Center of the City - Council of the Commons Meeting 3-3-22

001uh the agenda uh is posted on legislar um i guess before i guess first we have to do a call to order my apology it's been a little while on this one uh heather could you call the roll please sir steven borgstorf not here jennifer cornell alan haber and please remember to say whether you're here and um where you're calling in from jurisdiction wise so alan we're doing real call right now and i just called your name yeah i'm right here i'm on 531 third street in ann arbor all right thank you um sarah hammerschmidt here and ann arbor jeffrey honey here ann arbor camilla lisandia here in philadelphia pennsylvania for spring break exciting um rita mitchell you're in ann arbor alice ralph here in ann arbor frank welcome i'm here in calhoun georgia heading

002to florida adam's i'm key here in ann arbor and councilmember briggs here in ann arbor and council member dish who is absent if you want anywhere all right um with that then we'll go to the first item on the agenda which is just the approval of the agenda um there is uh was everybody able to except for maybe alice on um legistar to access the agenda take a look at it it's it's the this fairly standard one that we normally have alice just as a heads up public comment and member news and updates working group updates the four working groups and then um timeline for uh recommendations report and the rfi discussion so that is about it can we have an approval uh a request to approve the agenda all right propose a second all

003right perfect agenda passes um we'll go into the approval of the minutes uh from the january 6th meeting any questions on the minutes at all i don't have them i can't question well the uh i would just make a comment in our discussion of what should be in the request for information because that was the discussion i wanted to see among the things to be considered was in defying civic center civic center building indoor space as well as outdoor space that was not reflected in the minutes i think it was reflected possibly in the actual uh request for information uh in one of the responders it was not responded to significantly by either of the responders so i don't know what to say but if it's comments on the minutes i make that comment that's

004a continuing question that the commons is a central park and a civic center that implies i believe a four season indoor outdoor capacity implies it's not the same as specifies ellen do you do we need to adjust the minutes are we okay because that must be always persist in this comment okay uh could we have an approval to approve the minutes all right and we got a couple seconds there so uh all in favor say aye okay hi hi any opposed all right um then we'll go into public comment uh do we have any members of the public we do um matthew has his hand up so please go ahead you should be able to talk for me yep great that is this is my first time joining the meeting i'm matthew altruda i'm the

005curator of sonic lunch and i do a lot of events and i just want to let everyone know how excited i am for the center of the city and that sonic lunch is a part of it and i'm really excited for my programming at liberty plaza and how it's included in the vision of center of the city and look forward to utilizing the whole park with years to come it's very exciting for me and um i love liberty plaza and i love programming it and the excitement of the park growing to a community center is something that i look that i look forward to working thank you and we have robert black can you hear me heather i can thank you and thank you for this opportunity to speak before you again tonight since the

006inception of the council the commons a year ago now i have attended every meeting shared my views at each public comment and listened intently for where you have found common ground in your work i applaud your willingness to actively listen to one another and remain open to the ideas of others this is a model example of how a commons in this case the center of the city should form and grow i heard alignment during your july 7th retreat last year you formed working subcommittees around key focus areas to accelerate your progress comparable communities agenda item 5a tonight has yielded much learning from the experiences of nearby communities like detroit's three major parks and the city of plymouth's ability to engage a broad coalition to create kellogg park that has become more than a park a

007true civic heart to their community the work you all did with short medium and long range goals was most helpful a good example of this is chair zemke's ideas presented june 2nd last year quote in my view mr zemke stated short-term usage relies upon very little alteration of the space e.g pop-up style uses primarily uses the spaces for events that do not require significant planning and sets a time period of space use for the next six months unquote following this lead the initiating committee took action to create a series of activating events over the next five months that generated community interest and engagement mr zemke's intermediate term use proposed to quote incorporate a mix of pop-up and more standing use activities based around longer running events such that community members have an opportunity to become

008accustomed to events in the space and to offer feedback to help innovate unquote the green team's garden events from last year are being planned and extended this year to do just this other initiatives to grow public involvement include linkages as you just heard with sonic lunch that has inspired people for 13 years at liberty plaza park sonic lunches in 2022 will help build public awareness of the center of the city's developing brand identity mr zemke's long-term use and planning objectives inspired me and contributed to our response our team's response to the city's request for information that you'll be discussing in agenda item 7. he said last june quote ultimately creating a vision for the long-term use of this space is what likely brings everyone to this council i agree with his assertion here he goes

009on quote i believe that combining elements from the city's past with an eye towards creating a new central gathering space that attracts and celebrates a diverse swath of ann arbor residents and visitors is what a central space needs to satisfy well what this space will look like and be called is something that i hope we can all gain consensus around unquote i wholeheartedly support and encourage this last statement our rfi response is geared entirely toward this noble goal i believe that we have the ability to do this and i have offered many ways this past year in which this can be achieved i look forward to your discussions this to this vitally important vision to shape the most caring and enduring ann arbor that we will all be proud to create together thank you thanks

010robert thank you and then we have two callers um i don't see your hands raised collars um press start nine if you would like to talk odile has her hand up or dead for a moment all right we have um somebody on the phone would like to talk all right you should be able to go ahead that's the person with the phone number that ends in three two six you should be able to speak hello can you hear me now again great all right thank you my name is jeff crockett i live at 506 east kingsley right downtown and i'm been actively involved in the commons and in creating a community garden i am the person who's leading the green team i'm calling for a couple reasons tonight one is to express my strong support

011for the proposal that was submitted in response to an rpi by robert black for a number of different reasons the first one which is the most obvious one is his bid is 30 of mksk we're talking about from 36 750 to 56 500 for robert's proposal as opposed to msks which is ms ms mksk which is 120-140 000. but number two is we're talking about someone who is local and who really understands ann arbor he understands on amber so much that he adopted the theme past present future which by the way was the theme of the sesquicentennial in ann arbor in 1974. his report is 16 pages when you look at mksk they have a much longer overall presentation but most of it is 54 pages is just basically pictures of what they've already done

012and it's only eight pages about what applies to the ann arbor project i would also like to draw attention you may or may not have gotten an email that i sent not long ago to um to heather that i was hoping she could uh forward to you and it includes a link to a website that i would like to talk about robert black has submitted a response to the council of commons rfi where he shows an example of a rooftop garden in oakland california and there's been a lot of conversation about how cement services are not in particular the library parking lot are not suitable for a garden well i would like to add to this conversation an article i found not long ago about creating gardens over cement services which provides an imperative for

013doing so the article is titled planting living roofs for native pollinators and the first part is about sedums other parts will include about native grasses i would urge you to look at the title of the journal which is called living architect monitor a green roof for healthy cities publication this is totally consistent with our goal for this year in the green team to identify the community gardens as monarch way stations and think of this the city city is spending thousands of dollars to create healthy streets creating a garden on portions of the library lot turns concrete into a much healthier place for the monarch butterflies and bees and let's face it surface parking in the library no longer makes sense we are encouraging people to walk and ride bikes not drive their cars downtown maintaining

014service parking in this site totally undercuts a20 so i'm hoping you'll look at this article in fact if you do a bit of research you're finding that all over the country people are converting cement spaces into gardens both on surface over service parking lots and in large development complexes i also want to point out that i'm very excited about the development of the green team this year because we're talking about expanding the sites but this year thanks to reed and mitchell applying for a monarch butterfly way station now what's really important about this is we're going to be turning the gardens into an educational site and chris and i are starting with our own property we're going to be dedicating a portion of our gardens basically to pollinator plants to attract monarch butterflies this can

015really take off and by having a demonstrate demonstration site on the commons this opens up to us to educate the public which is education and engagement is really what the commons is all about so i thank you for listening and i'm hoping that you'll approve uh robert black's uh rfi proposal thank you very much all right thank you and then odile as her hand up they say odile is trying to get on and they have her blocked she's on she should be able to talk you just need to unmute yourself oh deal doesn't she have to do star nine okay can you hear me now okay i can hear you also i don't need my phone okay good because he was asking me for a meeting id and when i did the one i was

016given it said that it didn't exist okay i just wanted to say hello welcome it's nice everyone again the spring is hopefully coming soon because it's still very much freezing and i imagine that a lot of people will want to get out and enjoy the comments and enjoy places so it's very important i think to be prepared and to allow people even maybe we still mask if we that's what the demand but to be able to be on the common and in our town enjoying themselves and to come back to lives once again so we are preparing to do a gardening i am the coordinator this year and i am recruiting people that want to come and do some gardening we will start the seedling next month so i just wanted to let you know

017i hope you are well and keep well thank you thank you all right we have one more caller with their hand up okay so go ahead caller with a phone number that ends in a22 hello hello can you hear me yeah hello thank you heather and um uh thanks everyone on the council for the opportunity to uh address you tonight um my name is david olson uh i live in the neighborhood now known as waterhill and i was born and raised in ann arbor and then left for many years and now i'm back so that's just a little i've been back for about 10 years so now that's just a little background it's really exciting to hear about how this is all moving forward great to hear that al trudeau is is uh on the

018scene and excited about expanding into the into the new public space the butterfly uh way station sounds great the gardening of course so all very exciting um what i wanted to um bring up tonight is has to do with uh funding i know that the um that the council of the commons is going to be making recommendations to the city soon and funding is always an issue um and i have something to sort of bring to your attention as you all know in 2003 the the citizen voter taxpayers of ann arbor passed the greenbelt millage resolution that had to do with the acquisition and management and protection of land and park park and open space and early on in the development of this or the organizing for the um for the library lot common space

019i talked to several council members as well as others at city hall about the appropriateness of using some of those funds generated by the greenbelt millage for the common space and i was have always been directed to we're told that the there's a resolution in place that restricts um that has to do with the um uh guidelines for uh for use of the greenbelt funds uh which stipulates that uh two-thirds go for out for land outside of the city for acquisition in management and that one-third of the funds can be used for inside the city but that was for acquisition only as i've been digging around more though i find that that is actually not the language on the millage that is not what the people of ann arbor voted for the language on the

020millage doesn't make any differentiation or talk of allocation and says that all the funds can be used for the for now i'm reading from the millage language itself can be used for the acquisition and management of land and land rights both within and outside the city of ann arbor that resolution that it serves as the guidelines for how the money can be used uh is was a resolution that was passed by council and of course can be nullified um by another resolution that resolution was passed 20 years ago and i think our priorities have changed the situation has changed uh and it's time to revisit that and so i would propose that the council of the commons recommend that the city uh uh nullified that those procedural guidelines again 20 20 years later and that

021we would start to use that those funds now for the management of land in the city and i just wanted to finish with a real quick quote john ruskin who's a well-known thinker writer and social critic once wrote the measure of any great civilization is its cities in a measure of a city's greatness is to be found in the quality of its public spaces its parks and squares and when i look around when i as i travel around the country and around the world and even just around michigan it's one of the things you see in every town in every city is some sort of a a public space a town square of commons and i just can't believe that in ann arbor we we can't uh probably lose enough uh funding uh to make

022a public space that we can all be uh really proud of um and i think in fact that we have that the people have voted not only to set this land aside for the for the commons um in this public space but we've actually voted to um through 2034 to pay out of our taxes this millage and i hope that we can redirect some of those funds asap to this center of the city project thank you thank you very much anybody else heather sorry i'm muted uh that is it okay perfect all right with that we'll close uh public comment and move into member news and updates any uh anything that folks would like to share before we go into working groups helen oh yes excuse me uh i'd like to let you all know

023that earth day is coming up and we have plans on the commons for thursday april 21 friday earth day 22 and on the weekend saturday and sunday and uh much excitement and anybody who wants to help out and that please be in touch you know the perimeter is in you know matt is cooperating and that is not going to be a big concert like sonic lunch but it will be music and talk and opportunity for people to be at home in the center of the city and i wanted to follow what i'm sure i raised at previous meetings that always when we do events there is a land acknowledgement that this land not only of the center of the city but the entirety of our area is historically the land of the potawatomi nation of

024the anishinabe three fires council and they were basically put out of here around the time our bicentennial takes its beginning and more into the from the 1820s 1830s and i've been participant in the uh powwow discussions and other with native americans who participated in our programs and it seems appropriate that we begin to think of the question of land return as well as land acknowledgement and how do we make from the city of ann arbor an invitation to the pottawatomie nation for a community of potawatomi to resettle in ann arbor and to share with us their culture particularly beneficial in terms of the their historic relation to commoning and their capacity of a resilience and adaptation to the climate and such changes i've been pursuing that and there are several people there's a person on

025the faculty kyle white who is the pottawatomie and it does beautiful teaching on the values and of the pottawatomie culture and the sense of earth restoration most important in the difficult times we approach so i wanted to let you know and anyone interested in that element of the development uh and i further raised the sense in terms of the center of the city that the program of juneteenth uh the 19th of june uh the black community usually celebrates by keeping at the edge from fuller park a march along the river to wheeler park and the proposal is out that they should seek to center a program of celebration of their presence in ann arbor on the commons before they take their march to wheeler park for always an incredible good potluck and so on so

026those are some things i've been pursuing along the way with others and so for your information anyone interested in this and the earth day program is coming along thank you thank you that one i else you had your hand up too yes um just some short reactions to the comments that were made um go backwards i think it was david olson had two nice points of view one very high level about partly about the nature of a healthy city and its lovely spaces i think the quote was from someone from another century but it still stands well um i think i think it's good to think to to realize what we're about here in that respect that this is an integral part of our city um the other part if i can recall um i

027think i'll just skip to the another comment about um the rfi uh rfis that we've received the two that we received and there's i think we should be cautious about how we talk about those they're not really proposals as i understand it there and yet um i think that's an impression that many people might have that we're deciding on something that requires a budget request and all that stuff not quite there yet i think but if i'm incorrect about that i still would like first to be clear about what we'll be talking about tonight and what we're looking for we're looking at as we engage with those two proposals who sorry rfis response their responses rather than proposals yeah i agree with you alice i think it is uh important that there is a clarity

028and certainly not a rush to take action tonight uh based on uh based on the next steps but good discussion i i also uh now i see my key word is the ordinance um it was good for us also to review the green belt legislation and the ordinance that resulted um because there there is a long-held belief along people who started out looking at the greenway even um which is now called the tree line that there was some money that was intended to somehow enhance our green spaces and natural areas within the city um parks it's included and so we've never seen that realized and i don't believe that personally i don't believe that that was excluded per se but it sure has been um late it sure has been used as as something that's

029only outside the city we have never seen the money that was sort of implied or maybe even promised for the city itself so it's worth looking back at it again i believe too so i support the idea excellent any other members before we go into the working group updates okay well with that um why don't we move into the next agenda item which is uh the updates on any of the working groups we don't have to go in the order that are listed um i don't know rita i know you had worked on some things for the com comparable communities do you want to kick us off sure first off i want to say i'm sorry to my fellow working group numbers that i got our notes out to you rather late so that there

030was an opportunity for you to comment and maybe enhance them but i will report briefly that we had a zoom discussion with paul simpak who is the city manager of plymouth who manages the kellogg park there and he is very enthusiastic about their space it has grown in use and improved over time significantly and i'll just say that one of the things they do is assess the public reaction to the park and the most recent survey that was done by eastern michigan university of of um residents of plymouth was that 61 said it's a very important thing for them to host entertainment in the downtown and they do a lot of it um from you know you we've probably all heard about the ice sculptures but there's also all kinds of music and celebrations um

031and they are constantly i think thinking about what's going on in that space in their town uh it is very much engaged or sorry the members of the community representing various groups are very much engaged with the parks they have involvement from their dda from their local lions club a local foundation that donated money for a fountain that i have not seen it's been recently installed um they even have bathrooms that are funded in their case privately um and monitored so that they are safe so um it is a really good model i think for us to see something that's so close to home and that i think engenders a sense of pride by members of the community so um i did not submit these minutes to the group because i really felt like it

032was good to have the work group commented first so i can do that once once we all agree but that's that's where i am thanks frank did you want to add something um not a lot thank you thank you rita that was a good summary uh uh the community really uh in all aspects seems to rally around the concept of this park as a kind of a centerpiece of community activity which on occasion spills out into the downtown generally they claim it i don't doubt that they have the second largest art fair in michigan which started off 40 years ago with 20 artists in the in recent years up to 400 artists they have weekly music events that draw three to five thousand people i'm sure that i think the park itself was only a

033couple acres um i was surprised how small the acreage was because it seems to have such a presence in the downtown uh that it seems bigger but it it's not and uh the city is very much engaged in uh making uh this success the the management of the space and events is rather the city manager's office and uh there's a whole there's a whole structure to it in terms of uh determining what the fees will be for the organizations that want to sponsor events and it all seems to work and uh um there was a number of questions uh uh i think what we've reportedly read and i've reported is pretty much what paul sincock uh shared at the front end of this meeting back in mid-january but there are three or four other pages

034of uh particular questions so i think rather than going to all of that tonight if we can circulate that to the entire um council that that would be a good way to keep this in front of us and uh so uh we're looking forward to engaging other communities i just saw something over my electronic airwaves about a commons a park in royal oak michigan i believe which looked very interesting and it's just being dedicated now by uh around their centennial they're only 100 years old we've got them beat by 98 years i guess but uh anyhow so that's all i would like to add to that thanks frank i i would just like to add one other point too that i you know um having gone to the plymouth for dinner several times and driven

035through a number of times as well the the space is not very large but one of the things that strikes me and that's very unique about it too is just the proximity to the downtown uh restaurant scene and the establishment they really have surrounded the uh town square we asked uh mr sincock about uh the impact of events especially events that had food and that sort of thing and how they engaged with the community and he reported it was actually very positive that uh that the engagement between the private uh business establishment surrounded the square in particular and uh any of the activities even the ones that that had you know effectively uh similar services you know were uh had a really positive engagement they were working things through and so i think you know

036we heard that same same response from um a gentleman from the downtown detroit partnership right and so uh you know i think i think there's a uh you know not enough totally to draw a direct correlation but there's a way to make these things work is uh is i think what we're hearing and uh as long as we're doing it intentionally then you know it does so that's the only other point i'd like to add thanks for adding that adam that it's true uh very much the case both in detroit and plymouth and i'm sure that they had to work through uh issues over time but uh uh it's been done in a spirit of cooperation and and listening to um points of view and so on and it's it seems to turn that turn

037out to be a very positive feature of these down both these downtown areas any any other points in the comparable communities all right are there other is there an intent to look at other communities there is yes we're we're we're uh slowly making our way through a number of other ones we've had uh discussion around um looking at cincinnati um as a future one and uh we're looking elsewhere as well i know you have sent a number of ideas as well ellen i don't think anything's crossed off the list yet it's good to look at cincinnati because that's when milton where milton de honey has done work so we didn't know that in fact take note of that fact you'll get a a good docent for the tour um are there other updates at all

038you know these are standing items on the agenda so if there are none uh that is fine as well but if there are other updates from uh the block part yeah frank please yeah are any of the any of the uh standard reports uh i had just a comment about on the fundraising front um you can go ahead and make that comment that's fine um i don't know how widely it's known that uh the library green conservancy has has made a commitment of up to twenty thousand dollars to uh join with the city and providing funding for the what will eventually become the the rfp and uh i think we also have a cooperative clear understanding that we're we're going to work together uh to to seek other sources of funding uh for the the

039rfp and and for other uh activities uh the other area that library green is particularly interested in is the near-term activation and uh um i'm not in a position to announce at the moment but they're uh we're uh close to having a i think an important commitment from a community business uh in ann arbor that uh we'll be announcing that in the near future so thank you excellent thanks frank are there any other updates from either the other two um standing committees you know yeah sir i don't have a real update and i'm explaining why i don't have an update and i'm also going to say publicly that i'm going to get the block partners group back together i've had a very bad year so far um with covid and then changing jobs so i'm

040gonna i'll reach out to you guys to try to get something scheduled because we're pretty i mean i think we have a pretty decent survey to send out i think it's just a matter of figuring out the process for that and then talking through next steps so i will reconvene that working group this month and actually in that vein too i'll i'll give a little bit of an update as well we've had several conversations um you know with uh externally to this and in fact there's a working group that is more focused on liberty plaza but being at liberty plaza is part of the space in question that we're that we're charged with there's a working group that has been formed i just got a uh confirmation on the first meeting that is uh coming

041up here um in a few weeks and i've been invited to join that meeting uh courtesy of uh erica's uh advocacy and so i'm gonna participate in that i'll report back afterwards um an additional additionally to that um we had a discussion um with uh some of the staff from the parks department around that that we coordinated and heather uh set up and i think it was a very productive discussion uh it was around the idea of uh how um uh how the plan the pros plan uh review public review process of the prose plan that would impact liberty plaza how that would fit into place with the work that we were doing i think there was a strong acknowledgement in fact there is a a plan or a recommendation from the parks advisory committee

042that is a few years old now that talks about the coordinated activation and we can share that around it as a public document already but the bottom line is i think that there was a strong interest in having a cooperative focus working together and uh looking for uh you know a solution that took into account um you know both spaces and and that that would be done together not in isolation and i could feel like that's very much in the spirit of work that's been done here and has been talked about so uh you know i think that was a real positive discussion as well there's a request that we come before the parks advisory committee uh at some point in uh the relatively near future uh to make a presentation about uh where we

043are at and where we're thinking we're heading um and i think that would be a very good idea um and i uh uh stated stated that to the park staff that we'd probably be interested in doing that and so um those are just a couple of additional updates in that block partner space sarah i haven't even had a chance to talk to you about them so i apologize um but um but um you know a couple of couple of uh additional things that's wonderful news adam thank you for doing that engaging it's so may i please it's uh it is wonderful news and i just would like to have a little bit more of it um when you said you and erica were part of some meeting i didn't know it was a meeting of

044except that you said it was about liberty plaza are these council members are these parks advisory members or who who is this yeah so it hasn't occurred yet actually it was uh there's a there was a discussion mr tahoni coordinated uh in response to some of the issues that arose at liberty plaza um and there was an agreement in that discussion i was not part of this but it was an agreement to set up a working group around this and uh eric eric informed me the working group and i requested to be part of it and it hasn't hasn't met yet um so it's a working group of what body i believe it's city staff i'll take a look to be honest with you i just got the confirmation of the email today okay i

045think i i said i was looking forward to mr dahony um sort of making this happen because he seemed enthusiastic about dealing with the liberty plaza um opportunity um and to to make things better to realize the advantages of it rather than have to constantly suffer the swings and arrows um but i i still i hope you'll keep this update updated as to what how you know from what direction this is coming whether it's multi-organizational like city council pack and several others or like we are you know or whether it's just to some movers and shakers that are getting together and they'll report to somebody i don't know who yeah erica you you one off me there do you wanna yeah i thought maybe i could just provide a little more context so the the

046intern the um the working group is kind of continuation of a discussion um so initially there was um a mr dahony had pulled together sort of immediate stakeholders um spark and everybody who's in the building is you know next to liberty to plaza essentially um who had raised some concerns about um increased uh lack of safety in the area and brought together as well into that group um all of the service providers that are already operating out of that space um from annenberg police department to path to parks to you know a lot of the i'm sure i'm missing um some group and then also uh council member maui and i were there um and i'm sure there were a number of other staff members kind of internally in the city that were there and

047so there's kind of a series of three meetings one to kind of establish what the issues were to start um kind of providing some feedback and and making some kind of initial kind of recommendations about what might be some immediate steps that we could take and then a final conversation to report back a little bit to that to that group but following that meeting there was um vision to kind of shift how this this work group would work kind of operate moving forward and so um it won't be a group that for example councilmember romelli and i would continue to go to it's more of an internal stakeholder group that would be participating in monitoring and making sure that we're moving forward to address um some of the ongoing issues um in that space so

048that's sort of the context for that working group and stakeholder group and it makes a lot of sense though to have adam there and having some continuity in terms of how this how we're thinking about this space comprehensively as well thank you erica i i still not quite quite clear i see a lot of information going into a group of people but i don't know how it will be offered to others and that's what what i was trying to figure out yeah in other words what what you you know who we have to report to city council but who does this group report to it's really about i think making operations work better right now internally so there's you know i mean cities this is a city park and it's there are some there are

049some things that are not working in that space right now in terms of um issues of safety but also making sure that people who are using that that space are actually getting the services that they need and you know just trying to make sure that operations are improving in that space so this could be also part of uh police reform if you want to call it that absolutely absolutely and i just looked and alice i do have uh the first meeting is the eighth of this month uh so it's coming up next week i'll be happy to send an email out to folks here um you know following up after that meeting to give an update and you know we can put that into the into the record and um folks know what's going on

050thank you yeah um unless there are any other items oh rita go ahead sorry i can't see anybody's hands raised um you're muted rita um of the people meeting is there anyone representing the people who are using the space about whom there's concern um there's not direct um users sort of certainly folks like path that are they're um working with users on a regular basis in terms of kind of the most vulnerable population certainly um they are there and talking about um kind of how they're interacting with folks but it's not yeah it's not intended to necessarily be a community stakeholder meeting that's not really the design you know right could you um explain path i don't know the group sure so it's um it used to be called port it's path it's um it's

051basically an outreach a street outreach team um that works to um connect community members with resources that that they might need and um they you know there was kind of an assessment of that they work all across the community all across the county um actually so um there there's a discussion of kind of when they're in the space and might be helpful if they were in the space at different times of the day to be interacting with you know people who are using the space at different times so that was kind of the yeah it's funded through the county okay thank you ellen yes as well sort of on the similar question of the the critical stakeholders in that place are are the actual users and the long conversation has been there has to be

052a way to give recognition to the people who are using it as part of the governance and maintenance of the space as creative participants rather than his problems and that's the view of people there with whom i have spoken and with the people from the shelter who have a relation with a lot of the people who you know hang out there and i just eager that that point of view and representation and those who are trying to program in this space are part of this conversation that is going on and it seems like in terms of dealing with the immediate violence issue that came up a month ago or so that is a particular question in terms of getting an ongoing discussion as to how this place develops it seems to me that it needs

053to be broader it should be including those who are programming there the initiating committee and those who are uh using it including the representation of those the folks that are actually you know playing chess and so on so i feel a little bit that this is creating a separate structure to have some purpose but not really integrating its discussion with the discussion of how as a whole the liberty plaza gets to be improved because that is what our agenda is at all so i hope that there is expansion of that group and also that there is a regular communication report of what the conversations are because those conversations are not simply among the staff it is how how a planning for a public space not a staff managed space is really to be carried out

054so i i just want to express that concern and hope that it is represented in the composition and in the process of this uh meeting ellen i took some notes i'll ask some of those questions um at that at the meeting when we have it any uh additional questions at all all right if it's okay with folks uh the the next agenda item is actually at uh uh a timeline for developing the recommendations report tonight i almost feel like maybe we should talk about the rfi first and rfis rather first and uh then we can talk about a timeline even if we don't get to that point tonight i do want to have us think through start to think through what our timing would look like so we can march to a goal here and

055try and achieve that goal but i think that the rfis are probably the first step in that process heather would it be possible for you to share the rfis and we can walk through them given that uh you are more of the expert on this sure i can share the rfis and what would be because we have at least an outline of what the timeline is expected of when we when our annual report is due advice is due to the city council we got the note that we all expire in a year so are we do with this report before the 31st of may or in may after our main meeting after our april meeting when is that without exactly what it is i think that advice to the city council will probably include how

056we respond responding to the response to the request for information so i'm happy to concentrate on the request for information for what really are just time-wise our timelines yeah and as i understand it there's not a specific date that your report is due um it you know i think the intention was that it would be it would happen annually i think that's the language and the resolution so but there wasn't a date that was set um so ideally you'll put together a report annually to give recommendations to city council um obviously we're still kind of in the in a fledgling stage with all of this i'm still trying to gather information to be able to write informed recommendations so um you know really take the time that you need is my advice so that you

057can put forward sound recommendations to city council to consider um and there might be things that we can push forward a little bit earlier as things go on you know for example the rfi is one example or doing an rfp as an example uh council member briggs pushed that forward a little bit earlier you know saying okay we need to we need to get to thinking about how we're going to physically transform the space so that's that's already in motion and there might be other things that come up like that but in the meantime i do i do think it is worthwhile to take time to fully research um before you put together a set of recommendations yeah and as far as your appointments goes it really played out in such an odd way i

058don't know how common it is for everybody's um term to end at the same same date um so and um so there was behind the scenes there was a lot of you know oh wow you know this is what's happening okay um anyway it should be all set now all of you have your applications in so you should be good going forward i believe excellent verifies just a moment i can pull those up and what will be what would be helpful to me is really just to get your your thoughts on what you liked about that about each rfi ultimately we do want to put it out in rfp so um the the goal of this exercise was really just to get a sense of what professionals might think what you know they think would

059be a good process there might be a good process to do an engagement effort with citizens to figure out how these spaces would be physically transformed um so we do have two rfis that provide some information and i love your thoughts on what what were the the greatest hits from each of the rfi is in your mind so bear with me as i pull that out um but in the meantime please go ahead and share thoughts adam it looks like erica has her hand up yeah erica please i would say i am i'm not a host tonight so okay got it yeah i want to interrupt heather did you um do you want me to chime in right now or did you want to be sharing more i wasn't sure yeah feel free feel free

060i thought it was i'm really happy that we did the rfis i think it helps us understand better kind of these different approaches that we might be able to take um kind of what those anticipated costs might be um in terms of associated with different processes um you know i think we saw a couple of different kind of proposals presented to us one recording in progress um one that was you know focused in on sort of a community design process and how that might play out and then another process of kind of looking at a more traditional planning process that we've kind of seen play out in different ways across the city um i um personally um while i appreciated the sort of the community design kind of being able to think through that i

061i think there's a lot of merit to moving forward with a more of a traditional planning process on this and making sure that we kind of move it through a timely process and get through that engagement conceptual design and kind of get to that final design piece which is um or actually have some cost estimates i thought it was so i don't know if you wanted to talk heather at all about any internal conversations that you might have had with city staff around how community design process might be considered from kind of a if that's played out in the city before in terms of our planning efforts or you know any thoughts you might have on that sure so the sentiment among city staff is that it needs to have a lot of community engagement

062you know this is a really um important project for the city so it has to have an intense and iterative engagement process so um going out to the public getting input coming back working on design going back out to the public checking in um coming back doing some more design so building it with the community as we go along so that at minimum we know um and that brings up the question about uh doing a design contest i think it's unlikely that the city would want to do a design contest because it doesn't lend itself necessarily to enter to process with the community um so we would we would probably not go forward with something like that we would want more of a an engagement process we also feel very strongly that we want some

063technical professionals on this um we wanted a design at the end of the day that we can technically implement that we'll there's still going to be a lot of questions about the funding you know how how how much this is going to cost and maintain but you know because this is on top of a parking structure versus just a green space there are a lot of things that we need to consider um in addition to liberty plaza being already designed you know it has again it's not just a flat surface there's a lot of design that's already happened there and if that's going to be reconfigured we do need some real technical expertise on how we would do that um so that that would be our preference going forward and i do have both documents

064pulled up on my computer um my feeling is that i'll i'll just leave it off screen for the moment but if you want me to if you want to refer to anything then i can pull it out but i think it's easier to talk to each other when we can see each other yeah allison and frank um i when erica when you mentioned um a more traditional planning process i have no idea what that means and i'm i'm going to run design graduate i don't know what a more traditional planning process is unless it's something like heather compared the contest versus the [Music] series of engagements uh engagements with the community members and in that regard too um i'll have to say i carry some baggage from the days when we were doing many community

065meetings and workshops and everything or there were two things one was you know what what uh getting how to get 10 000 more residents downtown and the other was the greenway when we were trying to figure out how that that path would be created and of what elements so and those you know i would say that all of those many hours of professionals and community members the greenway was not very satisfying to those who were looking for that greenway to happen it finally changed on a total into a totally different animal which i hope continues to produce good results but [Music] i don't think that would work for this one site at least not that we want to be balanced in how we approach this uh i think the inclusion of a technical as experts

066is essential because we have a built space already and we need to know what is alterable and what is not or what the results are or what the costs are you're choosing one direction or not they're just some some thoughts that were sparked by what erica and other have said i don't know whether it's a cautionary tale to look at those two examples but i think there are good things that happened and things that just didn't happen so [Music] i think we'll need some guidance in creating whatever it is that we decide to use and i have to admit i i mean i already know i have not had a chance to look at the rfis at all in detail i did see that we got two and i saw that there was one from

067robert black and one from a group that i don't know they may have come from here i don't know but yeah enough they look pretty much like the standard rfi and that's why i don't have much to say about it yeah and keep in mind that they are rfis you know we didn't really ask to go into a full detailed process what they were proposed so you know it is limited in that way um but alice or and anybody else if you've had experience with the city or other cities anywhere else you know with a with a an engagement process a design process a planning process um you know i i'd like to take the what what's called the appreciative inquiry approach to this and and pull out the things that you really liked out

068of those processes so not even necessarily from the rfis but if there's things that you've experienced that you really appreciated um you know we can talk about those and then of course if there are items in the rfi that really stood out in either of them that really stood out to you that you really like and you know caught your attention and want us to think about then please bring those forward i see that you have your hand up yeah thanks um i do want to say that i also participated in the greenway um process and it came out not in a way that i expected either and i attended a lot of meetings so i hope that when we talk about an iterative process it becomes one that um whatever whichever group we may

069go with or a process we may go with that it does have a seriously confirming um component to it that those who participate and the community have a chance to really weigh in uh significantly on it and so it doesn't become a surprise or something that we really don't want at the end because we want what we're going for um so with that in mind though i would say that i found um some of the examples i mean it's just it's really nice to see physical examples of or photos of examples of of what could be um and it does make me feel excited to see some of them some of the different art in particular was inspiring to me the interactive kinds of things um i liked that um it also stood out to

070me that a lot of people like water um and so having a fountain of some sort with a playful aspect i think is really good um and uh there was a lot of uh examples of performance space i would say that um that i liked as well so without going into those real specifics on them those those are just like the basics um and again it's just yeah back to the let's make sure that engagement is true engagement that reflects um what participants have expressed thanks okay so far i have inclusion of technical experts as essential um the community has to have a meaningful say we don't want any surprises at the end um and uh you're liking the examples of what could be so that visioning what could be their art water performance space

071frank yeah uh i i want to start out by saying i'm obviously not an expert on these processes uh but i do have a a strong feeling that uh two feelings one is uh we've we have one chance to sort of get this right uh and the the second observation is and you know every project has its unique features but this has its history and the complexity of the site etc um i'm feeling a strong need for this process to to really understand uh the data we have what was generated by the task force to really uh i know there's hundreds if not thousands of pages of material um and not that one would do this and the other wouldn't but it just felt it was strongly articulated in the robert black group that we

072we really need to engage with the dda understand that structural uh do's and don'ts of that site um we also have to really uh engage with the dda to understand what they see as their role in this uh it it hasn't come before in our first year of deliberations where the dda is going to come out are they going to be a strong advocate are they going to sit on the sidelines etc it just seems that we need to do really good work at the front end so that we understand uh what we're dealing with structurally etc but also also some of the of the political issues around this and um it just seems that the more emphasis we can put at at the sort of the front-end stages of good research and good understanding

073uh and i i think it doesn't bother me that one one approach might take longer than the other i think we we need a lot of coalition building a lot of you know recognition of what this can be from the block partners and the surrounding businesses so i'm not particularly troubled by taking a little bit longer timeline uh i think the longest time that does bring us up to some important milestones uh occurring by you know mid 2024 which is the bicentennial and again i think an emphasis on the bicentennial and that this project be you know viewed as an important gift to ourselves for our third century uh and to tie it into the bicentennial i think is important i think that um you know we we have the resources in place right now

074uh to do many of the things that uh are are outlined in uh by the robert black group uh again i don't know what is the the perfect cadence and and milestones of this but instinctively i'm feeling that the more we do at the front end of this project to understand uh you know what the community wants and i think a lot of that has already been documented in the task force etc and i i'm intrigued by the contest idea of the competition i think that was brought forward because many great parks uh in the country and i think the one that was cited with central park in new york was the inspiration for that design uh came from from a competition and i think that builds community interest if we have that kind of

075activity both among the school children but also you know more mature capable entities that might present design solutions and it doesn't commit us to anything but it certainly will get us further along the imagination uh imagining this and i think there would be clear material and and guidelines for that competition it's just not here's a here's a clean sheet of paper give us what you think i think that we'd have to provide some real guidance in terms of the elements we want reflected in the design and etc and getting a clear understanding of the uh structural limitations and possibilities of especially the surface of the parking area maybe those need to be articulated in the design description that would go out and you know i always have a fundraising cap on i just think that

076doing a a really good job at the front end which includes obviously engaging the various constituencies will will build stronger buy-in as this process goes along and we're already seeing this in the near term activation where we're talking to community groups and they're saying oh hey uh you know maybe we can have yoga classes on the surface of the parking area and other kinds of activities so we're seeing groups in the community beginning to say oh thanks you know thanks for bringing that to our attention i think we see some possibilities here there's a lot more discussion to go on and etc in terms of actually scheduling events and activities but we're beginning to see this this process of engagement and uh and you know building of excitement around the possibilities of this site so

077i'll stop there but i um those are kind of my my initial thoughts on this oh thank you frank um what i've written down is um making sure that we engage with the dda to understand their structure and how they see their role um and also for this process to serve as a coalition building process in addition to you know generating ideas and a design at the end um incorporate the bicentennial in some way and then clarify if we were to do some type of competition clarify the limitations beforehand um but most importantly what you really emphasized is that we're not starting from scratch and i completely agree with you there's just been so much work that has gone into that i mean really for decades and then with the task force of course did

078a lot of work and actually did reach out to the community quite a bit um have all of that information gathered and acknowledged and read through and used as part of this process thank you heather alice i see you have your hand up yeah i i just want to reinforce what a couple of others have said about community engagement i think i think there is a real danger in repeating one mistake and that is not when people are asked to fill out surveys when people are asked to put sticky notes on on big pieces of paper when they're asked to rate or you know what you know out of these five options what do you like best that kind of thing and then they see no correlation in the end result it feels like it's

079all fake um and so when we say we're going to do that we really do need to have you know maybe let go of the um you call it the aggregate ego and say oh well yeah i had an idea but nobody else liked it so we have to go with the flow you know it's something that can build on the success of those who have who have an investment that in it in that they see that their contribution is revealed in the in the end result and that's that's pretty abstract and pretty hard to do but i think when you have the right kind of engagement and you end up with a pretty clear thing and i think the task force did a lot of things right on the nose and we we really

080do not want to put that on the in the archive you know we should have that closer to the front of what we're doing but a lot of this has already been done and quite quite reasonably well and by a by group of people who really worked hard on it so um i don't want that to be a wasted resource at all i think we can elaborate on it i like some things other than other than other than other some other rather than other things but we really don't want to lose sight of what's already been just a quick comment to follow up to alice i think bringing that that task force information into the into the current discussion and engagement with block partners the wider business community community groups in general to bring that

081forward in a way that uh can can share with the community again what what has been already uh developed uh i think that would be a real value in that not necessarily creating new information but there you know that may trigger some new ideas uh and coalescing around some of what's already been developed by the task force so maybe starting from a reorientation a place of review going over what's been done with with the community all of us kind of sharing in that i don't want to be too repetitive because i haven't done this before kind of thing no maybe we can just pick some things and move forward with them right and that is the intention yeah to take pick up where we left off basically from the task force because we didn't get

082as far as actually getting to the detail of specifically how how are we going to physically alter the space we have a lot of ideas about it but to really put it the pen on paper of this is what's going to happen put some cost estimates to it you know so it can get that much closer to realization yeah i would just uh add i agree with many of the things that have been said here um you know i do think that the whatever the process is uh that uh that the end products are a reflection of the community engagement is gonna be really important i also do feel pretty probably probably most strongly about the fact that we have a really robust um creative visioning process i i i respect and agree with the

083fact that the task force visioning serve as a catalyst but i also want to be conscious of the fact that because of the politics around this space we really have got to inspire the community i think and i think you do that through a really robust visioning process with a lot of ideas to show them what could become uh rather than what has been discussed necessarily uh or at least discussed in in a lot of uh context so i think that's going to be really important as well um and i too believe that uh you know we need a very professional driven process i don't think uh respectfully to everyone here we are professionally equipped to uh to do that i think we we will have a role and it will be important guide guiding

084role but we need to hire uh people who are who are well equipped to handle the technical aspects and also the creative aspects and i think the other thing that we want to be conscious of too is you know one of the things that we have seen in these comparable communities are governance models going forward and sustainable revenue streams going forward what's necessary and i think we need to be thinking about that as part of as part of this process you know not only construction costs those are important but what are we going to do going forward and what are we going to recommend um and and where those resources come from and so i know that's been on my mind a lot uh and i i think that's going to be an important part

085of the planning process for this so yes you're right uh adam i have noticed that in in our comparable communities explorations we have seen a lot of cooperation in other places that we are not seeing at this point here and it's going to be important to build or rebuild the kinds of relationships that that will enable us to have an imaginative very um reflective result of our community and i appreciate your you're bringing that to the front of our company thank you adam that these are maybe elements that need to come forward uh you know just the we're talking about design and development of physical development but there's this home management piece uh maybe we need to call that out in uh an rfp um and uh i i don't know is it proper for

086an rfp to deal with you know contentious issues and how to how to bring people you know people with a group so it's conflicting feelings about this how to how to bring that piece together these all these elements need to move from where they are now to a much better place and you know i had obviously thought about the management piece because we've talked about it but just the you know the politics of this and how do we sort of move this forward i i don't know if that is even appropriately part of an rfp uh but it's something that needs to be addressed as we go as we move along here yeah i i'll just offer one thought to that frank and i know sarah's got her hand up here too um you know

087it's really the job of this group to try and um you know look look out for the the aspects of uh you know the overall direction and ensure that the the process is what what we want it to be and that it sufficiently checks all the boxes we feel is important um you know i i too am not familiar with what would go into an rfp on this but uh in terms of in terms of the uh you know long-term financing and and other other items i would lean on heather's expertise to help comment on that but i think that the more options that we have put on the table you know i mean reality is is that even though even though different financing schemes are going to have different political angles to them the

088document itself or a response to that a preparation of presentation of all those options is politically ambivalent and that's what we need to rely on those professionals to be able to tell us what all the options are so that we can we can look at them and put them on the table and discuss what the politics are and i feel like that's actually part of our role here too um and to help bring community along and so i would look at the professionals to lay out those things for us what what the options are and you know we can certainly offer suggestions and and you know be creative but i'd much rather have um have have a pretty good idea of the landscape um and then and then um you know we can help make

089the recommendation ultimately to city council in concert with the uh design recommendations so that's anything thanks hi yeah sarah you have your hand on ew kind of freak what i was going to say but that's okay um i think it's a very good point to keep in mind that we don't really have like a long-term plan for this i guess i things are just popping into my head that are making me take pause so maybe i'll just say those things um you know i would hate to sort of have this really robust community engagement process that i also agree is is more or less needed but then we put you know you put people through all of this and then we end up with nothing in the end so i think there just really needs

090to be that balance of like how do we want to design this process in a realistic way to you know i think it's important that the rfp or the proposals come back to us with sort of like just kind of like a timeline like what are some of these like low-hanging fruit type of things that could go into this like if we really don't have very much money like what are the sort of things that we could do um another thing that keeps popping into my head and i should have a better answer for this but i don't and i don't think there is an answer as we're talking about robust community engagement is that we are going to be doing i'm pretty sure restarting the comprehensive planning process soon which is also going to

091require robust community engagement and people get engagement fatigue and so i don't know about the timing of this versus the timing of that i just think it's something that we should keep in mind as we're sort of like progressing forward with us erica you might remember better than me maybe it's next year um but you know i we want to make sure there's good engagement we just i think have to be really careful about how we do it especially keeping in mind what others just already mentioned that we have a good basis to start with we're not really starting from nothing we have the task force right the task force's recommendations as a starting point i think alan and then erica yeah the last comment that uh you made sarah on planning you're from the

092planning commission is that right you got it on your mind well part of this endeavor is to integrate with the master plan so in some way our community engagement and planning should be interdigitating with the master planning process as to how the center of the city actually you know becomes the center of the city and so that's something definitely to keep in our mind what i most want to say is that there are elements of this problems that are not that are beyond our control and that we have not sufficiently explored that uh what happens with the martin company is critical as to how we have we basically have a a commons that is a sort of a barbell we've got liberty plaza on the northeast and we got library uh surface lot on the

093southwest and how do we make that connection between them and that is really dependent on what kind of relation we develop with the martin company uh as to whether we bridge them go through them uh or walk around them and until that somehow has a conversation going on we're a little bit stuck and similarly we have an indeterminate relationship with the library and much of the sense of indoor four season gallery and such like activities uh gathering place and such is seen as a live possibly in the library when the library put forth their bond issue in 2013 or whatever it was they had that view of themselves we need in this some sense of cafe uh various functions and how we relate to the library in sharing those functions or in having them independent

094of the library in a separate building really requires a discussion that hasn't even opened the door and it seems and similarly how we bridge over and whether we consider bridging over the space between uh over the uh the parking ramps or whether we abandon the parking ramps to cars rather than reclaiming that elevated area for people is a question that a design group can certainly address but we're not giving any direction in that way i certainly as you all know have my view on that that we should minimize subordinate the automobile and maximize people's space by bridging over library lane to some significant part to connect up with the library but those basic questions that we want a design group to consider yet we have not specified and as on the docket we just put

095out very general questions and i think we need to be somewhat more specific as to the questions that deal with with this alternative or that alternative or how do you see it the main thing i want to emphasize is that if this is the center of our city everyone in ann arbor has to see it as the center of their city that the communities have to see themselves reflected somehow in the aesthetics in elements that they can see it is part of who we are whether we are part of the old germans or whether we are part of the uh the black community or whether we are part of the arab community or part of whatever that ever that is not a a mishmash of a unity with no character it has to be a

096very multiplicitous character and so i think they that we need a kind of community engagement that really goes to all the communities and draws out from them uh in multiple ways how they see themselves best reflected that they would feel when they come to the center of the city aha this looks like me and like my home i'm at home here in the center of the city not something that a a group however professional provides as a service to being a neutral public space that anybody can do anything in that is not my view of what is the commons the common is a place that everyone shapes together in some way and is not a blank slate there's a slate that is very rich in the contributions of all the communities of ann arbor that's

097why i particularly feel that what robert and his associates all of whom are very familiar with ann arbor who worked in ann arbor who know this town have a great uh advantage in designing a kind of community engagement that can draw out from our community not a not filling out a survey and i was not very pleased in the sense of the data that we got in the task force and it was not did not go deep but we need something people who are there who really have a sense of ann arbor and want to see how to draw that out so that that is a criterion i look for in what we are putting out in the request for proposals how you really help us see the voice of all the communities of ann

098arbor how a collective aesthetic could somehow be represented in the center of the city as well as dealing with these difficult questions of how we bridge and interact with the martin company and how we interact and connect with the library and how the indoor functions of a civic center are are met and where and i think another aspect of this is how we see the expansion of the commons beyond what is initially given particularly the opportunity to include the noble house which would provide a service center place uh beneficial to the uh liberty plaza community if i may say so and so part of how we see the opportunities of the uh credit union to redesign or infill in their their space so we have partners that are not just static but all of whom

099are in motion and the element that we want to bring forward has to sort of interconnect with that uh with those emotions and we may find so so that is part of the request for proposals or the next step if it is request for proposals is the next step the next step seems to me in a way getting a clearer clearer sense of how the library sees its next phase how the martin company sees its next phase how the credit union sees its next phase and as we in in the community block outreach that we're sort of touching on in this survey you know what new information we are getting as to how our neighbors are uh agitating themselves toward the future so i just dropped those pebbles in the pond which however you wrote

100those down i think there's a lot of problems that we know of that we have to identify more more directly yeah and i'll just reflect those back to you real quickly um one of the things that you said loud and clear was we need a space that provides a sense of belonging to everybody yeah that everybody is welcome there um and that we need to think about the potential expansion of the city of center of the city as land use changes around the existing public spaces so just kind of do some future imagining with this process make sure that there's connection with adjacent uses and activities so what's happening at the library will impact these spaces for example um as well as first martin and to make sure that there is connection between um liberty

101plaza and the um library service lot and how we might address that um and then going back to what sarah said earlier making sure that we get a timeline with with phases um what are the low hanging fruit for example what are the things that we can start initiating right away so it feels like there's constant momentum with this rather than now we have a design and then we sit on it for 10 years until we can gather the funds to make it happen all right so going on to riggs thanks heather by the way your ability to summarize is incredible um a few pieces i think one one piece that is going to be important for us in terms of the rfp um that sort of was articulated in the mk kate um a

102proposal um was sort of this element of the they have it as in their final plan you know the plan would include a plan of action funding opportunities project phasing implementation matrix meaning of cost and a maintenance plan roles and responsibility which i think are really key things that i've heard articulated but to kind of points that both adam and sarah brought up we've done a fair amount because of the research that this group has done there's been a fair amount of focus on you know that the importance of that governance model and i um i do think that we might be able to use a little bit of that to help we might want to contemplate whether or not we want to have that inform the design process up front um and by that

103i mean you know we could go into this process of course any planning firm wants to be visionary and inspirational and that's good if you want to get that you want to get people excited about something but we also you know i've also heard folks talking about wanting to be pragmatic and have this implementable and that we the reality is part of the reason this was politically charged was this concept around funding um and acknowledging our funding shortfalls up front um might help us get to a more implement a plan that is that we can better implement down the road i think that one of the concerns that we've heard from from park staff is wanting to be careful about going out to the community and doing a robust community engagement plan especially around liberty

104plaza and then not being able to implement that plan um and so you know park staff has has shared that in this engagement process we need to be very clear with the community up front around what are the fact that this there isn't funding for this and so and help helping that help uh inform the planning process up front might be helpful i think it's a little difficult i don't know how that how we go about or if that's advisable to you know help that inform how we write an rfp um but i think it is particularly important in terms of thinking about it as a phased project that we might be thinking about this also that we want designs that can stand alone and can be broken apart so that we obviously want it

105to be connected but we also want liberty plaza for example to be if first martin is redeveloping and really wants to help invest in that space that that might be something that for example could be um help really inform that planning process for example or the redevelopment of you know around the block as others have spoken to might help to inform these different phases so um i guess i would advocate for a a pragmatic more um phased approach to this yeah absolutely and that is yeah i do want to re-emphasize that that is something that we heard from um park staff and and i completely agree with that we need to be really sincere and honest with the public that there is no fun being in hand right now to implement any anything that might

106come out of this we are trying to figure this out as a community but the transformation of the space would be to make it a public space um but the funding piece is yet to come that's something that we still need to work on so rita frank and then alan well i thought that we were going to talk about how to work together with the funding process so um i hope that that's part of what we're going to be discussing coming up so to just say there's no funding that's not exactly correct there is some funding at least for this start point and we do have to figure it out for the future of course and and the sustainable parts of it for the future um but i i feel pretty depressed when i hear

107it's just like no funding sounds like the closed the door so i hope that we can if we're going to say no funding that we're going to find a way to open the door to the community to contribute and in various ways not just individuals but organizations and businesses and the dda so i hope that that's part of where we're going yeah i guess i should clarify there is no identified source of funding for capital improvements and ongoing costs at this point so that is something that we just need to you know as it comes along as we figure it out we need to communicate that with the public but the starting point right now is that that hasn't been identified i don't even know what we're trying to identify for that this is right

108this is right i'm right with rita we don't want to make blank blanket statements that actually imply that what are we sitting here for now if we can't do it we can't do it but we can do it and so you know it's i think that was a pretty big trigger for me as well to hear there's no funding there's no identified funding there's no you know no no no no no we're here to figure out the yeses yeah i would just i would just emphasize that i think that um you know the reality is that there there is uh we're not doing anything unless we can find a funding a way to fund this you know i mean there's no there is no construction costs uh funding pool yet uh you know we're gonna

109have uh there are a lot of things uh that we're gonna have to identify and i i i will emphasize that i agree with uh sort of uh you know rita's attitude you can um what's what's the old saying that um if you uh if you think you can uh or if you think you can't you're right and uh and uh so i i am going to try and approach this very much the former uh because i do think that we can um and i think that the examples from other communities emphasize that so i certainly always want to emphasize realism and honesty and transparency matter um but i i do you think it's going to be very important that we look for an opportunistic eye to this right and and it's not just a

110matter of going out and asking for money it's it's a matter of leveraging what we do have doing a fun time so that we can so that it becomes integrated with the future of our city and so no problem no like looking at the green belt ordinance and seeing if that's there's a way to shift the application of those funds looking at um the um sustainability program to see if there's a way that this can really advance this to the a20 program or whatever part is related to that this is where we have to open those doors we have to make those connections so that we can go through those doors and and that means our city will go through those doors that open it to you know a less anxious period of time we

111are i don't know about anybody else but there's a lot there's a lot of anxiety out here especially from the last two years and what came before that and what's coming up right now we need something to give our feet solid ground to go forward on and i think that that overall when i think of a place that that all of us are trying to articulate but that's actually the solid ground it's not this one place but it's what it means to the city to have this place so that's my little philosophical rant i i i think that's a great that's a great statement alice i just i i know we got a couple hands up and i want to emphasize that we are 852. um and so if we can just make sure everybody

112gets to say what they want to say and then transition to going forward i think this is a good exercise to talk through tonight given that we've got a response so alan and then frank and then let's let's see if there's any other points and we'll try and wrap wrap up well i think frank had his hand up first but you called on me so i i just want to say that i think that the point that david olson raised is absolutely relevant there's a bond issue that provides funds for acquisition and management of parkland in the city and out of the city the only reason that is not being operated is because the city council long ago said in the city only for acquisition and there's a city council a city council election there

113are two people on this body that should be put in for for the resolution to avoid to redraw that old resolution and allow the park green belt funds for use in the city to be used that would be appropriate for this project that's one there is money right there and the only thing that is preventing it is a city old city council resolution that could easily with six votes be disappeared and i hope those votes would be there and they should be an issue in the next election and that should be part of our recommendation our advice to the city council is they should just do it and also if we create something out of a process that does indeed engage people from the little people up to the big and old people that would

114turn out something beautiful ann arbor is just about the richest town around there's a lot of money in this town if we can do something beautiful private financing for a hundred million dollars is no big deal because there is that kind of money if it is beautiful i know frank frank has he and he and his buddies have raised it over at the university too so without putting any number on it i don't think that the absence of money is a problem the absence of a beautiful envision that is drawn out and filled that the pros the product the possession of people in the city that can be funded but actually there is money that has been voted for by the people for exactly this purpose and it should be freed for use and that

115is a question that is up to the people people on this council and people on the city council to address and i'm glad that that david olson brought it up he brought it up during the library uh green conservancy meeting you brought it up during the uh task force meeting we should listen to it it is a true fact there is money just sitting there except for an old restriction by the city council that is not binding on the future allen frank okay i'm looking at the clock um yeah i i think we do need a an overall vision to point towards but it may have been eric or maybe alice or both you know maybe this process does need some some intermediate steps that can be can be defined and achieved as we move

116towards the bigger longer term vision and that includes uh you know defining what those steps are and and building support for for that if there's financial components to that i just think this process needs uh real engagement with uh selected block partners uh the broader business community that you know the philanthropic community to bring key components of those audiences along as this process develops and and maybe you know i don't want i don't want to break out one piece at to the detriment of the larger picture but perhaps liberty plaza is that peace because the interest is has been regenerated uh by this task force and unfortunately by events maybe that can be a piece that uh we can develop uh some intermediate steps and build block partner and broader community support if there's some

117financial components to that and i i think we need a snowball and it's you know most all snowballs start small but they can get very big and you know maybe there's some discrete things related to the live the uh the surface area um you know we've had i've had talk with with donors about perhaps building a fund uh cooperatively between the uh the park and commons in the library programmatic funding that somehow links uh the library and their uh commoning uh mission uh with what is happening outside physically on the on the on the uh surface area so maybe maybe there could be discrete pieces that will help us build momentum as as this process unfolds so thank you frank so i i think i'm going to make a suggestion here uh heather i did

118a very nice job summarizing uh folks thoughts why don't we take take that offline a little bit and see if we can translate that into some actionable next steps and get that back to folks here for consideration uh you know in between this meeting and the next and i think also uh you know sarah will uh will get us started on that block partner engagement you know clearly that is important to these next steps um and uh and then you know we can we can bring that back so i'm gonna make that suggestion uh and if if folks you know want to be involved in in in that you know i want to reach out to heather and we'll you know we can get a little uh little group of folks together if if that's

119a desire feels like that's you know we we need a need to build a little plan of action um and and maybe uh maybe the this these meetings are a good opportunity for reflection upon that plan but but we do the heavy lifting offline that sound okay yeah are those no heather those notes can you circulate them to everyone yep i can do that i don't know what offline means it means not in the current situation yeah i understand that but is that i think it means that we're not going to try and wordsmith something on zoom i've seen that happen before tough to do so um let me know where the offline is we will definitely all right any uh any other points at all before we wrap up and uh and um you

120know move into uh public comment well i do i i want to say that i can appreciate giving an emphasis to liberty positive but the problem with activating the library lot is that the cars are still there get the cars off and the people will come there'll be more programming there'll be stuff going on there it is not it is very unfriendly to the whole process that the cars are still there after 39 meetings at the city that the vda has not yet put it on their agenda that should be our number one recommendation to the city council one more time city council should say get the cars off so the people can begin to have a program there without without having to go through a special permit and can be able to leave stuff

121there and actually begin to make it a people space taking the time it's nine o'clock okay it's the truth heather do we have any members of the public who'd like to make a comment yes robert black good evening again it's fascinating to listen to you guys i just applaud your courage to wade through this stuff you know these are not mutually competitive responses to the rfi they are mutually inclusive ideas that overlap and as heather's first question is what are your hit greatest hits from these things look at that carefully and see what's there both have strong practical structural people one of them has a group that's right above afternoon delight that knows a whole lot about structures that's a stone's throw away and they see that a lot every day and there are other

122land planners and professional architects on both sides who are extremely important to this process the other part though is having strong professional facilitation to guide you through these next steps and i'd encourage you to follow this process you know rita said open the door which means you know we all carry mental models of our ideas of the past and we don't necessarily want to shape the future from them but we want to consider them right all about practicality all about being grounded there are outside shaping forces to this project this is a teeny project compared to other big urban projects like central park or something it's teeny so the the shaping forces here are small and definable your process to articulate those defined pieces is a no-brainer for a good facilitator we're going to talk

123about funding now we're going to talk about structures now we're going to talk about water management that kind of stuff is easy to handle if it's directed by somebody who knows how to direct it and not let it sidetrack so you end up with what greenways was or something else good facilitator will get you through the process and get to goals as i heard many times also as alice said we don't know yet what we're trying to identify for and then i also heard if you think you can if you think you can't you're right so let's think we can right that's a recommendation and then alice also said give our feet solid ground to go forward on this is extremely practical and foundational to this so the inner shaping forces that drive this thing

124need to be defined more clearly in my opinion the task force needs to be sorted and prioritized and listed specifically what do you want there you don't want to pay money to the pie in the sky design that's not grounded in reality what do you really need to do here and you have that information before you you just haven't defined it yet and as frank said you need an overall vision to point towards clearly but it has intermediate steps that shape that vision and so part of this process i think that you're struggling with is to define these pieces take the work that heather suggested and put these pieces together in an overlapping set of visions and then quantify those steps that you need you will be surprised that as you move forward with this

125process the help you need will show up just like the funders i've had many conversations with frank and even other people in the ann arbor community about how funding will appear the non-profits i've worked with and others miracles literally happen when you're clear about your future and what you need so i think it's important that you need to assemble this criteria as a foundation to move forward so you're doing great it's just wonderful to stay open sort this process pick the best of everything together and you've got some wonderful things to document and move forward toward an rfp so kudos to your conversations tonight and i really applaud you for staying with this thing you're you're gonna do it thank you thanks robert and then we have the person with the phone number ending in

126three two six hello uh this is jeff crockett again or y'all can you all hear me yes ken okay great i i just want to tell you that i am really pumped up about the garden this year there's really a lot of exciting things going on particularly with rita's help and we have already outreached to the dda by the way we've talked to my wife and i talked to jeff watson and we briefed him on our plans we're talking about expanding from two plots to four plots we're talking about adding with rita's help uh pollinator plants to attract monarch butterflies and i want you to imagine for a minute right now we're talking about expanding to four there are 14 plots around the uh around the center of the city parking lot now just imagine

127if all those 14 plots had pollinators now imagine families walking in the middle of the summer and watching the butterflies and beets it becomes a destination and guess what there's no cost involved to the city this is something you can do with no cost except for volunteers and that is what tells us what the commons is really all about so when you talk about the activation of the commons consider what has already been done really important the other thing um i want to invite you all to come to one of our meetings we've been meeting on a bi-weekly basis typically on saturdays by zoom and we started this in mid-january if any of you want to come contact rita she'll give you the zoom link we'd be happy to have you come and i guarantee

128you're going to learn something uh joette ryoma who is our consultant is really into mulching and in fact is embarked on a project to help people reduce the amount of compost they put in their bins because this results in a cost to the city so imagine if you can process this locally without putting in your comp com compost bin so we're learning how to do that we're also involved in a seed exchange so the seeds that came from the sunflowers and other plants last year we have harvested and we have dried them and we're going to put them into envelopes and during earth day we're going to hand them out so that we can spread these seeds and have other people sort of enjoy it that's sort of the beauty of uh what we're doing

129with citizen engagement and getting other people involved uh and then of course there are the pollinators uh so uh but the other thing i would encourage you to think about is it coming up for your annual report you have a key opportunity here and to remove the parking this involves no cost if any of you are happen to be around in the parking lot underneath the parking lot it is by no means filled so if you remove the street parking there's going to be no hit to the dda there was some mention before about the dda was going to lose parking but there was no consideration to the fact that hey this is covad and there are a lot fewer people parking downtown during the day so i would encourage you to get some data

130and find out out of all the parking spots there are in these in in the structure how many are actually filled during the day i would think you would find not that much and could easily accommodate removing the parking so there's no cost and there's a lot of space downstairs so it wouldn't take much to create a storage facility close by in one of the the parking spots that are no longer be used in fact i bet alan would be happy to build the darn thing but basically what you need is to create a facility to make it easy to store stuff and the last thing i want to say it wouldn't take much to provide seating my guess is if you look around the parks there are a lot of benches that are not

131being used a lot of seats that are not being used my guess so move them you know move into the comments to create some place for people to sit it's going to cost little money but it is an intermediate thing that you can set you can do to activate the commons so i would encourage you long term to think big but short term to think practical and getting the commons going thank you very much all right and we have the caller that's ending in three four zero should be able to talk hi greetings uh my name is luis vasquez uh resident of the first ward living at 909 barton drive in ann arbor michigan um i feel like i i'm watching the movie groundhog's day because every time i watch one of these meetings the

132same issues keep on getting rehashed and discussed and here we are nearly four years after prop a was voted in by a bare majority and you know we have still have not very much to show and um you know i'm kind of getting upset uh especially since with this uh notion that's been being put forward about looting uh the greenbelt millage money uh that's not what you know i voted for the greenbelt millage uh i held a fundraiser at my house to get that passed um and you know i really don't want to see that uh rated for this purpose uh if you uh yeah and and i mean the the the pitiful amount of money that's been raised so far uh you know is it's a drop in the bucket and now you guys

133are have your hands out trying to uh ask uh the city taxpayers for money to fund this which you really don't i mean so far you don't really have a vision and here it is four years later um come on guys uh you know give us a break um and and you know get something done it shouldn't have taken four years nearly four years to realize that uh liberty commons is the is the first thing that needs to be addressed on that whole block and if you can't uh find you know do something about liberty plaza to improve it uh what makes you think what makes me think what makes anybody in another think that um you know millions of dollars should be put towards uh the library lot i mean you know i'm really

134incensed about this and i'm frankly kind of tired of it but uh thank you for your time and for listening to me and my concerns all right and we have one more person on the line um the person whose phone number ends in hello um my name is abdul i'm calling in um because i want to point out that there's a great opportunity to activate the commons for the goals of the city um thankfully the the parking garage is a designed to be a substructure for a building and if you don't know about high-rise construction one of the most expensive parts of highest construction is the substructure because it costs a lot of money to dig um and you're always going to be if you want to build anything um if you see right now

135on southeastern you're building the this new high rise building and they're spending eight months digging to build the substructure eight months until they even start thinking about going vertical um and thankfully this library parking garage is a wonderful substructure um also it's a really convenient spot to put um something that will can activate the space for people who walk past i walk past there regularly i'm going to downtown way to go get a grab id with my friends um i'm always walking back and forth there um it's a very big empty space um in the middle of the city it's kind of like a hole you might say a whole thing i don't think will be filled by some dirt thrown on top of a parking garage um but yeah so so because of this

136substructure part if you're building you know say any kind of building um i want to say like 10 to 20 percent of construction costs are going to come from that building and um fifteen to twenty percent of your construction co of your total cost to build anything are gonna be landing the question cost so saying like if you're saving about 35 percent of your total cost to build anything um that basically what that what you do is build affordable housing um build income restricted housing um to help people to give a place for people who want to live in ann arbor who can't afford to live here we have a housing waitlist that's 3 200 people long so i suggest putting this back to the voters and doing what we're doing with all of our

137other parking lots in the city um trying to use them to get the city's goals done because this has been going on for four years and i think that there's been like twenty thousand dollars raised and that's not that's not gonna do anything um it's not even a higher consultant i say you know take this back to the drawing board you know this is a great opportunity to put affordable housing i'm almost confident you can build 100 affordable um building you can put a park on top of the building on the side of the building in the middle of the building there's so many different options where you can put a park but you're going to save so much money with this substructure 30 and placed in and zero line acquisition cost and it's that

138by saving 35 of construction costs you can offer 100 affordable units i almost guarantee it i haven't looked into the finances like don't know the calculations and whatnot but i'm pretty sure that it can make sense and it can qualify for housing knowledge money you could even try getting litec money from the federal government that would eliminate the eligibility for our money but you can get low income housing tax credit money there are so many different ways that you can fund this project and it would be a much greater activation of the space than throwing some dirt on top of a concrete slab thank you any other members of the public other um somebody with their hand up i think they already went i just want to double check um the person with the phone

139number three four zero i think your hand was just continuing to be out but let me double check with you okay uh that's it okay all right uh could we have a motion for adjournment then all right motion and seconded and uh it looks like somebody else just raised their hand heather one person with the phone number three four five yeah why don't we give them just one opportunity hello can you hear me okay i'm sorry i tried to unmute myself earlier and i um pressed two sixes instead of one and so try to do it again my name is kitty khan and i wasn't going to call in but a few things that were said tonight got me a little agitated and so i decided i would first of all erica try to be

140a little positive your your comment about there is no funding we might as well admit it there's no funding tell people in the rfp there's no funding no that's not right that's not right and i really resent the fact that you said that it's like you're trying to sabotage the effort please don't and another thing is that guy that just called saying we should put affordable housing on the lot excuse me the y lot right across the street is going to have a ton of affordable housing those residents of those towers are going to love to have open space across the street because they don't have a yard they're in these towers so enough with the affordable housing argument we need open space if only the mayor and his majority would get behind this effort

141like plymouth did like other cities do instead of trying to sabotage it he's so mad that he couldn't sell this to his core spaces and it's sour grapes all over the way all the time and i'm so sick of it i'm so sick of reading on next door people saying oh this is going to fail what have they done just like lewis he's one of them there are so many naysayers and i'm sick of it if only people would join together this can happen and i still think it can happen but i am so sick of the powers that be and the mayor supporters in this town trying to sabotage this effort so i i really give credit to the people who can remain positive in spite of the naysayers and i believe this can

142happen i really do and it's hard when you have to push through a wall of people that wanted to fail and that's that's all you can tell how angry i am and i'm sorry i can't be as positive and upbeat as so many are and i but i know this can happen and i know it will be wonderful and i just wish our local government would get behind it i really wish that could happen and i agree with david olson look in to that green green belt millage funding there is the city has money that isn't being spent that is supposed to be spent inside our city there is money there is money if only our local government will get behind this project it wouldn't be this hard okay that's all good night thank you

143we have a motion on the floor uh technically still so uh if we could have an approval uh to adjourn all in favor say aye any opposed all right a wonderful evening thanks good night you