market doesn't support building of attainable housing downtown maybe we say that for Ann Arbor rights it in that because I think that captures a lot of things that what you were talking about and we don't have to decide that word right now I think we need just to have the spirit of it let us take
184it back and bring it and bring something back to you but what I'm hearing from you all is that you're looking for people who that there's housing downtown that people who work here um and who live here can see themselves in and access and be there and see themselves there 10 years from now I'll maybe frame it another way when you first heard that it felt like it was very gatekeeping I guess like I filtered it wrong in my head yeah it sort of like in our brights as we are instead of like who could be so I made a really funny face at you like what um I think in another conversation that happens a lot around this table is that local policy decisions have Regional impact to our sustainability goals is another way
185and what we talk about with that is uh if we become very restrictive and adjacent municipalities are not developers are going to opt to be there and the commuter traffic becomes the thing uh instead of this is you know in terms of what you can do in a walkable area and I think that may be uh what Fisher white was talking about a little bit like we're gonna lose them you know to the surrounding communities because that's where they can afford to be but they're still trying to connect in and then again to I think commissioner mills's point of like there's a core sustainability uh component that overlaps with housing like there are two goals but most of the time they actually overlap so like if there's anything it's some way to reconcile those two
186things in an assumption that those those aren't separate goals but they're very much married so let me Regional sustainability impact policy so well your downtown policies influence Regional sustainability yeah um and the what's what's a what's allowed or signifies to be built in downtown is part of is part of that policy so marrying these two together this region is growing and those people are going to live somewhere and which is I think what commissioner watch was saying they're like some people say we're full not here and I think that the the core assumption here that I think we can agree on as a body that we should make explicit to everyone else is that we think this region is growing and that living in Ann Arbor particularly in the areas that are best walkable is
187more sustainable than elsewhere okay I would add that this region is growing this region has been growing and the population growth in Ann Arbor has lagged far behind the regional population because of our restrictive and we don't want to see that trend line anymore school that has that and all the other things that we've talked about do you all feel as a as a group right now that these this is we can move forward on these assumptions and that we can work from them through the rest of the process excellent okay next thing all right um and this is gonna we're gonna do this this one we're gonna do a little bit I'm gonna ask you to be a little bit quicker and I'm going to ask everybody to say something um so there's this
188list of goals that are here um and those were in your packets in our report as well housing um General affordable accessible missing middle but maybe that comes out and we say higher density Energy Efficiency and we talked about in the report and some of this was my bringing the conversations I had heard the last time in the round um where we talked not only Energy Efficiency building by building but we talked Energy Efficiency in the downtown overall um and remember a lot of back and forth about different options on those and so if that's part of a goal wanted to have those as possible policy options for us to discuss later down the road the next meeting so keep those in the back your head sustainability again you could use those frame same frames
189is it building by building or is it the downtown overall and had some questions about what's the difference between Energy Efficiency and sustainability so with Energy Efficiency you're really looking at the measures of the efficiency of the energy used either in the downtown or in the building itself when you get into sustainability you're also talking about location you're also talking about Green infrastructure you're also talking about Transit so a lot of different things can come into sustainability of which Energy Efficiency is a part of but so you could have a goal that's around Energy Efficiency and around sustainability and those could be linked but they're actually pretty different sometimes when you're looking at different measures so those three reflecting on our discussions with you and in talking to staff seemed like those rows to the
190top that those were three things that we knew were high priorities for you these other things came up either that you incentivize them now their goal now or they were in case studies that we looked at pedestrian amenities and activities that could be the amenities that you that that you incentivize right now or it could be active first floor use which gets to some of the concerns we're talking about restaurants in that mix Transportation right now you incentivize parking and talk about parking and you have lots of things back and forth about parking but also there are many other communities that look to incentivize building around transect and Transit oriented design historic preservation right now that's something that's incentivized and that's on a building by building basis however if you looked at and this might
191be a third rail issue allowing premiums in the historic district you might want to look at how you know is that a goal and how how do those things play um also access for disadvantaged groups came up Universal Design developer diversity and business types in Michigan some of these things are difficult because of the building code and also because of the way our constitution is structured but if you felt like you wanted to look at those that's also part of the process but based on the conversation we had we felt like those four were things that maybe you would want to take off the table so what I would like is for us to work from here to here and just have give me yes no or maybe as to whether you agree with how
192we classified those goals yeah how we prioritize them so whether yes I agree maybe I need to discuss it more no I disagree if I can add just one layered to this when we're talking about prioritization I would challenge the commission to think about it in should we prioritize these as things we want to focus and incent or things we don't care as much I think it is easy to say well let's provide all of the potential menu of options and by providing a bigger menu by Nature we are diluting the things that might be most important to us so I when we're talking about prioritization I just want to say that I'm coming from that as not a the things at the top are the most important things are at the bottom I would
193appreciate the commission's initial thoughts on the things on the bottom be there at all I would start from the prospect that maybe they don't need to be there but so it so for for me as a facilitator we can go through this exercise so I can see where patterns are and how better structure help structure the conversation because we're at 10 15. and I can go late but we're here as you want okay we already started we don't have to pass anything particular for starting after 11 o'clock okay all right so um how these are how these are set out yes no maybe all right I'm going to do what you asked but Mr Leonard just added a caveat to it which I do have to address so one my answer is no and I
194think part of why my answer is no is because having the access for disadvantaged groups here is um it is important that we name how we have designed to intentionally marginalize groups of people and I think um that has to be acknowledged and we're at a juncture where we get to change things and this is an opportunity for us to reimagine so I would have just said no but then Mr Leonard said should they be on here at all and I think the fact that we intentionally marginalize people therefore we exclude them from having access to the benefits of our community absolutely that has to be on here and we do need to redress it whether it's one of the top three goals it does need to be in the mix I see they're also
195interdependent um and I would agree that access to as dispatch groups Aging in place Universal Design should be a priority um I also I guess I struggle with trying to separate housing from transportation and pedestrian activities just because and again accessibility they all kind of seem intertwined to me um so I guess that's not a very helpful answer but um yeah to me housing is an access issue which encompasses quite a few things on here okay thank you maybe and what motivates me is that access for disadvantaged groups to the Maybe maybe because I by sustainability uh I'm curious about if electrification is falls under that bucket because there's some things in sustainability they think are just given based on location and some things in sustainability that are not covered by Energy Efficiency that I
196do think should be a priority okay thank you I think Energy Efficiency I'm struggling with that as a category um because I feel like you could have an incredibly energy efficient building and still have it be dependent on fossil fuels and that's part of what we're trying to address here so um uh I get the difference that you're trying to go for in terms of sustainability and pulling that apart um but somehow that's not working for me in terms of the way that that's categorized okay and so it may be something about you know fossil fuel oriented you know something something along those lines um so that is problematic for me um uh and and like some of the others have said some of these things are they're all just so intertwined with each other
197that they're going to sort of automatically get scooped up and swept in you know with some of these other things so you know as long as sustainability we're thinking about Transit which is you know downtown where how can we not I mean that's the thing it's like this is not for the whole city this is for the downtown we're just by default it's Transit so it's like do we even need to really think about that I mean you know I don't know why that's even on the list in some way if it was the entire city that's different but for the downtown area it feels kind of like well yeah there's access everywhere but maybe you have a different explanation of why that would be in the list in the first place given that it's
198just in the downtown um so yes and that was some of the problematic things with the green building and the lead is that they're you we automatically get some scores because you're in the downtown um if you're using that lead certification right but if you are looking and again this is getting down the road if we're looking at different measures which maybe it's also fuels maybe it's electrification maybe it's do you have led do you have green infrastructure yeah what maybe it's How much cooling is is part of the building you know these are all measures that you could look at um and so if this was a way to get your priorities so we don't have to have and then we can narrow and bring you policy options to talk about for us to
199take to stakeholders um so Madam chair I'm going to check you up as a maybe um and then thank you for sharing those the the thoughts maybe okay any thoughts you want them I would say you can bundle sustainability Energy Efficiency if it's muddled at this table I think to the point of developers getting confused to figure out how to reconcile that because Transit hits in three to four lines here um you can definitely Nix pedestrian amenities Transportation historic preservation I'd be very interested to hear um strategies and tactics around access for disadvantaged groups as it comes to policy okay all right I would also say maybe ditto on the Energy Efficiency and sustainability I was struggling with that and some of these I guess to me and maybe it's because I'm tired and maybe
200it's because I missed the first discussion um like when we say like this doesn't necessarily feel like they're all sort of Apples to Apples like historic preservation like a lot of these it's like remote housing we want Energy Efficiency what is what is the historic preservation component of it um so it was a method to have historic buildings that are outside of the historic district um to be preserved so the example of where the most prominent example of where it was used is the hotel where Zingerman's is and you're the best people um some it was expressed to me when I was helping with this in 2013 um same kind of process many historic preservation Advocates felt that they called it a facadectomy and it was not a kind term um so um that's an
201example of how it had been used but when you have such strong historic preservation rules in your historic districts I would say that its track record has been spotty also the premium that was offered for it was pretty minimal and so it wasn't very often taken so that's some background on that okay I mean yeah I wouldn't prioritize that okay um Maybe okay context sure um I think it's the most Salient boiled down version is sustainability affordability equity and quality in the built environment the elements that I find somewhat missing here actually is one that's not on this list which is economic development um and the reason I say that is these folks need somewhere to you know generate they need jobs right I mean like we can build all the housing we want but
202um we also need um and I actually think you know I'm a little torn about The Pedestrian amenities activities because I talked about downtown's need to be fun that's why people want to be there right they want to attract Talent they want the the stochastic interaction and so I think um economic yeah yeah it's like oh the water came out of nowhere um so I think the um the elements of the top two right sustainability affordability um equity in the built environment and economic development is one that I think is just that we also need to make a point of saying we need exciting vibrant attractive storefronts a beauty in the built environment to a certain extent so I don't know how to really sorry I don't mean and complicate things well and some of
203it is what do you incentivize and what do you require right and so premiums are really incentives so also keep in mind that specific tool as we go on and I remember the last time in 2017 also we got into some of this is what do you require and then what do you incentivize and if there are things that are must require it do it somewhere else in the zoning ordinance or do it somewhere else by ordinance if you can't this is a good policy space for places where you can't require it or where the market needs a nudge or a bump in order to deliver what you need or what you want then pedestrian amenities activities actually to me I mean whether it's in design review board or um there's an element uh yeah
204I'll stop it there I mean we could kind of go wrong can I add though because so I just was in Vancouver which is just full full of that I mean it's astounding and it was so exciting to be in a place that had high density and all of these ways for people to be able to move through the city through green corridors and it was just like mind-blowing and if we just have a bunch of cheek to jowl really tall buildings it's not going to feel good and so what can we do to be able to and that may be not a parcel by personal thing but what can we do as a city if you're going to live in these zones that you can have access to and and so it's like it
205I don't think it's working very well on a partial parcel basis like the little corner whatever is not really happening it's not that effective but I I just feel like that visit really changed how I'm thinking in some ways about what our downtown could be um and that we need to do some work and it's not necessarily just like a spot here and a spot there and it may be more like within our right-of-ways that we have to kind of think about these things but or sometimes it there you can use zoning that if it's above a certain amount of dwelling units or if it's above a certain far or height and then at that point in time you have to provide Green Space and then you're some somewhere in there and that's how on
206a building by building basis they get that but there's also things like if you want 10 foot wide sidewalks you need to require 10 foot wide side box um just and that may be appropriate in certain places like in the D1 but not in the D2 but I'm getting us in the leads yeah um well I think what's been really helpful is for um I think you're actually being a really good kind of like guider because the idea of this being the incentives and not the requirement so this is this is the incentive driver um and I need to continue to scope our discussions or think of it in that respect so if I absolutely had to boil it down the top two yeah sustainability and affordability I think would be the key ones I
207just don't necessarily want to lose sight of the economic development itself but anyways and what I'm hearing from you is those top three are right and then actually a desire to bring that access and Equity conversation into that as well but pedestrian amenities the parking the transit and historic preservation those could fall off our list at this point in terms of exploring policy options and taking those to stakeholders because those aren't top priorities in terms of goals thought I understood or I wasn't sure but it seemed the reason you said the access for disadvantaged groups was weighed down is because you don't think it's something that we can accomplish through zoning did I no I misunderstood you okay because that was added last oh when we were looking at going through things so there's no
208reason there are some things in the Michigan Constitution and there are some things that different Municipal attorneys have said you can do and others have said you can't so this would be things where we would need to go in more and Brett's got his hand up um so I when I look at that last category just to share some thoughts I think Universal Design and and the type of units are housing that is easily Incorporated when we're talking about our housing goals so part of that I think is easy when we're talking about access for disadvantaged groups and this is something that we've identified as part of our comprehensive plan that we want to unpack we want to not only do better we want to try and repair Megan said something though really important zoning
209is one tool and it's a hammer and this is something we talk a lot about may I hope I talk a lot about with the commission is when we're when we're talking about a project there are aspects of a zoning decision that are really challenging there are operational aspects that are hard to manifest and evaluate and enforce through zoning what the long-term ownership is of a property is a really difficult to base a zoning decision on unless you're going to restrict that and that has cost as well what businesses can or can't be in a space ads restriction and it's really difficult for us to make a zoning decision that says hey you get this if you commit to this that means we either have to memorialize that that only that business can go into
210that space forever or we have to understand that that premium no longer becomes tied to the success of that being realized and so when we're talking particularly about disadvantaged groups developer diversity business types I would just share that those are absolutely great goals I have concerns about using zoning to accomplish them because we have to make a decision at at the zoning table and at on the site at the time that we say we hand over the keys and if we're giving 400 far because of some of something that requires an operational decision that we are going to not have be part of that transaction in the future I would encourage us just to think about well maybe we just allow that 400 far period so so I I so when we're talking about the
211Constitution and and aspects to equity I think it's a particularly challenging thing for zoning I don't think that we should let it go I appreciate that the Commissioners are elevating that I think that should be part of it but I just want to name with a little bit more specificity than what Megan's talking about it's hard for business ownership development entities to have a bearing on the physical aspect of what gets built or what doesn't get built and that's why zoning is a challenging tool for for that particular goal in some ways but they're what we can do as we research also is that with other cities they have some of the same goals too and have enacted different policy changes and some of those especially dealing with racial equity and changes in the built
212environment are programs rather than uh rather than a zoning change and so that incentive is not necessarily the floor height the incentive is just like you have in greenfields or just like you have in brownfields to bring them on level with with green fields is that there's a tax incentive or some sort of other subsidy that comes into play and that's a program that you don't put in your zoning ordinance and so and often those things also are wrapped together you almost have to have a cocktail of ways to address these things because they're so deeply ingrained um that it takes a lot of work and a lot of attacking it from a lot of different angles um to repair okay so um I feel like we have enough to go on on goals and
213I'm seeing nods from you um in terms of where we are one last question um and then I'm done I'll hand it over to Ben to say thank you um or am I doing okay okay all right next slide policy approaches so in on page four of our report to you we had this broken down by pros and cons and giving you some case studies examples um really from tonight what we would like to hear from you again and I'm going to work this way to this way is that do you have a opinion or on which you feel would be best to explore of these policy approaches a large menu and that's essentially what you have now a small menu where it might be two or three interrelated things maybe Energy Efficiency and sustainability
214together or maybe residential along with affordability together or residential with Equity together or is it better to not have the incentives at all um and to uncap we really didn't have a case study of that but Boulder Colorado um when they were they have had incentive incentives for Energy Efficiency they flat out State they found it to be ineffective and they're going to pursue requirements um and so um that's a different policy approach um and so the equivalent of that in this would be to say we're not going to do premiums anymore we're going to up we're going to increase the far or increase the height of the base and we'll see where we go and that's an option for you too so I'm going to work this way this way and I want to
215hear from each planning commissioner what your preference is for us is going forward what your direction would be to us to look at whether large menu small menu no incentive so back to you commissioner Lee oh sure um to me it's the Paradox of choice the more choices you give somebody the harder it gets I think simplification can be a benefit um I don't have I'm not going to lean towards one thing um there's plenty that a developer has to really evaluate right they have to gather a general partnership a limited partnership pool they have to bring in equity they also have to lever it right with it with a lot of debt um they have to convince lenders and they will look at the kind of municipalities and how difficult or the risk rating
216associated with the community and that risk rating kind of gets increased if there's more hurdles and or there's there's more choices or decisions that need to be made so to me simplifying uh frankly that I like the Boulder Colorado just requirements I mean at least you're just very clear about what you need to do um so simplification to me makes sense and that's the way that's my two cents thank you for your two cents I'd agree with that um I if I had to rank these um I think I would go with no incentive and increase density first um but if we do a little more digging and find that that for some reason that wouldn't work than small menu probably large menu no because if that's what we have now that's not working then
217nope thank you very clear none to small up Zone a little bit and allow a simple way to add a little bit more thank you I'm small too and and again I kind of feel like the sustainable sustainability thing really could be wrapped together more effectively and and housing and sustainability are my too big two big things I agree with commissioner sylvain commissioner gabrandel I agree with small menu I fear the results of going with no incentive because there are too many things in this state that we can't get by requiring them I would agree a small menu on the no incentive after that simplifying is better uh yeah I'll Echo small menu if we get rid of the floor area ratio restrictions um and then no incentive can I just ask Claire you you
218want to look to height only without SAR restriction well I'm trying to on like when I look at the UDC a lot of it or at least one of the key premium options is the floor area ratio and then affordability sits within there and before we made this change we didn't have or we had something different with the far like the fir gets unlocked based on all these sorry I used to get unlocked based on about a unit like doing residential now a far gets unlocked doing affordable residential but it also gets unlocked for sustainability yes yes so there are you can mix and match to get the far and I did send a note and asked about all the far because my memory is is that it's a new addition to our planning it's
219not something that has always been there and it feels like what we're trying to do is restrict something using that far whether it's the lot size the height and so I'm I'm just I just wanted to name it and put it out there and now we can talk about it to see how it fits I don't know if Mr Leonard wants to say anything or Mr Leo sorry I will defer to my boss oh thanks a lot um so yeah and I'm sorry I haven't got you a response commissioner white and part of the reason is is that I don't know I don't know what the answer is so I think far has been far has been around for a while um and it's it's been used in the city for a while and it's
220been used in other communities for a while um I I will say and I I just want to fully name I need to do more research on this in the creation of the D1 and D2 districts my understanding is they were originally created solely with an far and that was and and some communities use floor error ratio as the moderator of area height and placement they don't care as much about setbacks they don't care about height in manifesting particularly our far and the downtown district um I think it was kind of an 11th Hour Amendment to the creation of the D1 District to layer both far and Heights on top of that Alexis is going to correct me and tell me I'm way off shortly here but principally communities have not principally to oversimplify communities
221of traditionally regulated by area height placement that is you have to be set back you have to meet these height requirements and we don't care what else happens in that box or they are regulated by a density that is a residential units or a square footage based on the size of your lot we don't care how that's manifested or by floor area we generally think we don't care how that building is designed but we're going to use far as a massing throttle at some ratio of the size of that lot and I think I don't think there's nothing wrong with any of those approaches if I had a critique I think that when we try to layer both height and far we're probably diminishing the use of both of those tools Alexis I don't know
222if you want to add anything to the history of your work with downtowns you've been at it longer than I have well I can confirm that we've always used floor area ratio um throughout the city not the residential districts but throughout the city in our downtown districts and we had prior to a2d2 which was the Ann Arbor discovering downtown that in 2009 is when it was adopted and we Consolidated and simplified the downtown zoning districts and off the top of my head the downtown was primarily c2a which has been repealed it's gone and then it was also c2a R c2b c2b so forth there was no height limit in the down in those districts up until 2009 and Mr Leonard was is correct that the first itera the most iterations of D1 and D2 had
223also had no height limit um and the way that we we have a unique hybrid kind of form-based zoning but not really form-based Zoning for our D1 and D2 the D1 and D2 base zoning districts established the permitted uses that you can do and so that's fairly uniform because those are fairly Broad Downtown and it establishes the um the floor area ratio of the site um and um and then it's the character areas that kind of do the form of that amount of floor area that you can do and the character areas that's what has the height limit um some of them have a maximum diagonal and um that's the side and rear setbacks and then our front setbacks are based on the street classification so there's three different spots but we have a we
224regulate far so that's not form-based zoning very much like but we also have character areas that tell you how you mush and shape that development and but the as Mr Leonard mentioned the sort of killer is then we put a height limit on top of that and um that was added very late but it's here so um that I will just jump in one more time yes um when we did our most recent premium amendments um and we particularly for the D D1 where we allowed the you can get up to 900 percent with our affordable with our most affordable housing we also increase the height limit um so that you could actually achieve the 900 percent on a site including the height limit or at least get a whole lot closer than you would
225have so we have overcome we we have a workaround for we have a work but we have a workaround that we didn't have before um but only one project has utilized that and I would say so you you really want to change how you regulate the size and form of downtown talk about that in your comprehensive plan and lay out what that is and that's a good place to talk about what we want to require what where flaws are where we look to have zoning changes in what we want and then you can after after you have a comprehensive plan you usually have a whole mess of zoning ordinance amendments to implement that plan but what we're in this Twilight period where you haven't started a comprehensive plan but you're thinking about it and things
226like that and you have an opportunity right now as you've said to make some policy changes dealing with premiums which are a zoning incentive and so I want to thank you all for your work tonight it's you've given us a lot of good feedback and we had a great conversation I think that we're very prepared to come back to you and then on the next steps possible is that we'll go to stakeholders is that we will come back and talk to you about what we should talk to stakeholders about so what we'll do is we'll take these we'll rewrite some things those will be in the report but also at the same time we'll give you some policy options that we will say we think that these dovetail with what we've talked about the last
227one which one of these are you comfortable with us going to talk to stakeholders to and who should those stakeholders be um so and hopefully next time maybe we'll be first on the agenda and we'll get you fresh all right any any last questions or advice for us our pleasure okay we now get to talk about item 10B which is the 2023 City Planning Commission meeting calendar revisions the original calendar uh accommodated a potential election in May that is not necessary and so we're moving it to our typical convening date from May 3rd to May 2nd I I have something in my calendar that and I can't point to it specifically that shows a Planning Commission meeting on a Friday am I the only one that that had pop up I know I should have
228looked at that prior to sorry it's possible that we sent out uh an Outlook appointment or something but I'm not aware of anything if I come across it let us know it's um we do our best but we're we're just managing all um Boku to Outlook alrighty so can I have a motion to approve commissioner soave seconded by commissioner dish discussion let's vote on it all in favor say aye aye okay we are on to item number 11 which is public comment this is an uh opportunity for people to speak up to three minutes about any issue that is anywhere anything on the agenda or not um I will address first start with people here and then we'll move remotely and for phone access call 877-853-5247 enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 to unmute press star six
229we will just start with you please come up and say your name and address hello my name is Steve Christensen my address is 2771 Elmwood and uh I'm here to bang one drum today and I'll do it very quickly at a respectable volume when I saw you guys were going to be talking about premiums and priorities especially around the particular issue I'd like to talk about which is residential development single-family homes multi-family low-rise mid-rise high-rise you know when I hear premiums I think conditions right you usually have to have you know there's usually conditions to to receive a premium when I when I hear priorities I think road maps where people want road maps to hit those priorities so I hope as you guys continue to think about the premiums and the conditions that you
230want to put on those premiums and you think about the priorities and the road maps you want to give to the folks that need to meet those priorities I hope you guys here's the here's the drum out here to bang and that is the energy star residential certification programs I hope you guys are going to consider these hope you guys consider incorporating them into your conditions into your requirements I think it's I think they're a great program I'm very happy to see you guys are prioritizing Energy Efficiency I see it as the central pillar of sustainability that's kind of how I view uh it's its role and there's not a better program out there that gives the builders Direction whether it's you know single family home multi-family from low rise to high rise and the
231great thing about it too is if you're gonna be requiring developers or Builders to do this there's now the 45l tax credit which I hope everyone is aware of and in the in the field I I'm in the field of working with residential developers and it has been a game changer so it's nice to provide an option that not only gives great Direction hits the priorities but you know what it also kind of helps the developer on the back end and it's something that that the city of Ann Arbor doesn't have to fund this is some this these are tax credits are available to everybody so that's the main reason I'm here today I hope to help you guys are I hope the energy star is ringing in your ears as you're done with the
232meeting and I hope it's something that you continue to consider thank you thank you for sticking around to The Bitter End to tell us that foreign virtually for us we have one hand raised Alex Lowe you have permission to address the commission hi this is Alex Lowe from 3340 Fernwood Avenue I just want to say let's get rid of far limits let's get rid of height limits and let's get rid of mandatory setbacks thanks thank you no more hands raised no more hands raised all right um commission proposed business commissioner Mills thank you could you please add on to our list of priorities a note along with drive-throughs to remind us of our discussion tonight for today's date thank you very much anybody else the same with clubs clubs clubs at the bottom floor of
233Residential Building downtown a project index of a recording it for I think that's this is a good one for that too okay alrighty we're on to a German motion to adjourn bye Everybody seconded by everybody okay middle than dish how about that we are a devote everybody Yang motion to Adore we made it before 11 o'clock