001welcome to the wednesday september 7th 2022 a regular meeting the out of our planning commission for detailed information on the meeting procedures please review the full printed meeting agenda that is provided mr leonard will you call the role yes commissioner give randall present commissioner abrams here commissioner sovay here commissioner mills here commissioner hammerschmidt here commissioner dish here commissioner lee commissioner clark commissioner white here we have a quorum all righty we will move on to item three which is the approval of the agenda may have a motion to approve commissioner mills seconded by commissioner deich any discussion of the motion all those in favor please say aye or raise your hand motion carries alrighty for item number four i don't believe we had any minutes that were attached to our agenda so we're going to go
002through last through that one and on to item five which is reports from city administration a city oh i do think you have the august third minutes attached to the updated agenda oh i see not the one that i printed out at 5 15. yeah so if you haven't had time to review it we can just postpone that until the next meeting or if others have had a chance to review it's up it's up to the commission any sense of that did people have a chance to take a look at them i did not personally um i would recommend we just carrying forward to the next level forward to the next one yep i'd say so okay next we have item five which is reports from city administration city council planning planning manager planning commissioner
003offers officers and liaisons so let's start with commissioner or council member dish i don't think i have anything to report from yeah um i'm happy to report just a couple of uh planning adjacent items that were on the uh council agenda uh there was a proposed historic district study committee report um for a creation of a new historic the historic hayden house historic district was just presented to council no action and council did also authorize acceptance of a grant award that planning services has received from the state of michigan for an update to the uh historic resource survey of our old fourth ward historic district so not planning but i know that you care about historic preservation um also uh since our last meeting uh a meeting of the comprehensive plan subcommittee has met um
004they provided me with a lot of feedback on the proposed scope that will be issued for a request for proposals for consultants so i'm in the process of doing my best to incorporate that language in the the best ways that i see appropriate and then we'll be issuing that rfp uh shortly anything to add i'm seeing some yes please go ahead uh i will report that the ordinance revisions committee met on august 23rd and discussed uh the tc1 zoning district a couple of issues that had arisen during discussion uh among the planning commission the week prior on august 16th so namely the setback standard as it relates to street trees and green space and the setback as it relates to safety for driveways and curb cuts and we were joined by raymond hess the transportation
005manager at that meeting and i think that planning staff is preparing a presentation for the whole planning commission to discuss at a future working session great thank you for doing that that's something that was i appreciate that you all took that on um any other commissioners or liaisons that have anything to report okay we will move on then to item six which is public comment uh this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about an issue that is not listed as a public hearing on this agenda we'll first call an individual as present to address the commission then remote participants to speak during this public hearing remotely press star 9 if listening by phone or use the raise the hand feature if you into the web link for phone access call
006877-853-5247 and enter meeting id to unmute 977-6634126 star 6. city staff will select callers who have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly alrighty so for either method of participation please state your name and your address is there anybody present that would like to speak on an item that is not on the agenda for tonight alrighty not seeing anybody so anybody remote mr leonard no speakers are indicating any desire to address the commission okay could we move on to item seven then which are the public hearings for the next business meeting uh we can
007one moment all right public hearing scheduled for the next business meeting we'll have a proposed special exception use for a designated consumption facility at 3860 research park drive this is a location with an existing provisioning center and is proposing to add a designated consumption facility to the same location we have a site plan with a landscape modification for 529 detroit for redeemer church this is a proposed redevelopment of the um uh jeff the old treasure march thank you treasure treasure mart site um and then we also have uh proposed new development uh north maple apartments this is a proposed site plan and zoning at the southwest intersection of m14 and maple a proposed apartment development with surface parking and a sort of a accessory amenity building proposing of some affordable units solar installations for consideration
008all on that agenda great thank you alrighty we will move on then to unfinished business and i to item 8a which is the village of ann arbor site planning rezoning to r4a multiple family dwelling zoning for city council approval the petitioner proposes to construct 561 dwelling units on approximately 65 acres at 1680 duvarn roads road units include owner occupied and rental units access is proposed from pontiac trail duvarn road and leslie park stormwater detention is proposed on site the project includes a wetland use permit for a 0.03 acre of wetland impact construction is currently proposed to take place in two phases staff recommendation we are still kind of i think we are going to be getting some so additional information on that yeah if i could jump in so first of all my apologies to
009the commission and to members of the public um over the weekend we had um quite a bit of back and forth you'll recall that this item was postponed from the july meeting we were hoping that all issues would be resolved in time for this postponed date which we specified at that time many of those issues were resolved we originally published your packet um um optimistically that all those issues would end up being verified we were trying to balance getting the image information materials out to the commission and to the public while also giving about a week for our team to be able to review revised documents in short we learned that our engineering department and traffic review department had not was not in a position to recommend approval we modified our recommendation to you over
010the weekend reflecting that subsequently we've worked hard with those teams those teams have worked really hard the engineering department and transportation department and the petitioners provided a lot of additional information as well in short we are recommending approval of this petition it we have added some conditions however one of those conditions is that the public services engineering review is approves all of the outstanding comments um prior to us scheduling this for consideration at the city council there's also a recommendation for a variance condition for a variance as well just to be clear we did have some conversation about the brownfield aspect of this petition at a previous at the previous discussion i want to be clear that the engineering department is their biggest concern is to make sure that the utilities are going to be
011installed in an appropriate way in the context of the contaminants that are on site they haven't been able to conclude that we hope that they will be able to conclude that and will not have impacts to the site plan if for some reason it does that site plan may have to come back to the planning commission if it is refined so again i apologize for the back and forth that's a little bit of explanation of how we're trying to troubleshoot some of those issues over the past few days alrighty i think we're moving on then to a petitioner presentation for up to 10 minutes so go ahead hello bloomfield if darien newbecker quickly moved up to the panel so he could share the slides i would appreciate that i'm just going to interrupt for a
012second too i'm just noticing that the camera seems to be staring at everybody's chests instead of at their faces and i'm wondering if there's i apologize for that ctn has been working on that the feed to the public is is adequate you can see from the televisions there's something with the podium feed so the image that you are seeing is not ideal but the public is seeing that um i i indicated that we could probably live with that since we're in the room this is a much better view totally fine thank you um so again it's great uh great to be back in front of you we got really good feedback really great feedback from you last time we were here um you know we had a really good discussion as you know and we
013took a lot of the feedback to heart and we've made a lot of improvements to the plan so a number of improvements not the least of which is our promise to go all electric and the for sale section of the development which listen that's very important to you which means it's very important to us we've done a lot of research on this um you've gotten us out of our comfort level a little bit um but uh you know we've really researched it and i think we're comfortable with what we're proposing at this point so again we're proposing all electric for the for sale section which is basically the northern half north of the east west road for the most part there's some apartments on the north of that on the east side but all of
014the for sale would be all electric so we're excited about that we've provided further definition of the traffic conditions and specifically at our pontiac trail entrance so we've worked with traffic on that we've provided for a covered bus stop with covered bicycle parking we've worked with the ata on that so that would be what we'd be providing on pontiac trail at our entrance we did provide a pedestrian connection to northside glen it actually the road actually did go on to our property so we're just simply connecting to that existing road so we were able to work that out with the grades which is great i think that's a fantastic addition we'll be providing con contrast lights and we'll providing a signs for the crosswalk that's existing right now on pontiac trail that was put in
015with the polti development north sky we have resolved our issues with solid waste we've added some information on the site plan which i think they're amenable to i know they're amenable to if things aren't working in the future there's an alternate plan but we feel based on our experience with many other projects that we've built there will be no issues with solid waste so we believe we have a resolution to that we've offered off-site road improvements which i've outlined in my letter to you hopefully you all got our memorandum we have reduced parking i know that that was certainly something that came up so we've reduced parking in both the for sale and the four rent area so that covers um a lot of what we talked about last time i'd like to go through
016the slides but quickly office this time i cut out a bunch of them since you've seen them i just want to make sure that uh you know if there's new people watching that there they know what the project is if that's okay with you okay so darren if you can move to the next slide darian i don't know if he can hear me does do you know if the public can hear yes he should be able to okay darian can you he's talking he says yeah it says he's talking it's not presenting jeff did you receive the powerpoint maybe we could try to pull it out oh here we go okay great you got it perfect um so just quickly on the the summary it is uh 58 acres that is net of um uh
017the right-of-way uh for the la and landfill or 67 gross acres total and as we talked about last time we do have some additional acreage we'll be bringing forth in a future development plan the master designation is 7 to 10 units per acre we're we're within that total 484 total homes 164 of those are for sale those are the ones i mentioned would be all electric and the 324 lease um essentially single family tax single family uh homes and town homes and then a highly amenitized apartment community you know 684 up to 1800 square feet one to four bedrooms so that is the village concept that we see a lot of different um you know um opportunities and options um for people looking to live in this community so that that really has been our
018goal from the start darien if you can move to the next one please project highlights again multiple entry points that's what's really important about this a lot of different options a lot of open space 65 open space plus and new neighborhood connections so one of the things we talked about last time is there's a direct connection to leslie park from olson park which we think is just fantastic right now anybody knows that area knows that it's really difficult to get to leslie park and we think that this really will open up a really great amenity that the city already has mix of residential land uses obviously we're reclaiming a former landfill property which is a very important part of this component this is why there's 60 plus acres of land sitting in the middle of
019ann arbor so we're working very hard to be able to build this in a safe manner and we've got a very good consultant that's done a lot of work on this he's actually available on sme if there's any questions regarding any of our environmentals again we're going all electric and the for sale and we're using all energy efficient appliances very family-oriented plans like i said up to four bedrooms so that's something that's surely lacking high quality owner occupied and amenitized apartment and i won't talk about the development team this time so moving on to the next one so this is the context plan which i showed you last time i think what's important about this is we've got basically pud and r4a all around us so we certainly are fitting in of course we fit
020in with the master plan this has been long planned for something very similar to what we're what we're proposing so next librarian and this is the overall site plan so uh to the left um just for those who are seeing this for the first time pontiac trail is on the west which is the left that's that entrance it's a long entrance in to the property it's a lot of wetlands there we're only impacting .03 acres of wetland but you can see there's a lot of wetlands at that location so we've stayed away from it obviously not developing in that area i think it'll be pretty serene entrance into the development to be honest and then you come in you'll see a clubhouse to the right for the rentals and that actually will be open for
021the for sale owners as well as part of their hoa dues on the north side which is toward the top that would be the for sale section those are town homes and attached single family that kind of green area to the right middle right that is the landfill area we're not proposing to touch that that would be tens of millions up to 100 million dollars to fix that and nobody is going to be able to do that so right now it's a beautiful trade area we're proposing to leave it that way we may have some paths in the next version you see of this as we're working with eagle on how to mitigate any potential issues there and i think i think we'll be able to do it dairy next slide please and again this
022is really just i think signaling all of the advantages to the property this is not a pud so we're not required to have a public benefit um but we know that this is a very large property there's there's a lot of stakeholders involved we wanted to do the best we could on this property so i'm not going to go through all of these but um it's important to us to point out that uh you know we're providing these connections we're providing all electric and a portion of it for providing the bus stop we're gonna have you know many hundreds of ev chargers in the units and also um for guest parking so we're gonna have over a mile of bike and pedestrian paths this is i think a very special project and you know this
023is one that we're very excited about next slide please and i won't go through all of these i know this i showed you this last time but we took your um your policies very seriously um and we've gone through this and we've made a lot of changes to ar our buildings themselves the site development how we're developing it the types of sustainable items that we're adding such as solar panels on the clubhouse solar street lights as i mentioned all electric on the northern portion all of these i think are very important to the successful development at this location so these are all the things that that we see in your policies that we're happy to provide on the project and the next slide i think there's some product so just quickly these are the attached
024single family these really are single family homes about 1850 square feet up to four bedroom three bedroom loft or four bedrooms um and i don't know i think there's about a hundred of these if i'm not mistaken 90 to 100 of these and that's really kind of your northern central corridor there two story obviously and they are attached they're in next slide please these would be the townhomes so these would also be for sales in that northern section as well would be two car townhomes and one car townhomes ranging from 1300 to 1600 square feet and darian next slide please and these would be the the apartments dtn we're very excited to have them as a partner if you don't know anything about dtn they're very well regarded i'm not sure we'd want to do
025this with anybody else so we're very happy to have them on board and they're a partner on the apartment section to the south i'm not sure if there's one more slide and really that's it so i'd love to speak to you again about the improvements we've made any other questions you have since you've last uh seen me and i'm happy to have the conversation thank you great thank you mr khan do you have anything to add in terms of the staff report one thing i do want to add is that we did receive an email this evening from our transportation group that indicated that they're inclined to ask for a contribution for the construction of a new roundabout at pontiac trail in duvarn as well as a contribution for potential pedestrian crossings of pineapple trail
026and possibly dubarra i i do want to add that as as brett indicated we are prepared to recommend approval with the two conditions that are within the motion so i'd like to read that staff recommendation staff recommends approval of the proposed r4a zoning because it is consistent with the recommendations of the comprehensive plan land use element and is compatible with zoning in the surrounding area staff recommends approval of the site plan and wetland use permit because the project complies with all applicable local state and federal ordinances standards and regulations will not cause a public or private nuisance and will not have a detrimental effect on public health safety and welfare lastly i also want to make a commitment to ensuring that our public services group meets quickly with the petitioner to address any of the
027um outstanding issues that um that that exists so hopefully those items can be addressed and we'll be able to take it on to city council thank you could you clarify a little bit from me anyway um i know in the report they were contributing to a roundabout is this with the email that you have is that in addition to that or is that just kind of fortifying what was already in there right so the staff report indicates is a willingness on the part of the development team to um contribute to the roundabout as part of the non-environmental brownfield costs which which means the developer has listed a number of items that they're willing to put into the non-environmental brownfield which needs city council approval and those are dollars that in essence the developer would be
028providing up front but would be reimbursed over a 10 or 15 year period by the city for those for those items the petitioner can certainly summarize what those items are but they include contributing to a portion of the cost of the roundabout as well as potential electrification items but um i think the petitioner would be able to summarize those better better than i can okay thank you um we'll get into i think go through the public hearing thing and when when we're really in the of course the mode of talking about it then we'll we'll get into things like that i think so all righty so let's have the public hearing for this this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes um about the village of ann arbor site plan and
029rezoning uh we'll first call on individuals that are present and then remote participants to speak during the public hearing remotely press star nine if listening by phone or use the raise the hand feature viewing through the web link for phone access call raised their hand and 877-853-5247-6634 the last three digits your phone number you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area mute any television or background signs so that we may hear you clearly for either method of participation please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anybody present that would like to speak on this petition i'll go first hello my name is ken clark i live at 497 larkspur street i'm only about a thousand feet
030south of the development on pontiac trail i bike mostly to get around um i bike to work today and i bike to this meeting so some of my concerns is specifically about biking with regards to this development and city plans and adopted proposals however i'm going to start with something different i really do like this proposal overall but having looked through the material today and yesterday that's been updated recently i'm a little confused about why the developer is talking about air based heat pumps when most recommendations for somewhere like ann arbor would be for ground loop heat pumps which work fabulously in in our area i have a friend who actually has one of those we have solar we don't have the heat pump yet we're working on that dt is planning to make their
031electricity zero emission seemingly before the furnaces in these units would fail so it seems odd that they would be talking about air-based heat pumps and furnaces when they could be talking about ground-looped heat pumps that would work fabulously and then it would be much closer to zero emission all the way through tt cleaning up their act while they're looking at the ground loop heat pumps which they should because drilling the ground loop is best done early in the development process i don't understand why they're not putting solar on a lot more of these roofs me and my neighbor both have solar on our roofs and it's been terrific we really like it my bigger concerns however about transportation emissions and safety uh transportation missions the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in ann arbor um
032our two adopted ways to deal with those greenhouse gas emissions in ann arbor are vmt reduction 50 reduction vmt and moving to 25 of in-town trips by bicycle um certainly all of those efforts shouldn't fall in one development but um it doesn't seem like they're discussing that at all uh it would be nice to have some discussion and some other documents about the vmt from this development other thing that bugged me is these two are two diagrams from the traffic study you can all see those okay that is not pontiac trail that is not duvarin neither pontiac trail nor duvarn have continuous leptorlings both of them have bike lanes i don't know what they're studying i mean these are examples but um this is pontiac trail it has no left turn lanes and it has
033bike lanes there's a lot of danger that we have right now with very aggressive driving in this area i would like to see their traffic study deal with that to some extent if there's anything they could do to solve those problems and in part to solve those problems our lowertown mobility study recommended i'm reading it here two locations along this corner that would benefit from the construction of roundabouts as at the new residential development village of ann arbor i saw no discussion of that either thank you for your time thank you anybody else present would like to address the planning commission on this you to give randall on ken garber 28 hammer hill court air source heat pumps are perfectly fine by the way i'm sure the petitioner will explain why geothermal is less of
034a consideration here um my concern is the 320 apartments that will be using gas furnaces um yeah all electric for the for sale portion thank you um but the petitioner has said in the past that high utility bills preclude heat pumps air source heat pumps for the 320 apartments the larger narrative is that affordability and sustainability are not compatible in new construction this is a false narrative i call your attention to exhibits f and g in mr lawford's august 29 letter two different consultants compared the operating cost of gas and electric appliances i do not question the computational accuracy since both since both use the rem rate model which is a standard model but a model is only as good as its assumptions exhibit f assumes heat pump efficiency of 8.5 hspf and cr14 no
035one doing high quality new construction uses such low efficiency heat pumps here's a catalog from bryant a major supplier in this catalog you can't find a heat pump system air source heat pump system below sear 18 or hspf 10. so we can ignore exhibit f completely irrelevant exhibit g does assume high efficiency heat pumps and it concludes that on average uh tenants will pay 57 on end units we'll pay 57 or more a month for electric and interior units 34 dollars more a month however this uses dte's october 2021 gas rate that rate is now 19 higher if you plug in dte's current gas rate the higher cost of electric versus gas mostly goes away but even if we take exhibit t at face value there's a solution installing just two kilowatts worth of solar
036per unit will save tenants 613 a year those savings bring every unit in the village to parity or better between electric and gas and two kilowatts solar per unit will only add about five dollars per square foot to construction costs before federal tax credits in conclusion exhibit f assumes inefficient heat pumps and exhibit t last year's gas rates so both overestimate the difference between electric and gas but even taking the exhibit g at face value a small investment in solar wipes out the difference affordability and sustainability are fully compatible there is no reason for the village not to go with heat pumps over gas for the entire project a note about carbon emissions exhibit f shows that heat pumps produce almost out of time enough to say that i have serious reservations about those calculations
037as well they're really off thank you come on there were there are positives to to putting more than 600 apartments and houses in an area of land which is not being used right now and there's movement toward less carbon dioxide emission better emission total electrification of the townhouses but what is absent here is electrification of the rental units and i agree with him that that the figures really underestimate the advantages of electric and total electrification of the apartments and the houses would include solar i have solar panels on on one of our houses uh in chelsea and um and we don't pay any electric bills basically um averaged over the year and and so the advantages of total electric are in some ways reducing the installation cost because you don't have to put in the
038the uh the gas pumps the uh the methane pumps uh there is there is no no necessity to install the gas system adding solar panels would decrease even with a modest number of solar panels it would decrease utilities by by over a hundred dollars a month and the payback period for solar panels right now is some people would say five years payback i think 10 years in our climate is probably better a thing our old solar panels had uh a payback period when it cost a lot for the for for the solar panels more than twice as much as they are now uh our our payback uh period was about 13 years okay so getting that back after that point everything is kind of free electricity for for uh for that without having the burden
039of the um of having paid for the solar panels um solar panels last for 25 years or so usually that's what the old warranties were for it would make everything eligible for the federal and the state incentives and it serves as a good example for the city of ann arbor to to really work aggressively on the a20 project this is an opportunity which is like a low-hanging fruit it's a really good project it'll be very efficient and i don't think you should compromise on on having only one half of it be electrified it would simplify everything it would serve as a great example of the city and servings serve as an example to other developments too if they all have to compromise but we only want to do this we only want to do this
040it kind of takes away some of that streamlining toward low carbon emissions thank you thank you alrighty it looks like we are out of people in the room so is there anybody that is virtual there is james damore you have three minutes to address the planning commission uh thank you mr leonard uh uh can you all hear me mr jamar can you hear me hello can anyone hear me hello there i'm having problems with ritual one more time can you hear me now we can hear you sorry for the technical difficulty if you wouldn't mind starting over okay sorry about that i mean you can't verify and you can hear me now we can hear you now okay uh thanks uh my apologies if it's stuff i've done in my end um just uh um
041very quickly i think i would attempt this commentary i never do that um could say the least you can do i'm gonna go into macros of history northeastern clan of which this parcel is part of it and to say that a lot of things in northeast area plan um that ken clark and i can attest that probably shouldn't have been built but here we are um i also say speaking only for myself uh whatever we do here will not present sprawl in the elsewhere in the township i should note that robertson brothers is a uh playing a major uh development lodi township um we need i think we forget that our actions on housing uh we do it only in isolation of ann arbor and on contests of the greater uh southeast region of uh
042greater southeast michigan the region of detroit we are in a regional market and what we do um we need to look that in the top context that being said a lot of good things are i've seen tonight in terms of the process here and staff has really worked hard in coming up with a good proposal and i would say of all the major parcels in northeast area this is the one that was the most buildable and i see something fairly responsible here but i want to appreciate uh something uh ken clark brought up uh uh uh previous and other speakers as well um and that is that we need to make this uh entire development all electric um we need to move closer to the a20 goals i think you need to hold the petitioner's
043feet to the fire uh to make this project all electric and moving forward to 820 goals and in terms of addressing the climate crisis this is what i would say is the least you can do tonight it's a lot of work and i think there may be some more give and take but uh by making all electric as other speakers has indicated i think you're uh uh moving forward to set a good example in future projects and future development with the city all right folks good luck and i wish you a good evening and thank you for uh concerning my remarks thank you mr garton you have three minutes to address the planning commission thank you can i confirm i am audible you are audible thank you very much my name is hugh garton i
044live at 3080 cedarbrook drive about 1.5 miles from the proposed development seven points one under fair assumption electrification of the apartments in this development would produce nearly comparable costs to gas for the tenants two future gas costs are likely to rise more than electrical costs making the long-term bargain for tenants better three tenants are in a very poor position to affect change in their in the future for their own tenements so please consider your duties to act on their behalf to secure their chance at a carbon neutral living arrangement or while the updated plan is clearly improvement it still obligates a very large carbon footprint for likely 30 to 50 years in the future five in a climate emergency the city and by extension the planning board should use all measures at its disposal to
045minimize the climate impact of new developments six as you've heard modest additional on-site solar would allow for electrification of the rental sites without great financial difficulty and lastly if affordability really is the problem and the council is or sorry the board is determined to move forward with this then the city should be advised that it should use its tax abatement options or other equalization methods to solve this the commission could approve with this recommendation to counsel thank you very much for considering my remarks thank you michael strother you have three minutes to address the planning commission hello this is michael strother i want to comment about the contribution to the rotary i think this is great uh the one thing that i would comment on is that the center of the rotary itself should not
046be just paved over this is a major entry point and the comments were made previously about this being a traffic calming device i'd like to see some natural plantings flowers and treat this point of entry into the ann arbor area as it would deserve thank you no other speakers have indicated a desire to address the commission alrighty okay i will read the proposed motions motions and i'll read them together the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the village of ann arbor are for a zoning site plan and development agreement subject to the petitioner obtaining a variance for the maximum front setback along duvarn road and the second one is the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the village of
047ann arbor wetland use permit to allow filling and mitigation of 300 square feet of wetland disturbance and on-site mitigation should i add a piece about the approved yeah yeah goodness yeah let me if if i could read the recommended and do that yeah i have the printed out version from when i did it at 5 15. okay the second motion you presented is unchanged the first motion we would recommend the following the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the village of ann arbor r4a zoning site plan and development agreement subject to the following conditions prior to scheduling for city council consideration one the petitioner obtaining a variance for the maximum front setback along duvarn road and two public services area engineering and solid waste review and approval
048including all outstanding review comments identified in the september 6 2022 engineering review number five memorandum and in the september 1st 2022 solid waste review and any subsequent reviews all right moved by commissioner survey seconded by commissioner lee we are in discussion commissioner uh so one i just want to start my comments off by thanking the petitioner for hearing us we say a lot at the table and sometimes those things are accepted and the development goes ahead with whatever plans the developer had with the significant changes that you've made to the plan the addition of the bike lanes i actually biked up uh to the site to take a look at it both from my bike to just also see uh how it works so there's gonna be a lot of connection that will come through
049also into the park um the uh decision uh for the petitioner to go ahead and electrify the for cell as well as the inclusion of some solar on the property so lots to say and the contribution for the roundabout to do some traffic calming measures in that space so a lot to say thank you for and hearing and i appreciate the reduction in the parking but i'm i'm still struck by the fact that 83 of the square footage that is given over to the residential is also is dedicated to parking when you do just the the math on it um i recognize that you feel like that is an appropriate amount of parking for it i want to acknowledge that our zoning actually uh sort of uh has zoned this area of our city in
050a way that makes it car dependent i wish you would consider reducing parking further than the 10 percent you have maybe to about 25 percent i agree with the speakers that have shared and i think they did a better job than the comments i prepared around the electrification of um the rest of the development and i was particularly concerned around um the attachments f and g that looked at those uh heat source um um heat pumps and i and and so i'm appreciative to mr garber for doing some math on that and bringing some information for consideration on how you could achieve it and then mr clark's comment that came in late to us late this afternoon asking for solar in there to mitigate the cost because when you spoke to us earlier you were
051concerned that having a hundred to twenty to a hundred and thirty percent increase in the utility costs would make it hard for you to lease those units and it looks like the math there's some space in there to get to parity on that and so i just want to start my comments uh by just asking again for complete electrification and then i did have one specific question for you which when i read through your your memo back to us uh let me just try to full screen this okay there we go they don't have page numbers but it's before exhibit a you have in red the recommendations from the office of sustainability and innovation around the compost and i just i wasn't clear whether the apartment dwellers could participate in compost so that was just
052a question as i was re reviewing everything that wasn't apparent to me you can reply i think i think this is the time where we get to talk to so you those questions and again i appreciate your comments and um you know i believe this is a you know kind of a iterative process and i think that that's uh just makes for a better project um in regard to the parking i understand your comments we can certainly look at that um you know we we took out ten percent which you know for us is a lot i think in my mind what's what's really driving the number is the fact that there's driveway parking in front of a lot of those units particularly all of the attached two-story and that just really drives up the
053numbers now i could you know say you know you can't park in that area but i mean it just seems to be a single family thing to have parking in front of those units really no street parking so the opportunity for guests is in front of the house so i think that skews the numbers is what i'm getting to so we'll take a look at it you know obviously i want to move forward if we can with approval and you know of course we can look at some areas that maybe we could reduce a couple of i think 25 would be way overly ambitious for us to do but i'm willing to take a look at that as as we move forward so i don't know if that's that's clear enough but i understand your
054concern and appreciate it um you know agreeing with the neighbors on the apartment electricity you know there's i guess the way to answer that is there's only so much we can go with a project and i think we've gone farther than we we normally would have we appreciate your goals at this point this is our direction and this is this is our um proposal so um this is how we want to move forward um we do have an expert on on zoom but um i don't know if we need to go into specifics on it you know in all costs have gone up gas has gone up of course everything has gone up electricity's gone up so to say that we were skewing the numbers because of that everything's gone up in costs um you
055know in the past year so i think that that's a relevant comment you know additionally you know the the technology isn't quite there yet and we do recognize that we recognize that it's getting there which is why we're proposing the for sale jennifer granholm has a cold climate heat pump challenge recognizing that the technology just isn't there yet and we need to work at it as you know together as a team we're actually involved with that um initial um a meeting on that so you know high-end cold compression heat pumps with variable speeds you know they're there we've done a lot of research on it the cost just are more and i think that there was even acknowledgement of that but for the change in gas and electricity costs which again all costs have gone
056up so our proposal is to is exactly what we have in front of you at this point as far as the compost we weren't proposing it for the apartments we do have it for the for sale um so again that is something that that's part of our plan at this point is no compost for the apartments but we would have it for all of the for sale so just coming back to the compost is there any um um way you would consider uh doing something in the clubhouse where i understand that part of it may be where does it get collected and then where does it get picked up yes but you have a clubhouse and so just making it available to the apartment dwellers or those who are leasing their home to be able
057to have a place where they could uh dispose of the compost within the clubhouse building i you you've been very clear it's your development yeah i am not the developer i am just here uh doing my job which is to ask for thanks and ask questions and to clarify and so that that's it so it's up to you where you want to put it but if there would be a place for your apartment dwellers to participate in the in the compost um that just helps with you know our overall stewardship of the resources that we have yeah it is it really is a space limitation so um again we're looking at you know if we look at the parking we can look at at those areas as well see if there's something we can maybe
058we can expand the existing enclosure to see if we can add some composting to it so i'm happy to do that again i want to move forward if at all possible but we can certainly look at these items i don't think that those are out of the out of the question sure i'm good commissioner ditch thank you for coming back to us with as much as you have come back with um the uh i i did read in your letter that the reason you're not providing compost for the apartment dwellers is because they're not maintaining their own lawns and so you don't and also it's not a service that the city consistently provides to multi-family apartments but i did want to toss in that one of the things that's unique about ann arbor is that
059you can compost your table scraps including meat bones um i have composted dead rabbits i'm not sure if i'm supposed to do that i've done it i didn't kill them myself so i think that there could be a call for composting and where um where resident where single-family composting is picked up where you can have carts the city can pick up from apartments and so i mean it's possible as long as there's a route and since there is a route and your apartment dwellers could opt to use carts they might not all opt in or whatever it would be great to think about offering them compost it's one of those problems where um because we haven't universalized the service we're not we're not really able to ask people to accommodate in their site plans composting
060but um as you know because you're mitigating a fair amount of methane on that site we like to try to keep food out of the landfills um and i i want to express just um a bit of i just feel like my head is spinning and i don't know what to do about it because i'm getting different numbers right and i don't know how to adjudicate among those numbers that you know a little bit more solar these costs can be comparable if the barrier and i understand why the barrier for you would be that if it's an increased cost that puts you at a market disadvantage for your rentals so i understand i understand where you're coming from i wish there were a way for me to have a report and this isn't necessarily this
061isn't on you i wish there were a way for me to have a report um evaluating the different options that would be open to you and telling me if indeed our residents who who often speak to us about these matters if their calculations are correct because you know i i wish that we would had a way to persuade you that it wouldn't be more expensive because we can't require this of you we can only ask it of you you have come really far to meet us and i i just really really wish that we weren't going to have 320 units that are gas powered if if it's financially feasible for them to be electrified and you know we know dte is going slower towards green energy but it is moving in that direction we may
062do there are many different things that the city may do to actually get us on green power much sooner than dte projects so i just i'm really at a loss i don't know what to do about this conversation and maybe there's no way to pursue it because we don't have the regular regulatory authority and you are doing an awful lot on this plan on this thing i did uh so i just i'm just expressing that because i don't want to be silent in the face of what our sustainability plan is asking for and what our residents are asking for i did want to mention that there is a in the staff report which i believe was only uploaded today there is a mention of the roundabout and the city has applied for uh u.s department
063of transportation grant for the roundabout and the money that robertson is offering through the brownfield tiff strategy would help the city meet the difference between what we can get from the d.o.t and what it will take to do the roundabout um the the thing that is a little bit heart-sinking is that this would be programmed for the 2026 2027 construction season the roundabout would and that's a little bit heart sinking because it is as unsafe as you say mr clark so it's a long time to wait and this has nothing to do with your development right it's not your fault and you're sort of coming at the end of a lot of added housing and you are offering to help us build a roundabout which is really great um but i wish that in the
064meantime uh you know the traffic report does mention that a four-way stop would increase the delay for traffic on pontiac and it would be only a marginal improvement for the people on duvarn but something breaking the very swift passage of traffic from us 23 to the intersection of barton and pontiac would be nice and a stop sign you know to wait you know another four years for the construction of a roundabout a four-way stop there would it seems to me be nice to have and i don't think that this is the place at this table to bargain for it but i will just put that out there and i did want to because you wondered what was happening with that and i wanted to answer that so i don't know if anyone else feels the
065way i'm feeling about the numbers or if anyone wants to offer me some wisdom so i can sleep well tonight other discussion commissioner sovay um for for electric i i think we put a lot on i appreciate all the work that that's been done um i'll just kind of add the comments maybe it's the commissioner to the public that like there there's been a lot of work you know i i believe on your end to to resolve some of some of the electric um my understanding from engineers i work with on a day to day is at this point it doesn't make financial sense to proceed with gas that's their like status quo feedback and so we're proceeding with most of our um you know for our projects in our office with electric um with
066the caveat of you know certain conditions restaurants are very hard to go all electric with the load and things like that but um so i'll just kind of put that out there like i i understand the amount of other efforts that have gone into improving this development since last time we've seen it um and so i would like to see you know this move forward and so if electric is an opportunity in the future i know we've talked you know in two parts about this it seems in the conversation one is about the systems that you install and two is about the sourcing of energy for those systems right and for gas systems you can't really kind of flip the switch electric systems you can flip the switch from what dte is doing they've converted
067most of their sourcing from coal to gas now asking them to convert to convert from gas to you know sustainable sources is the next step which from my understanding they're actually a little behind not a head-on uh in terms of 2030 goals so in terms of when the replacement comes and things i do ask you know you evaluate solar and some of those other opportunities you know in the near future and i think things you know like all electric appliances are very easy you know and that really we're talking about the mechanical systems here so um [Music] i know it's not everything we want i think the amount of housing the amount of improvements to connectivity and things you know i i feel comfortable proceeding so i'm just going to put those comments out um
068on my side of things um i do have uh questions i guess about the methane and if you have any initial comments about like how are you containing all of the um utilities is it like concrete cast double uh conduit like what what is that starting to look like on your end like how are you working through that right so i guess the easy answer to that or not the easy answer the the quick answer to that is um our consultants who obviously are experts at this don't believe that there would need to be any kind of special aligners or special construction methods um particularly for the for the sanitary so that that is what their analysis is obviously we need to get the city departments comfortable with that and if there is you know
069a a discussion on on maybe engineering controls in you know targeted areas you know we can we can certainly discuss that but the ours consultant is essentially saying you know there's methane and sanitary sewer lines to begin with so and then the homes would have passive venting systems and obviously the existing um venting systems for um for the utilities just that a normal house has so i can have brett stunts if you want a more detailed answer than that but from a from an initial standpoint they're comfortable and again they're the experts and they they have everything they have everything on the line as well they're comfortable with um the existing uh utilities as designed in those areas we're not very high on methane i mean it is very low the readings are very low
070they think we've got five hits that are above that elevated five percent um and those are areas we can discuss but generally speaking they don't have any concern um with that so if you wanted brett stunts he's on the line um but he'll probably you know he'll probably bore everybody because usually or is me so i'll leave it to somebody else to call him back i just wanted kind of an update because it was like new like in depth context for us so i just wanted to see like what the progress was and yeah you know where you and certainly i mean i mean we respect the city departments and we want them to be comfortable so um i don't there's no issue with being able to resolve this moving forward my initial thought on
071this was this really is more of a final engineering question and issue to resolve um so i'm comfortable with the the you know the condition i wish it would apply to the final engineering and not just city council but we will have a meeting soon and we'll discuss these things and i don't have any concern that there'll be issues okay um i guess two other comments one um which is i guess i'll join four because this is on top of my mind um the future site plan yes um i asked last time about like their the entry in um to the development jobs a little bit because of the wetlands to the adjacent development and i understand like we're negotiating between wetlands versus vehicular kind of uh conflict points for the future development have you
072done any schematics and just is there another curb cut out to the street or is it internal connection no it would be the same connections those were really stuck with our connections there's no way to get i mean we could build a bridge but there'd be no need no reason to do that south of our existing entrance on pontiac trail there's just a wetland complex that it's impossible to to go over so um really the future development that you're going to see most of it will be concentrated on on that area if you remember the site plan the very north up to duvarn so that that would be where the future development would be okay and then my other which is maybe more of a note because we've seen all of these developments you know
073come one by one it's very hard to plan um but you know as you get going being a good neighbor and finding connections between each of these neighborhoods i think really leans into the bikeable walkable that we don't have to go on to these heavy traffic patterns that there are neighborhoods to actually bike through uh to really cut through between each one but right now we're developing isolated neighborhoods that all reach out onto it and sort of reach into each other's kind of backyards and roads so as you get going if you find connection points to engineer and cut across property lines to merge those streets i think that's a fantastic you know movement forward for you know the whole area up here the more developers can work together to connect interconnect plots um would
074be great okay um the last one i i'll just make kind of a comment to the parking i appreciate kind of the removal of parking again i'll just kind of say um to my justification i don't have too much issue with the stacked parking more recently we like applauded stack parking as a way to count it when we had parking minimums um but because uh those curbs you know to the driveways really land into the street that becomes paved here you know it's like sidewalk chalk and a place to learn how to ride a bike and for toys to spill out from the garage and things like that so at least i try to like paint like the best and worst case which is like it's full of cars and there's no places for people
075and then the best case which is there's actually a lot of kids using all of these driveways for activity merged together but with that again you know it's partly with operations too and helping all the residents understand either of those things could happen and everybody needs to be responsible and maintain sight lines and safety and speeds um that we have a whole lot of different occupants on these roads and that it really blurs together so again i'm just kind of like making this statement an observation i'm not asking for anything here um but i i'm saying it because i really do appreciate what you've brought back um from those comments uh it sounds like you're you know learning a lot from i think a lot of our goals here and so if anything we've seen
076a lot of these things that you can kind of take them reflect back on future developments too um and so it's just you know an iterative conversation so it's funny you say that because um you know we have started applying this to other other projects that we're doing and some of the other cities have obviously kind of you know moved toward towards some of these goals as well so it's it's interesting to you know get involved with it and understand it so so please if we don't see electric in these apartments put electric in the developments that aren't asking for them okay i'm writing it down commissioner hammer schmidt thank you um so one specific question and then i have just some some comments i wanted to make see i think i saw on the
077slide for the second time because i remember seeing it the first time too over 500 ev chargers yes how is that distributed yes so um each unit which you know with 484 has one in it so i mean that's kind of the the bulk of it we do have 36 for the guest parking a lot of that's concentrated in the apartment area around the clubhouse but that is what that's in reference to so each individual garage and all of the apartments will have an attached garage as well so each each garage will be ev ready you'll be ready but not the actual charger that's correct so in the okay so first of all can you do me a favor and on that slide it's incredibly misleading okay it says over 500 ev chargers so that
078i i read in the staff report so i knew that that wasn't true but i mean that's like completely my fault i apologize so in in the apartments who would be responsible for putting the ev chargers in those garages depending what system obviously they need uh but it would be on the um let's see now i can imagine that you know moving forward if it's there they would it would potentially stay for future for future residents but that would be the the intent we don't know exactly what system they're going to be using so we obviously wire it for for ev ready okay i mean i guess everything also i don't know a whole lot about tax credits from the bill that was just signed but i'm pretty sure ev chargers were included in that
079so i mean you might be able to take advantage of getting them for super cheap and just having them installed and you know i fully agree okay sorry about misleading it it's just okay it's just the second time i saw it and i was like wait i don't think there's actually 500 um i want to echo you know my colleagues comments about the the listening that you did in the work and the research and everything that you've clearly put into this and you know when i hear you talk about this project and one of the things that i appreciate is that it really seems like like your vision is for this you know one neighborhood that has different price points and different options for people you know it's great to have the apartments it's great
080to have the for sale units different sizes different price points but i'm also seeing sort of this like a dichotomy where you've got apartments on one side and you have for sale units we have all electric and we have gas we have composting and we have not composting and so i guess i would just encourage you to think about how in practice you can make this feel like one cohesive like village neighborhood um it'd be great if it was all electric but i think we've kind of you know beaten that to death a little bit um i am really happy that you said that the clubhouse is going to be open to all residents yes that's great and then um a couple of things you said struck me that i just wanted to kind of
081also comment on it they're good things they're good things you said that you were pushed out of your comfort zone and doing this project that's what we want like this like this is it's a new way of development but it's what we need to be doing as like a standard for all development i think you know this thinking about sustainability and and thinking about you know oh another thing like talking about gas versus electric apartments versus for sale like there's health implications of gas like we're not thinking enough about like the health of people that live in places and get around places um you know with combustion appliances if they're not using the fans they're not opening the windows like it can exacerbate asthma so they're just again like going back to sort of this
082dichotomy there are things that people typically don't think about with development so i think it's great that you're getting pushed out of your comfort zone i hope that you share what you're learning with other developers i'm glad to hear that you know you said that you're looking at doing this in other projects because you also said you appreciate your goals meaning the city of ann arbor we're not a bubble like this needs to be goals for understanding everybody i know you know that yeah i just wanted to call that out because i think you know we're at a point we're probably past the point where you know everybody in the development field needs to be thinking about like how do we do things differently we have a climate crisis we have like health crisis that
083are stemming from the ways that our cities are designed and our buildings are designed and so this is like the point where we can really push the envelope so i'm glad you're pushed out of your comfort zone i really appreciate all the listening that you've done um yeah i'm i'm excited i support this project but you know i just encourage you sort of look at how to make it more holistic feeling like a real neighborhood um and not you know i just worry that you've got this road and there's apartments and there's for sale units and like how can we make it sort of a little bit more like one neighborhood rather than so i think that's really good um comment we what you don't see is the marketing efforts we're making as far as
084branding it and how we're going to connect through you know wayfinding and signage and things like that so we're certainly thinking that on the next level it is difficult i mean it's really hard to put pods together like that um but you know having the the walkways through and then having this branding effort or our hope is that that will kind of add to that cohesive you're talking about so i appreciate the comment thank you commissioner mills thanks i think uh commissioners have talked about lots of the different things that were on here and i'm not going to beat a dead horse either but you just talked about marketing and i think that that thinking about the kind of clientele who would rent an apartment that has an e that has a garage that is
085wired for electric vehicle charging i would really encourage you to think about who those people are they're probably going to be people that are participating in my green power the who want to have um who are willing to pay potentially in the very short term what might be a premium but in the long term given the price fluctuations of the cost of natural gas i do not think actually that those numbers will hold up all we have to do is look to europe right now to see kind of what happens uh with the price of natural gas the cost of renewables is is built in when you construct it you know what the cost is going to be in the future related to that and as you're thinking about it and i don't know at
086what point you talk to the utilities about your connection i making sure that you're sizing i mean what what i understand in order it's not just the charger in the garage like you have to make sure that the the electrical box can handle right the the draw of of allowing for eg ev charging that's much cheaper based on when we wrote the ev ordinance in the city talking to dt that's much easier early on i would and for this many chargers that that could be a substantial um that could require substantial upgrade thinking about how solar might actually allow additional solar might allow that connection to be smaller could um could be something to just put on your radar similarly if this if the rental units ever do electrify and i agree with the caller
087that it's much harder like the for sale units have more autonomy kind of in their mechanical systems and so if i had to choose i would i would put the oh the electric heating in the the rental units because of that lack of autonomy there um i would just think about that when you're thinking about what the size of your connection is and can and some of the interconnection costs it's way cheaper now than it is down the road and particularly for whoever the owners of those buildings will be and obviously we're going to own own the apartments so it is important to us to think about the future so certainly you know for a replacement um you know i do believe that that those costs will come down to where it makes sense and
088so we do want to plan for the future with that so that is no question about it we would we would be having those those discussions early on yeah sizing your ca like making sure that whatever connection you get to the grid there is size for that uh yeah you want to look at those numbers um and and again within the context of marketing like this would be one of the first you the rental opportunities in ann arbor that could you know where you could promise not only bike lanes and connections to the park but um having an all-electric building um the question that i had and i did i wasn't at the last meeting uh i watched it but um the meeting is about the roundabout and maybe this was covered then but the
089lower i appreciate on the commenter to bringing up the the lower town mobility study uh was that discussed staff that specifically i mean the village village of ann arbor is called out here within the study for inclusion of a roundabout so the the study did call out for inclusion of a roundabout as a way to mitigate the multiple challenges at the pineal trail javon intersection so staff is looking for federal dollars to construct the roundabout and it's applied for a grant that we hope to hear back from in about a year or two about whether we are going to qualify for that grant well i'm wondering if we're talking about the same roundabout because at least the way that i read this like i'm i think what i understood was there this is the discussion
090about pontiac trail the intersection of pontiac trail and duvarin but my reading of the study suggests that it's it's on barton at the new residential development that's what this reads it says pontiac trail at moore at barton drive or sorry yeah it's on pontiac trail at the new residential development parentheses village of ann arbor located north of skydale drive it's my understanding that that is not around about that public services has requested grant dollars for that the roundabout is uh for the pontiac trail duvarn intersection i'm just i'm just confused since this is a since this is a brand new development like how it's connecting into the streets if we had a plan that came out in march 2022 that specifically calls for it has did this come up at all in your discussion with
091so my understanding of it is that um having it at the duvarn intersection would slow down the traffic and kind of suffice for what what that plan had called for i'm not a traffic expert either so we do have our traffic consultant on board on the zoom if it's something you know that she could speak to or if i don't know if the traffic engineer with the city but yeah we we've worked out kind of the geometrics of our entrance there's really not much room there because of the wetlands because of the development to the north of us and because of you know polities to the west it doesn't really fit i agree this is a recent study so it is confusing but i do know that our plan as it is existing or designed
092today is essentially what traffic had asked us to do we had a third lane that went uh that continued north through there that was important but we didn't really have the room to put in a roundabout got it yeah i mean i again i feel bad i i in watching the previous meeting i think there was a lot of discussion or i recall i thought the discussion was about barton um but maybe maybe not i'm seeing some nods yeses and some nods no i don't know it's that one and then sorry and i should have finished the last the left list the last though i can't talk tonight started teaching too early this morning um four locations and the last one on the list is done at duvarn road so i think that this is
093distinct it seems like it was distinct um anyway i [Music] it's it's it's suggested as this is not an either or there are four locations that would benefit and it's this is one of four in addition to the other so i i um yeah i'm not sure what to make of that it's especially because we put a lot of money into planning and to see this as a recommendation and less than eight months later um to have that very development included where where i haven't seen discussion it doesn't sound like that was discussed is odd to me um so i'm not i don't want to stand in the way of that i would suggest maybe commissioner dish that when this goes on or in between here like i'm just not sure what to make of
094this commissioner yeah so i think i feel i am still confused so um yeah my understanding is that wait this roundabout that we are talking about now is at pontiac and duvarn yes that was one of the sites in the lower town traffic study barton is unfeasible right we can't get the our right away for it so um and then i think they mentioned in the lower town traffic study possibly there was another one in between but i mean how many roundabouts can we budget for they're expensive so i mean this development gives us the opportunity to get one at duvarn and pontiac if we get this federal grant which it seems incredible to me that it takes two years to even hear about the grant right and so this would be that was what
095was in the staff memo about the possibility of 2026 for traffic relief that we have needed for the last you know not during the covered year but yeah we need it again so is so i'm not sure so you're you're what you're worried about is well it's that the study the study suggests four locations including the one that sounds like barton is infeasible but that is on the list this specific the in the connecting a new residential development village of ann arbor here is on the list in addition to duvarin and then also moore street and longshore street that kind of connect like the intersection with pontiac trail so i'm just i know that there was discussion south of this i know like clearly improvement north of this makes sense like there that's already a
096thing but because we're making a new connection here it seems odd to not have that discussion about the feasibility of that at this point because it hasn't been connected yet and so i feel like now is kind of our opportunity to understand if it's infeasible um anyway i see other hands well that's yester clark i just wanted to mention with the barton one um it's a little bit a side note that i i believe that it wasn't that it was in feasible it was that they would impact the level of service which is just the measure of like how many cars pass through and how quickly so um the lower town study does mention it and i don't i don't know if we want to write that off right away it's invisible i view that
097as priorities but anyway commissioner sovay i might have lightly alluded to this in terms of the conversation with last time about the staggered entries for the development to the west um on pontiac trail so that was our conversation from last time was trying to line those up so at least there was kind of the sight lines and an intersection instead of the kind of staggered and that discussion film last time was a lot about the wetlands and the mitigation and the clearances and the right-of-way available so we did have a discussion really at that intersection of the entry along pontiac trail for this development relative to even slightly shifting it what a roundabout would look like the amount of footprint for it the extension for a bus stop bike lane sidewalk all along that area
098so that was part of the conversation last time was that intersection if that's helpful and a lot of it was maybe in the lower town study not understand the extent you know of the survey for the wetlands you know from that high level that was then taken into account once they actually got onto this parcel and was were able to do the full survey and were able to deem it not feasible relative to the wetlands so that's what that's what i took away at least from the last conversation when we talked about that intersection and that's my understanding too my our traffic consultant is online if you wanted to have her speak so julie kroll sure why don't you why don't you ask her um i texted her so she said yes we can get
099julie kroll there she is can you guys hear me we can okay great um so i i couldn't see the name tags on the commissioners but the last one that just spoke was correct and so that is why we can't put a roundabout there um bret can i share my screen again in a moment you can hold that might be helpful if we can see it okay so um this is how the driveways are um our property is here on the the top of the this is our site access this is the north sky development to the south uh it's not south but it's the the east or the west side um so when we had looked at trying ideally to align these driveways that's when you could we could have potentially looked at a
100roundabout the problem was we have these wetlands right here and there's significant fall between this driveway that's proposed here and the existing driveway here so that's really where we have the issue so from a planning level you know ideal world that would be great but when we got into the engineering and started designing the access that this really was not feasible to relocate this driveway and this one had already been constructed so mitigations that we put in here to help kind of offset and provide pedestrian connections um we have new pedestrian connection we're putting in some additional signage here um a rapid rectangular rapid flashing beacon will be installed here to promote connectivity but um the roundabout really really wasn't a feasible option because of the wetland issue thanks i i was you know it
101that really helps in having the picture helps i'm i'm i will confess that i'm still confused a little bit because based on the the lower town study it doesn't suggest that this would intersect at skydale it suggested that that the intersection the roundabout proposed roundabout would be located north of skydale so but i i seeing where the wetland comes up to the road like maybe that is the explanation i just want to make sure that we talked about it especially because this is a new like a relatively new planning document uh so um [Music] and again all of these improvements i think it's a mess here right now so all of these improvements are important if there's any other opportunity i just want to make sure that we've exhausted all of the uh the permutations
102here and and not decided that like oh this one roundabout is the right thing rather than thinking kind of holistically about that but it sounds it sounds like there's lots of things that that were considered here so thank you commissioner weich oh sorry commissioner i don't know who is next oh if commissioner weish has something that commissioner lee you haven't spoken yet sure actually um one of the things that i actually wanted to voice was one of the commenters um i think it was ken clark uh regarding the figures um it's figures it's on page 38 of the traffic impact study report it's figure 9 through 11 and it's it's really since we're on the topic of the positive offset on that it does reflect a center turning lane and when you look at it
103that that isn't the case so um just wanted to make sure that that was revised uh i don't want it to mislead um since it's basically talking about a potential conflict if people are turning into that lane but that that's the wrong assumption so just wanted to make sure that that was updated um oh and i'm gonna now that i've kind of talked on that i'm just gonna talk overall um i appreciate all the efforts um and i also appreciate all the public's comments on this this is obviously we have to talk about our priorities and in the climate emergency that we are in so um my comment last time was talking about strengthening non-motorized transit and i think a lot of the improvements that you've done have done that so porosity making sure that
104we have you know again pathways through i'm going to echo commissioner salve's comments with respect to coordinating with other neighborhoods i'm sorry to hear you didn't get uh were able to connect with the north side glenn but if you could keep trying that would be great right right so no i would love to see you know again greater connectivity um i like the addition of the cover part uh bus stop as well as again with the new aata or triple ata millage and the uh potential improvements in the next five years that we'll see we want to increase the likelihood that people are you know leveraging taking buses and so providing for that porosity in bike lanes as well as connectivity to leslie park is really important um again the traffic impact study if you
105could just make sure that that is actually it's page 38 and 41. um overall again just talking about the imbalance imbalance of housing to jobs in ann arbor and creating reduction of vmt also is considered through the lens of providing more trip generation locations closer to job attractions so i think in that uh we this is doing well i would love to see obviously all attempts towards creating you know electrified uh opportunities for specifically the apartment rentals as well but again overall i think you've done a magnificent job of grappling with the concerns we voiced last time so i do feel that while we tackle some of these smaller nuances um that those could be done you know while you guys are on your way to city council so thanks for again everybody's feedback on
106this is very important um this is a massive development so we want to make sure to get it right and leave no stones unturned so thank you for grappling thank you with our comments last time commissioner weich i just wanted to come back to something that was in my notes that i forgot to bring up in my initial comments was thank you for including um the consideration of the bike share so actually just piggybacking off of commissioner lee's comment and then just wanting to put a recommendation to as you think about that bike share electric bikes as well as electrified cargo bikes uh so that if the residents that are there in the least or um units they can then you know take trips to the grocery store without having to make a car trip
107um that is going to be um a good outcome yeah and so make sure you put that into the mix cool we'll do commissioner lee i have one kind of side practical question um are there going to be any kind of fail safes or redundancies what happens if there's a massive power outage in the area are you planning on offering for the for sales this is kind of a larger just question of grid resilience in general we just had a big power outage last week tuesday i think um that we saw so just with respect to um are there any considerations that you're making of i mean from generators things that nature i mean which actually require connection of natural gas but uh for for electric i think it's something that we have to consider
108uh regarding fail-safes just given our grid in in the condition that is in so whether it's solar batteries that are retaining you know backup power um whether it's so so my question is has consideration been given to that from the for sale electrified units it's something i think we all need to graph yeah no i think that that's another concern that we've had so um that was that was certainly something we've we've talked about and i don't think we have an answer on how to how to address that so it's part of the the learning process as we move forward i agree it's a concern thank you commissioner abrams hi um i'm kind of reluctant to speak because i feel like i have a different tone but maybe it seems like there's enough support for
109the project that i won't sync it so i i just want to say like i think i'm frustrated that it takes like nine volunteer commissioners and amazing members of the public so much time to just what i think is like it's like pulling teeth or like dragging the development community through the mud to try to get you and i don't mean this directly um at you but so many of the developers that we see come come here towards us like to kind of i think just be responsible for a shared problem like it's not the climate crisis is not our problem like the commission's problem or the city's problem right it's everybody's problem and so like we're not i don't know it just feels like we're not even asking for really radical stuff we're not
110asking for uh passive house standards or asking to you know talk about the embodied carbon of the project but like i think as anybody who works on putting you know uh anything to do with building construction we are responsible for a massive amount of carbon emissions and i just think we need to do something about that and so it doesn't it just seems like something that people should be voluntarily doing particularly if it is going to in the very near future make financial sense even maybe by the time this is actually under construction so it's very yeah it just feels very frustrating to me and so i while i also you know i'm appreciative of the of the things which are in the project i think we set our standards super low so um that's
111how i'm feeling and um yeah so you know and like i i want more housing in ann arbor i think i'm frustrated that in order to get it i think we have to make so many concessions to other things that are really important to us so that's all thanks um i agree with you um i'm i'm frustrated with this too i guess part of what i think is difficult is that um ann arbor has declared this climate emergency and that we have to acting on an emergency is different than acting in our normal lives and i think what we're trying to do is sort of get people to act like it's an emergency and i think what's happening is that people are taking small steps which is what we tend to do as human beings
112like really if we stop and think about our daily lives we don't want to have like a massive amount of change in our daily lives right you just you it's it's comfortable right to kind of keep going forward as normal and i think what we're it feels like this is burden is somewhat on our shoulders because we are part of the process of making these things happen and we know that we don't really have a lot of control over it but we are trying to push and inspire people to be able to take somewhat of a bold step and i think part of my frustration as well is that i see other people doing this in other places and so it's not like going to the moon or going to mars or going to neptune
113or something like that it's it is happening so that's the thing i think that is hard it's not necessarily it hasn't happened in your company right and so that's part of like what's so uncomfortable is like whoa who are vendors how does this work what happens when the power goes out there's just there's all these unknowns and for a big organization it's like whoa how do we how do we handle this you know this is this is this feels uncomfortable and um [Music] and i think we have to feel uncomfortable with where we are i think that's part of what's so hard and this may be a little hard you know i don't know here's a chance to tell your kids you really did something and it's hard for all of us i think to
114be able to really look at our lives and this is getting personal in a way that we don't usually get personal but it's like this is it we're like teetering in a lot of ways with what we're doing and we just can't do business as usual and so um it's we're in this really awkward position where we can't really make people do things we want to be able to inspire people to do things and we also want to kind of push people along too um and uh it's it's tough place i think for us to be i think we're all uncomfortable with the position that we're in in terms of what we can really ask people to do and you have done a lot there's been people up here that have just stood up there
115and said oh sorry this is my gig and so i i really do i want to acknowledge the things that you all have been doing because i think that's really important um and that you know taking a modest step is still taking a modest step some people don't want to take any step at all because it's just it's the margins are thin it's hard to get through our system it's really expensive i get it you know that um that's that's part of the that's part of the puzzle of how you're making all this stuff work right so i feel kind of hamstrung i feel frustrated i would love it if people embraced what we're asking them to do but i also understand that it's also difficult to get big ships to turn yeah and i
116think that's that you know the development community is a really big ship and there's been there's just procedures and ways that people have done things and relationships that people have with how they do business and that this is a big change so um [Music] i feel like i i can't really do a whole lot in terms of what you know what the tools that we have in front of us um but i share the frustration of just that i feel like we need to be acting like we're in an emergency too and that um the more people stick their toes out of the comfort zone and sort of test things the more that it's easier for us to be able to say to other people hey it's okay you know other people are trying this
117and and uh and we really need some good local examples basically of this like working out okay uh for people right um so we hope that you can be that i understand that you're kind of saying this is what we're doing too um and that you can't make all decisions there's a lot of other people behind you as well right um so that's all to say that like this is kind of a big opportunity for us here too because it's a lot of houses i mean it's a lot of houses um and and i think that's a good thing for a for for a lot of reasons and it would just be amazing if you all stepped up to the plate in that full way to be able to really um take it on and
118show that it can be done because i think it can i think that there's just been enough other places that are making it happen and i think part of what why it's happening in other places is that it's the north star from the beginning of the design process and when that happens then you like you are you're designing everything around that so that then adding the electric isn't you're doing kind of passive house stuff and you're thinking about orientation and stuff like that that is kind of driving a lot of design too and it's harder to tack things on kind of further into the design process and so i think the the places the other places where this is happening that's part of how it's happening is that people have that orientation from the very
119start and that it's a lot harder after you get this far into the um regulatory process to just you know say oh we're doing this other thing here too so um anyway i i'm i don't know if this changes anything in terms of you know how i'm you know what i'm going my on my diatribe about but um i'm i'm frustrated with this too i i i feel like again there's a lot of good things about this and it would just be like amazing if it could kind of really take it to the next level all i can do is just ask and hope that you would be inspired to be able to be that that group that would be willing to stick their necks out to really think about what that means in terms
120of what it looks like to be able to to do that well i feel you i feel you both um i understand exactly how you're feeling i appreciate it obviously um you know it's awkward for us too because there's there's policies but there's also you know we're not asking for a pud but it is a large project and and there's a lot of stakeholders involved so you know we we do see this as as as for us going you know above and beyond i know it's not enough for you i get that um but but we do think that you know what we're proposing certainly gets uh moving forward in in a direction that a lot of other developers wouldn't do on this site and you know that that that to us is important and
121and we're doing this really you know outside of of maybe what you know you can force us to do so um you know i i feel you i understand what you're saying i do appreciate it um and you know we'll look at some of these these other items um but but yeah we do need to move forward with our with our project anybody else okay um i guess we are on to a vote correct all right so it's both both motions as read this is the approval of the zoning with the two conditions to resolve all engineering and solid waste comments prior to scheduling for city council as well as the condition of the variants as well as the issuance the recommendation of the issuance to the wetland use permit as a reminder because this
122is a corresponding with a legislative decision rezoning the site plan will also progress to the city council for consideration commissioner mills yes commissioner gibrandal yes commissioner yes commissioner abrams no commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes commissioner clark yes commissioner weich yes uh motion carries thank you we appreciate all your feedback thank you okay i think we are on to um item 10 for public comment uh this is an opportunity for people to speak up to three minutes about any issue that is any issue actually and we'll first call on individuals here and then remote to speak during the public hearing press star 9 if listening by phone or use the raised hand feature viewing through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and then our meeting id 977-6634-1226 to unmute press
123star six city staff also callers that have raised their hand you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak please move to a quiet area for either method please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anyone present that would like to speak thank you sergey randall planning commission ken garber again i'd really like to address my comments uh mr lofrin um you've seen how much we care in this community um about our future our present i mean the climate crisis to many of us is something that keeps us up at night it's all we think about in our spare time and we're seeing our city climate action plans basically go up in smoke in real time not just tonight but in previous meetings with previous
124developers um you know um so i just like to ask you would you meet with me and others of us who are concerned about this and see if we can work something out dr langmore here we have a lot of smart people here in ann arbor uh dr langlord's former chair of biophysics at the university of michigan um co-founder of successful biotech company we had a pediatric neurosurgeon dr garton call in earlier today you know i'm a comparative dummy um ken clark another smart guy um i really think that that this can happen um and would be compatible with economic feasibility of your project i mean that's ultimately your decision but we really appreciate an in-person meeting to discuss it i really appreciate meeting with you definitely thank you um and thank you commission for
125really thoughtful discussion tonight there's not much more left to be said [Music] so i'm at a loss for words which may be at first so thank you [Applause] is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak [Applause] anybody remotely we do hugh garden you have three minutes to address the planning commission yeah i want to thank the global developer and the planning commission for the thoughtful efforts into this protocol and i want to ask the members of the planning commission to make an effort to speak to members of city council between now and the time this comes to a vote about your feelings it seems to me there's a very strong opportunity for the city council to move with its funds and its efforts to support the developer if the developer can
126find a way to get to the point that we all wish they would get to they said this is if this truly is a matter of dollars and it can be put in a dollar number per unit well we're going to vote soon enough for a large sum of money for climate action that's what that money should be for here's a great chance to spend that money in a way that will will guarantee us the carbon reduction that we want so please use your efforts to speak to members of city council i certainly will uh like we should be able to craft a plan if we're just talking about you know 40 to 50 per month per unit that's not that much money thank you thank you no other speakers all righty we are on
127to item 11 which is commission proposed business anybody have anything commissioner lee um i forgot earlier when we were doing commission reports about transportation one of the things that came up was there's a uh there's a i'm sorry what's the right word for it we're uh we are looking to basically eliminate right turns on red in downtown so i just wanted to uh the discussion came back about setbacks visibility and also kind of like pedestrian thoroughfare i'm sorry oh okay gotcha and so i just wanted to give you guys a heads up that that was passed um we supported the motion it's gonna go to city council but as far as kind of like from the land use we talked a lot about tc1 as the idea of the zero setback um and the interaction
128with the right-of-way so just wanted to give you guys a heads up that the downtown elimination of turn right on red is moving forward so that's it thanks thank you commissioner weich mr leonard did you decide about the michigan planning conference um i'm sorry i didn't get back to you yes i heard i think from you and commissioner clark we could support your attendance thank you for reminding me that would be helpful for a motion from the planning commission to support the attendance of commissioners clark and white to the planning conference this year okay commissioner dish and seconded by commissioner mills so do we do a little vote here uh voice vote would be fine all in favor say hi um now i will do what i can to find you a place to stay
129[Laughter] alrighty we are on to item 12 which is adjournment moved by commissioner white second invite mr abrams we are done 8 55. you