Center of the City - Council of the Commons Meeting 9/2/21

001um a reminder to cite your uh local municipality and we'll go from there heather uh heather if you could go ahead and call the roll sure well let me pull up my list right now all right stephen uh president and i were michigan jennifer not here alan yes i'm i'm here in dan ray france sarah here in ann arbor jeffrey jeff here in ann arbor camilla here in ann arbor all right frida you're in ann arbor alice president attending from ann arbor michigan frank um eastport antrim county michigan adam uh you're in my car in oklahoma's mission jack kerouac councilmember briggs here in ann arbor [Music] excellent i think that means we have a quorum um why don't we go to approval of the minutes from the last meeting of august 5th any questions or

002comments on the minutes i'd move their approval a second all right gotta move uh motion and a second uh all those in favor say raise your hand and say aye all right any nays okay scene none uh the minutes are approved from the last meeting uh we have uh three minutes of public comment for speaker heather do we have any uh speakers for public comment we do robert black you should be able to go ahead and talk now thank you heather nice to see you all again and thank you for the opportunity to speak before you again tonight congratulations once again on your effective working session in july i encourage you to carry out additional facilitated working sessions around specific themes to continue to build momentum for this important project speaking of momentum the garden

003project reported to you by jeff crockett is an excellent example of how a coalition of community volunteers is forming the groundwork so to speak necessary to bring diverse members of the community together in common purpose the upcoming fan event fun art nutrition which you'll hear more on this evening from jeff henney is another step in the right direction to gradually activate the site an opportunity to engage the public gather their input and build their support and a key part of this effort here in my opinion is creating an identifiable image a memorable name or logo for the commons or whatever name you may decide to call it that will be used to market events and activities into the future and build public buy-in and trust another activation step is public art with already good examples

004in the black lives matter teaching mural at the library the engaging community of people art on the blake transit center and david zinn's instagram ready singing in the rain mural building on these three strong examples of public heart our public art perhaps we could start with a simple mural painted on the concrete wall that is backdrop to the garden there are several well-known examples of delightful local mural projects like this many led by the creative artists of treetown murals who are really good at getting folks of any age involved providing wonderful educational opportunities and attracting support from local businesses good art is really good business in this town and discussion on these items fits well under your agenda item 7 community partnerships but also for item 7 i strongly advocate for your exploring informal discussions

005with the potential block partners surrounding the library lot in liberty plaza the initiating committee has already reached out for positive relationships with jerusalem garden and the university of michigan credit union however in my opinion there are two crucial players that will definitely impact the future of this community commons first martin corporation and the ann arbor district library cultivating posit positive relationships with these two especially will help to shape your work in the coming months and year one of the public input speakers in your second meeting in april louis sasquez asked why not have a representative from the aadl on the council of the commons i support his idea and encourage you to reach out in whatever manner you decide to all the key players on the commons block their positive engagement and willing participation will

006contribute to your success over time best of luck in your discussions tonight and thank you was that three minutes heather rest of his time we appreciate you robert thank you for being here this evening yes any other speakers heather no that's it all right excellent so uh with that we will close public comment and move on to uh member up member news and updates and we had to have a a few uh pieces of news regarding fan and other things so uh jeff do you want to go first sure yeah uh can i share my screen here heather or uh let me try this again that permission what thank you let me give you that permission um oh i think camilla you wanted to say something no you can go ahead first yeah okay sure

007okay i'll try and share my screen now can you see the uh presentation here i can everybody see it okay so i'll just be real quick um so here's some key developments since our last meeting as far as fan is concerned we decided to move the data up because of not enough time to get all the insurances and approvals and what have you uh to from uh originally it was going to be september 12th we moved it up to october the 3rd november the 7th november the 28th um and we got our net our annual insurance from kaepernick which are the insurer the brokers who handle uh the decade folks and they gave us a a one-year insurance policy for the equivalent of what normally would have just been one or two events so that

008was pretty pretty great for them to do that um we got a provisional permit from deborah williams and uh so we've been providing the information i've paid for that and so forth uh we have a target vendor list out of about 120 vendors we uh called it down to about 40 and we've been contacted and we assume they'll be about somewhere between 10 and 15 ultimately and we've put together marketing materials i'll just show you a few things in a second uh we've refined our budget and we've gotten some selected sponsors uh financial commitments have been obtained uh we've [Music] got a entertainer list developed and contacts have been made with those entertainers i'll give you one example and uh we've put together facebook marketing and some artists have been contacted i'll mention something about

009that allen sorry uh robert referred to uh them the folks of some there are others as well but i'll just talk a little bit about that briefly and then we have a a preliminary program design and sequencing developed and a new website we've redone our website uh and i'll just if i have time i'll just say what our next steps are okay um so let's see if i can uh yeah so here's an example of some marketing materials can you see that uh those materials um you know uh i think uh it's those have been kind of well received and kind of give the feel that we we want to get across just so you could see it i uh heather sent out uh this presentation and and i i've got a slightly updated one

010which you may or may not send out but anyway so you have this um [Music] here is uh our i just found out this afternoon that we are able to get our lead entertainer uh kip maestro kip berry who has a very successful um cabaret and um performing arts center in anaheim california but he he lives here in in in ann arbor and he comes back every week and uh he will be available for the october the third event and will be performing his magic act and his singing and dancing and everything else that he does he's a really quite an extraordinary performer he's performed in you know 80 countries been on 100 television shows and was an honest graduate of the only magic college in the world chavez uh college of magic i believe

011it's in michigan anyway he's really a lot of fun and he'll entertain the kids and uh we'll have a probably have a booth or he'll be part of the decade to give kids some fun as well but he'll be our lead but we'll have others other local folks um singers and artists and uh just to keep things going while you know during the four hours that the event takes place give people something to to to watch and be attracted to um so robert mentioned the uh treetown murals folks we met with them and we are working out a way to have some entertainment uh have have have chalk drawings and paintings and stuff during the event for kids and for other folks and to have some illustrations about you know we could put together a

012potentially some temporary art that would be up and down uh you know at each event uh or be uh put in place um you know when there's not events going on we'll have to obviously talk to to the city about that but you know obviously you can't paint you can't do a mural on on a whole lot of places uh in this lot but there are a couple of places where nice murals and signage could be done treetown uh will also be consulting with us about uh um you know signage that we would want to put up temporary or some permanent again we'd have to consult with the city about that so that's that story there's some examples of the kind of things they've done temporary kinds of things and permanent kinds of things they

013they're very skilled at getting the community to um to actually do a lot of the painting they do kind of the design and then they get people to actually start painting by the numbers but it gets people engaged and gets people excited and so forth it's fun to do and they've done a lot of these successfully and and they've involved business and a lot and uh so that's been a a great positive uh the garden i just uh you know put up a few slides here they it's still going great this is part of our webs our new website which which talks about uh the commons growing and being the center of the city and then um i just wanted to say that uh he uh robert mentioned that we've been talking to the credit

014union and the credit union has asked us what level they want us to contribute uh at they seem very willing to sponsor what we're doing as i i think mentioned before and there's a number number of other organizations that have have stepped up to do the same so i think we're we're in pretty good shape we've gotta uh our next steps are really gonna be to sign up uh more of the vendors we've signed up a few but we're going to try to get everybody signed up as quickly as possible and to really push that marketing out there to all the different potential partners so that's my story and i'm sticking with it any questions yes any questions at all for jeff yes i have a question um i see that you have uh little

015badges or logos that uh say ann arbor community commons is this your uh name for it or is it the city's name for it or um have we agreed on you know that uh is this promotion of something that does not yet exist well no i mean it it the initiating committee the ann arbor community commons is a is a um a michigan uh non-profit and since we're kind of running this event doing this event so we've we're trying out different logos to see i i just put this together for your purposes there's nothing official out there yet i did not know that uh the name of your non-profit was ann arbor community commons which is the name of the proposal that way back 10 years ago um and i think it's it's it's confusing

016because i don't think we haven't you know nobody knows what the name of this thing is yet and um so we're getting into that quagmire now of who's doing what and and what it what it actually means or established so i just have to stop there because i'm really puzzled sorry alice i what i'm trying to say is that it's not actually the ann arbor community comments the the the the um the uh nonprofit is the initiating committee of the ann arbor community commons yeah but it wasn't it didn't initiate the report and that's the name of the report so i don't you know we're in this this quagmire again okay i mean nobody i've used this but we've all used this before the previous meetings and i didn't hear any objections so obviously we

017need to consider what you're saying but that's what what everybody was okay with up until now so i you know if you have an issue with it let's talk about it well it's different in speech than it is in print or in paint uh so um you know produce this event produced no i i like it i like the idea of having fan i just don't know if it's a good idea to kind of slide in um a name that hasn't been settled on i i prefer center of the city but sorry that's not that's not an entity either okay so also you're saying that that our non-profit should not be called the initiating committee of the ann arbor community commerce or are you saying this term should not be used in association with fan

018because it are not i think that i think they're kind of both i mean you you i can't i can't control how what you call your group but uh it does the name initiate initiating committee of the ann arbor community commons is first of all really long and second of all um still promotes the confusion between what we're doing as the council on the commons as a city appointed commission and your non-profit that's i think there's some confusion there oh okay so what i'd be interested in what other people think about that i mean you know i'm open to whatever you want me to do but i mean i i i this first time i've heard this objection and that could that that name was has been used as far back as the task force

019and nobody ever objected to it well it's been used farther back than that that's there was one that elena came up with for the proposal so and that's you know the proposal became city property for whatever reason and so i had to give up uh you know i don't i don't know we had to give up the ownership of that name and now it's it's taken on a new life and i i don't know i'm just confused and i hope it doesn't confuse other people because we're still so far away from naming this place so i i i i don't want to to go on a little a little bit of a rabbit hole here and you know why don't we why don't we just focus so jeff first of all thank you for the

020update uh and appreciate the fan event that you're planning um you know we can get into the discussion around you know if there is a discussion frankly around what the the name of the initiating committee should be referred to ultimately it is a non-profit and so i i don't want to go down to too much of a rabbit hole there with regard to you know what the name should be i think you know the initiating committee of the fan event it seemed seemed to be at least at the last meeting that this was pretty widely supported and folks are excited about this and i i certainly share that same excitement so i think it's this is a great update uh from jeff and the initiating committee event uh team and i think we why don't

021we just stick to that for at least for the tonight's meeting and uh and and go from there jeff are there any other updates that from your end of things that you'd like to provide i'm not not at the moment i i just say that our next steps like i said are to kind of uh get the the vendors on board and get the marketing really going and and finalize all the sponsorships and so forth that that's all i have at this point uh yeah i don't want to put i don't want to throw a bucket of rain on on the fan events but i think it's it's sort of usurps some territory to incorporate a name that is selected by somebody and you have a group you have to have a name for your

022group the sponsors but i think the fan events is a is a good name for the event i don't know how how we reconcile that so i'm not going to say any more about it at this time are there uh is there any feedback for jeff around the uh fian event or um you know things we have that are going to be happening on the center of the city lot um over the course of the fall i think uh alan has his hand up it looks like yeah ellen please feel free well i just wanted to comment on this last question besides my own uh report the city council recognized the initiating committee of the ann arbor community commons that's a name recognized by the city council on the uh on the 5th of uh

023october and 2020. that is the official recognized by the city council with no you know ambiguity about it and so called this uh ann harvard community commons since uh the time of the task force so i i would uh just respectfully asked to all those involved here i i think it's probably not a very productive use of our time to uh debate the name of um the nonprofit here that we're talking about i totally respect a lot of folks opinions and uh the reality of of where we are at what has brought us up to this point um but you know i think our purpose for this event was to have jeff update us a little bit on what was actually going on and you know certainly there's a confusion piece we can take that

024offline uh but uh do do want to just respect everybody's time tonight we're at 7 30 already and i for one would very much like to be done by nine o'clock um and uh so if we can keep moving on the on the you know updates related specifically to the faint event i think that would be really helpful i think frank's got his hand up frank i'm mute frank i i'm not uh going to comment further on that i was going to report on a couple items um up on updates good i think frank you're the only one who who has uh his or her hand up so if you'll feel free um i just wanted to report that the library green conservancy has uh surpassed the fifty thousand dollar mark in uh outright gifts

025and pledges our initial goal uh continues to be to raise a hundred thousand dollars and hopefully down the road uh you know other uh goals will be set based on uh you know specific uh needs and uh aspirations as they evolve um it it always feels good to get past the halfway mark in any campaign i can tell you that um so i'm pleased about that the other thing i wanted to report and this involves both myself and rita uh we uh established initial contact with the downtown detroit partnership um this turns that turns out we learned a bit in the initial contact is a 100 year old business uh consortium in the city of detroit and uh we had a very uh interesting uh initial conversation with a gentleman by the name of david

026cowan who's the chief open space officer i love that title we need one ann arbor uh of uh the downtown detroit partnership and if this is if people like david cowan are in our communities around michigan and around the country uh with wealth of knowledge and an eagerness to be helpful as we chart our course we are we are going to be in good shape um so i just wanted to report that we've made that initial uh contact and uh he um he's eager to be helpful to us and has a just very wide and deep knowledge on many many issues that we're you know talking about and wrestling with here so we were pleased and encouraged by that contact and i don't know if rita wanted to add anything to that um just that

027it was a a wonderful conversation inspiring and i would be really happy for us to continue being in touch with this group and thinking about others other groups sure excellent thank you for the update uh frank and rita uh camilla also has her hand up camilla flow's yours thank you um i'll be brief uh i was approached by a staff member of ground cover news uh to write an article on the council of the commons um uh the staff member specifically asked to introduce the council of the commons to the public give some history of the space and its politics and then ideally open a method or a forum for interested readers to engage um i just wanted to let you know that this is going on i don't want to blindside anybody and and

028i'm going to be really conscious about toeing the line between representing my own opinions and then um you know representing myself as an elected member of this advisory body um if people have feedback i'd love to hear it because [Music] there have been many more people who who know more about the history than i do i i think that's uh good and wonderful and um i think that we have a opportunity for you to maybe write tonight uh you know based on what you hear this evening obviously your participation in the previous meetings um so i think uh just from my perspective i think it's a it's a good thing that you that the opportunity is affronted to you and um you know i'm sure you will you will do a very uh good job

029of representing our our collective uh opinions the fact that basin you've uh you've had uh you've even been a moderator in some of these things um so i think it's wonderful camilla very very good news yeah i agree i think that's excellent excellent thank you uh let us know what you need from us camilla if anything um but you're obviously more than capable uh alan you have your hand up heather set out in our behalf uh odile and i is right over there we've been organizing the peace week from uh sunday september 19th to saturday the 25th around the international day of peace which is tuesday uh september 21st and we've been doing peace day it's a pretty interesting program everybody has some anxiety about the state of the world and that peace and the

030uh unhappy extinction in which it progresses and the uh doomsday clock but seconds before midnight so peace is on everyone's mind both locally and globally and we have a program that begins with actually the fostering a culture of peace and non-violence which is one of the recommendations out of the task force is the vision of the commons and bringing art to the uh commons and uh what are the questions that need to be on the peace table what are the discussions that can go on that are on people's mind and how to search for knowledge we will have some exposition of the books for the giveaway and say and uh conclude on saturday the 25th with restating the visions that people have as to how advanced peace in the world peace in the community and

031what's on people's minds so you saw the basic outline of the program which is subject um to certainly change in development as if you want so really we hope that people can participate in that and it's the kind of program that goes on that has gone on so it's now part of our framework of what we're doing and everyone is invited it's basically an open show and we'll see what happens and i guess that is my uh my report on that and uh [Music] i guess it also might fall into the question of community partnerships because this sort of program is the kind of thing that goes on on the commons more thereof on there on other days that are recognized on the calendar uh people's day and the human rights day into the nation's

032day and [Music] so that's that is the uh report it's not a a specific program of the uh initiating committee of which i am also a part of just something that i've been involved in with odile and many other people since 2014 i think was the first one that we did on the center of the city thank you alan thank you a deal um council member breaks a follow-up question for camilla and then i adam i didn't know if it was useful for us to do the update to this if this is where you wanted to talk about kind of um could it be a little louder please yeah um can you hear me now yeah okay um well i'll ask the follow-up question first so camilla would um for the article you mentioned that

033the article the request was to to do an article about the council of the commons i just wasn't i wanted to ask for clarification is it actually about the commission itself or is it about is it a is an article really about the space it's a good clarifying question i'm not entirely sure i can get back to you i i would assume it's it's both okay yeah just curious um and then uh adam is this a good spot on the agenda to discuss what happened um at the last council meeting with regards to me uh why don't we why don't we do that at the the next and item actually okay any other points regarding member updates i drop into that that the ground cover september issue has a brief outline of the program of

034the peace week excellent any other member updates before we move on to community partnerships agenda item okay adam excuse me oh yeah sorry rita go ahead um this isn't an update but we missed the part about approval of the agenda and um i i do have a thing that i would like us to discuss um ideally it would be tonight but i don't know if we have time so the issue that i would like us to discuss is a plan for the council of the commons for us you know to have a plan and some of the targets of activities as we move forward um so that we have goals yes so i apologize for missing the approval of the agenda but you are totally right uh rita and that was obviously part of uh

035part of what our plan was this evening so why don't we go ahead and approve the agenda uh for the evening and then we can get into since we've already approved the minutes uh from last meeting we can get into um what is going to be on the agenda here so can we have a motion to approve the agenda this so evening so moved we have a second okay uh all in favor of the agenda this evening say aye all right all right any opposed excellent uh so with that um why don't we get into uh community partnerships and rita we can talk uh i think about you know community partnerships i think on this agenda item is meant to be a little a little more fluid with what uh you know we're thinking about

036here so i think it was intended to discuss a little bit about what happened and uh transpired last uh city council meeting the councilmember rig suggestion but also to talk a little bit about some of the work that you and frank have been doing in other communities and decide how we want to do this work going forward so i think first uh why don't we talk a little bit about uh we'll see the floor to councilmember briggs and she can highlight a little bit of what she would like to highlight and then we can get into uh some of the good work that you uh rita and frank have been have been doing so erica why don't we turn over to you first um so you probably i'm i'm sure you all received the the

037email from adam that that gave an update as to what happened at the last council meeting so i think you're up to speed on this but essentially um we as council um received a fair amount of um push um concerns around this resolution that was being that had come forward from um from this commission with a recommendation of bringing food carts as an activation technique um to the center of the city and you know this is something that kind of we had mentioned in um had come up in our discussions uh in july i think that we might want to get some feedback from from from stakeholders and see what they thought um but i had we had you be a little louder please yes sorry this computer's um microphone doesn't work as well as

038i would hope um so anyway we received feedback from the main street area association and from businesses downtown about concerns about essentially bringing food trucks into um into the spaces particularly following a very difficult time for businesses downtown so i think it was based on the the um the stakeholders the community partners that were that were providing that feedback um it seemed that there would be adam and i um adam did a did a fair amount of work because i was actually up trying to camping at pictured rocks with very with no connectivity when all this happened um and uh i'll let him report on those conversations with main street area association but um it seemed advisable to take that feedback that we were getting from um from not exactly official block partners but from

039community stakeholders and figure out um what would be an activation strategy that might be met with greater support um and so i am i was regretful to have to you know to to pull that from the agenda um but i didn't want to have the first thing that brought brought to council from the commission um we met with so much controversy i guess immediately based on the feedback we were getting so adam you might want to add to that and i will work on my microphone yeah so i think that i think erica highlighted uh you know some of the more uh direct points you know i would just like to say that i think that when we started out this process a few months ago you know we were talking about who would be

040uh interested in being a partner and who would be uh you know interested in helping us move forward on these things and so uh i often found that in those discussions that scope of who we were who we were thinking might be you know limited in some regards you know and we were mostly focused on those who we thought were interested and i think the fact that we put forward a resolution and it was met with some resistance actually uh in consequence provided us with an opportunity to try and bring in additional people who are who are certainly partners in the downtown area and have the ability to help us move something forward and so while i am absolutely in no means stating that uh the main street area association is uh interested in in

041helping that i don't think they are an obstacle in helping us accomplish our goals here and so i feel like this is an opportunity to build partnership in a real uh serious way and so and based on the conversations i've had uh of which i don't particularly want to get into the exact details uh this evening you know i i feel like there is a real constructive way of utilizing this opportunity and i think that's what erica and i saw on that that day of the city council being that we had a real opportunity to either meet obstruction head-on and not have it be constructive or to turn it into a way of trying to build partnership and i think that we chose the latter that was part of the reason that i sent out

042the email to all of you uh and and noted that and i think we are still working on that you know it's by no means uh settled we frankly do not have a ton of resolution on this but i think that we are in a constructive spot and i'd like us to give some um weight to the fact that we are that we have the ability to build additional partnership in this and that ultimately if we all want uh this effort to be successful it is about community and is about uh engaging more members of the community to help move this forward and so uh you know i would just like to state that that's i think where we're at right now um i think we have an opportunity uh we are by no means

043of the woods with trying to uh you know broaden support but i think there is a healthy and constructive process that we're engaged in right now and so um you know while certainly i'd love it to move as fast as i think we all wanted to during the last council of the commons meeting i actually think that this provides us with an uh unique catalyst that we didn't when we when we all voted for that resolution last time we didn't have when we all voted for the resolution last time and so uh i'm a optimist by nature uh i think that's what you gotta have when you look at public policy and i encourage everyone else to hopefully share in the same optimism that erica and i have uh in uh in moving this far

044because i really do think there is uh the opportunity you know is much better to have more people talking about what you're trying to do even if some may have opinions that are they want to shape a little bit but are not necessarily opposed then to have nobody talking about what you want to do and i felt that this is very much the case with this opportunity so that's the only addition i'd like to add feel free to have any questions uh they have regarding um where we're at and the resolution i i just wanted to make a point uh i put my hand up here earlier um that i have made it my business along with dana to reach out very widely to the main street folks and we have not focused on food

045trucks or anything like that at this point we have gone out to all the restaurants we can find all the community organizations and you know local shops and so forth mainly you know in the main street area and so forth have been have been talking to them and that's our focus because we recognize that's extremely important so you can be assured that's uh top of mind jeff thank you frank i just want to uh kind of second and support what you've said uh in this initial conversation with the gentleman from the detroit partnership it was clear that the business community is front and center uh in all the positive activity that has developed around seven downtown detroit parks and open spaces and uh you know it it it's kind of obvious when you think about

046it the who would have a greater uh stake in this than the the community of businesses that operate not only on the block but in concentric circles around the center of the city and so i think we can you know positively engage these businesses and the associations that represent them in conversation and so i'm i'm wholeheartedly wholeheartedly in support of what you've observed already anyone else i can add a little bit more of some feedback that i also received that might be helpful to this group um as that resolution was coming forward um i i heard strong support for the non-profits that are activating the space um working you know the fan uh sort of uh approach of of having um that that approach in terms of short-term activation that that was uh i was

047definitely hearing support from that on from from some council members um i heard also heard from both the community and um a interest um that this commission might focus um in terms of thinking about activation thinking about more about liberty square plaza um as a place to start as well that that might be an easier place to to start with activation um a little more just um and um also focus um support for focusing in on the long-term design components of things and so um that's that's some initial also additional feedback uh that i kind of heard from community and and unlimited feedback from council as this resolution is coming forward for a couple of days and so i think that's just some some pieces that we might carry forward with us um about thinking

048about what we can do next it may take us a little bit more time to figure out working with community partners what is that that strong um short-term activation that's that's going to work for us but um we do have money on the table that we need to work with on that's um focusing on on physical design and i i do hope when rita talks about what's what's our plan um that is that's that is an area i want to suspend a fair amount of time um and i think there's there's definitely opportunity to be thinking about the entire site that was the entire space that was that voters consider center of the city thank you uh councilman briggs others uh anyone else on this topic uh yeah i just wanted to um say i

049totally support uh the feedback you've gotten i do think we very much need to involve liberty plaza and look at the long term critical the reason why liberty plaza has not been part of this initial fan series is because of couple things one i was gonna have some difficulty getting insurance to cover that um because of some issues that are out there which would need to be addressed and i think we can be helpful in addressing them but i there it's not something i could do this early on you know without consulting the council and and i could get into a quagmire also my understanding and i may be wrong about this but my understanding is that the liberty plaza comes under the parks department and so that makes it a little more complicated and

050so i didn't want to get into that uh situation uh again again without due consultation and um [Music] so that's that that's the reason thanks thanks jeff uh rita you have your hand up you're muted still rita sorry all right um i was just gonna ask erica if you could explain a little more about the comments about the long-term activation um that you mentioned um yeah i think just that we um there there was support that um council had had supported this this um physical design of the space and that that's you know that's definitely something that that um there's interest in seeing the commission moving forward with and um and and you know getting that rfp out there and really working with the community to to understand what you know what what is our

051proposed you know design for the space so just um nothing not extensive feedback on that just continued support to see the commission working on that element okay so there was support in other words yeah yeah you know okay exactly continue support interest in seeing us move move that forward okay thank you i i would argue um that in order for us to do that as professionally as we can and involve as much of the community as we can i think um it would be good to have some more of these facilitated sessions um and working groups perhaps associated with focusing on that and as i said before we we can make a small contribution to that by collecting some information further information to help the process over the fan uh events but obviously you know

052this design element we obviously need to bring a lot more input um to bear and and and to have some of these sessions that would be my opinion i know how other other people feel about that but i totally support that notion we have to do that so i think there's uh it's actually a very good prelude into the next topic of discussion which is uh really an effort that frank and rita have uh led and i guess i just saw alan's hand pop up here so before we get into that we'll uh we'll give the floor to allen but then i think we should really talk about uh some interest in other communities that frank and rita have been looking into and how that plays into a forward thinking uh role uh related to

053that design element so ellen the floor is yours but then we're going to turn it directly over to rita and frank well i do think it's important to see how other communities have developed open space and center of the city focus i wanted to say as we began to look to the longer view that there have been a lot of ideas out there and there's some drawings that i'm glad that people will be they will begin to look at what is the picture of how to uh create a central park and a civic center uh which is viewed as a building something that is four season that we have to figure out how that fits into the physical capacity of the space and whether there are additional facilities that can be drawn into the commons

054in particular the noble house and carriage house that the martin company said they'd be interested in having the city take over and that could serve particularly the noble house as at least on the first floor uh which could be made accessible as a social center as an adjunct to the community that finds liberty plaza as it's you know itinerary home so i'm very interested in this long review and i think that the pictures that stefan trendoff developed not so long ago have been shared with the uh council of the uh commons and maybe that could be shared further for people to look at of how the various elements can fit together but i wanted to back to the more media to see i think one of the things that we really need is the uh

055calling into a service of the so-called block group that is one of the recommendations in one of the uh of the uh task force and one of the elements of the city council resolutions on this that that block group of the immediate basically the immediate neighbors you know be convened so that people can see that we're all partners in this common development and uh they're reflecting also on robert black's comments that the first martin corporation and the public library need to be brought into these conversations and they've sort of stepped to the side watching what happens rather than being invited into the actual conversations so there are big elements who have been silent in our conversations and they need to we need to hear their voices but furthermore the uh from the very beginning the

056uh the uh all resolutions have said you know remove the the surface parking on the parking lot so that it can actually begin to be used as a public space and and develop and that's what when we have a public program we got to go through a whole process to get the dda and the republic parking and the community services to agree that the cars are off so that people can go on and i just wish that that long term or long commitment or instruction from the city council would be carried forward to instruct the the dda with the republic parking to terminate the surface parking on the lot it was never intended as a surface parking lot there only until you know further development is takes place and that is a center of the

057city central park and uh so uh if we would you know carry out what has already been mandated to create a block group of the immediate neighbors and partners and to remove the surface parking we would then have a little more momentum towards seeing how the community can begin to use this space and see from the bottom up what people actually want to do so that's my that's my comment on this i'm glad that we would move also forward to see how we envision a long-term development they would see the integration of liberty plaza a connection between liberty plaza and the uh we current library parking lot and the creation of a four season civic center uh building of some sort as part of this total downtown center of the city development thank you alan

058um so i'd like to turn over uh to rita and frank to talk a little bit about some of the research they've been doing and potentially make a proposal for some initial next steps rita uh frank feel free well i guess i'll start because i see frank's muted for the moment but jump in frank we uh i think we're just um trying to explore at a very elementary level on connecting with communities that have downtown open spaces and that had come about as a result of just some brainstorming really with uh initiating committee members um talking about detroit uh plymouth dexter as local examples i'd consider them all local um and we would certainly like to um the thought was to just make a connection and see what would happen and so it's like i

059can't tell you how excited i was after talking with david cowan and i really believe that everyone in this group would appreciate listening to him describe what he's done um and and his team of people that he works with um it is definitely a coalition of business and um this group as support and and it will call us to calling us to figure out some things that that we need to do for us locally um but i i i it's sort of like i don't want to like read you the book because it was so exciting it's like i don't want to i i sort of like you all to experience it it really is um impressive the service that they've provided for their downtown so the proposal from my perspective is that we start

060forming an approach to work groups or committees or whatever we want to call them that will investigate how other places do this and set some criteria some descriptive information that we would like from each so that we can either investigate it as a whole group and bring in speakers or whatever of representatives of these places or compile information that we would review as a group that would be up to the council to make that kind of a decision so i think i'll stop there and frank please jump in and let me say that frank made this first connection and i'm really happy that he did uh i couldn't have said it better uh uh rita here i just think there's uh great potential for learning uh from uh other communities that have uh have tackled

061these challenging issues and detroit uh as i mentioned this is a 100-year organization uh that has obviously morphed over the over the years and decades and there was a a conservancy formed uh at the time of detroit's uh 300th birthday in 20 2001. um and uh that conservancy now is a subsidiary of the downtown detroit partnership but again we could talk about some of the details of the conversation they have developed a funding mechanism for much of their activity it's both private fundraising but they also have a tax incremental financing district that they've established there and so it's uh the other thing is that i think uh other communities around the country uh have been looking at detroit and seeing what has happened uh david alluded to uh working uh uh you know in partnership

062with other communities around the country to understand their issues and of course detroit learns from that but the the communities that they work with also learn from the detroit experience so it just seems like we're at a stage where we need to accelerate our learning about what really works uh and i think we'll find that these are going to be different in each community i don't know nearly as much and i don't know a lot yet about detroit but i would encourage people to look at the downtown detroit partnership website and and click on a lot of the drop downs uh it i would say in a half hour no more than an hour you can really delve into this you know as a preview before we uh proceed further but um plymouth is another

063intriguing place uh that as i understand it and we have not personally talked to anybody in plymouth but uh jeff crockett who is has spoken in public comment uh has uh started with a foundation over there that's been very generously supporting kellogg park and my understanding at a very superficial level it's the it's the city of plymouth it's the downtown development authority and the chamber of commerce have formed some kind of a working relationship with the uh with this foundation as well so i think each community is going to reveal something a bit different but i think we'll learn from it and in the process we'll over time we'll figure out what what's going to work in in ann arbor and i the probably the biggest takeaway from our conversation with david cowan is which

064is staring us right in the eyes anyhow is uh is we really got to engage the business community uh as major long-term stakeholders in this process excuse me i just want to say that david was extremely generous with his time with us and offered to continue the conversation yeah can we draw him into one of our meetings as a uh participant i would think that would be you know at the appropriate time i think that would be very much a possibility the facilitated discussion that yeah we had before and that robert black referred to again as being a useful form might be an opportunity to draw him in as a participant in our discussion just a thought adam i could see these committees that are matched up with communities and with a kind of a

065common agenda so we can gather information that's comparable an outgrowth of that could be uh you know focus facilitated discussions with the you know speakers from from these communities who could uh just that might be a process to think about i think uh we're all thinking along the same lines here uh certainly uh frank i think that uh you know sort of what we've had a chance to trade emails on and certainly what you and rita have shared this evening and what alan's thought process is i think actually there's a lot of commonality here which is you know we this would be a great first step on the long-term visioning for this council to really start to investigate other communities and what is working you know we have we have uh i don't know if

066this is the correct term but sort of gotten hung up on what the limitations are of our current space and maybe what the reality is is that we need to be a little more visionary um and and not seek to necessarily determine what the limitations are for a new wheel that we have to create but really look to what others have done and so i i think that uh you know the outreach that uh that you rita and frank have done uh have has been very helpful and i'd like to make a proposal that maybe as a series of next steps we form uh i think the technical uh term by our bylaws is a committee or a series of committees um that each highlight different communities and we do we we can obviously uh

067form these as uh needed and uh add to them as needed but we try and identify you know a series of maybe half a dozen communities initially that we feel we want to look into to draw examples from and certainly alan to your point about bringing forward individuals who who serve in those communities in similar roles to us you know how we can utilize tap into their expertise bring them to the the full console the commons if necessary but certainly inform the work is is probably a good use for time to try and uh illustrate some of those examples so i'd like to make that proposal uh going forward so that we can identify some communities at least initially there's by no means a limitation on this list but at least a few communities initially

068assign folks to help investigate those communities and as rita stated maybe even assign some minimum criteria for which we want to make sure that every committee investigates uh from from neighboring communities neighboring meeting quite broadly in this particular case so i'd like to see what other thoughts are on that proposal um and uh i know alan has his hand up we'll go to him first but uh see what other folks thoughts are on that proposal as well allen yeah i i support that proposal i don't want to side track it but i do want to uh call into the conversation that the enthusiasm for detroit is not uh universal and i was brought to my attention a book that analyzed the development of detroit in relation to the poor and black community that has been

069in some way bypassed in the organization of the downtown development and i think i will share i hope that heather can share with you all the review of a book that did a very detailed analysis of how the detroit development has functioned in relation to the african-american community and the poor communities in the around the center of detroit so there are many partners in here and sometimes when the emphasis is on the business community the poorer people are left out of the picture and the development of the commons is very much a development that sees the base as the actual whole population of the community and so i just want to put that in and i will share it through heather the uh review of this very interesting book of detailed research thank you thanks

070ellen i i i uh frankly i share your sentiments too by the way um i think that uh it's very hard to argue that the neighborhoods in detroit have not necessarily benefited from the same development the downtown has but i also want to keep us thinking about the fact that it's we're not just talking about detroit obviously really and uh frank used an example of the ddp uh there are certainly very positive examples as exist around the efforts they've done but uh you know certainly the efforts are on equity i know many have expressed those uh desires here and i share those sentiments um and i think that um in general what the proposal that i'm making is related to is uh you know looking at the the constructive features and also the effects somewhat

071negative in case in some cases that we can learn from other communities so that we don't make the same negative effects or gentrification that that maybe some communities have have uh you know mistakenly gone down uh you know um maybe by by accident frankly not not by malfeasance so um jeff your hand is up um please feel free yeah um can you hear me yeah so i uh had the honor a number of years ago i was a a trustee of the of the episcopal diocese of michigan and um one of my responsibilities was to engage with the city of detroit some a a very relatively poor area of the city of detroit the island view area down there um and it's anchored by a fairly um dynamic uh episcopal church called the church of

072the messiah and barry randolph is the pastor down there and uh he is a sort of leading light in the city to try to to to get the uh the poor members of of the community more engaged in the economic development and i helped him put together plans for doing that entrepreneurial training education uh putting uh some businesses in place and so forth and uh as part of my role and funneled some resources from the episcopal diocese uh so i had a pretty a pretty good understanding of what the issues uh were then this was about seven or eight years ago but um barry's still very active and um the key really was to as part of keeping the community the the lesser powerful lesser uh you know wealthy members of the community engaged in

073the development process was to bring this entrepreneurial training and entrepreneurial dimension to and helping them build businesses as part of the process so um that's one point i wanted to make the second one is and we had some fair amount of success uh the second one was um to the other extreme there are two or three or four places in europe uh and one or two in in other parts of the world india in particular um and in latin america that have had uh some extraordinary things happen uh in terms of uh this kind of thing and they i'm not saying we want to over extend ourselves and going too far afield but i think there's some experiences there that we can can learn something from as well which i i know quite well and

074i think there are plenty of people who are willing to zoom with us from those communities to talk about you know what they did and what's going on because we are part of an international network whether we recognize it or not of of cities that are trying to transform themselves in the current environment and get more um central engagement so i i think we should not ignore that dimension be very careful not to to spread our resources too thin but we should you know get some input as well from a broader broader story okay thanks uh very good points jeff uh frank you got your hand up here um you know to allen's point we uh we don't want to restrict our uh our learning to you know what's going well and right in these

075communities we want to we want to learn from things that they've attempted that haven't worked or that they haven't attempted that they should have um so it's i guess three 360-degree learning there i've coined it i guess um the other thing is that uh i think this process of identifying communities and and and uh individuals from the council and we may eventually want to add people outside the council but i think we should start within is a way to get us all engaged i i'm going to call out sarah for for a moment and we rita and i got to know sarah back earlier in the summer and we're just so impressed with her um urban issues background and uh professional credentials that uh i i'm eager to uh you know involve everybody on the

076council and there's a lot of talent here a lot of good background and uh so i think this is a mechanism to to do that as well i i hope i it was okay to uh highlight you over there i gotta smile okay i'm okay [Laughter] i'm going through lists like cities that i've worked with in my head to try to figure out good so so i are there other thoughts on the idea of uh you know proposal i think we can actually take some time and i think it'd be a very good idea you know all all of uh or many of you put forward uh offline last time a number of ideas of examples of things we should consider for uh highlighting in the city council resolution so i actually think that process

077was actually quite good um in terms of trying to generate ideas i'd like to propose we do a similar process here where we don't necessarily at this meeting this evening suggest specific communities to highlight but maybe we agree to form a few maybe three uh given the number of uh representatives we have in the on the council of the commons three working or three committees rather sorry specifically uh where we investigate a series of communities and you all uh submit everyone here submits ideas of communities that that we would like to consider to heather and we break up those communities individually that way it's somewhat random frankly and we maybe can learn something from from communities that we weren't necessarily thinking of but we are inclusive with all of our thought processes with suggestions so

078i'd like to sort of make that suggestion that if if we want to go down this route of community committees maybe it's a good way to describe it we also go down the route of suggesting uh offline which communities we think we should consider and then dividing those up individually so i think we got a couple hands up here uh erica ellis and actually four hands up erica alice stephen and sarah not necessarily in that order but maybe we'll go that uh that order erica uh why don't you go first yeah um i like the idea of having a committee that focuses in on doing some research and around best practices and identifying what that criteria would be um i'm just a little confused about the recommendation for three different committees kind of doing the

079same work as opposed to just one committee that is comprised of you know whoever here would like to volunteer to be on that subcommittee um and then amongst that that one subcommittee um the work would be divvied up so i was just curious why you were thinking about it being multiple committees um mostly because i think there's uh at least historically uh this council has uh seemed to be um more focused on a council of a whole um and so if there is just a small number of people that would like to focus on this shoot i don't think i have any objection to that but it seemed just to be that there there was a stronger interest in the past of not having a smaller subset of the council to focus on issues so

080uh you know that's really the only reason i suggested that that we try and engage more members of the council but you don't have any objection that if it is just a few um i think uh we had alice stephen and sarah um ellis do you wanna go next yes um so committees all of which would be doing the same work or a committee you know it's it's a little bit fuzzy here but one suggestion i would have is to think of if you have you want to look at a whole lot of community communities and you need to split the labor between those among those cities um to study these cities or make contacts with them or communities it doesn't even have to be cities there are four about four areas where it would

081be good to have to compare the same four areas of interest in each city so like how each project or city has addressed administration or funding or the physical aspects that were transformed perhaps um you know what what the physical aspects had to do with what they did um so those are three areas i think there's yet another one that i had in mind but so that we get a comparison of the different ways that you know in specific areas not to miss one on in each case you know um otherwise we'll just have this way hey i like that way you know or this way maybe this could work in ann arbor but you know you can see how the if there's any difference or commonality in the way that they approached administration finance

082and maintenance or regulation whatever whatever we want to settle on um those we should look at those specific areas so that we will address our own questions about our own site not skip over them in each in any case you know you want to have okay we studied this city and they did this this and this for those four things the city did it this way you might find commonalities and you might find significant differences or realistic applications i just don't want to copycat copycat say seattle or something i you know just because we like that city and the way they did it doesn't mean it's going to work here but if we study the exact categories of things um that that might help us sort through the sea of both subject areas subjects and

083subject areas that's it take my hand down stephen uh thank you i fully agree with what erica said um i feel like there's one committee here maybe not multiple committees here i fully agree with what uh alice said i feel like if we're going to step into this we ought to have some way of measuring sort of apples to apples or trying to get consistent criteria or questions that we're asking about these different projects and i guess my own original thought maybe is just one way to sort like sort of a taxonomy for this may be able to think of cities other cities or other locations within michigan similar tax structure similar business you know communities whatever maybe look at communities outside of michigan but also in the united states and then maybe look at

084communities outside of the united states as ways to kind of divvy up the the different uh examples that may be out there thanks sarah thanks so i also agree with what alex said in terms of like a research process if this is a road that we're going to go down and i guess you know i've worked with parks apartments across the country i've worked with you know individual developers who have developed parks across the country and so i'm trying to wrap my head around like what exactly are we trying to figure out like what are we looking for similar park types i mean i wrote a whole report on like transforming parking lots into parks like maybe there's examples in there that might work but then there's also examples of like bigger parcels but like

085the partnerships that were formed to fund that might make sense so i guess like there's an entire universe of like examples out there so i think you know before we just start throwing out like examples of parks we think are nice like we really need to somehow like stephen saying like come up with criteria and maybe we all just need to like think on that for a bit because i'm not really sure like where my head wants to go i like this approach i just like i'm not entirely sure who what i don't know of any other park that's really comparable to the situation that we have here so it's kind of like cobbling together like a bunch of things that worked that might work for funding or design or things from from other parks

086across the country i think alan is next yeah it seems like we're moving towards convergence i i like what alice uh said in trying to lay out criteria and uh uh she said she had four in mind and mentioned three so i've been trying to put a word around the fourth and uh you adam put out that word equity and i think that that is one of the factors we have to look at you know what is the uh the bottom-up democratic participation development element of what is going on in these various places so that should be part of what we look at and i think it's great if we can pick some cities and see whether we have one committee or that breaks down into three subcommittees or whatever everybody can't do everything but

087we should have some common framework to look at and as best we can see what we can learn from other places and but the uh democratic bottom quality is essential to the sense of the conference and we're really seeing the users of commonly told resources are able to more effectively control and utilize and create a [Music] research is more productive than when either the government does it or it's delegated to some private corporation and how we see that uh use of the users of the versus action the energizing element so equity i guess is maybe one word to put into these criteria very good point ellen uh i think we've got uh frank and then rita um this has been helpful uh and i appreciate alice's list uh which you know we can continue to

088uh fill out and understand but i think i think common criteria uh studied across various situations i was just reflecting back what what motivated uh me personally to you know begin to identify communities and understand how they how they achieve what they're achieving and it it gets back to what i've expressed is that you know what is the public private contract uh for partnership how how we have uh public entities like the dda and the city of ann arbor coalesced in partnership with community organizations of groups like the library green conservancy and the initiating committee in our case but other groups detroit had this uh you know detroit 300 uh conservancy that was formed uh almost 20 years ago so i i'm looking at kind of the larger structure uh in wanting to learn about

089that uh not to the exception or the detriment of you know how did how do they how did they work with a particular park situation and or whatever but how did they form this community partnership and these things evolve but the ones that have been successful i'm sure we can learn from the you know things they did right and things they did wrong along the way by their uh by their own reflection and our our observation so that that's where i think uh this could be most valuable but that's just my opinion uh thank you frank we got rita and then uh councilmember bricks um i just want to say i think this discussion is great and i absolutely agree with having common um elements that we would use to compare across communities or projects

090or whatever we're going to be examining and i believe that each of us has some ideas that would be contributing to that kind of discussion the thinking of in my mind we're setting up a table with elements that we'll look at and versus cities or wherever these things kind of things happen so i just want to add one more element which would be a time frame that we um set a target by which this kind of study or whatever we want to call it um is completed or that we attempt to complete it so that we don't have a negative long extended kind of thing i don't think this is a thesis this is gathering ideas and looking at them and then figuring out where we want to go that's my idea all right thank

091you rita uh councilmember breaks yeah just to support what um sarah and um kind of frank added on to i think um in terms of really what is our purpose of looking at these communities i think we um i agree that it is that public partner public-private partnership that really needs to be explored a little bit more and we can see what our our group has struggled with a little bit and we can anticipate what's going to be what are going to be struggles to come after a design is is formalized so funding partnerships to successfully fund a space are clearly um questions that we're going to need to have answered and then operational models are something that we are currently struggling with so those are you know if two things that i could imagine

092would be helpful helpful pieces those are ones that i would hope we'd focus on uh thank you erica jeff yeah i just wanted to make a couple of observations one is certainly when we think about innovation for example and hopefully ann arbor is going to be innovative in what we do and that's our tradition and and hopefully that will continue and obviously we have unique circumstances as as everybody does um one of the things that i teach when i teach innovation is is you want to try to achieve insight an insight is composed from my perspective of three dimensions one is patterns of the past what has happened historically so hindsight the other one is what's called outside where you're looking at other people other models what other people have been doing and sometimes you

093want to step outside the model of cities or towns you might want to go into something completely different you might learn some kind of uh tool or idea that would work in a unique situation like ann arbor so you don't necessarily just want to look at your own industry so to speak as as other models but you might want to be a little creative about thinking about borrowing something from somewhere else just to use a silly example henry ford you know didn't invent the automobile what he did was he put the assembly line together with with uh building a cheap automobile and he learned that from the arms manufacturers and the chocolate manufacturers okay so he didn't go to to other car companies because they were all building stuff for rich people right they were

094all bespoke they weren't low-cost mass-produced anyway i don't want to get too off in the academic woods here but anyway that's the one thing uh and then the third element so you've got hindsight outside and then you've got foresight and there you're looking at scenarios of the future and you have to use the novelist or science fiction writer's idea uh or a way of thinking when you do that and you have to you have to try to imagine possible end states that would be desirable or attractive to people and work back from there to see where you you know what the steps you would have to go through to get there and so if you put those three together hindsight patterns of the past outside other models and then imagine the scenarios of the future

095you put those three things together you get profound insight and that's where create you know truly creative or innovative stuff comes from okay that's one one one dimension the other dimension is the big elephant in the room that every city that i know about that i'm looking at when it comes to these issues is grappling with is the whole issue of sustainability and you know i don't know how that would necessarily fit in with the immediate goals that we have here but i think it needs to be you know born in mind we have a very large sustainability effort going on in the city of ann arbor and every other city is either looking at that or doing something like that and a lot of times you look at cities and what's happening is the

096center of the city um is actually becoming the the place where these people start to think about how you would radiate out from the center of the city uh a new model of sustainability for the whole city it becomes kind of a catalyst or trigger so i think uh you know talking to you know uh missy stultz's group and the and the sustainability people would not necessarily be a bad idea when we think about what kind of designs what kind of central uh focus we're going to have and how that connects with the rest of what's going on okay thanks uh so to try and uh summarize a little bit about kind of i think what we're hearing here where uh let me just get a show of hands um you know who is interested

097in being part of a subcommittee on one or more aspects of this uh regarding other communities and i certainly can break it up in a variety of ways can we get a show of hands on that okay so uh i i think that's most folks so um you know i feel like we have a couple of variable options here you know we or we can establish uh common criteria and break up subcommittees based on community or uh potentially we could break up subcommittees based on criteria and investigate the same communities for those similar criteria maybe i'm missing something but it feels like in order to isolate variables we want to go down one of those two routes um and if folks feel like i'm limiting my thinking please feel free because i certainly have i'm

098not intending to do that but um but it feels like you know we've essentially got to choose one of two pathways and then we need to generate some ideas uh for how we're going to structure those committees uh in in one of those two pathways would you describe those again i didn't quite get it yeah so it sounds like we have a couple of proposals on on the table if i'm correct in my understanding one is um we just we create sub uh subcommittees that are based upon um identifying together or offline by submission a series of common criteria and then the subcommittees investigate all of those criteria uh inclusively based on a community so for instance choose plymouth michigan and we want to investigate how they are structuring their center of the city area

099how they are being more inclusive for equity purposes how they are funding it how they are structuring it from a use perspective et cetera um or so that's that's one option as i see it or we then structure a series of subcommittees that say for plymouth dexter detroit traverse city portland wherever we want to investigate in one committee the funding sources and in another committee the uh usage opportunities and another uh subcommittee the uh how we're dealing with uh making sure that we're not gentrifying the community um so i feel like we have a couple of maybe i'm wrong on this at least in my thinking but in hearing everyone talk this evening it seemed to be that we had you know essentially one of two tracks where we could be more community specific but

100greater numbers of questions and you know therefore influence some variability uh in our in our research or we could be more structured in our elemental research what we're looking to obtain from each community but um be across many communities in a in a subcommittee so i feel like there's there's a couple of options here maybe i'm missing something and like i said till please feel free if you think i am to to correct me on this but in terms of like moving forward those are the two sort of pathways that i seem to be hearing from folks comments i would um suggest i mean to some degree leave this up to the remember i think i saw five or six hands go up the folks that wanted to serve on this committee but um personally

101i would recommend the the first suggestion of of reaching out to a community and trying to to determine that information having done research like this in the past i find that it's often one person who's who knows all this information it'd be kind of horrible to have five people from this commission reach out to the same person about that so i think it'd be a little more efficient use of time to to go with um one person trying to to reach out to a community but i will trust whatever the committee decides i think we've got a few hands up here i'm not sure who put their hands up first so we'll just go in order as i see it uh you know rita alice uh sarah rita all right um i'll just speak quickly

102um i agree with what erica just said my brief experience with um talking with david cowan um i just found that things just sort of you think of one thing in this conversation with him and it connects with another thing and so you quickly can get a lot of information um from one person so i think it would be hard to have a laser focus on one thing they all are so connected right oh alice oh yeah i'm not even muted um i i agree with what erica said what what rita said and of course what i said um because um i think we actually were charged with the with uh looking at the funding or the these certain areas we need to get that that task done and i think this is a great

103way to do it if we in what erica says it's very cogent about being efficient and not taking too much expecting too much of one person or one effort in one city so yeah i go with the first option of determining what our central areas of focus are and asking for response from various cities which is probably a determined list at first we want to make sure we have these 20 cities or communities or places i think using places is a good one a good way to go to not just identifying cities and that way we have really focused information that is that is also integrated in the effort so i i support that first way of doing that excellent sarah um i agree um and i think you know if there's just one sub

104committee if only half of the i mean i think if we can all if we can define however many people are in the subcommittee if the whole group wants to do this those common criteria the same questions i think that'll take a lot of that variability out of it and you know if there's six of us doing this i think you know we split up into groups of two do the interviews and i think it would make sense to sort of come back together and look at all the funding answers together and see like what we see you know emerging as as trends or if there's different information that we need to collect and maybe we can sort of sort of do both of the ways that you described but like erica said i think

105that we just need to contact somebody one time because these people are really busy yeah sure else do you have anything else to add i did um yeah i i don't mean be a stickler for technicalities but um i'm going to um i think the way that is described in our bylaws we need to be careful about the number of people in one committee we can name the committees differently and still have a committee but i think three to five is as much as we'd wanted to have an even number or i mean an odd number of people but really a small number so that so that we're not i mean it's hard to organize the community the way we are structured you know we're on zoom here but we need to be able to

106actually do the work together without having the difficulty of a larger group decide what we're going to divide and develop and so forth so i would i would recommend a small a few committees or related communities committees with us a few people at a time so i i agree with all of these things and i think that i'd like to make a couple suggestions uh obviously for bylaw purposes and certain for open meetings act purposes we want to make sure we're in compliance here um i'd like to make a couple of suggestions one as it relates to criteria that we want to make sure we cover it's really important that we be inclusive of all of the all the folks on the council of the commons with collecting that information and secondarily in the same

107vein making sure that we are all submitting uh ideas for communities to research and so i i'd like to ask everybody to make sure that and maybe heather for those who are not in attendance tonight if you could put a call put out a call to action for all the council members here to make sure that they are communicating back with you you know around communities of interest that we want to look at and criteria of interest that we want to make sure we tackle the second thing is i'd like to suggest that to alice's point maybe we have a small group of folks heather uh myself or alice one of the two of us doesn't have to both of us and then maybe frank and or rita or both get together and just talk

108about uh bringing all those thoughts together and dividing up into some subcommittees and so frank and rita are mentioning this because you had the grand thought of of uh this process and i think that it's a really good one so maybe we can we can do that we can create the committees based on that and and send the information back out to uh council members and then we can initiate dividing up uh based on that to create these committees based on a common criteria and a common set of communities of interest to look at here and then we can move forward uh to alice's point with a small number of people with common criteria common uh communities of interest um you know uh in a subset uh of of course and um and go from

109there so i'd like to make that i guess is my suggestion for how we break up this work um and then maybe uh we have a the small initial working group of heather uh either else or myself and frank or rita uh and or rita to um to you know divide it but divide that up is that a suggestion folks are good good with we do that in a very short period of time by the way like within a week so that we can move forward i think that's a great idea okay any objections i guess is a better way to describe it i had zoom okay okay so um hearing none seeing none uh why don't we move forward with with regard to that um and so i'd like like to ask that everybody

110from uh you know one heather submit or send out a request to all council members um you know requesting information around communities of interest that we're interested in investigating and criteria of interest and then uh simultaneous to that we will get a small group of folks together here to take in that information not limit it down by any means but try and uh and try and organize it and also break us all up so that we can investigate uh based on that and then we'll set some criteria to read his point around time frame and try and start utilizing our monthly meetings to report back this information try and build upon it learn more and utilize it as a learning tool to inform our our discussions about the long-term proposal uh going forward um so

111i i i feel like unless there's any objection to that you know that feels like a good next step to me okay are there other other comments or questions around the uh the community partnerships or agenda items um specifically on the agenda this evening i don't see any um are there any other agenda items that folks would like to have on the agenda this evening um i guess i i would just like to ask that we start talking about figuring out how we're moving forward with a physical design that was one of the four categories of interest that i was thinking of sorry for partic yeah i know i appreciate that erica because you reminded me that this is something that is tangible as well and and we have for instance one category of interest

112the criteria of interest is like are there any other built on a parking lot you know a parking garage an underground parking garage well maybe there are some um i know there's one in chicago so um that would be one or um a whole block you know a center inside of block with a perimeter you know these physical characteristics are something we're gonna have to deal with one way or another and so it'd be good to see if they're wow i never thought of that you know they got pretty much the same situation okay good so i think we think about our physical characteristics and how their potential is there or not you know maybe some more or low hanging fruit but i think that's that physical aspect is very important because it's something people

113can see and think about as opposed to these sort of arcane areas which we must deal with but you know finance and funding is sort of like uh science fiction but physical is right there so that's my suggestion i think that's a good idea frank frank anytime you yeah um it turns out uh again in conversation with uh mr cowan that grand circus park is is built above a an underground parking structure and the campus marshes in another park downtown detroit have basements under them i don't know what he quite meant by basements but there's there's a level below for mechanics of fountains and storage and stuff so there's yeah you got it yep other other points i think we're going to learn a lot from this exercise by the way i think it's actually

114going to be very interesting for many of us here um jeff has his real hand up [Laughter] yeah please feel free i do have a real hand yeah i totally agree and alice is absolutely correct um the only thing i would say is i i i think in doing that we should not forget what adam said earlier which is maybe we should not limit ourselves to just what we're seeing right now in terms of a you know a space that we have available to us try to imagine at least in one of our scenarios possibly of the future working back from there a broader vision of what the center of the city might be i'm not talking necessarily about you know the software part the human part but i'm thinking of the physical space itself

115uh that it it may be that we come to realize that it may be important to to have a broader center of the city than we have and rearrange some of the the pieces that are there and to a greater extent with the collaboration of our block partners and other people in the city to truly make an innovative and unusual and powerful statement uh center of the city statement so that's one thing um and i don't uh i don't think we can um totally ignore uh the the human element i mean we do as part of that imagining of the future we have to have i think a stronger idea or stronger set of possibilities about what we're actually trying to achieve what is our end's goal uh what what or several possible end goals

116to some extent the political structure is dictated by the by the gr you know by the geology and the geography and the the the urban structure but it also has to be dictated by the kinds of human relationships we want to achieve in the future for our city okay excellent points jeff i think we got a few hands up i'm not sure whose hands carry over from the last line of questioning so i'm going to go rhea alice allen uh i'm going to repeat myself i also want us to make it for a future agenda item to really start thinking about a plan for our group so we've got some really solid things that we're starting out i really like it but i think that's just part of it so i think there is kind

117of like another set of steps that we that i'd really like to see written down so that we know we have them as tasks i think that's a a very good point very good point alice and then alan yes i think a calendar is a great idea sort of a calendar also we were talking about the physicality of the place i think the connections between physical places is interest isn't is important too i mean lately we heard about the train station plans kind of at least going on pause if not imploding um but uh the minute i thought of that we have an opportunity just like we had an opportunity with another sort of debacle recently with the food trucks um that our center of the city is logically the first place that people might

118want to go from the train station or it might be one of the major destinations on the tree line that that is projected to go to williams street or up to williams street or something like that so this is this should be a destination a physical destination that's connected to other physical destinations absolutely including the park system so you've got an actual park right there it's a connection where do you go from there maybe to the playground park that's up between the train station and in the uh center of the city that little place on fourth i think as you go down to the depot um connections so i think it's important to think of the connections between the physical spaces as well as the there's their role as a destination alan yeah uh all

119in accord with this i yeah but going forward in this comparative uh searching for more information i don't want us to lose [Music] particularly the martin people and library as uh elements in what is possible and and other plans that are you know going to impinge upon or coordinate with what we are doing so i think that our the local organization and as this conversation began connection with the main street state street business associations and our own community we need to be doing our community organization right here as well as looking what is you can learn from other places yes i if i'll just enter interject a short little thing of what alan is saying reminds me of libraries and their parks parts bryant park in new york next to the metro the metropolitan library

120and we have the potential of having our own little park attached attached to the uh our own library and there are many other other aspects too there there are museums that have parks attached to them and so forth so there's a great deal of potential ryan park has some very interesting uh topography uh issues too which also probably knows about let us let's not forget also that there are some major structures going up right now as we speak yeah in the area and alice has referred to this before and some others that you know so all these people are going to be there and they're in these structures they need a place to go to and uh so we need to bear them in mind as well and see what what their input so i

121think we've got some really good ideas we've got a couple of action items that that uh for for all council members one you know to reiterate is ideas around communities of interest that we want to target and you know be an inclusive list you know we had a great process for this uh for submitting ideas uh for the city council resolution last time i'd like to re-uh purpose that same process and you just utilize it for both communities of interest and also criteria of interest and then we're gonna have a small group of folks uh you know heather myself uh alice uh maybe rita and frank determine you know break that down and take that list and divide up uh everybody and try and correlate it to a common set of um of criteria of

122interest with a uh a diverse set of communities of interest and break up into some subcommittees based on that so we will take that action item we're going to try and do that within the next week so that we've got three weeks before the next council meeting and we will assign some homework uh for uh those organizat those uh uh subcommittees to report back in in some type of organized fashion at the next council uh of the commerce meeting so uh and this can be uh an gen item uh read it to your point we're on the long-term agenda we'll utilize this to inform that long-term agenda don't really what that's gonna look like at this point but certainly um we will we will figure that out so i feel like we've got some good

123direction at least we're on some shorter uh term action longer term visioning items uh out of this meeting tonight so unless there are further conversation on this uh agenda item i'd like to open it up for public comment um and uh i am pretty adamant it's 903 i would really like to um hit our nine o'clock mark at some point here you know in our process then we start about three minutes late so we we may have started three minutes late so maybe we're even but uh but we've been about 21 slate of real time so we got some time to make up um so any other any other comment on this agenda item if uh or we get to open a public comment three in the morning here and and to alan's uh benefit

124uh obviously here um heather do we have any members of the public would like to comment we do we have a hand up we have robert black i'm gonna allow you to talk now i'm not gonna take three minutes i'll make this very quick i i want to applaud you guys again watching your alignment and connection to each other respectfully and working through confusing and conflicting issues that show up both within the group and outside the group is exemplary i think alice hit one right on the head that you need to resolve very quickly which is the confusion about naming who's involved within this group what are they called and then what is the name of this group and the place you're looking for is it a commons is it center of the city which

125i love it evokes certain images that's very powerful and um you know there's uh alan talked about a bottom-up process there's also a thing called inside out you have the outside shaping forces which are other ideas like jeffrey mentioned from his outside thing in the issues from the past there is a park in in california in berkeley that's called kaiser center five-story parking structure which was at the time in the 1970s the largest urban park on top of a parking structure that won awards all over the place in urban planning one of the members of the initiating committee chad used to walk to work through that park you might want to talk to him about some examples of of what works and what doesn't it has two fountains on it it's beautiful and it's a

126concrete structure purely anyway um just quickly this outside in process then is from within you and you already have a number of criteria at your disposal through the great efforts of the task force and also there's a bunch of work that's been done within the initiating committee that could be helpful to you in terms of creating a structure for this understanding the criteria and then lastly i just want to support rita's idea of a plan where i facilitating this meeting with you tonight i would have a number of pieces on the board up there that are large words like learning and criteria and framework and insight and innovation things to inspire you there's a process called visual listening where you take these images and you put them in front of you and you start to

127create another idea that inspires you in the larger community and and then also just in terms of a larger time goal i want to reiterate alan's mention um i just did a thing with a this this museum at 200 years old you talked about detroit at 300 in in 1824 ann arbor was chartered and founded so in 2024 what's that number right so think about that as a time frame and use that as a as a catalyst and you will start to create things like they're doing in detroit um i could go on and on but i just want to applaud you for your your beautiful work together and i i wish you good luck in continuing and and lastly i'll just say adam's thing about when you see the take this perception of of

128a conflict as an opportunity to build partnerships that attitude and the strength of your commitment to you know really understanding and listening to other people will pay dividends as you move forward in any resistance you meet will be easily overcome i tell you so thanks again and good luck in the next few weeks with your work thank you for joining us this evening robert any other members of the public heather oh that's it all right well with that i can get a motion for adjournment a second all right excellent uh with that i think we are adjourned we are only eight minutes over so i take that as an improvement you