Ann Arbor Planning Commission Meeting 5/17/2022

001welcome everyone to the tuesday may 17th meeting of the ann arbor planning commission while we are conducting this meeting in person we will provide virtual opportunities to address the commission during public hearings please be patient if there are technical issues mr leonard will you call the role yes commissioner mills commissioner gibb randall president commissioner sovay commissioner abrams here commissioner hammerschmidt here commissioner dish here commissioner lee here commissioner clark commissioner weich here uh we have a quorum we have seven members present just a reminder that it takes six affirmative votes to advance a petition all right we are on to item three which is the approval of the agenda uh may i have a motion to approve the agenda commissioner lee moved my commission really seconded by commissioner white any discussion of the motion no discussion

002all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the motion carries alrighty item four is the minutes of the previous meeting may i have a motion to approve the minutes of may 4th 2022 commissioner dish moved by commissioner just seconded by uh commissioner abrams is there any discussion the minutes no discussion of the minutes all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the motion carries we are on to item five which is reports from uh city administration and city council um commissioner yes council member district yes either way so council met last night and passed a million dollar budget and it includes seven hundred thousand dollars for the master plan update and i can't think of anything that totally jumps out for planning interest but perhaps mr leonard um i think the

003budget might include an additional planning position on a temporary basis as well so i'm still going to moderate your work program [Laughter] excellent well that is a long time coming so i am very happy to hear that news that's great can i also add that uh commissioners lee hamershk and abrams were reappointed to planning commission last night thank you for bringing that up commissioner weights we are glad that you are continuing to be with us mr leonard any report from you no reports this evening any commission officers or liaisons have anything to say nobody alrighty we are on to item six which is audience participation um next is uh there 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

004please note that the planning commission will be holding dedicated public hearings on 330 detroit street site plan proposed amendments to the anniversary code of chapter 55 unified development code we have a couple of other items as well but they do not have public hearing tonight if you wish to address the planning commission on other matters besides these first two items now is the appropriate time to speak on this matter press nine if you're listening by phone or use the raised hand feature viewing through the web link for phone access call eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven and enter meeting id nine seven seven six six three four one two two six city staff will select callers that have raised their hand and use the last three digits of your phone number

005or by name if available for those accessing through the web link you'll hear an auditing 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 for any speaker please state your name and address at the beginning of the comments first though anybody that's present that would like to address the planning commission before we get to the uh online callers speakers alrighty um any virtual hands raised at this point mr leonard no virtual hands raised okay seeing none and we will uh i will close the public hearing and move on to item seven uh which is the public hearings for the next business meeting so mr leonard could you please appraise us yes we have

006two public hearings news public hearing scheduled for the june 7 2022 uh commission meeting first is 340 depot street site plan and plan unit development rezoning this is a proposed 7 800 square foot development consisting of four residential units and 5 891 square foot commercial use on ground floor on a .15 acre site currently zone z1 c1b being proposed for pud second is the wizard firework special exception use at 2449 west stadium boulevard an application for temporary outdoor sales at westgate shopping center in the parking area facing jackson road to set up a temporary tent to sell fireworks sporting goods and seasonable seasonal items over approximately 10 parking spaces thank you very much we will move on then to our regular business part of the meeting which is item 8a i would like to introduce

007330 detroit street site plan for planning commission approval this is the proposed construction of a 14 unit residential building on-site parking spaces on 1850 square feet of ground tail ground floor retail on a 0.23 acre parcel zone d2 in the kerrytown district uh just give me a moment here we've got several people to promote be great and uh the petitioner has 10 minutes to present to the planning commission so okay to the petitioner is there anybody that you are expecting that i have not brought into the meeting i don't think so i think you've got them all thanks brett okay and will any of you be sharing a visual as part of your powerpoint or as part of your 10-minute presentation excuse me jim well i think jim plans to when mark is going to

008talk okay you all set uh should be all set right good evening thank you all for your time tonight i'm greg kopp from mabd the co-developers of this project participating from our office here at south state commons joining me from our team tonight are our builder partner tom fitzsimmons from hearing contracting our civil engineer kathy kinett from macon engineering and our architects mark reuter and jim strivens from reuter associates we're excited to present our project 330 detroit street bringing new residential units to the kerrytown area and a currently under utilized site with no stormwater treatment replacing two obsolete buildings in the surface parking lot the building will be a leed gold certified project we've developed a preliminary plan with our lead consultant catalyst partners to meet that standard which includes significantly exceeding code requirements for

009energy efficiency the building also will have a green roof and ev charging for every residential unit and with that i guess we're here to answer questions but i'd like to turn it over to uh mark to give a brief overview of the project design are you uh okay can you hear me everybody okay go ahead all right um jim uh in my office who is the project architect for this will be running the uh slides while i'll be talking and so i'll have jim put up the um the images there okay the first image really is a google 3d earth photograph of detroit street which i want to spend a little bit of time on just saying how we drive the forum for the building anyway as you can see it starts way down at

010the end of where the people's food co-op starts and it proceeds up past the agricultural building or the white swan building as it's sometimes known or a mav developments building past the farmers market and passed some other buildings all the way now this street has a very definite sign of character because it cuts through other streets creating many opportunities for unique buildings starting down at the people's food co-op which is a interesting building going past the farmers market and then we also have 415 detroit streets right down at the point here which is a really interesting little flat iron building and then it goes past ziggerman's uh delicatessen there which has its face sort of sheared off so there's a lot of interesting things that happen on the street and that's what gave us some

011inspiration for how to do this building so jim let's go to the next uh slide please so part of the inspiration for this was the market building here which was built a number of years ago as an addition to the white swan building and we are using design elements that have been borrowed from this building particularly the large heavy base on this building the concrete base the brick and then a lighter top in this case it's a green spanner glass and green curtain wall so that kind of gave us the idea about how to approach uh this building so let's go to the next slide then please jim and so as you can see here there are a number of features that we've incorporated here and one of those is quite a lot of open

012areas and crenellations along the edge of the building this gets us a massing situation which the building is designed into three discrete elements the there is a patio open area alongside of suite 101 here which is step back from the sidewalk giving a nice little sitting area or patio area for the users of those buildings and there is the parking that is shown in green and then down in the right hand corner is the ramp to the lower level where there's additional parking down there the building is set back from the detroit street filling station about 54 inches i think it is and back from what used to be jessica's apothecary is set back from that for constructability purposes you also should note that there is a stairway exposed to the sidewalk there and that's

013the main fire exit and it has a lot of glass in the front and it exposes a lighted steel sort of sculptural stairway which would be a kind of a nice pedestrian asset there there is a little area off of the main beside just to the north of the ramp down in the basement there is a little area for a light vehicle to pick up a private trash from the residence and they will just pull in there pick up private trash and haul it to an offside height uh storage and disposal area uh let's go to the next slide okay here are three perspectives and um let's go to the top left-hand hand one there um the you can see the heavy rusticated base that's concrete there and excuse me [Music] sorry um above that

014is the a brick um curtain or a brick elevation that is um taking the um that is that is hiding the uh facade of the residential building there and then the white curtain wall system or not curtain wall but rather white metal panel system is a light sort of element on the top and over the entrance way is a sort of a placeholder for a artistic sculptural canopy that will later be designed and incorporated as a as a design feature here on the other facade and jim can point this out on the south um the area is a are panels for arch or decorative elements and [Music] the lower lower materials there are a very dark vitrified brick and the area is has quite a lot of open glazed areas decorative panels and it has

015a lot of landscaping set in the indentations there upon the right hand side is upper right you can see how much area is devoted to outdoor private use for residents there's a large patios on the south west side there and that also helps the building step back a little bit from from the filling station and if you were to go down the ramp you'll also see the the um the mural that's painted on the north side of the um billing station there that will be exposed it could be lighted so that that mural won't be covered up so i think there's some large glazed areas on the top and many balconies and i think that sort of wraps up my end of it here and i think if you later have questions uh jim and

016i'll be able to answer those so um on to the next person is that all from the petition team yeah i think that's all we had uh brett and matt if matt wanted to add something uh to that we're obviously here for questions yep okay thank you i guess i'll uh kind of wrap up a little bit of summary here really and highlight project evolution but really on this one there wasn't a lot um so again what we're looking at a brief summary here it's about 32 000 square foot mixed use building as they mentioned 14 uh units and approximately 2 000 square feet of retailer office space on the ground level which would be located kind of towards that tr you know the point of the triangle area there they are going going obviously

017as mentioned for lee gold certification that enabled them to get an extra premium about i believe it's about 123 yes so three the base far is 200 percent in the d2 district so by utilizing the lead premiums for environmental sustainability they're up they were able to get up you can go a little bit higher but they're at 323 percent um so they will be providing lead um petitioner can highlight some of those methods and they did a highlight on that um they are uh sporting uh they are going to be providing sporting providing a uh vegetated roof so about 3 500 square feet of a vegetated roof um also additional or not additional but eevee parking infrastructure will be provided um previously that was and actually when the plan was originally submitted this would have

018been a project that would have won went all the way to city council um but as i'm sure hopefully plant cushions weren't aware tonight um this is an approval now because it obviously fits within the zoning so this is a by right approval by the planet commission here tonight um and again there's there's really uh the design matches pretty closely to what the design review board had had seen and what they had recommended um the petitioner really worked the trickiest things probably are obviously as you probably know now there's no natural features on the site there's no trees no wetland or anything else like that so nothing's going to be disturbed kind of the trickiest thing was working out some of the access points with our traffic engineer regarding the drives on detroit as well

019as fifth in addition to the solid waste but obviously both of those issues have been solved to the satisfaction of city staff um and really that kind of summarized up and of course staff is recommending approval of the project at this time uh let me scan through my notes here see if there's anything that i highlighted and missed um no i i that is it and i am uh again staff is recommending approval and i'm also available for any questions thank you all righty we will move on to the public hearing for this um petition and this is the opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about the proposed 330 detroit street site plan if you wish to address the planning commission on this item press star nine if lifting listening by phone

020or use the raised hand feature viewing through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id that have raised 977-6634-1226 hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name if available for those accessing through the web link 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 sense so that we may hear you clearly for any speaker please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments first is anyone present here that would like to speak to the planning commission on this you may come forward and state your name and address and then you will get three minutes to share your thoughts hi uh my name is matthew

021banks i'm representing detroit street failing station on detroit street corner of catherine street um and uh thank you for the opportunity to speak uh you know at the filling station we really uh are looking forward to the opportunity of working with uh the city and uh our local neighbors and developers mave development on the building the building's terrific uh we love all the positives of the building our concerns about the building are not about its mission or what it's like when it's completed but we have concerns about us operating at the same time that the building is under construction at the filling station we're veterans of a number of these projects the dda streetscape project uh you know ended up taking three times longer and a couple years longer on different sites to complete these

022projects have a huge effect on our business losing our utilities for a day losing having diminished business for a week or two weeks can really make or break our business um i don't know how many of you have been in our business but our business is pretty unique to ann arbor uh although we run on very thin margins it's because we have a big heart uh we support a lot of people in the community that are very underrepresented people who may be just out of prison people in the recovery community people who don't have a bank account people who don't have id students musicians you name it we support a lot of people uh and we really love our home in detroit street uh again we look forward to this you know opportunity of working

023with mav but we were really looking for you know having a voice in what the construction site staging looks like we'd really like some assurances from the city about when operations happen can we keep noise down can we keep idling trucks down uh what can we do to all work together to really keep this a great neighborly project um so there's so much that we like about it uh you know kind of an over overriding thing is you know that we feel like we need some of these concessions uh to keep our business going if we can't get assurances uh you know the owner of our business is really thinking about not keeping the business going and that would be a real loss for our community it's a lot of work to go through these

024projects to uh try and keep business afloat when when things are 30 more seconds by construction so we're really looking at at what we can do to work together we've met with mav they're super they're they're really straightforward and understanding uh and you know i i personally see this as an opportunity for all of us uh to proceed you know together in a positive way i think at nav they probably feel just like we do when we're doing well and they're doing well the whole city is doing well so we really look at working together on this project the positives of this building are great for our neighborhood but we don't want the positives to be outweighed by the negatives we don't want to lose our business uh we need some help probably with this

025uh and that's really why i came here tonight to talk to you so i really appreciate your time thank you anybody else from the audience that would like to have their three minutes please state your name and address hi i actually have two letters to read so i may go over just a little bit so i'm lisa young i'm the chair of the public market advisory commission for the ann arbor farmer's market and my first letter is from one of our long-term vendors carlene goetz of riga michigan she says i'm a long-term vendor at the ann arbor farmer's market and i have learned of the upcoming construction of a housing project the detroit street project the construction phase of this project could be very detrimental to the market a jewel of the city and adjacent

026businesses parking is limited and appears to be reduced even more by this project noise dust and construction activities could greatly interfere with the existing businesses many of the businesses in the city uh were lost as the result of the pandemic and we don't need another interference to follow if the city sees fit to approve this project the least they can do is add construction restrictions to the approval these should include using fifth street to stage the construction and limiting uh dusty activities and noisy activities from interfering with the market on wednesdays and saturdays and at times with the neighboring restaurants during their busy meal times while this might be an approval uh an approved use of the property for this area it should not be developed at the sacrifice of existing buildings all of these

027small businesses provide necessary services for a residential a residential community every measure is to preserve them should be enforced throughout the development process these small businesses cannot survive through two years of turmoil at their front doorstep stage the construction on 5th street side and place restrictions on the construction process to be fair to those who are already located next door and across the street so and then my letter as uh chair of the commission the commission is charged with uh providing support and stewardship from the ann arbor farmers market and um as has been expressed by the detroit filling street station we are also concerned about the construction phase of the project the project itself looks beautiful a lovely use of that space but we are concerned about what will happen as as the construction

028and i as you all know the annober farmers market has been the heart of ann arbor's local food system for over a century it not only provides fresh and healthy food for the from the surviving surrounding farms uh into the city but it's also crucial for food access within the city and contributes to the economic and social sustainability of food and farming businesses in ann arbor washington county and beyond so the public market commission is concerned about the construction at the detroit street site especially for the market itself the sunday artisans market and the neighboring businesses so i propose that the any impacts that will happen because of the construction be mitigated and minimized in the following ways first create a document that has clear and transparently identifies those potential impacts of the construction project

029to develop a plan in conversation with the farmers market staff and the neighboring businesses to minimize the impacts of the construction and then told regular meetings throughout the construction project with the market staff and the neighboring businesses to provide regular updates on the various phases of construction specific issues that should be addressed in the plan are reduction of noise and dust as carlene has already mentioned and also thinking about the specific impact of parking on detroit street and as you also already all know that detroit street's a cobblestone street and that really provides some of the historic character to that area and so that's something else we should should think about preserving um you need to wrap it up okay so uh as we've said that the detroit there that suggestion is that things move

030to fifth avenue that might block some traffic but i i work at the university and there's a lot of traffic blockage right now at south university and east university um so uh doing this as uh detroit filling station has said it will um help with fixing residents and also be a good neighbor i think we hear what you're saying and it sounds like it's just concluding and summarizing what you've already said so thank you for your time so any virtual commenters or is there one more sorry about that mr garber thank you acting charity randall on ken garber 28 hammer hill court yeah i urge the petitioner and commission to take the concerns of mr banks and miss young to heart yeah i know the owner of the filling station and to hear that she

031may be considering giving up ownership is it would mean this whole social project that is that restaurant would probably be lost [Music] about the market and you all know all about its value um but yeah 330 detroit street this is an excellent project in the petitioners design review board application dated october 13 2021 the petitioner wrote that quote the building will be designed as a lead gold building and includes sustainable systems such as a green roof geothermal heating and cooling and operable windows in commercial and residential spaces i was especially thrilled to read the part about geothermal however i don't see geothermal installations in the site plan drawings and geothermal was not mentioned in tonight's briefing documents or in the petitioner's presentation or the staff presentation so there's some doubt creeping in does the petitioner

032still intend to use geothermal heating and cooling if so fantastic but if not why the change in plans as i have commented before commissioned in council ad nauseum it's critical for new construction to be all electric to avoid locking in decades of unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions from gas combustion in terms of efficiency geothermal would be ideal although i imagine it's a challenge on this site with its small footprint and high flow area ratio but if not geothermal i hope the petitioner will be installing a vrf or mini split air source heat pump system as many other local projects are doing leed gold by itself does relatively little to reduce emissions compared to electrification it's 2022 the gas furnace is a technology that no longer has any role in new residential construction i hope the original

033geothermal plan remains in place or alternatively air horse air source heat pump technology thank you anybody else come on up and state your name and address and you have three minutes to present your comments hello i'm stephanie stoffer i'm a resident of ann arbor township but i am the current ann arbor farmer's market manager um and i just wanted to reiterate a lot of things that have been said but also increase the the awareness about the impact that this may have on our vendors again we're looking to be partners with the development we really like all the environmentally forward aspects that they've discussed but we are concerned about the impact of the staging on detroit street will have on our vendors not only would it be very dusty and noisy during market hours of operation

034which may make it difficult for vendors to actually produce and sell their products and make it dust on the vegetables people may not want to buy those things people may not want to come to the market because it's very loud so we would love if there would be a way that we could actually make sure that during the wednesday market and during the saturday market we could be certain that there would not be any construction happening at the same time we would also love it if excuse me if the project could be staged on 5th avenue because it's not just a parking issue for us it's that we have specific vendors with very large vehicles that use the detroit street area for loading loading their product and these are excuse me vendors that have large

035heavy orchard equipment apples and things of this nature and they just would not be able to fit in the area whatsoever if they lose the angled parking in that area not to mention the turn radius might be untenable when the fence comes in in the plan that i have seen so we would love it if these concessions could be discussed and we could work out a way so that the project benefits everyone and does not have a detrimental impact on the market it's our 103rd birthday this year and we would love to see that continue very much into the future and we'd love to see some assistance coming from all parties to make this work for all thank you very much thank you anybody else from the audience alrighty any virtual commenters none indicated okay

036since we see no more speakers i will close the public hearing and read the proposed motion the ann arbor city planning commission approves the 330 detroit's detroit street site plan dated march 22 2022 as a site plan complies with all applicable requirements of the unified development code and other applicable laws ordinances standards and regulations moved by commissioner lee seconded by commissioner hammerschmidt discussion commissioner dish it is exciting to see this project but i cannot i cannot emphasize enough how important it is that the ecosystem of that area of the city survive its construction we cannot afford to lose the farmer's market you're not limited speak away one more second we can't afford to lose the farmer's market we can't afford even to lose a handful of vendors from the farmer's market it is a centerpiece

037of our sustainability efforts to have local food it is something that we are spending lots of money very happily on through our greenbelt monies now to preserve farming and to bring to to make farmland affordable to people who want to buy into this kind of work it would make no sense for us to allow a development that would um or for us to allow a development to proceed in a way that would um hamper our farmers market in addition detroit street filling station is not only the only vegan restaurant in town which i appreciate very much i'm not a vegan but i'm a vegetarian and i love being able to eat every single thing on the menu and just like the movie diner i could just eat right down one side if no you're all

038too young anyway the but in addition as mr banks mentioned detroit street filling station probably does more than any other business in our city any other commercial business in our city to support the recovery community and returning citizens and young people who need jobs while they pursue their dreams and so my question is what i don't i don't know what can we do mr leonard what are we allowed to do as a planning commission in helping to place constraints on or help facilitate productive relations for for construction and i will tell you that i have spoken with our city administrator he has a list of names to contact i'm going to add a couple names to that list but i i want to know what we can do as a board here what is within

039our power my recommendation would be to consider a condition if desired to approval of the plan that that condition is that the petitioner work with city staff to optimize and to the greatest extent minimize adverse impacts to that area during construction i would stop short of making decisions about that that is there was some comments about specifically where to stage because there's a lot of factors that go into that that neither i nor this commission would be the appropriate um bodies to make those decisions but i think it would be appropriate to establish a condition along those lines that would mandate that dialogue a dialogue occur and but to an extent leave that to the city staff that would be making those decisions about the most appropriate way and to the best ability to minimize

040impacts can we in addition to in addition to the idea of working to uh make a plan for optimizing and mitigating can we also say that we want ongoing meetings or not yeah um again i would you can again i would i would set the expectation that this conversation happened between um city staff and the petitioner some of that happens on a regular basis through regular right-of-way inspections and the like but again i would be i that's not objectionable to me but i don't know what that frequency or standard or who the parties would be again i think the appropriate condition would be that you expect as a plane commissioner as part of this that that dialogue will occur and both parties will come to that um with good intention to try to minimize the

041adverse impacts commissioner abrams just quickly um maybe we could add to that condition um that representatives from the public market advisor commission the farmers market also be at the table i think that was your intention uh commissioner dish that it not just be the petitioner and planning and city staff yeah so just a just a asterisk there commissioner lee um i see actually mr kowalski as a comment so i'd like to yield basically my time to mr kowalski and then to the petitioner to try and address um some of these concerns so i'd like to hear from them about what they're planning to do to mitigate so thank you for acting as facilitator commissioner lee i should have noticed that thank you uh mr kowalski please thank you you'd have to yield your time to

042me but thank you um so i just wanted to add a little bit more information because obviously the the location of this project across the farmers market it's been a point of discussion really from the beginning um so what i can say is there has the dda has been involved with with the discussions with especially with city staff and and i know one of the petitioners had his hands up so i would also like have would like them to fill in the blanks as well actually a little bit but as far as the staff end of it the dda has been involved working through it with engineering as well because there are some other construction projects that are going on within that area i believe a water main and maybe a sidewalk there's some issues

043there's also construction issues and i know they're trying to line up some of the timing issues they've been in discussions for that to minimize impact on any surrounding businesses um i can also tell you from the beginning obviously park staff has reviewed this um and they were sensitive to that concern and as well really yeah maybe a month or so ago again we were working with uh one of the manager uh the parks manager that oversees some of the farmers markets operations and she uh was in contact again kind of the dda in between engineering and also again obviously our park staff with her so it's it's really been a point of discussion going forward um and that we we also recognize that um that that is something that needs to be preserved and protected

044with the farmers market so staff is very aware of that um again everybody from between engineering um from engineering to uh again sorry the dda as well as obviously parks and planning staff so we have been involved with that and uh they they were attuned to all the comments basically again so if there was overwhelming concerns they tried to identify them through the review process but everybody has agreed and again i believe traditionally add to this that there's future conversations that are warranted when they get to some more of the details regarding construction staging and that so i just wanted to add that information that it has been a point of discussion staff has looked at it between various different departments because there's kind of a lot of moving pieces between what planning can control

045what parts and then obviously what engineering who maintains the uh the right-of-way uh the impacts of the right-of-way as well so um thank you commissioner lee uh that's all i had to add for right now but again obviously available for follow-up questions yeah and if if i may add to that i mean um we're very uh conscious of these impacts i mean we've met with um matt and phyllis a couple of times and i i understand their concerns i grew up in a small business i get it um we we've committed to meeting with them on a regular basis they'll have my cell phone um we the last thing i want to do is disrupt that business we own the building and manage the building across the street we don't want any disruption there we've

046been the neighbors to the filling station and i think good makers for a long time and and been shared space with one another when they needed it for parking and such things so i think we've demonstrated over a length of time that we're a good neighbor to them and we we expect to continue that as far as the farmers market i've been a patron there since i was a toddler we love the farmers market you know obviously it's a it's an institution we met with uh stephanie at least the one time and discussed a preliminary staging plan um just to try to get ahead of that issue and discuss how we can minimize the impacts but as matt pointed out there's a lot of moving pieces to that that need to be resolved and and

047we're committing the committed to minimizing the impact on uh the surrounding community it's just a tight urban site it's uh presents some challenges thank you commissioner white i think you were next uh if i can move on from this but i don't want to um deprive you of further conversation okay all righty we'll move on to commissioner weich's topic first i just wanted to ask the petitioner to respond to mr gardner's concern around the geothermal that there were plans i mean maybe before the historic district or some other body that included geothermal powering for heating and cooling but that they're absent in the site plan is mr gardner correct in that assessment and if so why is there why why has there been a change between the two presentations and does the petitioner have plans

048to do geothermal yeah i can take that if you want greg we honestly are not sure what we'll be using for our heating and cooling system i'm sorry can you hear me i just unmuted yep we can go ahead sorry thank you um we're working through it we've met with our mep design team uh looking at the site looking at what we're using for heating and cooling um i was just in front of planning commission a month ago regarding a different project at 212 miller where we're using high efficiency heat pumps in that project we really don't know which way we're going to go at this point we're looking at geothermal we're looking at high efficiency heat pumps we'll make that determination we plan to make that determination during working with our outside consultants we

049also want to address some of the sustainability issues that um you know come up we plan on making this a solar ready project both for common area and residential units we also are planning on installing actual ev chargers one per unit um above and beyond what the city requires it just doesn't make any sense for us to try and put in city standard one or two ev charging stations when we have 15 potential resident uh units there so we're just decided that we're just going to install uh one for each unit that's really as far as we've gotten on the design of what we'll end up using for hvac systems at this point and i'm here to answer more questions thank you i actually would like to interject here so um just through my past

050work i know the architect that worked on this site a long time ago and it's my understanding that there are 11 existing geothermal wells that are drilled down to 600 feet for this site and i'm just i was also a little mystified why that didn't show up in the site plan in terms of first of all you know you've got these things it was quite an ordeal to be able to make all that happen i know they hit boulders along the way and all kinds of things and i'm just wondering i guess just tell tell us more because that's my understanding that this site already has access to a quite extensive geothermal field that is vertical um and i'm just wondering what you know and if that's something that you're kind of don't know enough

051about before you make decisions or i i get it that the site right now is more level and you're uh you know going to be digging down and things like that but i would imagine you know disrupting the the initial 15 feet of those wells is still a tiny percentage of a 600 foot deep uh well so if you could just tell us more about what you know and it seems like a tremendous resource that you could take advantage of and i'd just be curious to to know more well that that's all correct uh we do have wells on site um i believe the wells that are currently on site are are powering actually the building across the street and so we're looking at all options i mean i don't i don't think we consciously

052included or didn't include something on the site plan again we have haven't worked through the construction documentation on whether it will continue to power the site will continue to borrow the site across the street or how we'll approve it approach it um so there's i just we haven't gotten to that design of the building yet i mean we've been focused on the the overall site plan of the building what the building looks like meeting city standards the the energy usage of the building and how we go about designing that will be our next step uh when we get into construction document documentation phase so are you telling me that the wells that are on your site are currently serving the white swan building across the street is that what i understand that's my understanding so

053in other words if you were to build this you're not sure if that would abandon their current system or how i guess just if i might jump in it's it's our building across the street right the marketplace building it's half the building actually that it that it feeds and so i mean i we're not i apologize we're not trying to be evasive it's just obviously as you know it's early in the process we're we're still we haven't even hopefully get past this stage and then we work on cds and really figure out kind of how the building's going to go together so it is something we'd like to keep it's something we've got to figure out how we keep and if it's possible to serve both buildings or one building or there's a lot of

054things that have to be figured out um obviously you know we don't govern those pieces of it it just seems like it would be a tremendous waste if you didn't take advantage of continuing to use those at the very least to power the building that's powering so you're not disrupting what they have as one of our as mr garber pointed out from the audience it i think that we all feel if i can speak for the commission feel this way that um that that would be a huge waste of a resource if those are somehow abandoned in this process of building it um and we would i i personally feel like i would dearly hope that you would be able to take advantage of the infrastructure and great expense that you've already gone through to

055be able to harness that energy and build on it for the future so that's the way i personally feel about it so it does feel a little funny to me that there's nothing mentioned about that in this and i get it that it's not necessarily on the um you know something that we review at this stage but um [Music] anyway those those are my thoughts anybody else on the geothermal piece okay commissioner hammersmith just really quickly i want to clarify or confirm what i hope that i'm hearing understanding that you're still investigating your options but i didn't hear you mention natural gas as an option so is your intention for this to be an all-electric building you're just not sure which way it's going to go exactly when it comes to the hvac system we

056simply don't know we haven't gotten to that point in the design process we're focused on the site plan process now we haven't we've had one initial meeting with our mep design team we have all of the original design documentation of the geothermal wells which are in operation are powering building across the street we don't know yet what we'll end up having to do either to keep those wells to keep those wells of service that building to potentially repurpose them to service this building to repurpose them to service both buildings so we just don't know what will be the optimizational strategy to move forward with heating and cooling i can assure you that we have no intention of creating waste here but i can't answer something i want to be honest with you i i can't

057answer something that i don't know the answer to we're working through it or and we certainly will be working through it uh i mean going back to all the farmers market concerns we have a very long logistics plan that we have to work out with staff too and we and we welcome you know the farmers market and staff working with that on on that whole plan also that just hasn't been worked out yet we're aware of the concerns and that is sort of the next step that we get to once we get through this approval process yeah i appreciate your transparency um and i don't think we need to belabor the point that you know that our sustainability goals of the city would you know obviously want this building to not tap into natural gas

058so i'm not going to say any more on that um thank you i think i'm done for now commissioner weich i think i will belabor the point to pick up from commissioner hammerschmidt and say yeah we i wasn't aware of those uh wells uh there and i think the my question remains unanswered which was um and it was mr garber's original question which is that on one set of plans you noted the geothermal but on these plans you removed them and i think my question was was that intentional so pause there okay so it wasn't intentional no no it was not i actually don't have design review documentation in front of me nor do i have the site plan in front of me or what notes are were not on either plan again i just

059i'm a little bit trying to figure this out because we we know the wells are there we you know we we know that we're going to work with whomever we work with as a as an mep design engineer as well as several local eating cooling contractors [Music] to figure out how to potentially repurpose them but we don't know yet so i don't know what the question i don't know what more i can answer aside from there's nothing purposefully that we're doing or not doing here but just putting on the site plan what we need to put on the site plan for you to review and hopefully approve it so i think i think for me the thing that i'm trying to ascertain is you indicated that you were before this body a couple of weeks

060maybe a month ago and you i think have heard us say this because we say it with almost every site plan that we review uh that these are things that we are concerned about and it's sort of surprising that knowing that this is the deliberative body that sort of brings this up and talks directly with you why you would um well i don't want to cast any aspersions on on motives or anything like that but why not just sort of give a clear indication uh to us around your intentions uh for the powering of the building and i think i mean that's just my reflection and i'll i'll save my um additional comments for later in the meeting but maybe to give you a heads up mr leonard um one thing that i was thinking

061about when we had our conversation around what we wanted to include in some future work that we were doing was districts and one district that i was imagining was some kind of overlay where we would say this would be a district where we wouldn't allow this kind of use of energy you know like a fossil fuel energy or that there would be incentives for developers to build to our sustainability goals in this district and this feels like a perfect sort of case or an example for me because it's like well there are wells there which would make would seem to make this a easier approach the petitioner says they don't have any plans to waste the the wells that are there but it feels like if we had a tool in our planning that was

062like an overlay to say this was a energy efficiency district for for an example to reach for something quickly then this conversation changes and we can say you know how are you planning this development to meet the sustainability goal because this is a planned district where we want to see this kind of efficiency so i'll save that to the end of the meeting but just to telegraph to you that i have a question about that with that thanks commissioner abrams um i'll be quick but i i i think the only reason we're discussing geothermal is because at least as i understand it the petitioner presented this project as if it was going to be geothermal at the design review board and so i'm not sure why there's a kind of you know it seems like

063uh mr fitzsimmons here there's a kind of surprise that we're asking about it but we're asking about it because i think the petitioner put it on the table previously so i just want to mention that um i have a quick question which is um for the lead gold premium a question for staff what happens if the project does not receive its certification there are kind of excuse me there are penalties and uh uh laid out within the code the code itself i don't know what those are offhand but there's a fine um and it it goes up i i looking right when i heard the question formula i'm trying to look through the code really quickly to get the uh but it is within the code of what the what the ramifications are so it

064would be a code violation okay thanks um i'm not concerned about it i'm more curious about it and also it just kind of flags for me that um something to flag for some future unknown date is whether that's the right premium to be whether that's the right certification for which to offer premiums exclusively and to not consider other certifications that we think actually achieve sustainability goals better that's it thanks i would like to call on mr kopp you have your hand raised you can go ahead thank you so so again i'm with mabd we own the property and i just want to clarify a couple of things i mean we we installed a geothermal over 10 years ago well before there was an office of sustainability in the city we put solar panels on our

065building at 350 south main over 10 years ago as well we're committed to that long term and we've demonstrated that we've led in that in the office environment and so we we would love nothing better than to incorporate the geothermal walls but what actually happened was they were shown on the early plans it was presumed that would be part of the project and we really hadn't done the due diligence as tom said to to figure out how that could be incorporated so we elected to take it off the plans that's not misrepresented at this point because it's not part of the psych plan approval process so i'm i'm a little bit offended and taken back that the the accusatory nature of the the questioning that that we're trying to bait and switch because that's the

066last thing we want to do is we want to be as upfront and honest as we can about what we're trying to do and and i guess that's my two cents about that commissioner dish say that i'm sorry if if we sounded accusatory i don't i don't think anyone meant that i think that it was a genuine question um not not an accusation and um uh we're um very i mean yes you you have put your money where your mouth is on these goals and we respect and appreciate that anybody else oh commissioner lee thank you i'm to switch gears here i just wanted to talk generally about um the project i actually really liked the concept of the materiality kind of mirroring um i think would add actually a lot of character um overall

067bringing you know four five stories of residential i think is a good thing for this particular area i'd love to see the office retail use on the first floor that 1850 square footer be used for something retail something that really activates and creates continuity i'd love to see again complementary uses as well as adding additional eyes on the street this is a very vibrant kind of area of the neighborhood so overall i actually just wanted to say i like the design i think everyone's had really good points uh but i just want to step back real quick and say i think from a design standpoint the idea of trash sharing with i think 2723 south state street is a good solution to the overall kind of access issues um i'd we've talked about hvac uh

068the thing that i actually also want to focus on is the cobblestones because i've just seen a lot of roads get destroyed uh you know i live across the street from a major senior living care facility that our road is still kind of in disrepair so um as we stage et cetera actually this question is for staff do we have like what is the repair budget or something like that does a developer have to contribute to something like that because i the character of that cobblestone is i think very unique and and that that's something that i do just want clarification on is that a city responsibility do we have budgetary allocations towards it just just the amount of weight of materials that are transported i just have a little concern on that so if

069you could shed some like that'd be great brett or or mr lantern or kowalski um i can just add a little bit i unfortunately don't have the exact specifics but um again it was something that was discussed i was trying to skim through my own review comments regarding the brick pavers um the developer is required to basically restore to i mean they can't leave they can't walk away they're going to be required to restore that's another thing that's within within city code um the site is inspected also on a regular basis by our city right-of-way inspectors so again they would be out there looking to see if there's you know unnecessary direct disruption in there and um again so i don't really have specifics of how that's done i know that we do monitor i

070know the petitioner is aware of it and we do have restoration and i'm sure that required to restore it as well as a bond um that that could be uh solid for that purpose as well and i'm sure the petitioner has no interest in restoring any more of those bricks than they they have to because they're a very limited resource and it's obviously quite expensive to restore those so really a monitoring process again making them aware and staff is aware as well i don't have specifics of that but they'll be required to restore it gotcha thank you for the clarification i know the wear and tear of construction just as long as that is really um emphasized from a restoration standpoint it's just a really character driving feature of that area um so i overall

071i just want to step back and say i actually really like this development the idea of the the garden on the roof for uh first flush water retention to lead gold i think there's a lot of good things about this that i support um the importance of coordinating with our community partners as well as you know again restoration and maintenance of our character in the kerrytown district is critical but overall with those kind of conditions or considerations taken care of i would be in support of this particular site plan proposal and so procedurally i guess my question is how can we put some of those again conditions of saying hey we we want to make sure that there's good community involvement uh maintenance of the brick road if they and if please feel free to

072stop me if there's any kind of um again if i'm being a dead horse or something along those lines but uh overall i just want to say i'm in favor how can we make sure that the community is being heard and that the um you know that we're all working together towards the same end here which is maintenance betterment i mean always a bit of a j curve but we just need to do it together so i don't know what the best way to introduce that is but i'll ask the commission for their thoughts on how to advance this thing i'm overall in support so just thank you mr leonard you got any language for us not yet [Laughter] well how about i'll say a few comments and you can work on the language that

073sounds good okay um like commissioner lee i think this project looks really good i'm excited for another flatiron building um in this area i think that it's really dynamic looking and so i think it it it really looks like a neat project so i'm i'm very much in favor of what i think this will bring to the carrytown area i hope we can work out the the the just stresses that go on with construction and um because i also feel strongly that this area is really important but i think everybody at this table and probably everybody in our zoom boxes feel that this area is really important too so uh i i think i i'm hopeful that um we can work it all out there's also a lot of very real um constraints around um

074both staging and timing with all those things and i um so probably nobody's going to be completely happy in in this process and i think that's to be expected and i hope that we can come up or that you all you know through interaction with community which you all have you know said that you're interested in through working with staff and working with the petitioner about what's possible here too because there's there's only so much i think that the petitioner can do too it can't let this project go on for five years because they're only working three days a week to be able to accommodate all the various schedules you know that are going on so i'm hoping that there can be some good common ground that can be found that is like reasonable enough

075for everybody so that the the market can stay vibrant enough and that um the detroit filling station can can stay alive because i think a lot of us would love to be able to see that continue to thrive because it is such an important part i think of our our community um so i'm i'm hoping that that can that that everybody can just work it out and then it all happens clearly we're not the ones that are going to be doing all those negotiations so it's easy for us to say good luck and let's figure it out um but i'm hoping that i just gave you enough time to come up with uh um so the language i had proposed before looking at commissioner dishes is that the site plan is approved with the following

076condition that the petitioner and city staff proactively work to minimize the negative impacts to the carry town business district during construction through collaboration routine stakeholder conversations and updates toward the goal of minimizing adverse impacts to the surrounding area while supporting the construction of this building much better than that so how shall i do this um so if um i can um i can read that again if people are comfortable with that somebody can move and support that as an amendment to the proposed motion okay do people want to hear it one more time or commissioner lee anybody else want to hear it again or does that seem okay any any any other discussion was there a second amendment commissioner dish second okay so just let me uh read it one more time just so the

077petitioner and the commission is clear the site plan would would be cycling approval would be conditioned upon the following the petitioner and city staff proactively work to minimize the negative impacts to the carry time business district during construction through collaboration routine stakeholder conversations and update toward the goal of minimizing adverse impacts to the surrounding area while supporting the construction of this building to be clear that is a condition for a conversation to happen between the project team and the applicable city staff commissioner hammerschmidt okay and i'm hearing this collaboration between city staff and the petitioner and then updates to the stakeholders but i'm not really hearing collaboration with the stakeholders and i kind of think that that's important and maybe it's just like where a comma could you repeat the language that i i guess

078i would suggest that i think conversations have started already with the city and um i am comfortable taking that message that it is expected as planner kowalski already indicated that already conversations been happening with members of parks and recreation with the downtown development authority we can make sure that that casts the a widely appropriate net or if desired we can we can bring that in i guess i just do want to be clear that there might be city decisions that need to be made that not there are not consensus about and so um i think i am specifically um making sure that we're providing shared updates uh brainstorming but ultimately the city will be making those decisions i think that's fine i i just i think i was reading it more as are hearing it

079more as like it's providing updates but it's not really giving opportunity for like that sort of brainstorming collaboration but i only heard it twice and i wasn't looking at it i mean i understand that ultimately the city is making the decision but you know getting that making sure that there is like that mechanism for gathering input and it's not just updates unless shared updates means like a input gathering a potential amendment through collaboration with existing businesses routine stakeholder conversations and updates yeah that works for me so it's still it's the petitioner and city staff do the work setting the condition that there will be collaboration with existing businesses and routine conversations and updates commissioner can we name the dda and parks in that and then uh because you just say state city staff so if

080there's a parenthetical or including uh because then the um sorry i forget what's the name of the commission that mrs light has the public market advisory commission could have representation um either through parks or through the dda in that conversation city staff including dda and parks and recreation yeah so that gets the farmers market and then it would get the business association thank you so shall we do a vote on the amendment first and i want the commissioner lee and commissioner and dish you're comfortable with those changes yeah okay can i just hear it one more time in full yeah cause we've added a bunch of things see i'm really nervous i'm trying to edit this on the fly and you guys are gonna criticize my grammar you're fine the petitioner petitioner and city staff

081including dda and parks and recreation proactively work to minimize the negative impacts to the kerrytown business district during construction through collaboration with existing businesses routine conversation stakeholder conversations and updates toward the goal of minimizing adverse impacts while supporting the construction of this building should we do a roll call on that or should we just do a i think yeah let's do roll call it is related to a petition okay commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yeah commissioner clark yes commissioner weich yes commissioner gibb randall yes commissioner abrams yes all right the motion is amended okay so now then can we take the vote for the the overall project with the amended motion okay ready to go through it again commissioner hammersmith yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes commissioner clark yes commissioner weich

082yes commissioner good randall yes commissioner abrams yes the site plan is approved all righty thank you thank you for your time thank you for coming saying your peace all righty we are moving on to item 8b um which is still part of our regular business which is the proposed amendments to the ann arbor city code chapter 55 unified development code amendments to the unified development code the udc sections 5.1 6.1 a residential occupancy 5.16.2 point a nb adult day care center child care center 5.16.3 point j outdoor recreation 5.16.3 point p transit corridor development 5.16.4 point b non-profit corporations 5.16 points 0.6 point c drive through facilities 5.16.6 point g group day care home and section 5.19 parking standards are being considered to eliminate minimum parking requirements for all uses eliminate or consolidate some parking

083use categories eliminate the option for off-site bicycle parking change the weight limit for vehicles parked in driveways simplify the requirements for electric vehicle parking and change reformat and include the tc-1 district and the special parking district regulations these changes will enable reduced impervious surfaces encourage land to be used more efficient efficiently incentivize the construction of new residential uses reduce the cost of constructing new residential uses and support transit services i think we have a staff presentation by mr khan thank you we do at our last meeting on april 5th in which we discussed um these proposed amendments uh planning staff excuse me planning commission had quite a number of of comments for us we went back and began working on additional language and amendments and structure of the plan in the staff report we divided

084these modifications into three main sections the first type of modification pertains to the number to a number of scattered sections in code that uh that require minimum parking they include sections um dealing with residential occupancy adult daycare centers outdoor recreation nonprofit corporations and we were all we were looking to um eliminate the required parking for those particular sections of note was um a section 16 3p which is the trans corridor development section and in that section uh we're keeping the language uh regarding the vehicular use area that may not be exceeded by the building footprint however we're adding some language to clarify this to some degree and that clarification includes language that says if the vehicular use area cannot accommodate the maximum number of permitted spaces the remaining amount must be provided in a parking

085structure or within a building so those are the main um changes regarding to that first type of modifications we also have um a second name type of modification and those uh to to those proposed amendments most of those pertain to section 519 parking standards currently the entire section is proposed to be deleted and replaced with all new language the majority of the new section includes language that is identical to the seventh edition of the udc and moved around for clarity and consistency and user friendliness so we're not making substantive changes but we are trying to make it clearer simpler easier to use excuse me um a separate comparison um document of the current section 519 and the post-section 19 is included as an attachment to the staff report the third main type of modification is

086specific to section 519 parking standards um there were a lot of minor tweaky type changes that the staff report summarizes i'm not going to go through all those but i do want to highlight a couple of them one pertain to table 19 which is the main required parking standards and that now provides only maximum vehicular and minimum bicycle parking spaces all previous minimum vehicular parking requirements are deleted from the table and previous maximum vehicle requirements are retained with no changes no new maximums have been added to the table the second highlight of these third main types of modifications pertains to the special parking district section that has been overhauled and now includes the tc1 district this section has been simplified tc1 shows that the maximum number of required uh parking spaces remaining at one space

087per 333 square feet of floor area which is about three spaces per thousand square feet the floor area and since parking is no longer required in the d1 and d2 districts the previous language about alternatives for the required minimum floor area parking spaces has been eliminated so those are the main three areas of modification that staff has made over the last month and a half i do want to remind everyone including um people watching this meeting that what the main focus is the main changes the main modifications are with within these parking amendments one of the main changes proposed is to eliminate minimum parking requirements for any land use in any district we're also looking at establishing a maximum of three parking spaces per thousand square feet of florida in the tc1 district and then

088lastly another substantive change relates to the ev parking section and in that section we are including a change in applicability from a site plan for city council approval to any new parking spaces that are proposed to be constructed regardless of the site plan approving body and then secondly related to ev changes we are still proposing to shift the ev ready spaces to ev capable spaces so those are the main um those are the main modifications that we have made plus a quick summary of the main issues that are are before us um i do want to um summarize uh the staff recommendation which includes staff recommends that the amendments to the udc be approved because the proposed amendments will reduce the amount of underutilized impervious surfaces encourage land to be used more efficiently incentivize the

089construction of new residential dwelling units by reducing construction and land acquisition costs which may result in more affordable housing units being constructed and by using land more efficiently will and will support transit service these proposed amendments are also consistent with recommendations in the city's mastermind land use element and the a20 climate action plan and that's the summary of the sap report alrighty thank you um i was remiss in not um allowing commissioner lee to make a small announcement i should have done that beginning sorry about missing you you're fine um i don't think it's a surprise anybody my employer owns property in the tc1 district so i need to recuse myself from the vote with respect to parking standards in the tc1 district so um i'm recusing myself i'll see you guys in a little

090bit good luck okay yeah if i could just add a a few more details um so a couple of things one sort of housekeeping issue is the original packet included the comparison table that um city planner jeff khan referenced the ordinance is the actual ordinances attached as well but it was attached this evening so i just want to draw your attention to that actual ordinance however um mr khan did a really great job summarizing the that's mostly what you're missing was the 5.16 content so that's now included in the proposed earnings for adoption so that's one thing i want to draw your attention to um the 516 section content was one of the references that you will recall that during the original consideration of this ordinance i said that there would be some other references

091in the udc that might be adjusted as well as parking changes occurred upon review of those those were more significant parking standards than just references so that plus the confusion about two standards was one of the reasons that i elected to bring this back to you the commission for reconsideration in a more fully developed ordinance i just want to remind the commission of that distinction we had a lot of conversation about the interaction of the tc1 what i will call the forum based requirement that the vehicular use area which is a surface parking lot area cannot exceed the footprint of the building or a percentage of that building depending on the lot size vehicular use area does not apply to parking included in a structure or below grade so there was confusion on that you'll

092recall that was one of the reasons why i wanted to bring that back i just wanted to clarify that with the interaction of that standard and the proposed maximum parking of one per 333 square feet in the tc1 there is a form limit that is you can't have a surface parking lot essentially larger than the building without the limit of maximum parking you would with the limit you could still achieve up to one per 333 square feet if you can't get all of that in the surface parking it would have to be structured parking or in a building so i just want to remind i brought this up as a distinction previously i think there was confusion around that i think it warranted the clarity um [Music] and the additions for 5.16 so just a

093couple other points about why you're seeing this again thank you um all righty so let's go to the public hearing and then we can we can have the discussion this is the opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about the proposed amendments the udc sections 5.16 and 5.19 if you wish to address the planning commission on this item press star 9 by listening by phone or use the raise hand feature if viewing to the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 city staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name if available for those accessing through the web link you will hear an automated announcement the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and

094mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly for any speaker please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments first is anyone present don't see anybody present any speakers who are virtual waiting in the queue yes mr chambers you have three minutes to address the planning commission yes thank you this is brian chambers ward 3. [Music] i'm a bit concerned about the tc1 parking language that was just shared i do not believe the residents of ann arbor anticipated parking decks going in across the tc1 designated area it was promoted for transit-oriented development basis to foster the greater use of bus transit and i put a note out there 3500 to 5500 housing units could be established across that area using a transit oriented district um standards um

095six-story structures um could easily be accommodated uh to meet that density and it would foster enough transit use uh for essentially a self-functioning independent aata that doesn't require subsidies if you go through all of the tc1 districts that are anticipated across the city so i would ask that that language be reconsidered so that it is not fostering the use of parking decks as seen to be in in that statement in that language uh thank you very much i really believe we need to push for sustainable development transit oriented development and not more parking decks thank you no other speakers indicated all righty sing no other speakers i will close the public hearing and read the proposed motion the anniversary planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the amendments to chapter 55

096unified development codes sections 5.16 and 5.19 regarding proposed modifications to the city's off-street parking requirements moved by commissioner hammerschmidt second in by commissioner dish a discussion for the proposed motion commissioner dish i want i i have a question so let me walk through something and make sure that i fully fully fully understand it so we have a form based limit on the amount of surface parking that is built into the tc one district oh is it i mean yes sorry i'm very sorry um so we have our form based limit on parking built into the tc1 district if a developer were to come to us wanting to build something not in the state in eisenhower tc1 district which we have zoned we've officially zoned but rather on packard and their project required a site plan

097they weren't just taking over something that existed the form-based limit would or would not apply to their project the only place oh i'm sorry brett no no problem uh the only place the forum based limit would apply is any property zone tc1 so we right now just state eisenhower correct okay um so i think that this this district has a lot of goals in it and that's why it's been so hard to figure out what's the right combination of everything so yes we want to both make use of transit on corridors where there is transit and where transit can be expanded easily so we want to both make use of and stimulate the provision of more transit that's that's a goal we want mixed use so we're hoping to get not just residences although i

098think we wouldn't be unhappy if that's all we got but again to really move people or or facilitate people choosing a less car intensive lifestyle you need services near you and you need fun stuff to do near you um and and you need yes easy transit to your job but near you you're going to need grocery stores and excellent bars without televisions and other fine fine things in vegan restaurants too um and so we want mixed use we want uh we want transit we want people to make use of transit um and we want to bring folks who are commuters we want to give them a place to live in the city so um [Music] do we so our big you know we've had a big discussion about the limit on essentially structured parking because

099or rather i should say we've had a big discussion about the parking maximum do we need a parking maximum in addition to the form-based limit i think we talked about it this last time we were a little confused last time because we because we didn't understand how the two worked together but at this point i think it's clear that the parking maximum of three per thousand square feet of far is an additional limit on top of the form-based limit and it is also a limit that is neutral with respect to use and staff is proposing a limit that's neutral with respect to use in order to facilitate development that includes services as well as residences another way to achieve that kind of permissiveness so that we could get office spaces to convert to housing or

100whatever the other conversions we imagined would be possible would be simply not to have a maximum over and above the form based limit certainly one of our goals is to reduce impervious surface and the form-based limit does that there are other limiting factors that constrain the provision of structured parking and that is notably the expense of it and it it seems to me that in the models that staff had provided in the previous report that we received there are a number of different approaches everybody agrees we get rid of parking minimums but there are a number of different approaches to figuring out maximums figuring out what they should be whether they should be you specific and if they're not used use specific what would a one size fits all maximum b should it be three

101should it be two um i think it's worth considering uh taking that taking the maximum out for tc1 knowing that we have the form-based limit and knowing that the expense of providing structured parking will contin will nobody has nobody has an incentive to over provide and we would be able to gather data on what we're seeing and what we're getting and move forward from there so i just wanted to put that on the table for consideration i'm happy to have obviously commissioners respond uh staff respond i'm always open to hearing from people who've been thinking about this a lot longer than i have i think the the other thing about this these areas is that nobody can charge the rents that they would need to charge in order to be able to build structured parking

102because basically structured parking works downtown because it's so expensive to build it um so in some ways we're sort of like they can do it if they want to and maybe it'll become that incredible but i think it's going to be pretty hard to truly pull that off in terms of in terms of that so in some ways we're just by doing the limiting of the footprint thing it's an i think it's an interesting question like what you know to um commissioner hammerschmidt has a really concerned look on her face and i'm wondering if she wants to raise her hand or if we or commissioner abrams if you have something that's more informed i'm just trying to like figure out the benefit of removing a maximum or like what the i'm just trying to think

103through where's commissioner sobe in her math when i need her i just don't really i'm just trying to understand like what do you see is the benefit of removing a maximum my my sense of it and i'm just riffing here is that it would allow more flexibility in terms of the use on the first floor um if there's retail because to commissioner dish's point if you wanted to be able to put a grocery store on the first floor it's pretty hard to pull that off with i mean you could do it but there's certainly no grocery stores in that arbor that have that kind of ratio and so you're you're you're kind of skewing towards a certain use i think with that now that's with our current use now and i totally get it that

104we are trying to move in the direction of more transit oriented um development here but um it's it's it i think there's power in the kind of the like you know we're keeping it super flexible by this one to 333 business but i just did some counting of parking you know and uh and i i remember was it i don't know if it was mr connor mr quality somebody was saying i think it was mr khan last like a few times ago when we talked about this talked about grocery stores being more like you know being yeah it was it was higher you know than what that is and so are we are we limiting the kind of freedom for people to kind of let what needs to happen on on that retail level i

105don't know it's an interesting question commissioner abrams i think i'm going to come at this from the opposite point of view which is to say that i think there are certain kinds of suburban model grocery stores like a meyer or a kroger that want that kind of parking ratio i think these quarters are more appropriate for something like the food co-op or argus farm stop or places that either have no parking or very little parking and i think you can still make a market style retail space work without giving over to a kind of suburban style development and i think for me i mean i still i've been saying this i would like to see parking maximums on our work plan um i'm gonna bring it up later that it's in the future but doesn't

106have a date so and i think if we are hopefully moving towards a kind of city-wide maybe use neutral parking maximum approach then i don't think we should remove it now i think we should try it or have it in there as a kind of precedent it feels like we're moving the wrong way to remove the maximum in my mind and so because what i'm also concerned about are not just developments in the tc1 but you know all that all the places that are not tc1 so i think there's a for me there's a kind of urgency to think consider a maximum generally um and it's true that the form-based code already restricts the tc one so it may not be the most urgent place to have it but i don't for me it doesn't

107i don't see the i don't feel compelled to remove it i guess um to accommodate the kind of grocery store model that's me when i was doing my um when i was kind of looking at possibilities i looked at whole foods which i have often been to when there is no parking there and i'm waiting in the parking lot too the one on washtenaw um and uh so i was not looking so much at like the the kroger on stadium or you know things like that or whatever on maple i guess um i i have heard through the grapevine that the co-op is slowly bleeding in terms of their ability to be able to do what they're doing i know for a while that that space that was right that's right next to argus farms

108that's that empty space that is now kind of taken up by um art whatever that that was sort of thought to i think this is again rumor not me i was not part of that development but i remember people envisioning it as a grocery store thing and nobody has touched it so um and argus i think is it is kind of a different animal in some ways and in that it's like right in the middle of a neighborhood but at the same time you know we and it's right on the way to downtown where a lot of people are are walking and and driving too um [Music] so like is there a sweet spot does it really matter in some ways i don't know like like to your point like does it matter that like

109should we just kind of keep a maximum and and then that just sort of gets at what we're i guess i'm truly kind of i don't know where i land on this yeah but i do think it's an interesting thing to consider and that's given that we have the form-based piece of the footprint part that you can't just build you know a massive parking lot because you are automatically limited by that in the previous staff report from the last meeting they gave us the statistics for the different for some of these um developments and the whole foods on washington is on there and so the just as a reference point at the current tc1 max they would be allowed 384 spots and what's currently there is 411. so it is a it is a bit

110more but it's not like radically it's not double when we're not slashing in half what they would want what they would typically build for something like that commissioner weich i have a couple questions so the first one is um trying to understand the comment from brian chambers around the parking structures and um the changes in the code that he was concerned about so when i looked through the coat there's lots of strikethroughs on the parking structures and it seems like it was only 5 19 7 that seemed to be close to what he was concerned about the design of vehicle parking facilities um but that just seems to be discussing how not the pushing into parking structures as the solution for not having the surface lots available and i'm trying to make sure i understood

111what he was commenting on as it relates to the code changes um i'm not sure what i guess what i was presuming is that you could i think i think the conversation here is about the tension of the evolution of land use we have a we have a very auto centric pattern of development we've rezoned it to try and shift that tide one way you could do that is um and this could be where i i can't speak from but this could be where it was going is that to allow parking even at a rate of one per 330 square feet which even it might be in parking structures you're dedicating volume in this area that could otherwise be put to a more productive use could be housing could be office could be retail so

112i guess what i was interpreting is that whatever we can do to use to maximize the volume of productive space used by people rather than cars is better than dedicating space for cars presuming i think i would i think this is it's a really interesting conversation sort of on the heels of our previous petition where i think about a restaurant like that you don't get much more pedestrian oriented than that um and even there we hear about how important it is for the parking adjacent to their restaurant for their business model and so what i suspect commissioner dish is sort of getting at is there is an evolution going to be happening here it's probably as it's constructed now there will be parking associated with it it will not be a hard line to say

113that the only way you can build 200 new units is if those 200 units are built without any parking so i think that i think what commissioner edition what commissioner ricky brando are sort of hinting at is we're making it hard already by form to provide cheap car storage but if it is core to the business model to have the residential or retail or office space or whatever it is there that some parking is provided we've heard in the past about office users coming to the table wanting i will sign this lease if you give me one you know i need x spaces per square feet the maximum says that you can provide costly parking up to that maximum if that works for your business model eliminating the maximum would allow you to provide whatever

114that parking ratio it is to get that forma to work but it has to be structured so it's still limiting the impervious surface it's still impacting what i would say it's shifting from a more to a more urban form from a more suburban form but i think you know i think as christian abrams is talking about and commissioner dish are going from i part of this is where is the commission in the city's comfort level and seeing this evolution max the max i think the maximum is reasonable i don't i think that there is going to be some limiting factor just by the nature of it has to be structured so if there are no maximum unlike surface parking i think that there is going to be little incentive for people to provide more than

115they can absolutely get away with because it's very costly so can you clarify something you said at the end which was it has to be structured and are you using that in a technical term meaning it is a parking structure versus a parking lot a vehicle so the vehicular use area is a surface parking lot open to the sky yep parking under a building in a parking structure that is either incorporated into a building or separate on a site with a development those are not going to be vehicular use area okay okay because you said in i'm assuming in the tc1 the parking with that sentence meant was that the parking has to be structured so it has to it can't exceed we know it can't exceed the form and all of that because of

116the lot so i think i have that in hand but i just want to be clear that what i thought i heard mr chamber say was the changes that we're making in the code is going to force people into building parking structures and that is what is problematic or lyles right them too yeah and that the citizens of ann arbor would would be surprised that that's the trade-off that's happening here and and that's the thing i'm trying to clarify like is he correct is it well without us assessing correctness to him is is what his comment is conveying a correct assessment of what we are changing or is it an incorrect assessment of what we are proposing a change for is what i'm trying to grasp i i am i'm presuming we all are um

117well just based on his previous comments i think mr chambers is very um i would say pretty aggressive as it relates to sustainability yes he wants he wants and so i'm interpreting where we can put it uh perhaps he would be more comfortable that you get a vehicular use area no bigger than the building and that's all you get okay so that would be the that would be the trade-off otherwise what what we are allowing is that you would be able to incorporate the parking into the building structure so you could go underground or come up a few levels and then build your building on top of it as long as it didn't exceed the or again next to it could be a parking structure that is adjacent to your building remember you know one

118of the things about that form um if you have a 10 000 square foot two-story building or a 10 000 square foot 10 story building that vehicular user is going to be the same calculation right yes so so the sort of the notion of the maximum is it says you only get so much surface area right but we recognize as investment gets more intense larger you there might be a legitimate need for more parking but it has to be done in a more sustainable compact fashion so we're not giving up as much land ala the current patterns in that area that might preclude it from other new development okay commissioner dish did you have something else that you had okay yes i wanted to what i was i think i was not as clear as

119i was trying to be but i was trying to convey that what people want out of this district is multi-fold and one of the things that has been consistent is people talking about mixed use so the desire is not just to put residential where there has mostly been office but it's really to see the development of cities apart from downtown right or downtowns outside of downtown not cities that would be strange so um and for that to be the case we either need to set if we want to set parking maxims we either need to delineate them according to you so if you have a restaurant we're going to let you have more or if you have a grocery store we're going to let you have more or we need to come up with we

120need to hit the sweet spot the right number the one that will give enough flexibility so that yeah we know you don't need as much for residential but you've got some office so you know we've left you enough room under our maximum and and you can do that and so staff has recommended a three per 1000 square foot of far maximum and people like um people who who very much value this development being transit supportive and it being it it increasing ridership and increasing transit service right i think that's what we mean when we talk about transit supportive is we're trying to do both increase ridership and increase service those folks are saying no three is too high uh and so you should make a two because we really want people not to have their

121cars but then i have to raise my hand and say but then what's going to happen to my mini downtowns because if you limit it to two we might you know developers might just say you know what i can't a bank i can't persuade a bank that to loan me money to have a restaurant in here or a grocery store in here and it is such a bummer to live on the north side because you have to drive five miles to a grocery store i mean you know and it you know you just you have to drive out on plymouth and i wish we had an argus in our neighborhood um uh you know and so i think what i'm trying to say is that these aspirations that we have for tc1 are many and

122they pull against each other they speak differently to that question of how big the maximum should be and we also don't have a clear model anywhere else telling us what to do a lot of the other places we looked at didn't set a maximum some set them but differentiated them by use and so i don't see that we have a lot of data for this and i think that it is not a bad idea to i mean either we leave the more generous maximum of three um or we and not just three yes three per thousand i'm always afraid i'm going to say the thing wrong you have three cars ten story building three cars um or we don't regulate this because we're we're working in an area where there's a lot of things changing

123here there are there are not models elsewhere and we don't really know what this one size fits all right number is and uh so i'm sure that you know mr chambers and mr westfall will be quite a bit more unhappy to see all maximums removed rather than to have the maximum reduced but i am not i i would really need to oppose strongly reducing this three per thousand square feet maximum because it it really does not it doesn't comport well with the mixed use desire so are we going to get a million of these projects right away and will we have made a big mistake if we you know if we leave it at three if we take it away and see how the developers themselves with their financial institutions calculate how much parking they

124can afford to to build i don't really know commissioner clark um i guess i just want get a little closer um i guess i just want to be cautious especially with the um parking structures especially that we're not just going to be adding permanent dead zones to something that we're hoping for people to take public transit into things like that um parking structure isn't something easily undone and a lot of the developers that are coming in working they might i mean ann arbor is one of the most walkable cities in the state most the developers especially that are coming from other areas are maybe going to have a skewed view of what is possible and there's no sure i guess the banks can have a preference on what they're going to fund but if there's

125a policy in place that requires them to push the limit a bit i guess i don't see what else could be effective in pushing developers and nudging them towards lower parking maximums or lower parking ratios because if they're headquartered in more like you know in suburban detroit area their status quo we're just going to keep getting the status quo um and so i guess pushing that a little bit on parking and especially the structures just uh i guess makes me nervous i've never been to a transit accessible area with a lot of parking structures on it i'm a little bit confused about so if the parking structures would that still if we were to remove the parking maximums could they build unlimited parking in a parking structure just to be clear like unlimited height or

126whatever the limit to the zoning yes without the maximum they would not have a maximum so if they wanted to provide four spaces for every 333 square feet they would have that ability um i don't anticipate that happening because um it's pretty expensive and i would um and to your comment there there are many buildings downtown that have structures integrated into them we have the public structures but we also have many residential buildings that have structures integrated into them as well so it can work um it can fail we have both examples in our downtown but i think one of the things that the tc1 has going for is all the attention to the streets the street frontage design requirements um you know the mixed use within the proximity to the corner so we've insulated

127ourselves to an extent i think to some of the more terrible manifestations of parking structures so it's a parking just to clarify parking structure doesn't have to be in conjunction with another use in a building it could just be a completely like a five-story parking structure with that as part of the tc1 use um let me check this but i think it's not a principal use it can only be done when it's accessory to another primary use okay and i think the other thing just to kind of follow up my understanding commissioner clark is that it can't really be suburban because the because of the form-based piece of it where you can't get any bigger than the building so they can't build acres and acres of parking because they're automatically limited by that and so

128you can really only go up or down and it's incredibly expensive to do that and i don't know that the rents are ever going to support that kind of expense for the zones that they're in if it was downtown that's a whole different story because they can charge those kinds of premium rents it could evolve towards that i think the thing that is really tricky about this is something that you talked about mr leonard which is like how this is an evolving use we want to see it to be we want it to become transit oriented but we're not totally there yet right now and so we're in this awkward space of being able to try to incentivize towards it but not make it so that nobody does it because it just doesn't work um

129in terms of bank lending in terms of the markets whatever and so i think that's like the really tricky part of trying to figure out all these different mechanisms we have a couple of them with the footprint business with the structure business and all that kind of thing i frankly i think the structure thing is probably not going to happen in these areas because we just can't charge enough it's not premium enough i mean who knows maybe you know commissioner dish one it will become a little node and will become like super successful and you know it makes sense to put structured parking there but right now it's just it just can't happen in terms of what um what people can actually charge for rents in the far-flung areas that are not this the the

130downtown um so i think the crux of it for me is how we can hit this sweet spot of incentivizing towards it still allowing though for some flexibility for kind of what people need now and where we want to go and i think that's for me that's the tricky part is kind of knowing which lever we pull or which levers we pull to be able to kind of push in the direction we want to go but also have it happen i mean that's i guess the thing that i would be concerned about is is is uh like will people if are we limiting it too much so that we're basically just getting residential and and i agree with your commissioner that's like better than nothing for sure um but i think we're all hoping for

131it to be a little more vibrant in that way and not just kind of apartment buildings and and nothing underneath them like commissioner abrams who had something to say yeah i wanted to just maybe return to commissioner dish's comment about the lack of data which i also feel in this in this decision and in this deliberation and but i again i think one the one data point or one of the data points that we do have is the existing amount of parking at arbor hills and here on village which is the whole foods on washington so i just want to return to that for a moment because i think what we have to remember is like if these are mixed use three three per thousand is really high for residential use and so if you

132have a building that is eighty percent residential and twenty percent grocery store at three per thousand you may be able to get there for your grocery store so i i don't think in other words uh three per thousand gets you 384 spots at whole foods they built 411. but now imagine that 80 of that square footage was residential there would be way more parking than you needed so i think we have to remember that the three per thousand is a blended number across multiple uses prime majority probably square footage of which is residential so i think it's not as restrictive as it is on its own if it's just being applied to a grocery store or restaurant use and maybe the other thing i wanted to mention was hold on because it just slipped out

133of my brain as i was saying we all understand this okay i know i'm not proposing that we remove the footprint restriction but i think that that's actually far more restrictive than the maximum and so i don't want to remove the maximum [Music] i don't think that actually releases pressure on the situation and i hope that we are moving towards the maximum and not away from it and i guess so i know the one other thing i can say is i think i i i sympathize with the um dilemma that you're describing uh commissioner gibb randall and i feel similarly but i think i believe quite strongly that if you make it easy to park people will drive and so if we make it less easy to park people will find other ways to get

134there and i understand that there's this sweet spot where if you make it too hard people won't go at all and that's what we're trying but i think i feel like we have found a moderate way to try to incentivize and pull things in a particular direction without being totally um you know cutting off our what is it nose despite our face so that's kind of where i'm where i'm ending up right now commissioner clark just a quick so the parking maximum would include some three per thousand that would include structured parking so that would say like and then if we were to get rid of that you could build unlimited oh yeah that's yeah definitely in favor of keeping that maximum did you want to say something yeah i mean i i do just

135want to um the form-based limit is the big kahuna yeah you know that is the cheapest parking to provide that is the most offensive parking right it's we are filling in our parking lots all over downtown right we have better use for those and that's what we're doing so i feel like we have won a big victory there and there are other pressures that there are financial pressures that incline a developer not to over provide parking on top of what they can get with their surface lot so their surface lot is included in their maximum right so their surface lot they're not going to get to three per thousand square feet unless they have whatever a two-story building which god knows we hope they don't right um they go higher but we hope they are

136going to go higher right and so they're not going to get to their three per thousand with their surface lot if they want to get closer or all the way probably they don't want to get all the way because that's going to cost them an arm and a leg then they need to put structured parking and my you know my concern i think the worst one of the worst things that could happen with the tc1 zone is that we do get a lot of two-story buildings right that would be a real devastating loss of what we were looking for here we wanted and i'm going to use it density [Laughter] right we wanted to increase housing opportunities and we really hoped that they would also come with services and ending up with uh shorter buildings

137because people decide okay i'm not going to provide any structured parking i'm going to i've got my surface lot for my footprint and i'm going to just stick with that i'm going to do what i can do with what i can get out of my surface lot that would be so sad we really wouldn't have affected a transformation of the kind we're looking for and so i mean just again i feel like there are limiting factors built in and we can come back and regulate if we feel like those aren't sufficient but i don't know why we think we know when we don't know and you know we need to regulation be based on evidence and i feel like we we do not have enough evidence from this experiment to to name a number but

138you know but honestly in the end i don't feel like i'm not going to go home and cry if we keep this in here nor will i fight tooth and nail on council to remove it because i don't think developers are gonna go up to three per thousand i don't i don't think they can afford it so i'm curious commissioner dish because we as the planning commission don't really we we're not supposed to be talking to people about this but you as a as a city council person that is part of your role is to be able to talk with people about these things so have you had conversations with people that are kind of informing your discussion around this in terms of like learning more about how this works i'd just be curious for

139you to share anything that that you have um learned with people that are saying like you know it's the banks loans well you know whatever it is like that that could be helpful for us yeah i don't think i've learned anything definitive i mean i have learned that nobody wants to over provide structured parking and uh and we had i believe when we discussed this last time and mr leonard said that two-story buildings were a possible unintended consequence of what we are doing i believe mr moore was in the audience and nodded his head at that um and i've but i don't you know i haven't heard anybody say to me oh if you put that three per thousand per square foot maximum i'm not even gonna entertain this i have not heard that what

140i've heard is specifically from one person who might well and i also spoke with mr moore but um that nobody wants to over provide and they have very detailed calculations way more than we do thinking about uh if i have this parking i can double use this during these hours and you know they're thinking because this is money to them this is directly in their profit line and they have more experience and more data so but as i say uh i don't i don't think that the three per thousand is so restrictive that we're screwing up i would not lower it despite the concerns that we've heard raised question okay is that a hand just well that's quite i won't you know prolong this much longer but um i just want to throw out there

141that you know one of the things in like the american planning association is that there's projected need for less parking in the future as we move towards other ways of you know riot sharing or you know those ride sharing models and all that you know but we can't unbuild a parking like structured parking i guess i'm not clear on if structured parking should be a goal um but because it's like i just you know looking up five thousand dollars estimated for a surface parking space versus um the cost of developer 25 to 35 000 so yeah it will add a lot to their costs but on the other hand you know if they do overshoot that we're the ones that are stuck for 50 years paying the price with the parking structure there i mean

142you go to detroit and you see structured parking everywhere that's empty um it to me i guess i would want to be cautious about um structured parking in general i get that it would have you know be underneath residential and things like that but it's just a point um and then the other thing is i think sometimes there's a people's perception of parking might be off you know you with the parking downtown especially with the surface lots they're easy to be undone you can build on surface lots you can't do that with structured parking for one then two there's a lot of people that might be troubled by the removal of surface parking you know by the farmer's market but one block away is a structured parking lot that's never full and i think that

143sometimes people's perceptions of the parking situation don't necessarily line up with what they are and that can go for both the average person going to visit downtown as well as a developer who may have never even been to ann arbor may not understand the local that it is we do have relatively good transportation and if a parking and you know if pushing them a little bit to have to go and make an exception because there's not like any hard and fast law with the banker that says they cannot lend i mean they have policies in place and they have preferences and formula has to fit the pro forma um but again like i said three spaces isn't particularly restrictive um and so i guess that's just the direction i'd like to see the conversation going

144would be looking at best practices and other cases on whether structured parking is an investment and a trend that we want to keep in our community for 50 years 100 you know it's a long term commitment not just like right now it might be too expensive but we don't know in the future um where things are going to go okay abrams i have a question about something totally different so i'm just wondering when when when it's a good time to transition to that um but i'm if other people have comments about this i'll wait uh okay um i wonder i was wondering about the deferred parking allowance for bicycle parking and maybe a little context for why we allow a deferral of up to 40 percent of the bicycle parking spaces and also whether um

145i'm noticing that and i know that this is it already exists in the ordinance it's not new but um and that the owner has to install that deferred parking if the planning manager determines that some or all of it is needed and i wondered what is the process by which does that ever happen and what would the process be for that to happen i can start off with giving you a little bit of background about that section um since i worked on the first bicycle parking requirements that now require class a b and c um we included the 40 deferred um to apply to bicycle parking as it currently did at the time apply for vehicular parking we we did so because um again we wanted to provide some degree of flexibility because we we

146were sure that not every petitioner and development project was identical and we want we wanted to build in some degree of flexibility recognizing that um some some projects might have a strong demand for uh bicycle parking and some projects might have a very weak demand for instance if you're a project in and around downtown particularly residential you're much likely to have a much higher demand for bicycle parking if you're on the periphery in an office building like five miles from downtown on ellsworth the likelihood that you're going to have a ton of bikes coming to that site is is really quite remote and so we wanted to build in um some degree of flexibility um which would allow people to defer up to 40 percent they would need to show it on a site plan

147show the complete total numbers of spaces on the site plan but they could identify 40 of those spaces to be deferred um and that at any time the developer or uh the planning manager decided that those spaces needed to be installed they they would need to be installed this would allow us in some cases to reduce the amount of imperviousness because bicycle parking is required to be on a per um impervious surface like concrete or asphalt so that's a little bit of the background um maybe planning manager leonard can can talk a little bit about what what he would go through if if being if if we run into a circumstance where we might need to require additional parking spaces be installed sometimes at staff we point fun at city planner con as being overly

148experienced um but it's times like this that i really appreciate um uh your perspective and you got a great history with this um i would just add um i don't think in my time here at the city nearing six years that i've ever been part of a conversation to trigger deferred parking either bicycle or vehicular to be installed commissioner weich anything we can do to increase the bicycle parking i'm in favor for because i just recently tried to go from my house on the west side of ann arbor to jackson road and if you've ever had to go from scio church in main street to jackson it is not a safe path to to traverse that on a bike even on an e-bike where you might be going at the speed of the traffic and

149then when i arrived at my destination there was no bike parking and um it it's it's sort of hard because then that forces me into my car where i have a mode of transportation that works it's it's it's good but so like as we think through that reduction um and especially the the thing that just triggered for me was the location that from where mr khan sort of gave us the reference and from where i was i'm outside of downtown but i still want to stay on my bike i want to make more trips on my bike and less in my car for my own personal reasons but then there are other benefits but then when i get to my destination if there's no place for me to park my bike and i think a

150lot of us actually bike at this table um there's like that built-in disincentive and and um stadium towards jackson is a targeted tc1 area and so like how are we thinking about making it easier for people like myself and others who want to traverse our community on our bikes to get there if when we get to those destinations there's no place for us to to lock our bikes so i i wind up having to lock my bike to itself and and that works unless someone has a big pickup truck and they just toss the whole thing in um so just you know a comment um as we as we sort of think through that yeah just two thoughts um so remember this is a measurement of new plans so if a new development is happening

151it cannot occur some bike parking has to be installed so i'm guessing um your experience was that something that hasn't been through site plan for a while or they remove them without our knowledge but to the point of the language if desired it's a sort of a distinct section in the udc if desired the commission could propose striking that what it would mean is no development would have that flexibility whatever the required bike parking was required would have to be realized at the time of site plan completion so can we would you let me let me understand the procedure because this is a big block of changes that we're making as a single motion so let's assume we pass it tonight and then we wanted to target something that we changed that we approved tonight

152for another revision later because of an unintended consequence let's just say like what we did that brought us here um uh is it worth you noting that now and holding it in our collective memory so like it rides in somewhere where we can revisit it so that we don't have to like because that udc is fairly big with 280 pages and i don't have it all memorized like you and mr khan do so um if if there's some way to note that because i know our minutes don't they're not like a transcript but if they're somewhere in there to highlight that so that we can come back to it um that would be helpful and then i i did have a another question about the parking i and it and forgive me um if it's

153too trivial but that will mean it's a quick answer how would what uh commissioner dish was proposing about removing the maximums have affected the um outback steakhouse proposal on uh state and that is inside of tc1 so to your first question i would either note something like that in council proposed business or we could add it to the future of the work program but in this case um i think it's a pretty distinct and easy amendment if the if the commission is of the similar mind i would just recommend you make that proposed change now at this table and then when it progressed to city council it would be accompanied with that modification as well as it relates to the outback steakhouse a mailbag steakhouse would get caught up in the forum based so what

154that means is their parking lot would not be approvable because its vehicular use area exceeded the footprint of the actual building but then that's but the issue why they wanted it is because of the use and so they wouldn't be able to have as many diners if they fit the tc1 exactly and it would have to be two-story right which they wouldn't do so oh take care of that okay i i was just we got that anonymous thing at the beginning i didn't know who it was from and so i was sort of thinking through that so okay thank you um what can i ask the table what they think about the bike thing because i don't want to make a proposal if people don't if there's no support commissioner dish so it's it's but

155it's 40 of the bike parking that can be deferred so it's not 100 right there is bike parking provided and only in projects where it is initially not anticipated that there will be a big demand for a bigger demand for bike parking would that deferral even happen but there would always be bike parking provided but we're not talking about because mr khan's comment was that it's the the consideration is around the impervious surface so we don't want to create more of that so then we want to give this accommodation as it were um but the bike parking doesn't have the same space requirements so i guess i'm just trying to understand what's the why what we need to defer 40 of the bike parking when most of the bike parking is less than like 18

156loops or you know in these spaces like am i am i missing something that's obvious no you you i don't think so you don't have to defer it um previously we the city would have petitioners come and say hey the minimum vehicular parking being required is more than i need which makes sense and so we said well if we should at least provide some flexibility in that regard we're not saying that you you have to show us that you can meet that if needed if there's such an impact on parking and similarly we provided the same to bicycle parking i agree the corresponding impact impervious service much smaller it's still potential and to be clear in both circumstances the stormwater system is designed based on the potential volume of that so whether it's vehicular bicycle

157parking we are addressing the impervious but at the end of the day if 15 biking like parking spaces are required and the petitioner says i think we're only going to need 12 right it's just a pretty easy way to say well let's let's make sure we we can just keep that impervious surface avoid that impervious surface for that incremental amount um if for some reason commissioner weich goes there to buy his smoothie and he can't he can't find bike parking we could decide you need to add the other part hoops so i i totally agree it's much much more incremental than the vehicular parking but it was intended to follow that same map that same method and the reason you're only seeing the bicycle now is because now that vehicular is eliminated there's no there's

158no longer that need right i'll defer to commissioner abrams if if she said she started the conversation if she has thoughts about where we should go with it i would be inclined to leave it for the time being since it's just the 40 um but i just wanted some context and i was just also curious to know what the process would be if you went there and there was you wanted more parking um and if that ever happened it sounds like it doesn't happen but now we know that it can so um yeah and um yeah i mean anecdotally there's no bike parking at the power center which i know is a university michigan but like even just in really populated areas there's places with no bike parking i'm kind of inclined to strike it

159frankly and i'm glad you brought it up and i know that um because i feel like this is where we're trying to incent like i love it when i show up to a place on my bike and i get the best parking for the site because i'm close to the door i don't have to deal with anything and i feel like yeah we should be rewarded for doing this you know this more arduous thing that is good for the planet and good for all kinds of things you know and um i feel like when these people are when developers are designing these sites i don't think they're like looking at how many bikers are actually coming here and i don't think that they have the same models for that stuff that they do for cars

160frankly i just don't think they do and i think that we should be showing what we want there and and that we're limiting the other stuff with the cars and i feel like we if somebody pulls up and they're in their car and they see wow look at all this bike parking that kind of says something too and i think that we want to encourage people to do it we want to grow into that and i think that you know your average person besides commissioner white who shows up on a bike is going to say oh i can go to the city and i bet that they deferred this bike parking and i know how to make that happen nobody knows how to make that happen and so i would rather it was aside from

161our anecdotal experience where we happen to bike in town because we know you know there's very few of us that are going to ever realize that and it's a pretty simple fix according to you know mr leonard i kind of feel like why not is is my my feeling so i'm with you actually i don't know if anybody else feels that way um but that's it it's such a small area i mean each hoop is two spaces you know so so it's you know it's 24 square feet it's four by six it's not that big compared to a car parking spot in a way it's not just similar to our approach with ev parking it's recognizing ideally exactly that the mode share is going to move more and more in that place i don't know

162if mode share for evu vehicles isn't quite right but um i don't think it's dissimilar it's perfectly appropriate that even in those circumstances that mr khan was identifying or that commissioner weich has experienced when those site plans happen providing that infrastructure helps over time to cultivate more usability for those destinations as the city hopefully is making progress on its sort of route and infrastructure benefits as well commissioner hammersmith since commissioner white asked i'll just say for my two cents if i'm agnostic so if somebody proposes to eliminate it i'll support it if we want to leave it i'll support it since you asked i'm fine either way and i don't bike so i'd refer to those of you commissioner dish so it sounds like we're talking about a pretty trivial amount of impervious surface and

163i will say that when i'm finally able to bike again i like having a hoop to myself you know i don't like having to you know you know when you're trying to lock and everything so yeah why not you know let's just put those three extra darn hoops and just one final comment which is it's the other whole foods there's only three loops that are [Music] outside of that structure between the whole foods and rei and i have arrived at whole foods and not been able to lock my bike right and yeah which is you know but you see this vast parking lot and it goes on because it's the whole development from from uh eisen you know eisenhower and uh maine and the the the cut into the neighborhood so yeah if there's support

164and mr khan's okay with it uh we'll i language from mr leonard and i will go ahead and move it but so the um a proposed motion might be to strike the proposed section um 5.19.4 deferred parking requirements altogether 5 19.4 okay so moved so this would eliminate deferred parking we are already uh um impacting the deferred parking removal for vehicular through the elimination of minimums this would extend that removal to bike parking all bike parking would have to be installed at the time of completion do we want to vote on this now and then move on to yep okay uh commissioner hammersmith yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee is abstained commissioner clark yes commissioner weich yes commissioner gabe randle yes commissioner abrams who started this whole thing sure yes all right the motion's been

165the ordinance has been a motion has been amendment to strike that um i don't know if there's a proposed motion on the removal of the maximum or not that feels sort of unresolved okay okay here no [Laughter] i would and i agree i think though that we should be paying attention to this one over time because i think that we really need to see if we're getting what we want and that i wouldn't be surprised if we end up amending this as it goes along so that so i would give us all homework to be paying attention to this because i think there is no easy comparison as commissioner dish was saying in terms of how other people have handled it so alrighty are we ready for a vote then on the larger amended motion

166all right so this is the full adoption of the proposed ordinance changes commissioner as amended uh commissioner hold on let me get organized here commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee is abstaining commissioner clark yes commissioner weich yes commissioner randall yes commissioner abrams yes uh the minimum six required affirmative votes to forward a recommendation for approval to the city council so how do folks feel we have two more things discussed tonight a break yeah i think i think so okay um why don't could we uh since we're getting a little late can we make it five minutes okay back at 9 45. thank you jeff concession and on item 9a which is other business and we are going to be going over the annual comprehensive plan review um and i will let mr leonard

167lead this one sure uh thank you for commissioner dish and highlighting that this could be reality so you'll recall at our last um our last meeting we held a public hearing as stipulated by the planning commission bylaws on an annual basis an opportunity to hear feedback about our comprehensive plan the elements within it and if anything is recommended for consideration i am and typically uh often over time the planning commission has affirmed the documents that comprise our comprehensive plan and they have affirmed a series of resource documents that are also adopted by the city council as just that thing they are not adopted as comprehensive plans but seen as information documents sort of color commentary if you would on how the comprehensive plan is implemented distinct from just affirming the status quo this two resolutions

168here are presented that would both be adopted by the proposed motion and the staff report one rel is relatively comprehensive plan and one is to those resource documents both of them recommend a full review and update to the city's comprehensive plan beginning in fiscal year 23 and commits this planning commission to the leadership to undertake this process and that the planning commission recommends the allocation of city resources to solicit both consultant assistant and internal support of a comprehensive update process in the we talked about a little bit about about this with the plan subcommittee i've gone into a little bit of detail on how i just some very preliminary ideas about how i envision this process going highlighted in the memo specifically i think that the most attention warranted at this time are for five

169documents the natural features master plan from 2014 the downtown plan from 2009 the 2009 land use element the sustainability framework for 2013 and the south state corridor plan from 2013. more recent documents the parks and recreation open space from 2016 that is also going through a distinct update process now the treeline allen creek urban trail master plan and the moving together toward vision zero comprehensive transportation plan that was just adopted last year i don't envision a lot of work on those documents excuse me at this time um we talked about some of the the findings i've tried to articulate some of the findings that i envision as why it's time to update our comprehensive plan first of all that the land use element was adopted over a decade ago and some of some of that

170was just a consolidation of plans that are now almost 30 year over 30 years old we've talked a lot about how public institutions have started becoming more educated and knowledgeable and grappling with their role in systematic racism and economic segregation trying to update our comprehensive plan recognizing that and we talked at this table about taking sort of restorative policies to try to help not only acknowledge but do our best to undo some of that in the future the last time we went through this update we talked about elevating climate neutrality this has been more refined to recognize we now have the a20 living carbon neutrality plan and more fully and completely integrating the recommendations of that into our comprehensive land use planning documents and then a couple of maintained categories i would say more in

171the previous one is affordability affordability remains an acute challenge for the city of ann arbor as a lot of other communities and i think that also has to be a considerable focus of any sort of comprehensive plan update and finally that resolution that identifies eight planning documents i still have an aspiration that we collapse and condense our policy documents to make them more accessible to not only the public but to you as board and commission members and to the city council and all of us carrying out the work of those goals so my recommendation is your adoption of this ordinance this would be forwarded to the city council and would hopefully cultivate in a very successfully rooted in community engagement update to our comprehensive plan that shouldn't take more than three months to three years

172[Laughter] and i might be answering questions alrighty we do not have public hearing on this since we already held a public hearing on this so we are just up for discussion at this point so does commissioner hammersmith yeah just in reading through the what are you calling this resolution um i'm curious why in like the planning documents listed below you're you've not listed 820 as like a support document because all those documents are specifically adopted into one of those categories by the city council and the city council did neither for the a20 they adopted the plan but they did not specifically tie it to the city's land use policies okay but it could still we could still use it as a resource that the consultant will see okay all right thanks mr ravens um i

173think this is great um excuse me i just had one small uh maybe suggestion for editing the resolution to be more give a little bit of urgency to the task so uh one two three in the fourth paragraph the last word it says um that the review is warranted and i thought maybe we could say necessary or needed or something like it's more than just simply justified but maybe we feel that it's really overdue um and similarly at the end the first result second resolved clause uh fiscal year 23 i wondered if we could just say as soon as possible or something like that or or if is there a reason to be more formal with the fiscal year language than something more i'd be fine with either fiscal year 23 is the first resources

174that we have allocated toward financial resources um so that is as soon as that is the technical as soon as possible yeah and it uh that starts july 1 of this year right i suppose i just don't want to leave any room i want to be clear that we think it should happen july 1 and not june 15th of 2023 maybe beginning immediately in fiscal year 23 could be added to that resolve clause and then i have just similar in the in the second resolution it says in the second resolved statement resource documents above in the coming years and i thought we could similarly revise that to be more have a little more urgency to the timeline thank you commissioner lee in reviewing my notes from two weeks ago i think mr leonard you did

175an extra excellent job actually summarizing pretty much everything that we discussed and kind of hitting all of the salient uh items um land use plan natural features um i think we you also mentioned resolving the conflicts my question procedurally is is your memo and the proposed planning commission motion also a part of the city council package okay gotcha because i would be remiss that if only just the approved motions were okay perfect um other than that yeah i agree with commissioner abram's suggestion about putting a little more sense of urgency i suppose on these items but aside from that just wanted to say um it seems to accurately reflect our discussions from two weeks ago and would be in support of this thank you anybody else uh well people are considering a couple of proposed

176amendments to the comprehensive plan resolution i think the term was used and i was just going to suggest an update to the city's ends with update to the city's comprehensive plan documents is urgent the first resolve clause beginning immediately in fiscal year 23 and then on the corresponding conference of plan resource documents perhaps change the coming years to immediately in fiscal year 23 as well should i move to make those amendments to the resolution i don't think we have emotion on the table yet so you'd just be moving the resolution as adapted as amended ah got it i don't want to cut off i won't do that unless we're ready is there any other discussion okay so am i just reading this one sentence motion or am i just the one sentence motion okay all

177righty there we go one resolved um so the motion is resolved that the city and our city ann arbor city planning commission thereby approves the 2022 comprehensive plan resolution and the 2022 comprehensive plan resource documents resolution moved by commissioner dish seconded by commissioner hammerschmidt okay i guess we do not need a roll call for this one so all in favor say aye raise your right hand there was no emotion on the table so we're so we just modified we we just approved a modified version of what was in your packet is everybody clear on that modification time okay so all in favor say aye aye any nays okay then it passes alrighty so then we are on to 9b which is um the work program okay um you will recall you've seen this work program

178at this is the third consecutive meeting you saw it preliminarily [Music] at the last april meeting just starting to get the the format the content started um you have the benefit of the public hearing to consider updates to the comprehensive plan um to see if there's anything that you heard that should be reflected in your work program and so now this work program is being presented to you for adoption as a reminder it's a little bit different format from what we've done in the past because i like the colors the top is comprehensive plan and other i would say administrative type work you'll recall we have added some of the source or basis of why things are here in the top segment it tends to be state planning legislation city code or our bylaws once

179we move into the green section which is ordinance amendments attempting to identify these on a yearly basis we've also put in what are some of the corresponding origination of those requirements sometimes i will note that they have evolved from commission proposed business but they are relate to a proposed plan goal so um i have put we've put together as you recall this is more ordinance amendments than we typically do on average but these were the group that seemed to rise to the top through those two previous conversations i'm going to preemptively tell you that i am envisioning at the bottom of this first page before you go into 2023 on the next page that white that white stripe on the document that is a impermeable barrier so in the event that you would like to

180add something above that that means you have to pull something else out or because stormwater capacity is not going to it's not going to it's not going to be sound so um uh the memo is a simple motion approving this work program um directing me and my staff to try to get all of this done for you in the time identified just a question the years are calendar years or fiscal years that is an excellent question uh typically they have been typically they are fiscal years they are typically adopted sort of on that schedule this would be adopted for the coming fiscal year i would really like to morph towards a calendar year because the fiscal year is doesn't really mean much to most people other than our finance financing so that's to say my

181goal is maybe we shoot to do a it this would be 22 calendar year this is still pretty ambitious for that so i want to be honest i'm not terribly optimistic that i'm going to get all this done but i would i'm happy to start and do my best commissioner weich did we uh what happened to unzoni uh we talked about uh perhaps at a retreat or a working session talking about um we talked about on zoning we talked about commissioners bringing ideas as part of that discussion i've not put it in here yet because i i feel like we've identified that as sort of more of an exercise than a defined ordinance amendment in the context of these other things if that's something you'd we'd definitely like to elevate i think it would be

182in that discussion of perhaps prioritizing it over something else that's in this year now and we just did the parking regulations yep the top two you can pretty much ignore because now with the parking regulations um those are just on here they're they're going to city council next both so we have two slots uh no no no sir it is maybe uh yeah i just want to make sure that the unzoning um doesn't get lost i do think it'd be a great retreat discussion yeah yeah and it just it feels like if it doesn't if it's not somewhere written down that we can all see and refer to then i feel like we have to keep asking for it so if you're unwilling to take the parking regulations and use the udc delta changes you

183could leave it under u udc delta changes and just take out what we've already accomplished and then you don't actually have to put anything new on there mr leonard and then we can continue to add in that space uh i would prefer not to do that yes i should tell however i think your point is good and it can be listed like as it is i think it needs to be listed as an interim step i think we could add it to 2023 yeah just so that we know that this is something that we want to accomplish and i want to apologize to my colleagues and the general public i have my earphones in and i did not know i had them in until i left and they disconnected from my computer and i was

184like what wait i didn't even know i had these in so i apologize for that i wasn't listening to anything it's like jewelry for me don't even keep them on yeah all right so um one the proposed change would be to add i'm going to call it unzoning for now to the 2023 list perhaps mr abrams no surprise i would like to have parking maximums on a list other than like more specific than future so i may have lost my chance to add it to 2023 but um or maybe we could consider swapping some bumping something down but for the reason i already stated many times tonight um and previously so i won't reiterate them but i do think there's some urgency there so outside tc1 so kind of to consider it citywide to think

185about that um and what would i be willing to swap well i guess some things are are undefined to me so like mixed use neighborhoods in 2023 i i actually would need more information about what the scope of that is um and maybe the one below it to the missing middle if hypothetically the commission were to add parking maximums also to 2023 and hypothetically we are also being ambitious for 2023 um maybe that is a bit of an intermediate landing ground a little more elevation than future not quite getting started on it yet and as long as we are thoughtful and um and just mindful of the progress we've made in 2022 i'm recognizing we might have to have some hard conversations in 2023. i don't i don't mind being a little bit aggressive on

186that list just recognizing we might have to make some adjustments and then as we get further down if we're in the planning process we might have a better sense of missing middle we might have a better sense of mixed-use neighborhoods so i i guess i would just say i'm a little less scared about overpopulating with the caveat that i might come to you and say we gotta we gotta prioritize these yes yeah so commissioner yeah i want to um strongly support this because i think that um given our decision to proceed at a reasonable pace with the tc1 rezonings i actually think that raises the urgency for parking maximum city-wide because those other tc until those are zoned they are ripe for right all kinds of parking structured sea of concrete and you know whatever

187hovercraft i don't know anybody else okay shall i read the motion so uh the motion that is about to be read is pertaining to the work program as included in your packet with two modifications adding unzoning and parking mo adding unzoning to 2023 and moving parking maximums from future to 2023. and do we need to vote on that or is that i just nope that's i'm good okay just want to make sure everybody unders was clear about what they were voting on okay so the motion is the ann arbor city planning commission here by adopts the city planning commission work program moved by commissioner dish seconded by commissioner weich so are we we're good vote on it oh sorry i'm sorry i'll make it real quick just one point of clarifications on um the 2023

188it says drive-throughs and i'm wondering if parking maximums if that's like a completely separate like in my head i'm like we're talking about vehicular use areas maybe those two can be combined drive-throughs and parking minimum maximums or whether they should be two separate lines altogether i was trying to figure out like is it possible to combine those two but just food for thought you could keep it separate i'm i'm in favor of the modification regardless so um i'd like to talk about it in 2023 i do believe it's a very important kind of lever for us to tackle but just wanted to at least um for the purpose of not having that list grow absurdly long so i it yeah we can leave them listed separately now i think they could end up being tied

189together my two senses i think parking maximums is going to be long and hard and drive-throughs probably less so yeah okay yeah just i mean it just might be a question about sort of checking something off versus rolling it into something larger yeah never mind for did i send anything okay thanks anybody else okay so are we ready then and can we just take this all together we don't need a roll call already all in favor say aye aye all right negative nobody negative all right it passes okay so i believe we are on to item 10 which is audience participation this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about an item any item of interest if you wish traders to plan the commission at this time press star 9 by

190listening to my phone or use the raised hand feature and viewing through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 977-6634-1226 city staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name if available for those accessing through the web link you will hear an automated announcement the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly brittany speaker please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments nobody's present any speakers virtually there are none okay all right we are on then to item 11 commission proposed business is there anybody or did we kind of get it covered in our work

191plan discussion oh sorry little one commissioner abrams um in one of the communications that we received for this evening uh there was a note from uh mr westfall that points out that there may be a kind of inconsistency in the way we define what qualifies as a zoning what qualifies as a parcel that can be rezoned to tc1 and i wondered when would be the appropriate time some future date to to have that conversation um so he just in this but in a specific purpose statement it says that um there are rare instances when if you're entirely surrounded by these designated mixed use categories you could ask to be considered to be rezoned to tc1 but that the parcels that we are doing the city initiatives only don't meet that criteria so it feels anyway

192for a future discussion but wondering uh when we should have that edit to the list thank you anybody else commissioner lee just want to say great job on running the meeting chair randall oh thank you always tough to kind of step into that role [Laughter] all righty i think we are on to item 13 which is adornment by commissioner just and seconded by commissioner lee all those in favor aye we are adjourned i get to hit the gavel too right here we go there