001call the housing board of appeals meeting to order at 1 30. brandi can you do the roll call please yes kristen schweijhoffer present jerry schulte tim durham here todd shachelski here andrew rasmussen here and lisa steltzer here for staff we have chris mcfarland here john riser here deborah williams here and myself brandi lewis and glenn dempsey excellent thank you all right before we have an agenda can i get a motion to approve the agenda a motion to approve the agenda all right thanks jerry is there a second i second thanks angie there's an approval in a second all in favor of approving the agenda please signify by saying aye aye opposed all right we have an agenda up now we are at public commentary there is three minutes per speaker i know we have some
002folks here in the room and it looks like we've got some folks online anyone who wishes to speak that is not part of the appeal today you may approach the podium okay not seeing a big rush brandi do we have anyone online i do not see anybody in the waiting room okay all right we are cruising through then the next item on our agenda is the approval of minutes we have the housing board of appeals meeting minutes from february 8th 2022 they are included in our packet i'd entertain a motion to approve the minutes i moved to go ahead all right i'll give todd the first angie will you second i'll second all right all in favor of approving the february minute please signify by saying aye aye opposed all right minutes are approved um
003new business i don't see any this is listed under unfinished business but i believe this is the first time we've heard this appeal so would this be new business yes okay all right so if we could just amend the agenda to note that this is under new business all right we have the appeal 22-1057 which is a variance application for 227 orchard hills ann arbor michigan 48104 there are some attachments in our packet including a staff report and then we will also hear from the appellant who's providing the staff report for the city i am all right chris thank you chris did you want to give the staff report okay thanks all the way from the path on here right i think yeah the background in the summary okay so the background the single family
004dwelling located at 227 orchard hills drive was built in 1955 and appears to be original construction the owner of the property requests one variance to the requirements of section 8 504 paren 4 parent b number 5 for handrails for exit stairways staff is unable to support granting of this variance the housing code requires a handrail at all flights of stairs with four or more risers this is similar to the current building code requirements found in the 2015 michigan residential code and previous versions each stair within the flight of stairs in question are half the rise four inch risers and choices deep 18 inch treads as allowable the low slope of the stairs does not constitute omission of the required handrail the 2015 michigan residential code requires a handrail on ramps exceeding a slope of one
005unit vertical and 12 units horizontal that's an 8.33 percent slope the slope of this flight of stairs is 25 percent three times as steep as a ramp which requires a handrail well accessibility is not required in single-family homes it would be unreasonable to expect a person with a wheelchair or walker to climb stairs as suggested in the owner's appeal the code at the time of construction which was the official building code of ann arbor from the 1929 council proceedings is ambiguous and can be interpreted to require no handrail or a handrail on one side it's the city's interpretation that the intent was to require a handrail on one side this is ultimately not relevant since the housing code is applicable to all dwellings without regard to whether they were constructed before or after the effective
006date reference section 8 501. application of chapter within the housing code all right thanks chris um are there any questions for staff before we move on to the appellate or do you want to hold your questions for staff until we also hear from the appellate okay i'm not seeing a lot of questions so who do we have here uh representing the um a palette hey there i'm jeffrey shocks monsoon hi jeff can you see and hear us okay somewhat look at uh did you have like a tiny little screen with all of us on there yeah oh that's tough sorry that's exactly um plus the mask and so i wish i was there in person i had planned it but i didn't get the official invite until friday which made it a little difficult to
007book the flight um i'd love to be able to provide a little background on kind of who i am and about the house and about the safety of the stairs as they exist and how they're safer than an equivalent stair that would not require a handrail um but that this is new to me and i'm just wondering how much time i have to be able to provide some background you know i think you had certainly this is uh your appeal so i certainly would encourage you to provide us the detail level of detail you think is necessary for us to make a decision i appreciate that thank you i was born and raised in troy i graduated from the university of michigan with two engineering degrees and i lived in ann arbor for more than
008a decade i was at that time that i saw the frankfurt white house i was running through the arboretum and this was a destination of mine and i would stop there we'd look at the house and would run back i moved to san francisco in 2003 where i practiced patent law and i invested in startups and with the proceeds of one of my investments i purchased the house at 227 northride hills from the son of mary palmer in 2009 my parents sue and gary cox who were in the audience today helped me manage and maintain the house the palmer house is a work of art its references tranquility rights one of its top 20 houses of all time it's celebrated as a national historic landmark it's a state of historic landmarks and also the county
009it's been the setting of countless advertisements in movies as the subject of two architecture books not just a page or a chapter but an entire book an architecture book on the house not just one but two and it was recently named as the favorite house of all houses on the airbnb platform by the airbnb ceo people come from around the world to live in this art piece for a few days they do do it because the house has been meticulously maintained in its original form at great expense for over 70 years when i became steward of the house i signed not only an easement with the frank lloyd wright foundation that i would not make any modifications but i also promised mary's son that i would take care of the house like his mother did
010this has been an expensive promise to keep this sheet or singles alone costing fifty thousand dollars we've never made a profit renting the house in airbnb and vrvo as the house has demanded every dollar that we have made and then some unlike many of the other ann arbor residents who rent their houses for football weekends i do not rent the palmer house to make money i do it because i'm the steward of an art piece and the brbo and airbnb allow me to reach the people who want to experience living in this art piece the city of ann arbor is asking me to add an 11 foot handrail to the front entrance i cannot do this without drilling into the walls without ruining the design and most importantly without breaking my promise to the palmer
011family i appear today i'm asking for a i'm variance to talk about the safety of the front entrance prepared to show that it's safer than an equivalent staircase that doesn't require handrails and i'm prepared to brainstorm a compromise but before we continue i need everyone to understand that adding an 11 foot handrail to the front entrance of an otherwise original condition frank lloyd wright masterpiece is more than a practical difficulty it's more like a practical impossibility and i can't see everyone's faces certainly behind the mask and at this distance and if it's possible to just give some thumbs up that people understand like what this art piece is that would be great i'm happy to continue to talk about it if people don't understand the mohawk is right here in ann arbor thank you does
012the board have any questions significance of the house what are other uh means of entry into the house can you describe them yeah there's um there's another entry it's in the back and the house is a ranch it's a single single level and so there's and there's two additional entries and one that has been blocked off that's a very narrow entry but the entry in the back is a double door does that have stairs to access it i know i'm familiar with the front of the house and the driveway you know parking up top just i know this is the main entrance i'm just trying to get to you know other means yeah and this i believe the interest in the back has two steps um the the four inch rise is the is the
013design that was used throughout the step throughout the entire house and throughout the design both interior and exterior and so i believe the rear entrance has maybe one or two of those steps two steps we're hearing from the audience thanks awesome awesome okay um let's talk a little bit about the safety and it's important to me that the house is safe and both because i don't want people to get hurt but also as a light here i know the potential liability of the visitors fall and how that could jeopardize my financial security the steps are safe in their current form they're half the height and they're twice the depth of normal stare by several laws they're not even considered stairs it's not a theoretical question of whether the front entrance is safe it's rather a
014fact the palmer house has been around for 70 years over six thousand guests have visited the palmer house in the last decade none have ever fallen there's another design if we simply moved a couple of the steps around we can make it so that there's two steps and a five foot landing and another two steps and that alternative design would not require any handrails because there wouldn't be four steps in a row we could easily do this because of the landing it would be possible that the total and because of the possible ride or the total rise of the steps is so small it would completely eliminate the need for a handrail but i urge you to think about like how much safer the current design is than this equivalent design that doesn't require any
015handrails right now we could actually go up the stairs with a wheelchair my mother is in the audience when she was struggling with a reconstruction from her knee and she had a walker and the walker fits on the steps that's how deep they are and so like i don't i can't imagine anything safer than a walker that fits in the entire step while your staff member has noted that the unreasonable to to ask a person with a wheelchair or a walker to find normal steps we are actually thankful that our house is accessible by people in wheelchairs and in a walker i think the design is perfect the way it is and i urge you to come out and see the house if you think otherwise i'm happy to to consider any other compromise but
016i simply cannot drill into the walls not without breaking a promise thank you are there questions yes i have several okay todd go ahead can you hear me okay yes i can okay thank you i can't see you but i could hear you no worries um in the context of the easement and or promise that you have with the family and or the frank lloyd wright foundation i believe it's called what does that mean if you need to make this adjustment to meet code i'm not sure to be honest i promised that i would not make any modifications to the to the structure of the house and so when when the house was for sale and honestly it was sold as a house not as a piece of work i've since then talked to sotheby's
017and christie's they think that the houses were somewhere in the close of the order of 10 million i paid less than a million this is public record the my bid was not the highest bid it was the second highest and the person that was the highest bid and wanted to add an addition to the house it's a smaller house it's 2 000 square feet instead they wanted to change the structure and mary palmer's son and didn't want that he wanted the house to remain exactly as it is and he accepted my bid lower than the highest offer but because i had a promise to never change the house or to modify it in any way okay thank you i just wanted respectfully to understand potential other compromises as part of this yes okay in a
018typical four-step um stairway the one that would rise you know 30 inches or whatever the total rise is and the handrail would be about two and a half feet but because the slope is so low and the steps are so wide and the height of each step is so low and the handrail would be close to 12 feet long it's about 11 and a half feet it's not insignificant the the front cover of these architecture books on this house show this particular front entrance and it would be marred by that tan rail it's as if the the board is asking me to put screws through a picasso i think i have a question so you had mentioned the the visual look of the staircase being very important but i also hear that you're very willing
019to change that to not need an appeal could you speak to that a little bit more because it seems that those are adoptions yeah thank you for the question um if you look at the some of the photos and i think there's a couple photos and frankly wright did an incredible difficult job of creating these horizontal lines and if you look at the bricks between the bricks adjacent bricks the mortar is flush with the brick but between the horizontal lines of the bricks the mortar is recessed and this which was done in great difficulty was to draw these incredible horizontal lines uh throughout the entire house but specifically the front entrance and so i urge you to look at those photos in a pocket and every single one of those bricks took probably an extra
02010 minutes to lay down and there's thousands of bricks and they did that for this horizontal line you can't create a handrail and that's horizontal it has to be diagonal and so when i talk about modifying the steps they would continue this horizontal line and they wouldn't disrupt those horizontal lines that had been created by this masterpiece thank you i have a question go ahead in your arrangement with the polymer family did you specify that you were going to use uh the house as a rental it did and they were incredibly expected about that they knew that this house was not truly livable and that you that this house the way that frank lloyd wright designed it is not something that a family would live in but they wanted it to be shared like a
021picasso you know hung in the dia and so when i talked to them about the vrbo plan they were excited about that they warned me that it was expensive to to keep up the house and i was prepared for that again i haven't made a single dollar in this house in 13 years it's there as an art piece and airbnb and brbo is my platform to be able to reach people from around the world people have flown in from brazil and japan just to stay at this house what year did you make that arrangement uh when i purchased it in 09 okay and it went on to the vrbo platform immediately thereafter and we reached out to the city because at the time it was very confusing there's only three houses on vrbo at that
022moment it's very early on and there was laws on the city around better practices but there weren't any laws about a short-term vacation rental and you know people come out to the house and they scratch their head they said this doesn't fit into any of these categories we were honestly just ahead of our time and so at the time the city said we don't know what to do with you and we'll treat you as a private residence and so when this ordinance came up recently and said you need to add a handrail it was quite the blind side that we had been operating for 13 years and we've been told by the city we've been listed on the front page of the city of commerce right now at the front page of airbnb and this
023particular movement has um has honestly been quite a feeling of a significance as if someone doesn't quite understand what we have here i have a question for chris or maybe glenn what year was the handrail requirement added to the rental code not completely sure um i believe it's original to the housing code though i don't think it was added the house was approved as a primary residence so hey glenn if you drilled into the steps to make a handrail how many intermediary posts would you have to have from the bottom to the top look at it take some measurements is it more than two like if one was at the bottom and one was at the top and then the railing just went like that and it was a steel piper and you just drilled
024into the steps not sure it's possible though i think it's possible if you have the you know right supports i guess yeah okay that's all i have thanks glenn for coming up a point of discussion for the board you know understanding and i don't i am no frank lloyd wright expert but i know entrances were very important and the impression you got walking into a building actually rode by yesterday uh if no one was there my intent was to try the stairs i think the city you know absolutely in terms of interpreting the current code it falls under you know i i agree with the interpretation and the requirement when i look at the three criteria we would need to give a variant and i think regardless of if somebody publishes something and you know
025that stays with the building for the rest of his life presumably or into perpetuity but practical difficulties are undue hardship probably doesn't take the artistic point into view uh doesn't violate the intent of the section i think that's a difficult one but does it jeopardize public health and safety this is such an unusual tread and riser dimension that i think it may be helpful to the board to visit you know some of us and actually walk the stairs to see what it feels like that potentially you could say because of this unusual arrangement um you know and i appreciate the city so even even a ramp at a like a 1 12 slope you need a handrail but but a ramp is even a different feel than a stairway like this so that's one approach
026the board could consider thanks jerry and this is kristen i wanted to say i this is an area um architecturally outside my uh professional scope so i thought who might know more about keeping architectural integrity in line and so i reached out to the historic district commission and i asked what what did they normally do right because that's something as i understand it would be similar and while this doesn't fall under the city of ann arbor's historic district as is been noted uh it's it's listed in other places as historic districts and the information i had was that generally speaking they don't provide variances for health and safety items there may be some ways to address it like going into mortar versus drilling into brick or the stairs themselves that could be removed and repaired
027should it no longer be a rental property and no longer need a handrail in that same way so again this is just information that i provided whether that's completely applicable to this situation i just needed to get a little more information for myself given that generally speaking we're often looking at um a little bit of a different situation the rise and runs usually are far less than what we see as acceptable i have a couple questions so is this considered a rental property yes that's my understanding it's a rental property he is a registered property i've sold real estate in ann arbor for 38 years and i admire mid mods and i love medcaps and oslers and olenki's and all the beautiful architects um in the ann arbor area many many many times those handrails
028although there are handrails certainly would not pass code when i'm selling those beautiful homes and i think that that rise i mean i personally feel like it's a safe rise and i've walked i'm probably probably visited that house four or six times in my 38 years being in ann arbor i've never felt unsafe on those steps maybe maybe i didn't need a handrail at the time i'm getting older maybe i would want one now i i think that they're it's a beautiful beautiful property and i i personally hate to see it compromised but i think it's a hard thing to say what are we supposed to do just ignore the code to the city and ever i think it kind of trumps any agreement that you've made with anybody with the historic society and frank
029lloyd wright i don't know what the solution is but i would sure like to see i would sure like to see no handrail put up there but i'm sure i'm in the minority up here but i think it's a beautiful property thanks lisa i guess i had one more question maybe could someone speak to the winter maintenance of the stairs given that we have a lot of snow and ice that was the one place where i felt like um i didn't see that addressed in the uh packet in terms of safety they actually don't plow the driveways they are out there um don't want to be four inches or whatever especially if there's a quite incoming the results applied sometimes you don't like that because the steps are pounding obviously your poured okay thank you
030so shovels and salt if necessary yes okay thank you are the rentals year round there excuse me okay all right there's a couple i mean it feels like the board members that can appreciate the house and that don't want to see the handrail [Applause] but they assure you that every single person in the room including myself zooming in like wants the house to be safe and so i'd be happy to have a brainstorm around what are alternatives and if it is hey include handrails during the winter months and we can slot a handrail into the steps and if there is a hey please include a walker in the garage so that anyone could use that if it's hey you need to have a notice on each of the platforms that we use or even have
031someone initialized that there's there's not the handrail i'm happy to go down any of these paths i just can't drill into the mortar and the bricks may i ask why you're not able to drill into the mortar nor the bricks great so then it goes back to my original um you know please i'll try a different approach imagine you were growing up and one of your neighbors owned a picasso the guernica the really really big one 26 feet long and your neighbor passed away and that painting was being sold in a garage sale and someone wanted to buy it and break it up because it doesn't fit in the house it's not conventional but you saw something special in that you walk by it all the time and you went up to the owner and
032said look i'll buy the painting and i'll put it in the detroit institute of arts and i'll maintain it for years and years so that people could see this and the owner said great and that's what you did and you put it into the dia and for 13 years people saw it and it was celebrated and people came from around the world to see that picasso and when you put it in originally the city of detroit came out and said wow it's a really big painting we don't really know what to do with something that big it doesn't really fit into our rules but go ahead and then years later it was changed and someone said look you have to put screws in the painting to secure it to the wall it's not really a
033hardship it's just a screw just put a screw through the picasso and screw it into the wall and you're like this is a picasso like i can't put a screw through picasso and they're like well it's unsafe and they're like no it hasn't been 13 years it's been on that wall it's been safe as can be and they're like well that's the rules you have to put screws into the picasso it's really simple and the inspector walks over with the screwdriver and screw and starts to put that screw through the picasso that's what we have here this is america's greatest architect of all time and this is one of his top 20 houses of all time and it's on the airbnb platform so that people can appreciate this the city of ann arbor is acting
034like that city of detroit saying this is the rule you have to fix this but there's nothing that needs to be fixed i beg you to come out to the house and walk the stairs they're not even stairs according to certain rules okay thank you hey one more thing having been to the house several times part of the beauty is walking up to those house and experiencing those steps but is there any way that i don't remember but is there a different way that we could gain access and access and entrance and egress and to and not utilize those front steps and i think so as mentioned earlier by the other question um there is a rear entrance and it only has two steps it opens into double doors can you park in front of
035it sorry um what was the question can you park in front of the rear door that has two steps good guests park there and access the house that way and it's about 30 feet from the doors where you would park probably no further than the front door to be honest all right i appreciate all the discussion and is there are there other questions does the board feel ready to make a decision did you want to make a site visit we have a couple of paths ahead of us i would like to make a site visit i'm in support of that as well okay so i think what we'll probably do is um what is my smart word table table thank you gosh it's been a minute since we've done this table the appeal pending a
036site visit by the board to meet uh open meeting act i think we have to go in two groups or more if or or a designated subset of the board could go um to as you see get a feel for the stairs um they are an unusual rise and run um and and to make a sometimes putting your your yourself in those uh places can help make a decision yep it's hard i mean i think i probably know where the house is to start to visualize and not you know it doesn't seem like you said they're further rise and run than most but i think we should probably visit for sure okay so thank you absolutely [Music] i know it's intimidating i promise we're all smiling under our masks okay i'm gonna show our water
037to our neighbor okay yeah and they're all in that three and three quarter inch then the 18 inch yeah that was clear in the packet almost 13 years now i've seen one person negotiate the front steps with the walker yes i can see it thank you all right i don't think anyone using a walker is going to use a well handrail use two hands on the walker so i don't know [Music] the handrail is certainly for multiple reasons right so it would be not only for people who may need additional assistance uh could be emergency egress as well making sure that there's you know something to hang on to could be for those uh times before your your snow and ice removal company gets out there but i appreciate the demonstration and i think it
038helps visualize the the long with the unusually long width of the step right now i think it's not an accessible entrance so yeah and i don't think we're looking for all right so i think we're looking for a motion to table this appeal pending a site visit does someone want to make that motion sure yes okay can you say it again you have to say those words all right are you good brandi no no so todd was making a motion to table the appeal pending a site visit thank you you're welcome sorry that's okay i'll take it and angie seconds that all right all in favor aye aye aye opposed okay so okay sorry uh just to note tim said uh opposes the site visit or the tabling correct okay all right so that is
039our new business is there any other unfinished business [Applause] yes yes so what we'll do is we'll work with the city staff and and you as the representatives to coordinate a mutually agreeable time for everybody we're not just going to show up yeah absolutely um yep absolutely and i imagine it'll probably be in the coming weeks it's not like it's going to happen tomorrow but certainly we also want to move forward on the appeal um so we aren't leaving this lingering for too long we usually meet once a month so hopefully we can get it scheduled before the next meeting but understand that you know it's summertime and schedules get busy okay any reports from staff nope all right then i guess i'm looking for a motion to adjourn i will motion to adjourn all
040right jerry motions to adjourn i'll second because i don't ever get to make motions all in favor aye all right all right thank you thanks everyone for your time today we'll be in touch