Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the Tuesday, May 19th, 2026 regular meeting of the Ann Arbor Planning Commission. For detailed meeting information and meeting procedures, please review the full printed agenda at either end of the dais. The information that's in our packet is available via Legistar. You can go to a2gov.legistar.com, go to Calendar, select City Planning Commission, scroll down until you find today's date, May 19th, and then click on the agenda, and then there are links to everything that's in our packet.

packet my name is donnell weich and i will be chairing tonight's meeting manager kelly would you please call the roll noting one advanced absence for commissioner lee weish here hammersmith dish Here. Mills. Here. Weatherby. Here. Adams. Here. Norton. Here.

Bestuni.

Here.

You have a quorum. Thank you, Manager Kelly. May I have a motion to approve tonight's agenda? Moved by Commissioner Mills, seconded by Commissioner Weatherby. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Same sign. The motion carries. May I have a motion to approve the minutes of the May 5th, 2026 meeting? Moved by Commissioner Weatherby. Seconded by Commissioner Mills. Is there any discussion of the minutes? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Next up are reports to the Planning Commission and written communications. If Councilmember Dish is ready, we will start with Councilmember Dish.

I am ready. On first reading last night, Council voted against the PUD amendment to Ashley Mews that would have permitted all D1 uses, including non-owner-occupied STRs. In their discussion, they expressed concerns about expanding the number of non-owner-occupied STRs in the downtown core. They viewed the decision on this project as counting as an expansion of non-owner occupied STRs and wished not to proceed with this specific decision before CPC made a decision in CLUP implementation regarding whether or not to limit non-owner as occupied strs in hub they also expressed a desire not specific to this project that there be no further expansion of opportunity for non-owner occupied strs in the downtown core not just with respect to this project but generally because of the housing crisis i took this to mean that council views creation of non-owner occupied strs as intensifying the housing crisis rather than mitigating it. I reported to them that this body has heard concerns for revisiting the STR ordinance with respect to transition, and that the body wrote its consideration, that is consideration of STRs with respect to transition, into the comprehensive land use plan. I take it that city council would like to see that discussion extend to HUB. As I said, however, not only would they like to see that discussion extend to HUB, but they voiced a desire to hold off on permitting new opportunity for non-owner-occupied STRs in the downtown core in the meantime while the CLUP is being implemented. I know that we have recently used TC1, D1, and D2 to approve high-yield housing projects in areas that CLUP signs to the HUB or transition, you know, to the HUB category. Most of these are in what I would consider the near-campus downtown, but I do not know what city council meant by core downtown and if they recognize a distinction between those two. Lacking a precise understanding of what council meant by downtown core, I am not sure of the status of these tools, TC1, D1, and D2, in the meantime.

Thank you, Council Member Dish. Manager Kelly, do you have a manager's report for us?

I was wondering if Councilmember Dishwood had any comments on the budget item from last night?

We passed unanimously a budget with no structural deficits, which is lovely. And there is $320,000 budgeted for CLEP implementation, which could be renewed a second year or rolled over into a second year if we don't spend all of it in the first year. And if there are any other great things, please let us know, Mix Kelly.

I will also note before we go to Manager Kelly that my colleagues, Weatherby, Norton, and myself were reappointed at last night's City Councilmember to a new three-year term ending 2029. Congratulations. Manager Kelly.

Also, Commissioner Weatherby was reappointed to the Zoning Board of Appeals. If I... What's that face? No?

There was a bit of a snafu and that will be coming, I think.

Okay. Okay. And I do know from colleagues in engineering that I believe the budget includes two new positions that would assist with private development review. That has been something that has been a challenge is making sure that we have enough staff to keep pace with development. So our team is looking forward to new colleagues in private development engineering sometime whenever they can. post those get them hired I have one item for the manager report which is that currently on the Planning Commission calendar August 4th is Tuesday is listed as a meeting however this is the state and local primary election I think we had some discussion earlier this year about whether or not to just share the date but it is I have come to understand highly inconvenient for the clerk's office it would be preferred if we moved the meeting and also dawns on me now that we have many staff who work in the local elections in lieu of their planning roles on that day to assist with that big operation and so they would have a challenge to present to you so we did move your calendar hold and plan to put that calendar update on the 6-2 agenda

Thank you, Manager Kelly. Do we have any other commissioner officers or committee liaisons who have anything to report? And again, for everyone in the audience, written communications are in today's packet. You can access it at a2gov.legistar.com, click calendar, click city planning commission, and then scroll down to May 19th and click the agenda to see the attachments there. That brings us to agenda item number six, public comment. This is an opportunity for individuals to speak up to three minutes on issues not listed as a public hearing or a dedicated public comment period on our agenda tonight. We'll first hear from those of you who are present with us in chambers, then we'll turn to remote participants. If you are connecting remotely, press star 9 if on phone, or use the raise hand feature if on Zoom. For phone access, dial 877-8533. and Intermeeting ID 977-6634-1226. City staff will identify callers by the last three digits of their phone number or by name if on Zoom. You'll hear an announcement when it's your turn to speak. Please move to a quiet area and mute any background noise. For all participants, whether in chambers or remote, Please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments. Is there anyone present in chambers who'd like to address this at this time? manager kelly do we have remote participants there are none i shall close the public uh comment or hearing nope this is just public comment and then take us to agenda item number seven communication from commissioners is there any I did, seeing none of my colleagues, Manager Kelly, I did want to ask you about the note that we have in our packet from Gabrielle Steiner. It was sent to City Council and to Planning, and I wasn't sure if this was private development, city development, or a combination, and who is the right person who should be the receipt of the concerns around the pedestrian challenges that they had over the last couple of days and weeks.

If you give me some time to take a closer look at that, I can try to identify someone, and since we likely receive that by email, can reply by email with information.

Okay, thank you. And then, while I still have you, Sean Weber sent a note about data centers, but maybe I'll ask Planner DiLeo. since the UDC is a fun area for you. Can you inform us of our, like, do we already have data centers in our UDC? We do, I looked it up. And then are there any concerns about Basically he was writing in to say that most municipalities are being surprised by the presence of new development for data centers and then they don't have code in their UDC to address it. So I think in our code we call it data processing and computer center and then it's permitted in office like that whole middle section of office to to TC1, thank you. So we do have, it's permitted in our code. We already have some criterion for it. We have some parking standards for it. Are there any other things in your estimation that deserve our attention around data centers with no notice from me that I was gonna ask you this question?

I think it's probably a good idea to take a look at our definition of data processing centers because I'm confident it was developed some technology generations ago and did not anticipate AI data centers. So we probably should take a look at it and update it as necessary. But we do address them. Some land uses, though, we probably in the city limits would not attract. And I don't feel it is something that we would want to have a moratorium on. Land is very expensive in Ann Arbor. and so i'm not sure if we're very attractive for a data and we don't have very much of it if in greenfield so i'm not sure if we're the number one target for a new data center to be located but i think it's still a very good prompt to double check great thank you planner to leo anything to add manager kelly thank you that takes us to agenda item number eight public hearings scheduled for the next business meeting manager kelly

For your next meeting, your next regular session will be in chambers again right here at 7 PM on June 2. We have 315 West Huron, which is a planned unit development rezoning and site plan for city council approval, a proposed fully electric 10-story mixed use development spanning multiple addresses with 285 units comprising studios one bedrooms two bedrooms 15% of the units will be at 60% area median income affordability levels it will include amenity spaces The ground floor will have covered parking with electric vehicle charging and access via West Washington Street. The first floor will have additional covered parking and coffee shop retail and access via South First Street. Floors 1 through 10 will have residential units. The 10th floor will feature a rooftop bar. A dedicated entrance will be provided off South First Street. various sustainability features are included the site is partially in the floodplain fringe zone d2 downtown interface it's in the first street overlay district with a secondary street designation and located in ward 5.

thank you manager kelly so that takes us to agenda item 9a and i told folks before the start of the meeting that we would be going into closed session to this evening and this is the agenda item for that so we are going to I will entertain a motion for us to enter a closed session under Michigan Open Meetings Act for the purpose of discussing Attorney-Client Privileged Written Communication as set forth in MCL 15.268, Section 1, Section H. Moved by Commissioner Bass Uni and seconded by Commissioner Norton. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We're in closed session. All our regular meeting back to order, and we will start with agenda item number nine. On your agenda, it might be 9B. On mine, it just says nine, which is unfinished business. Actually, it's 10. Sorry, unfinished business agenda item number 10. 10A, we are prepared to discuss 805 Oxford Road Site Plan and Special Exception Use for City Planning Commission approval. This is SP25-0025 and then SEU25-001. A proposal to construct a three-story, approximately 23,500 square foot sorority with 47 beds and a surface parking lot with eight spaces. The parcel is zoned. R2B two family dwelling and student housing district. The petition includes a special exception use application, which is required for sororities in the R2B district. This project is in ward two. We'll start with the petitioner presentation, which is up to 10 minutes. Then we'll have a staff presentation followed by a public hearing. And then after that, I'll read the motion and then we will, as a planning commission, start our discussion. For anyone speaking tonight, whether it's the petitioner or the public, you have three indicators at the dais. Green means you're good to go. Yellow means you have 30 seconds. Red means please stop and see the floor.

Mr. Chair, the petitioner did request additional time this evening if you are- A minimum?

Did they tell you how much?

Five to 10 extra minutes.

Okay. Five to 10 extra. We'll check in at 15 minutes.

Okay.

Is that all right with the table?

Okay.

when you're blocking the minutes good evening good evening my name is ron nades i'm an attorney with cousins lansky and farmington hills and i represent the petitioner for this for this project now there have been a lot of issues raised by the planning commission and also by homeowners in the on the cambridge street and uh and today i was presented with a letter that that is signed or purportedly signed by a whole slew of other people in the area and so there are a lot of issues that we'd like to be able to address and we'd like to address all of them if possible but I'm going to focus on the ones that I can address quickly to start with so We've prepared an elaborate presentation set of materials, but the fact is, let's just say when I went through this, it was well more than 15 minutes to get through it all. So I'm going to skip through most of the initial things to get to the key issue. This project was approved by the staff in terms of the ordinance issues, and so really it's just the R2, the SEU application that is really before the, I mean it's all before the Planning Commission, but we're focused on the SEU application tonight. I guess I would just say about the SEU process that obviously the Planning Commission has a fair amount of discretion here but it's not unlimited discretion and in our view this is well it's really a question of it's not a let's just say it's not an opportunity to weigh in on whether or not sororities or fraternities are a good thing for our for the community or what's happened in the past or arbitrary size limitations or subjective judgments about how much space per person those really are not any of the factors that are listed in the ordinance it's really applying your discretion to the factors that are listed in the ordinance which really deal with whether this fits into the neighborhood whether it it's uh in the character of the neighborhood uh whether it it takes into account the neighboring district and and and doesn't adversely affect the neighboring district and and it also addresses it's supposed to address the city's concerns about that are expressed in the comprehensive plan but let me just say about the comprehensive plan we are trying to be as respectful as we can these are the comprehensive plan is a long document with a lot of aspirational goals and we can tell you we can't solve all of the problems of the city or all of the problems over the environment but we can make a real effort to address them and we think we have and when it's all said said and done if we have substantially met substantially met the the the factors that are in the SEU ordinance it's supposed to be approved and and so what is the main question it's whether the project is compatible with the appropriate and orderly development of the zoning district and the and the adjacent district in terms of location size and character I'm showing you a slide that that shows the in the middle is our project and it's absolutely surrounded by similar projects this is all this slide shows that all the blue is commercial properties where other student housing is the next slide shows in orange is the fraternities and sororities and then in purple the co-ops and other similar kind of housing there couldn't be a more appropriate area of a neighborhood for this project to be located and so we think in terms of character it absolutely fits in now it is one of the larger lots and so it fits a larger building and And so we've proposed one that meets the needs of the applicant. This isn't everyone else's decision about how much space the students need or what amenities the building should have in order to manage in a competitive marketplace. it fits the site it's been approved in all of the respects of the setbacks and so forth i've put in a few pictures here on the slides of other large buildings in the area that's all there is in this area is very large buildings that are very much in line with what we're proposing in terms of scale and size and the ones i've shown on the screen are really all on this block or on washington or hill uh surrounding this property so

I'm sorry for the petitioner. For those of you who are in the audience, could you keep your comments to yourself? We will have an opportunity to hear from you, but it interrupts the petitioner, it slows down the proceedings, and then I have to ask you not to do it. So if we can all just allow the petitioner to use their time, that would be good. Thank you.

As you can see from the data we gave you that was provided to us by the University Sorority Society, I'm not sure what the exact organization is, but you can see that the range of sizes is, you know, basically between 10,000 and 20,000. That is the scale that we're talking about here. We're not really going much beyond it, but there are reasons why the extra few thousand feet does not really impact the site, and we'll show that to you in a second. so what are the five standards it's are they consistent with the general objectives of the city master plan the comprehensive plan and we've we've put in our application the basis for our claim that that we do we've tried to improve on that in this in this version of it and the the questions go on to ask is it is it going to be compatible with a the planned character of the general vicinity we think All of these are satisfied, A through E of 5.29.5 D1. And we will show you that we don't think it's detrimental to the youth's peaceful enjoyment or economic value of the neighbors. And as far as the natural environment, yes, there will be some trees that come down, but we believe that we've minimized that. We've added 120 trees to the site to build up whatever we've had to take down to accommodate the building. Now, before I get to those main events, we have updated the plan. We heard loud and clear about the desire to have fewer parking spaces, and we reduced the plan from 16 to 8 spaces. We've increased the size of the height of the screening fence in the back on the easterly side from 6 to 8 feet, we've added arborvitae trees in that back corner to provide additional screening and we'll illustrate that in a moment and and we've added to some i think it's about 36 trees to the original proposal which gets us to the additional 120 or 121 trees that we've added to the site we are adding to this proposal there was some discussion about whether we could make it all electric we had it 85 electric and we were we were listening to our kitchen consultants telling us that they prefer to have gas in the kitchen and we we are committed now to having an all electric building and so this proposal now should be viewed as an all electric proposal and if we need to put that in writing somewhere we are prepared to do that and we've also been in touch with the administrator of the SEU plan for utilities. We can't really commit to that yet because we don't know all the details, but we've signed what they call a no commitment required letter of intent, and we would like to pursue that with the city and see if we can put some solar panels on and follow that program as it evolves. It's apparently not all unveiled yet, and so we're waiting to see what it actually looks like. So now, the main event. One of the big issues that the Planning Commission has raised, and I would say I'd break it down into three big categories. One is this question of impervious surface. There's too much impervious surface. You've got this fire lane, and you've got a turnaround, and you've got a large building, and you've created more impervious surface, and we'd like to have less. And the bottom line here is that You have to ask, why do we want less? Well, we want less because we're trying to manage stormwater drainage, stormwater drainage on the site. And one of the disconnects, I think, is that our team, which has looked for different places to put this building, and forward, back, over, northerly, southerly, all these possibilities. One of the factors had to do with trying to minimize the impervious surface. But what it turned out to be, in any kind of a development, there's always going to be competing interests. We can't solve all problems for everybody on every issue. If we move the building in one direction, we lose some landmark trees. If we move it in another direction, we lose different landmark trees. We, in some respects, we can move it in a certain direction, and maybe we can try to have less paving. Well, it turns out that early on in this process, and it's in our submission, our initial submission, our engineers did a perk test on this site, And it is not a sand site. It is a clay site. And so the idea that we've exalted the impervious surfaces issue as a principal issue in deciding whether this is an appropriate development, it's not illogical in the sense that that's sort of a goal of the community. But for this particular site, The whole site is impervious because the water just sheets off because it's got nowhere to go. And so our focus was, how do we address that issue? And that's why we addressed it and focused and made a priority the underground detention system that allows all the water to be collected and then released slowly into the system. And so we've solved the underground or the stormwater system.

Thank you.

reducing impervious surfaces is not going to help anything because the ground itself is impervious okay now did we consider other places on the property of course we did we started off with our citizen participation meeting and we had this l-shaped building which was further to the front and then we had a another more rectangular building also a little bit further to the front but in both of these you can see there's parking all the way around and It turns out that these configurations didn't allow us to have the turnaround that we found was necessary in order to accommodate solid waste disposal. And we've now confirmed that we could shrink the building by a third and it would still require the solid waste coming onto the property and emptying a dumpster. We're working within the ground rules, but these site plans didn't work, the ones that pushed the site forward. And on top of that, because we made a priority dealing with the stormwater system, the underground stormwater detention system, we put that in the front of the property at the lowest point that is the most logical place to put that system so that it collects the most water and so once it's in the front of the property now there's a setback requirement beyond that in terms of the interface with utilities and the building that's that's on the property so we're already starting back close to 100 feet from the from the setback because of those constraints and We were also the entire time thinking about our neighbors. How is this going to affect the neighbors? And you see in the proposal that's on the screen, you've got the dumpster in the back as close as possible to the Cambridge neighbors. And there's open area in the back. The same thing is true in this proposal. And then we came up with another one. There are several proposals. We've tried everywhere on the site to make this work. The next one was we've drawn in a rectangle that moves it a little bit forward. but what this does is it moves the dumpster to the back so the the neighbors that i've got my cursor on and i'm circling it that's where the dumpster is now the neighbors who are concerned about noise they're going to hear the beep beep beep i mean i it's my best impression of a garbage truck but the point is that that that's what they're going to hear and they're going to hear that that removal whereas in our current proposal i'll just compare it you have the the dumpster here it's hidden but it's up at the front of the property so that it's as far away from those our neighbors as possible it also has the benefit of of eliminating this open space in the back for which which will invariably used for gatherings i mean the the neighbors told us We're worried about all the people in the sorority gathering around and doing whatever it is people in sororities and fraternities do, and littering and making problems. the last thing we wanted to do is put that up against the back of the house especially with with as close as 1835 Cambridge is so the point is that that by moving the house to the back corner which is there was some angst expressed at the last meeting why does it have to be in the back corner closest to the people and the answer is that It's the best place for it. It's also more consistent. First of all, I want to point out in this slide that it's actually more consistent with the neighboring properties. If we moved it 50 feet closer, it would look a little bit strange because the other two properties next to us, north and south, are both more than 120, about 120 to 130 feet from the right of way. And if we were right up on the road, it would look a little bit funny. whatever I mean that's an aesthetic issue the bottom line is I just want to warn you that you're in your 30 seconds well I'm getting close to somewhere here maybe you can indulge me a little bit longer we'll see but the by doing this we've moved all of the activity at the site to the front and I want to point out some really important things about how this will affect neighbors first of all the let's talk about sound people are worried about noise This building, the main noise is on the first floor. It's below ground. It's below grade. Between that noise and the neighbors on Cambridge, you're talking about walls, retaining walls, and an earthen hill. That sound is not going to get through there. And on the top levels where the residences are, those are fixed windows. So there's not going to be sound coming for it. And that's why we weren't worried about putting it, relatively speaking, close. But more importantly, I'll just show you these two elevations. I'm going to pause.

and just check the table.

That was 15 minutes.

Okay. All right. I think we'll stop here, and we'll go to our staff presentation. You'll get questions, so you'll be able to present. We had these in our packet, and I can attest that we did go through your... I went through your presentation. Yes, I did. So thank you so much. Thank you. We'll turn now to Planner Malene Cochran to give us the staff presentation.

Thank you. This project has been moving very quickly in the past few days. So I don't have a lot of, I think they have the most up-to-date updates. But I will just call out a few things that are included on this version of the site plan that's included in the packet. The vehicular use area has been reduced to provide parking spaces for eight cars instead of 16. But the location is the same. It's that northern row of parking spaces that has been eliminated. That means that there is a slight change in the required number of installed electric vehicle chargers. So proportions are the same, but because there's less parking, less chargers are required. And then in going along with that reduction in the size of the parking area, that means that now three fewer landmark trees are proposed to be removed. So the required mitigation numbers have also been updated. And then because of those minor changes, well, other minor changes have gone along with the reduced vehicular use area and those changes in natural features. And that's things like retaining walls and lighting and outdoor picnic areas, so nothing nothing else that I'd like to call attention to and I think that the applicant has explained the rest of their updated changes.

Thank you so much. That brings us to a public hearing. This is an opportunity for individuals to speak up to three minutes on this item. We'll first hear from those of you who are present with us in chambers, then we will turn to remote participants. To speak remotely, please press star 9 if on phone or use the raised hand feature if on Zoom. For phone access, dial 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226. City staff will identify callers by the last three digits of their phone number or by name if on Zoom. You'll hear an announcement when it's your turn to speak. Please ensure you're in a quiet area and mute any background noise. For all participants, whether in chambers or remote, please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments. Is there anyone in chambers who'd like to address us on this issue? Come right up to the microphone. And remember you have... All right, come on. You have three indicators. You have a green light, a 30-second light, a red light, and a countdown timer. So, good evening.

Thank you. My name is Matt Wolf. I live at 1841 Cambridge Road. Nice to see you again. We met five weeks ago, and I was a little bit surprised to be invited again so shortly. So, I was... interested to see what was changed and so five weeks ago there was a very clear outline that the project is fairly big, there would be a lot of trees being cut and basically it is very intrusive in the neighborhood. So the question was to have a dialogue with the architect and the neighborhood. And in the five weeks, I was not approached by anyone. I have not been called by anyone. There was no dialogue. And if I basically get told that they did everything they did, I'm not sure with whom they did it, but they didn't do it with me. So hearing what the changes are, I feel like they are fairly small. I mean, we cut down by two or three trees. the number of trees to be cut. So there's still over 40 trees to be cut and that is for a community that was just in the Wall Street Journal and complained about DTE and what's happening in the city with DTE and how many trees get cut down by DTE. So It seems a little bit tone deaf to me and basically the number of students that are housed in this building is cut by two or three. There's still 47 down to 44. The changes are very minuscule and I'm not a native speaker in this country but I think you have a term for this here and that is called putting a lipstick on a pig and that's really what this looks like to me. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Farina Meir. I live at 516 Oswego Street. I've been a resident in Ann Arbor for 26 years. I have never come to this meeting nor spoken before this board. I want to say that this plan really is changing the nature of our neighborhood. A neighborhood does not face only in one direction. We saw a lot of pictures in the presentation today. We didn't see any pictures of Cambridge Street. and that is part of this neighborhood it's changing the nature of our neighborhood in terms of the trees the property being proposed at the building at 23,500 square feet is actually incompatible with this neighborhood if you were to look at Cambridge and other adjacent streets, not just at Washtenaw Avenue. It is a project that is going to be detrimental to the economic value of the homes it will be adjacent to. I find it hard to believe the statement put as fact in the presentation that it will not. It will absolutely, and I know because my home abuts a fraternity, and so I know that it impacts the value of my property. The density is not quote context sensitive as called for by the comprehensive land use plan. Again, if you look at the streets behind this property and not just at Washtenaw Avenue. Their points A through E which are stated as fact in the presentation are all contestable. Their point C that this is consistent with the general character of the neighborhood is only apparent if you look at other fraternities and sororities not at the single family and duplex homes that are in this neighborhood their point d that this will not be detrimental to the youth's peaceful enjoyment or economic value of the neighboring properties is again something that I would contest vehemently They have reduced the parking and their adjustments to the plan. I don't know where these other cars will go. I do not think there will be less cars associated with a home that houses minimally 40 students and up to 70. Those cars will all go into our neighborhood. And then we will have the disturbances that come with these additional cars in our neighborhood. At the beginning of his presentation, this gentleman said that this plan fits and is in the character of this neighborhood. As a resident, as a 24-year resident of this neighborhood, I would contest that characterization. I would invite any members of this body to come and walk the streets of our neighborhood, not Washtenaw Avenue. Come and walk on Cambridge, walk on Hill, walk on Oswego Street where I live, and I think you will see that these representations are actually not accurate. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in?

Greetings all. My name is Dorothy. I live at 1841 Cambridge Road. Glad to speak again, as I did five weeks ago. And when I did, I followed a line of thought that I want to keep up, and that was stability of the soil, of the physical nature of the neighborhood, the physical impact. and this time around I have a list that I dug up and if these are things that are already included great that would be good to know and be part of the public record or perhaps accessible to those of us in the neighborhood but some of the things that I thought we should ask for This may be a bit boring, so I'll try to go through it quickly. A full geotechnical report. A pre-construction condition survey for the neighboring homes, if that's allowable. A construction vibration monitoring plan. I suppose that's something that comes up with the construction documents. There was talk about the visual impact, and I didn't hear anything specific to a sight line and shadow study. Other things that are on my list include an excavation support plan, dewatering plan, retaining wall engineering, construction sequencing plan. These are all things that I suppose could be delved into later. What I'm trying to say is, what are the guardrails? And that was the key term that I used last time. What are we putting into effect to make sure that we're not impacted? And to end all this, I would like to understand if there's some sort of clear process to seek damages if we should see any physical effect on our properties. Thank you.

Thank you.

hi my name is aniket dot foley i live at 1817 cambridge road this is my first time speaking at this and just a couple things from the presentation it seemed that the petitioner put a bunch of kind of plans of why you know the building couldn't be situated further forward you know i don't know how difficult it is to turn around a a vehicle in a 1.074 acre lot, but it doesn't seem that difficult in this day and age. So I'm not sure they really put that much thought into that. They showed a picture of Telluride House as one of the comparable properties. I actually live next door to Telluride House. at most telluride house has 20 to 25 residents it probably has a bigger parking lot than we're describing here and i can tell you what i see in front of my house is non-stop ubers fedex trucks ups trucks door dashers and so to put something like this on Oxford Road seems like it's going to cause gridlock. You know, I'm an avid biker, I bike to this meeting. Who I don't see biking often are students. Who I do see biking are kids going to Angel Elementary. And so you're creating kind of a gridlock right in the area. where an elementary school resides. So I see bikes with kids seven, eight, nine years old, you know, on the sidewalks down Washtenaw. I see them on Cambridge. I see them on Hill. And you know, at the end of the day you're creating Like I said, gridlock. There was a proposal that the delivery drivers will use the driveway. I can tell you this is not going to happen. What happens when an Amazon vehicle pulls up, they just pull into the street, stop, run out, make their delivery, come back in. So in the meantime, you have bikers, cars, uh other you know spin scooters kind of trying to avoid these obstacles while you know we're adding 47 or 70 new people that's all thank you thank you is there anyone else who'd like to address us at this time

I'm Aratna Krishna. I live at 1835 Cambridge Road. At the last Planning Commission meeting, the developer was asked to 1 reduce parking asphalt and impervious surfaces, 2 cut fewer trees, 3 reduce the size of the building and 4 move the building site away from single family homes on Cambridge. I'm very concerned with their responses to these four issues. First, on parking, the total asphalt area was about 11,800 square feet or 0.27 acres. See the first page I just gave you. They claim they have cut parking spaces from 16 to 8, but the total asphalt area has been reduced from about 11,800 to about 9,100 square feet or 0.21 acres. The new plan shows asphalt and also mill and fill which is also asphalt and this could actually allow more parking for six more cars. See the second page. In addition to the asphalt there is also lots of concrete area which is the same amount in both plans and is 3,000 plus square feet. The concrete also include lots of unnecessary bicycle parking. See the third page. The yellow is concrete, the red is asphalt, the dark red is mill and fill asphalt, and blue is the house. Between the asphalt, the concrete, and the house, it's 20,000 plus square feet of impervious area. Second, on trees, they are cutting 45 instead of 48. And just to show you what kind of groves they are cutting down, on the fourth page you'll see the southeast grove, which is a woodland which includes at least six beautiful landmark trees, including a bigtooth aspen, a sassafras, a hackberry, a black walnut, and an aspen slash black cherry conjugated twin tree, which is very rare. They say they're adding many more trees. But are they adding 70 foot tall landmark trees? The mitigation of tree loss will take several decades. Third, on reducing the size of the building, they say they have decreased how many people will stay there from 47 to 44 and the max capacity from 75 to 61. But the building size remains the same as before at 23,500 square feet. This is completely out of sync with the neighboring Greek houses where the smallest exactly on their right is 3,708 square feet and the largest is 16,900 square feet. To our knowledge, this would break all records in Ann Arbor and would be the largest sorority in Ann Arbor. My husband will discuss the last point about the building site.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Jack Jagadish from 1835 Cambridge Road, and I want to talk about some of the factual disagreements or inaccuracies in what we've heard. The sizes of the other sororities and fraternities that were presented by the petitioner, some of them were wrong, and you've seen in what my wife just handed out some of the numbers that are more real. They go from about 3,000 to 15,000 in size. What they're proposing is more than one and a half times the size of the closest largest sorority in the neighborhood. They said that the front setbacks are comparable to their neighbors, but they didn't talk about the rear setbacks being comparable to the neighbors. And they cannot, because their building is so large that if the front setback is comparable, the rear setback is not. And so their rear setbacks are just not comparable with what their neighboring houses are. They've actually got, they're moving the rear setback of their house on their property by over 60 feet. Immediately after the Commission meeting last month, I reached out to them to see if there was ways that we could work together to mitigate my concerns with this project. After a few days, we had a call set up, and in that call, I even offered to hire an architect to develop an alternative site layout that would meet the required turnaround codes for fire, garbage truck, etc., while at the same time saving the southeast grove of trees, the woodland that you've seen pictures of, and improved the rear setback. They declined my offer and instead chose to file a revised application with minimal changes, as you've seen. In this, they showed three alternative plans and why these would not work, but the problems are actually already self-contradictory. For example, two of the plans that they showed had room for over 20 cars worth of parking, and once you take that away, the problems that they have with regard to turnarounds, et cetera, would go away. They even said one of them, the reason that it's not allowable is because you don't want parking in the front. The third plan, the rectangular building, is a plan that Their primary problem was that this was rectangular, and that that's a more expensive thing to build. If they were to take that same rectangular-sized building and make it square, they would have a more reasonable-sized building that is more in consonance with the neighborhood and would meet all our requirements.

Thank you.

hi neighbors i'm david patterson i live at 1942 cambridge road and i want to take us on a little trip down memory lane the last time that we had kind of a similar situation in the immediate neighborhood i was not yet a resident here so i had to do a little bit of research about the destruction of the house on 1705 Hill Street which I actually I think faced quite a bit less opposition from neighbors for a variety of different reasons. I think one thing it didn't directly abut five single-family homes so there's some facts that are different with that property but they did apply here in this chamber for I believe in 2014 for it for an SEU. and they were granted one and I think a couple of other things that kind of strike me about that their plans were they also were not real just destroying a single-family home they were demolishing their own fraternity house to make way for a larger one that could accommodate their needs interestingly enough I want to talk about the trees since we're here in front of a bur oak that is the seal of our city they were able to do all of this and to meet all of their goals in 2014 with removing only one non-landmark tree in poor condition all of the other trees on site including multiple landmark trees were able to remain and the reason i bring this up is when you remove 45 mature trees to make way for what is a radical re-engineering of this property storm water clay soil it sounds like a great lot but that's not what we're here to talk about that's a loss of 2 160 pounds of annual carbon sequestration going forward every year indefinitely when you immediately cut all these trees down they are holding hundreds of thousands of pounds of stored carbon that gets released at the moment the trees are cut down and that impacts All of us. And that's not including the demolition of the existing building, which is also an environmental challenge. But if you preserve existing mature trees, it can have a profound effect on slowing global warming, much more so than planting new trees. I realize they are planting bukus and bukus are very small trees, but immature trees sequester far less CO2 than older ones. Replanting doesn't offset the loss for decades and decades. This is science. I think this removing of these trees will definitely have an impact on the neighborhood. It will likely raise local surface and air temperatures affecting the microclimate of the entire block. So my plea is, you know, if you're going to build the record-breaking largest Greek house in Ann Arbor, at least try to do a little bit better when it comes to minimalizing the environmental destruction you're leaving in your wake that we have to live next to.

Thank you.

Hi. Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Ben Bly. I'm not an adjacent neighbor, but I'm a near neighbor off of Geddes, and my youngest child went to Angel School. I have a real interest in this part of the neighborhood, and I have many friends in this area. I came to the previous meeting. I was really pleased with the previous meeting. I remember listening carefully. Commissioner Weitsch, Commissioner Hammerschmidt, Commissioner Dish, I think you all made clear something that I found really exciting, which was that you are serious about the comprehensive plan. And I think a lot of the objections that led to the process that unfolded after essentially came down to a question of seeing whether the developers and maybe in cooperation with neighbors, whether there was a way to make this very ambitious plan fit in a way that suited the comprehensive plan and was appropriate to the neighborhood and suited the character of the neighborhood. I was a bit disappointed when the proposal that came at the beginning of this meeting or this topic discussion essentially explained in a kind of nervous but lawyerly way why there was no way that this object could fit in this space unless it had all the properties that were required by the developer's plan so that only three trees could be cut and because clay was underneath the soil the impermeability of asphalt was sort of irrelevant and you know it seemed to me that in some way the attempt was to tell a story in which it was inevitable that this was the only way that this could unfold because all of the considerations that could be taken into account were taken into account and this was the plan that we arrived at and what we heard then was something not so different from the original plan and most notably didn't address what I thought Commissioners Hammerschmidt and Weitsch and Dish and others were bringing up in the previous meeting which was that this may just not be appropriate development on this site. This may be an unsolvable problem that they have set themselves. But the unsolvability of that problem is not Ann Arbor's problem to solve. So the fact that the developers have a goal that they feel they can't reach in any other way doesn't mean that we have to accept and share that goal. We have a comprehensive plan for a reason. You commissioners all spoke eloquently in the way that you did at the first meeting, I think, for good reasons. I don't hear things that have changed my view about that reasoning, and so I'm disappointed after waiting five weeks to hear what I heard tonight. Thank you all very much.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in chambers who'd like to address us on this issue? Manager Kelly, do we have remote participants?

There are no hands raised, Mr. Chair.

All right. Last call for those of you who are in chambers before I close the public hearing. All right. I will close the public hearing and read the motion. Let me find the motion. Bear with me. It's long. The Ann Arbor City Planning Commission, after hearing all interested persons and reviewing all relevant information, including the accompanying site plan, finds the petition substantially meets the standards in Chapter 55, Unified Development Code, Section 5.29.5.D Special Exceptions and Section 5.16.1.E Fraternity or Sorority House and Student Cooperative Housing and therefore approves the Kappa Delta Sorority House at 805 Oxford Road for 75 occupants. This approval is based on the following findings. One, the proposed use will be consistent with R2B, two-family dwelling and student housing district, which provides for residential use, including special exceptions for fraternity or sorority houses and student cooperative housing. 2. The proposed use will not adversely impact traffic, pedestrians, bicyclists, circulation, or road intersections based on the location. Oxford Road provides access to the site and the proposed use is consistent with the existing and other surrounding use's traffic impact. Three, the subject site meets the use-specific standards for on-site resident manager, minimum lot area, and minimum lot area per occupant, principal building floor area, and screening. 4. The maximum number of occupants shall be established as 75. 5. A site plan documenting the existing and proposed conditions of the site has been submitted as a part of this application. And that the Ann Arbor Planning Commission approves the Kappa Delta Sorority 805 Oxford Road Site Plan Version 7, dated April 29, 2026, alternative natural features mitigation for 46 inches of tree mitigation and the development agreement. Moved by Commissioner Mills, seconded by Councilmember Dish. And before we start, I just need a pause. So what's gonna happen now, just for everybody's benefit, is we're gonna talk. We're gonna ask questions of staff, both the principal planner and the planning managers. We may ask questions of the petitioner. Some of the commissioners have written down some of the questions that you, the public, have asked, and we might ask the petitioner for that. So we're gonna just have a conversation. It'll be orderly, and then once we've exhausted our we will check the table to see if we're ready to vote, and then we will vote. I would ask you if you have any questions, but I don't want the planning manager to look at me. All right, so. Who would like to kick us off? We'll start with Commissioner Adams.

This is a question for staff. To the best, this is sort of a tough question. To the, my understanding is that this has been R2B since the original, like the 1963 ordinance. I didn't pull any, if you don't know the answer to that.

Alexis is nodding, so I'm going to assume that the answer is yes, it has always been R2B.

R2B, thank you. Who's next in the queue? Oh, Commissioner Mills.

This is just to get us started. Thank you all for showing back up. Also, thank you to the petitioner for some additional details. I think one of the key things that I was thinking about last time was the massing in comparison to neighboring properties, and so had done on the fly some looking in the property tax records. And I appreciate that you highlighted which are specific properties. I also appreciate in the presentation tonight similarly large buildings or large buildings in the vicinity. And I appreciated that in the presentation, you have the comparison of other sororities in the area. One of the things that is striking to me is not only is it the biggest, but it would have the smallest number of residents. so and actually the change tonight of reducing the occupancy but not the building size actually makes me more nervous which i know is not something that the neighbors love to hear but i'm but i think a lot about how much floor area is dedicated per person and this one is I think significantly different than a lot of the others on that list. For some context, within the comprehensive plan, which calls for residential in this area, one of the up to three stories, so this is in the future. We do not contemplate how sororities and fraternities will be treated as far as I understand, like we haven't gotten there yet. We haven't gotten to what the zoning will be, but when we talk about what is in the residential district, we specifically note creating opportunities for smaller, more flexible homes. And some of the considerations that we're taking into account are possibly maximum building sizes. And I would say that that should change based on the number of, again, we'll get there someday, but the number of units that are in that. So honestly, again, maybe not a popular opinion, but this may curb the size of a single family home for new residences. Like that's how what I'm imagining. but also taking into account building coverage. So that is the amount of land area on that site that has imperviousness effectively. We currently don't like lot coverage. We don't have that right now in residential districts. We do in some of the more intent, like the upper R districts, but we don't necessarily in the residential districts. And so we don't know what that's going to look like. But these are values that we've thought about. How do we accommodate more people ideally in smaller units, right? Again, it's the combination now of having additional information about the square footage of neighboring properties and actually on that table, the fact that there are far fewer residents in this one compared to any of the others, and this is larger than any of the others, that actually gives me even more pause than before. And so that's something that I'm sitting with. I think that the size of the property is important. I looked, the biggest on the list that was listed was 1811 Washtenaw. For what it's worth, on the properties assessment page, it shows up as 14,578 square feet, not the 20,180 on the list that you got from the sorority people. So I don't know which one is right. I didn't check all of them, but that one is different. That is on a lot, though, that is a little bit bigger. It's 1.5 acres, 1.572, if you care. So I am trying to figure out... myself like how to weigh these two things. Both I think it is beneficial to have more residents here, particularly like you're replacing a single family home that is large. But also, even in comparison to the neighboring properties, the people per square footage is significantly larger. And so in case that math is helpful for others, I would put that. I think that the movement towards 100% electric is really important. And that is something that I would want to condition any approval on. I am weighing whether. whether the scale of this building is appropriate in the context of the neighboring properties thank you commissioner mills we'll go to commissioner bassuni

Hello, everyone. I would also like to echo Commissioner Mills' comments. I appreciate everyone who took the time to come and make public comment. You took time out of your day to come and talk to us, especially with these longer meetings. So thank you. I have a question for Deputy Manager Kelly, potentially a continuation of that to the petitioner pending the response. Deputy Manager Kelly, I believe during my orientation, you had explained to me the process of how someone who is, sorry, my mic.

Ah, let's get it closer.

Someone who is petitioning or having a project, what process that looks like and at what point the Office of Sustainability and Innovation is looped in or at least notified, and if the petitioner is then offered a chance to meet with them. My question is grounded because I want to understand more about the sustainable energy utility based on some paperwork that I believe the petitioner left for us on our dais. So I just want to follow up on that.

uh yes for special exception uses with development we do invite the office of sustainability to make comments they're invited to all of the pre-submittal meetings that we hold for petitions in our department for site planned projects and they do reach out to petitioners to offer information about incentive programs, potential building envelope strategies, ways that they can just improve the overall sustainability of their development. And they ask questions and they also generally like to learn from how developers approach things. For this project, there were some early discussions, but they were primarily surrounding potentially using a height bonus for sustainability. That was abandoned after it appeared that it was not going to pencil out. And I'm not sure if there were subsequent discussions. Perhaps the planner, Ms. Malene Corcoran, is aware of other discussions.

I'm not aware of any other specific discussions, but then there have been very recent updates with the email to the SEU that was in the past day or two. So I think that there's kind of two sections. There was the one when they thought that they might use the sustainability height bonus. That didn't work out. And then now after last planning commission meeting, I think then there's been a kind of looking at different opportunities. I don't know specifically that the Office of Sustainability and Innovation was contacted in recent days apart from the SEU side of things.

Wonderful, thank you. That's very illuminating. Chair Weitsch, am I allowed to ask the petitioner directly? Yes, you can.

And then they get to decide who answers.

Oh, fine. Bit of a hot potato, I'm sure. So hello, petitioners. So given that information that the planners have shared, so I wanted to probe a bit about the Sustainable Energy Utility Program. I see from the documentation you shared with us, thank you very much, it seems like the senior housing manager reached out on Friday, May 15th at 4.08 PM to Ms. Lenski, there we go, the executive director of the SEU, seeking information about it. And it seems like there was a bit of a conversation around it. And it sounds like that is referring to what you had mentioned, the part where you said, we can't commit to that because we don't know all the details, but there was a noncommittal agreement of sorts. Is that correct?

May I? One second. If I could just respond, because it's what I was saying earlier. We've reached out. We've signed the initial documentation. That's part of the process. We were given a proposal for some solar panels. We are prepared to, and I think Mr. Miller here can talk about making the building ready for solar panels as part of the process all we were saying was we didn't want to make a representation that were that we will for sure be part of it because I don't actually know what it is yet completely but we are we are moving down that road to be to participate in it in in all the respects some of it isn't going to be unveiled till next year I think and so at this point all we've got is a notice that says that that the first step would be sign this letter of intent which we have and and then can you make the house available ready for solar panels There were some issues about the solar panels because we had our own consultant to look at the question of solar. And the initial conclusion was that the consultant didn't think that the solar panels would have a huge impact here. In fact, it would have a very small impact. But we're certainly open to solar. It's just we didn't think it would provide much benefit, but we've signed up for this, and if that's part of what we can do to add even an incremental benefit to the sustainability, we're on board. We'll do it.

And I do want to address your first question that we did engage the Office of Sustainability and met with them on January 26th. And we had a very, very productive meeting with them and reviewed the project top to bottom. And we got really good comments from Mr. Christensen at the time. And he said that he recognized that the project, the sustainability initiatives were not obligatory for this project, but he recognized the steps that we were taking from a design perspective to incorporate as many sustainable initiatives that are in the plan as possible.

Thank you. Thank you. That's very helpful. Part of me is just curious about the timing. Friday afternoon, coming to a Tuesday hearing, I'd love to know what motivated you to move on the SEU, the Sustainable Energy Utility, not the other SEU. I love that we have the same for both. But I'm just curious about the timing, given that it sounds like you had met in January, had had a relationship, or at least a way in which you could contact OSI. You were aware of some of these, so I'm just curious about the timing.

Yeah, there's, I mean, maybe I can't speak to it except to say that as we We've been looking for opportunities to address the very issues that have been raised. Yes, we're not obligated to meet all the sustainability requirements because we're not asking for the height bonus, but we have been trying to make this as sustainable a property as we could. It wasn't actually on my radar screen, the SEU program, and this was something that we really started talking about as we were approaching the meeting and thinking, is there anything else we could do? to make this a more appealing site and as I said we've we sort of had abandoned the the solar panels because it didn't look like it was going to be of much benefit but we started looking in fact it was in conversations frankly with without with the planner that we started looking at what could we do to make this even better than what we thought we had made it And it was actually the planners that had suggested that we look into it, and we did. And we thought it had merit, and we want to participate in it. But it wasn't like, it may seem like last minute, but what we're really trying to do is we continue to look for ways to address sustainability issues. even though i i would say that um you know we've really we've really addressed them in many ways i'm not sure what else we can do and that's why we actually asked the planners what else can we do here and and those were some of the things um that the all electric um we can we can do these things thank you thank you yeah that is a lot of helpful information thank you i'll see you back thank you

I'll take just a quick moment to address some of the comments that I heard from the public. So the first thing someone asked the commissioners to do was to walk your neighborhood. And those of you who were here five weeks ago, you know that that's what I did. I did that before I set the table so that I could see the property actually drove up probably onto the property proper to try to understand it because I didn't know where it was. And so I had to go up and the little turning loop to just see the pitch. And then I got out and walked Cambridge as well so that I could understand. So I just want to first offer that. just to those of you who may be making assumptions about how we engage with the petitioners and the neighbors' feedback. The other thing that I wanted to note is the turning radius is for, that we, as a result of our meeting with this petitioner, we asked for a meeting with the fire marshal and the fire director, excuse me, Chief. Chief, the chief. And we had that meeting a week ago during our work session. It was our entire work session and almost two hour time where we got to ask questions, try to understand the placement of this. um the massing of the building the requirements the how long the hose needs to be it's 150 feet from the street and then from the fire apparatus lots of details one of the other things that we learned is they have fire apparatuses with a 45 foot straight axle and that's what they have to turn around so it's not just a car that is being asked to turn around. And we, I think, all through that conversation asked every question possible about, could you get smaller fire apparatuses? Could you put this here? Could you put that there? So we spent a lot of time in that conversation trying to understand those concerns. Someone also talked about the parking being ridiculous. My words, not yours. I'm an avid biker in the city. The parking is required for various sites, and sometimes they exceed the bicycle parking. And I remember five weeks ago, some of the neighbors just alerting us to, I've never seen a sorority or fraternity member on a bike, but I've seen them in an Uber or Lyft. So all of that noted, but I did just want to acknowledge why. that parking was there. Who else would like a opportunity to speak? Those were the things I just wanted to address from the public. Commissioner Norton, we'll start with you.

So I raised concerns at the last meeting about the placement of the home at the very back of the lot. I understand the topography is constraining this site and the size of the structure wouldn't fit closer. All of the images you showed us of other structures that are sororities are close to the front lawn and they kind of fit on the lot that way.

I'm sorry, Commissioner Norton, can you orient yourself towards your mic in a way that because you're cutting in and out because you're turning. I'm sorry. I hate interrupting you.

I do this all the time. Sorry. I'm commenting on some i want to express some of my frustrations with this project we were told at the last meeting it's sitting at the back of the lot because the fire department told us we had to put it there because they needed to turn the building around and then when we asked the fire marshal about this he said that was where they put it in the first place i told them they needed to put a turnaround because they placed it so far away from the road ouch i asked I will note that the imagery that you're showing us of other site designs you considered one of the neighbors pointed out are not the same designs they have substantially more parking all around them that would of course make it impossible to do what you want to do so if you're going to show us imagery to say this don't work give us comparable imagery and don't it's a little bit insulting to say, look, we couldn't do it. Well, those aren't the same designs that you're situating on the lot and then telling us we can't possibly do it any other way. I'm a little frustrated with that. We were also told in the last meeting that we couldn't possibly go all electric because DTE told us we don't have the capacity to do that. That came out in the comments that no, that's not the case. I'm frustrated that the information that we're being given, it's looking like a lot of the numbers that you're giving us tonight don't seem to line up with the numbers that are also available about comparable sizes of projects. It is a little bit weird to me that you're keeping the property, the building the same size and yet reducing the number of students who would be living there, which means they've got lots of space. Maybe that's to reduce the amount of commotion that will be happening with Ubers. So I'm starting off to express all of those frustrations. But then I'm looking at what we're supposed to do on this project. And we're supposed to be reviewing the project under the standards that are stated in the code. Sororities are allowed as special exception uses in this district, and they have been for a really long time. And we're not supposed to evaluate whether or not we think it's the best design in the world, or if it's the appropriate size for what you want to give your students. even the specific site location, the property location standards are really speaking primarily to traffic conditions. I understand the neighborhood concerns about the kinds of activities that this will be generating, but those are activities that are related to sororities and sororities are allowed as special exception uses in this neighborhood that we can't really pass judgment on whether or not you can put a sorority there or not. It's allowed as a special exception use. So I'm feeling greatly constrained about that. And then I hate to see when a tree comes down. And I understand the neighbors' concerns about the loss of trees. If we decide, though, that we're never going to allow any property owner to ever cut a tree or a bush down, we've just now stopped all new development in the city. It's just an impossible thing to do. I appreciate that the petition is coming back. with additional landscaping and features to try and minimize the impacts on the neighbors. I do have a question for staff. I know that I asked, I was trying to figure out, you suggested when we were chatting that in the presentation they're identifying updated features and you weren't sure if those had already been baked into the site design. And I'm particularly interested in the landscaping, additional landscaping and tree mitigation features. Are they in the site design or are they just being presented for the first time tonight as part of the presentation?

The landscape features that are in the site plan have been reviewed by staff, by our urban forester. And those are the ones, since those are in the site plan, those are the ones that we're going by. Those are the numbers. I don't know what...

are there are there specific numbers in here that you're pointing to that seem to be a discrepancy with the site plan maybe it's the question for the petitioner are the you note in your presentation updated features i'm trying to find your presentation and numbers of trees that you're going to be adding 122 new trees are the are the statements that you're making in the presentation consistent with what's in the site plan i guess is the question i'm trying to get at

Again, I'm just going to introduce Sarah. She's our landscape architect who can actually speak to this. But in fact, I'm just going to let her explain what's in the plan. The point is that the statement about those arborvitaes being added to the plan to provide an additional screening for 1835 and some of the properties. Those were added to the plan since the original plan, but in other words, the landscape plan that has now been submitted. Okay, so if you're going to talk, you've got to talk into the mic.

Okay, I got it. I appreciate it.

I'll let Sarah handle it. In the presentation, you're making statements about the additional things you're doing. Have those all been formally incorporated into the new site plan that you're presenting and that we're passing judgment on tonight?

yes that is correct the site plan that was submitted um it incorporates all of the trees that ron mentioned in his presentation and i just want to clarify because i don't know if maybe this is the the misconception the 128 nutrient 121 new trees are from what exists to what is proposed now not from the previous iteration i don't want there to be i don't want you to think we're adding 120 trees from the previous i believe it's 36 that's from the previous or maybe it's 38 i don't remember offhand but

OK. Thank you. I'm just wanting to make sure that the landscape features that you're talking about in the presentation, this all came in fairly quickly. And the staff didn't see your presentation until the very last minute. So they didn't have a chance to double check.

Yeah, I just want to note also that was brought to my attention earlier today that what was in the PowerPoint presentation, that is actually a previous plan. The wrong one got submitted. The one that was submitted to the city that's on file, it should be part of your packet as well. That is the correct one. It should have the date of April 29 on it.

OK. Thank you.

And it also has the reduced parking. So if you see anything with 16 spaces still, that's a previous iteration. OK.

Thank you. And when you say plan, you mean site plan? Yes. Great. I just want to make sure. And landscape plan. Yep. I just want to make sure that when we say plan, we know which plan we're referring to. Sorry.

I'll just say that landscape features, things like the buffering, the mitigation, those are all part of site plan approval and those would need to go through staff and be approved. So anything that they said that would be different in this presentation, that would be a problem because we are going by the site plan for landscape features.

All right. Manager Kelly?

Can I?

Hold on for a second, yeah. Okay, back to you, Commissioner Norton.

Just to finish up, thank you for answering that question. Am I good to go? Yes, thank you. I want to finish up my thoughts. I understand the neighbors' concerns, and I understand they're wanting us to document all of the potential harms that can come about from construction activities and site design, and that's all covered through the city standard. site preparation and approval and review and processes so we don't get into that level of detail and require specific ground vibration studies for every project that comes through and I'm confident I trust the city's regular procedures to make sure that construction activities happen so I guess I'm kind of wrapping around to saying I'm really frustrated by this project I do question the size of it and I've questioned the location of it on the lot but I think a lot of the neighbors frustrations are with the idea of having a sorority in the neighborhood and we've allowed that as a special exception use and I'm looking at what is being proposed and whether or not they satisfy the standards that we have to make a decision by and I'm inclined to think they have satisfied those standards. I'm having a hard time finding how we would say they haven't so I'm leaning in that direction.

Thank you, Commissioner Norton. I have Weatherby, then Dish, then Hammersmith.

Okay, so I'm going to do a little bit of the same kind of what are my thoughts here. One, One advantage, disadvantage, I don't know, that I have is I do live in an area that has a lot of building and has had a lot of change in buildings that have gone from single-family homes to one a block away from me is 48,000 square feet. And so I understand the, and I'm going to say fear, I know that's not, it doesn't encompass everything, but bigger building is not necessarily the worst thing it's not necessarily the best thing but something where we say oh it looks big it is big it's in my backyard it's you know going to loom over my house or my backyard if the windows don't open and that building is right next to your property it's actually going to be pretty quiet there i i have to agree with the petitioners that the things that are noisy are cars and garbage. And garbage is really, really noisy. It's noisy with the backup. I'm not going to imitate a garbage truck. But the one that it's also really noisy with the bang of the and garbage trucks come very early in the morning. So I think moving parking and garbage away from the neighbors is actually a really big thing especially if you kind of put your building in between the neighbor and the garbage people living in their bedrooms are not that loud and so You know, I do actually appreciate that even though visually it may be pretty different than what you're used to. I actually do think having the building closer than say an open area or parking is actually better for the sort of peaceful enjoyment. It seems counterintuitive, but that's like my lived experience. I'm just saying that for the record. Street parking, people have talked about, well, where are people gonna park? Street parking is public. I can park in any neighborhood, just like all of you can park in my neighborhood. I live near the stadium. We get a lot of people parking in my neighborhood for a lot of, and like, I can't say that's not, allowed. There are neighborhood groups that you can, I mean neighborhood mitigations that you can have for a resident only if that becomes a problem, but street parking is street parking. I agree that 44 people in a building of whatever 20-some thousand square feet, 23,000 square feet, it seems ridiculous to me. And I would agree with Commissioner Mills that maybe more people is actually better in this case. But that is your proposal. I would also like to say that if this were a single family home, they could cut the trees immediately and with no mitigation required. The only reason there's mitigation here is because it is not single family home and so um it's tricky we don't we don't tell people they can't cut trees on their property and uh if you're the person cutting the tree you're really happy about that and if you're the person who is used to that tree it's really hard but i actually think you know we are requiring mitigation of the trees and i think that's a good thing um let's see uh neighbors not being consulted I'm impressed that there was actually some consultation and I know again that's not very comforting for the neighbors but when you when you own a piece of property and I've had to wrestle this a lot in my house is that you don't own the property around you and and that That can be great because your neighbors are great, and it can be really hard if the neighbors don't do things the way you would want to. My neighbor just cut down a tree this week and, you know, didn't talk to us about it. I mean, we love him, so it was okay. But, you know, like... It just, it is. I mean, we feel strongly about those trees, but if they are not on your property, it can be difficult. So, yeah, so I guess what I'm saying is I think that This may not be the perfect proposal that we would want here. If I were SimCity-ing this, it might not be a big proposal, this proposal, but I think it follows what we need to look at. I do think that the electric all electric is important. And we need to have that in writing in our agreement in our motion. Because I think that is something for the future that's important.

Thank you, Commissioner Weatherby. I have Councilmember Dish, then Hammersmith, and then Adams.

Thank you. And I want to echo the thanks for everyone who came and spoke. I know it takes time. I know it's frustrating. And it's also very frustrating to hear People sitting behind a dais saying, I share your frustration, and there's not a lot I can do about it. And what I want to make clear is that we are not being asked to change the zoning. This property has been zoned for this use since the beginning, correct? That was the answer to Commissioner Adams' question. the city now requires that it get a special exception use in order to activate that zoning to the fullest extent. And when I look at the criteria for the special exception use, one of them that Commissioner Mills has mentioned is one that is also, sorry, sometimes it's cold in here, sometimes it's warm, is also, I'm stuck on a bit. It is section 5.29.5 DB that the The structure will be consistent with the general character of the neighborhood considering population density, design, scale, and bulk, and the intensity and character of activity. And it is design, scale, and bulk that have been just really hard for me because I personally I know the neighborhood. I have walked there, not recently. And I totally understand that this doesn't fit with the rhythm of your neighborhood as you walk by other structures. And I understand and appreciate that the petitioner designed this building to mitigate the scale by tucking the building into the hillside. And I understand that the scale of this building, in part, provides meeting rooms, dining space, and study areas for students. And I think students really do need those. So I do not know of anything I could ask for to mitigate my concern about that condition. However, I am concerned about the project having a detrimental effect on the environment. And there is a condition that the project has already, that you have already volunteered, that would mitigate this concern for me. And that is that the project would conserve energy by being all electric. and would indicate its interest, which you've already done, and follow up on that, in participating in the sustainable energy utility. So, I have stated um a concern about a detrimental effect and a condition that would mitigate my concern which i would like to be added in whatever i don't know if i need to read that again or staff would translate that in a way that can be added to the it sounds like you want to amend the original motion yeah okay i usually want someone else to write

That's fine. I'll check in with Manager Kelly. Would you like to draft a potential amendment that we can consider? You don't have to do it right now, but we can continue the discussion and then when you felt like you were ready, you could interrupt us and then we can vote on it. Would that be agreeable?

Sure. I'll put something into a Word document we could share screen and see if it looks correct.

Great. Thank you, Manager Kelly. Commissioner Dish, you're done. I think I have Commissioner Hammersmith, then Adams. I'm going to check in with Mills and then come back to Weitsch. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. And I'll echo the thanks that all of the previous commissioners already said. And especially with Commissioner Norton and Commissioner Weatherby, you said things much better than I could say them. So I really appreciate this discussion. I have a couple of questions. Some of my questions have been addressed, which is great. I have a couple for staff. Proposed occupants versus max occupants. So they say, and I think it was in the presentation, that bringing down the proposed occupants to 44, but the max occupants is 75 or 61. Why is it important to me what their proposed occupants are when they have a max?

So there's a couple of layers to it. One is the maximum allowed by zoning. So in this district, and I think we talked about this last time, but it's like 140 would be the very maximum that zoning would allow, not thinking about what building codes, rental, anything else like that. Then there is the occupancy that needs to be established by the special exception use. So that is a requirement of the code. It has to be in the motion. It can be whatever you want. It should kind of be based on their number of proposed occupants so that they can fit the number of people that they would like. We had suggested increasing the occupancy in the motion because it does require a new special exception used to increase occupancy. So having a little bit of flexibility is generally helpful.

Okay, no, thank you. That helps. Based on the comments that Commissioner Mills made and sort of drew my attention to, I mean, and I know that in the presentation it says that they would be willing to bring it down to 61. Like, I'm inclined to leave it at 75, because I think, like, the points that have already been made, this is a huge building. Limiting so severely the number of students that can live there really just puts more pressure on the housing market. outside of this particular building. So I'm sure the neighbors are not happy about that. But I would be inclined to leave it at the 75 and not accept their 61. OK, another question maybe for staff? There was a comment in one of these documents, the windows on the south side, and Commissioner Weatherby mentioned this too, on the top two floors, the sound will be contained because the windows are fixed, do not open. Is that a concern from a building code perspective? Can windows just not open in a bedroom? That's a question for a building official. OK. I mean, OK. I would just, that makes me nervous. I would hope the windows would be operable. But I think that the point remains that, what? It is kind of creepy. The point remains that I think those are quieter things that will be happening on those floors, but I would really hope that they open just for fresh air and safety. I would also agree that I would like the electrification, and thank you for that, to be a condition in the motion. And then for the sustainable energy utility, our second SEU, from what I know of it now, it's putting solar and batteries in your home or building. I'm not sure how you participate in that, considering what I read in the solar assessment. And then previous comments we heard on like the opinions on batteries so I'm not I'm not considering that like in making this decision um but maybe if there's a way to tap in to the the energy generated from other buildings that do have solar and batteries um okay that's it thank you did you want to ask the petitioner if the windows are operable I mean, it's a building code thing.

Well, the petitioner may know for the design, if you want to ask.

Okay, I would like to ask the petitioner to clarify that comment about the windows being fixed.

they are fixed and the building code allows them to be fixed because our building is fully sprinkled and it has life safety measures to be able to protect somebody to be able to get out of the building in the event of a fire and from a ventilation perspective we have a mechanical ventilation system that's going to be putting fresh air into all of the occupied spaces okay okay thank you thank you i next have adams then mills then weich um so i i think i

First of all, thank you, Commissioner Norton, for articulating. I wasn't at the prior meeting, and so that's obviously concerning. At the same time, I agree with you that, and I went back and re-read the legal standard again, I don't think any of those troubling facts bear on the legal standard that we're may ask to apply. So applying it, I agree with the findings of fact and the analysis and the two city staff reports. To that, I would add that it's important to me that the legal standard here is not the applicant has strictly met every element. I think the wording is substantially met. That's important to me. I would also add, with respect to the elements in 5.295 , which relate to the adverse consequences of the project, its appropriateness within the neighborhood and the neighborhood area, the following facts that I think are significant in explaining my support for voting to grant the petition. One of the things that we heard over and over and over again when we were working on the comprehensive plan was the concerns about the presence of student housing pressure pushing out into residential neighborhoods. and the need to create dense housing student housing where it made sense to do so in order to reduce that that pressure again radiating outward um we also acknowledged when we created the residential category and the land use map that there would be areas of the city where larger larger housing larger buildings would be contextually appropriate and I think this is one of those areas I think that because this, like I mentioned earlier when I asked my question, this is an area of the city that has been zoned for this type of building for as long as our zoning code in its modern form has existed. And that reflects a long-standing city policy that this is an appropriate location for student group housing, fraternities, and sororities. this project in particular is cited within one of the densest oldest and most well-known clusters of fraternity and sorority housing buildings inside the city that presence is not merely an existing condition in this neighborhood but it's um it's a prior existing condition on this property i noted in one of the papers that this property used to be used as a greek house for some period of time so it's difficult for me to make the case that the construction of a sorority house on the site reasonably offends the peaceful enjoyment, economic value, or development of the neighboring property or the neighborhood area in general. The impact of the presence of fraternities and sororities would have been priced into the economic value of surrounding properties for as long as those surrounding fraternities and sororities have existed, which in some cases has been over 100 years. While this project is slightly larger than those other buildings, it's on a very large lot. My personal judgment is that this size increase relative to other similar structures, which are very old, is not a basis to deny the petition. It's not out of character with the vicinity, nor with the scale and bulk of the surrounding structures, which, again, are quite large. I also think that it's hard for me to define this analysis to just these blocks, this specific block. Under the UDC, I have to look at neighborhood area, the greater neighborhood area, and the proximity of Central Campus to these homes I think is sort of a palpable presence. The fact that you walk 10 minutes and you're at the footsteps of a major dormitory, I think that matters in terms of analyzing neighborhood character and the appropriateness of this project. And then finally, with respect to the other concern that I've heard tonight from residents, which relates to tree loss, I agree with the comments from Commissioner Weatherby about, I think that has to be evaluated in context. I think it has to be evaluated relative to what you know, another homeowner can do with their private property in terms of cutting trees down. Also, I think our analysis here goes beyond just trees. It's detrimental effect on natural environment. I think moving a larger number of students closer to campus and replacing an older single-family home with a modern, energy-efficient, all-electric structure is a net positive rather than being a detriment. So I'll be supporting us tonight.

Thank you, Commissioner Adams. We have Commissioner Mills, then Bass Uni, then Weitsch.

So I've been pulling up the UDC. I'm really looking at 5.29.5 D1C. Follow that. I'm gonna read it to you. Will be consistent with the general character of the neighborhood considering population density, design, scale, and bulk, and the intensity and character of activity. And this is the one where, actually, I think that there's opposing things going. There's like a war, I'm not going to lie, in my brain about which of these are out of character. And honestly, when I average them all together, it's not. So let me explain how, though. Again, I pointed out the population density. I think that this, for a For a sorority, the population density is too low. For other residents in the area, it's not. It is 529 square feet per person. So I'm imagining that lots of the homes around there are less dense than that. And so I want it to be denser. But actually, it's not out of character in that way. The design scale and bulk, again, I agree that there are large properties. I wish this were a couple thousand square feet smaller, especially if they want to have fewer residents in there. And I can't think of what... what that would mean, and the fact that it is built into the side of a hill and minimizing what that looks like, I think is important context. I think that actually, though, the bigger part is the intensity and character of activity. And I'm going to go back to the number of residents at some of the nearby properties. And again, I'm going to take that list with a grain of salt because I think there's at least one error in it. But many of them have more. I mean, every single one has more listed. And so, in terms of the intensity and the character of activity, there's lots of other Greek housing in this area. And so, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't remember the words that you said. it's not like a slam dunk that this is not met. Like there's conflicting evidence and I could make the case that it is met. And I think it's difficult for me to articulate like how it's not. So I am inclined to, to support this but what's really important to me is that the detrimental effect on the natural environment the condition that is being drafted and i'm also really curious about whether they're like how we think about any carve-outs for is there an elevator in this building Yes. How that is handled, and I think we should talk about that, or maybe that is already, as we think about the all-electric, the life safety kind of things. Exactly. Especially if those windows don't operate, we're going to want to make sure that they get fresh air from the outside.

So are you proposing to ask a question of the petitioner of whether or not they have a gas backup for the elevator?

Thank you for suggesting that. You've already contemplated an all-electric building. So what is your plan for what happens if the power goes out?

uh there there is not a plan for if the power goes out because the the elevator is not considered a means of egress in this building so we have two we have two full height stairwells on opposing corners of the building that are both rated and within the allowable egress egress distance for the code

Is there anything for the, I don't know how the sprinkler system works, or again, you told us about the fixed windows so that there's intake air. What happens to that in the case of a power outage?

It would not function.

And that's not threatening. I'm sorry, can I clarify what will not function? Because she asked two parts. Okay, thank you.

Being an all-electric building, if the power were to go out, the mechanical systems would go out as well.

but not the sprinkler system not the sprinkler system because she had two questions okay thank you for that i don't know if the sprinkler system has something that requires you know just like when your furnace scope when the power goes out even if you have a gas furnace you still got to figure out how to get it like there's right the blower for example um So I'm going to go back to make the pitch. I know what the team said last time about the sustainable energy utility. If there is any interest in having backup, I think that it's really important. Actually, this is a great opportunity for battery, like a great case for why you might actually want to deploy batteries with a sustainable energy utility. So you do have... clean intake air during power outages. And I might actually, I am curious about how people feel at the table about not allowing a backup generator, a fossil fuel power generator on the site. And instead it sounds like that is not anticipated, but again, this is a condition that would move with it. And it feels to me like this detrimental, you know, thinking about environmental impacts may be a,

So you have two, I think, ways here. So one, would you be suggesting that the petitioner, well, that there'd be a condition that they do participate in the SEU if it's possible, because then that would provide the batteries, or are you suggesting a condition where a fossil fuel backup solution would not be allowed

I think that the latter is more important because they could get, if they in the future want better, if they want backup and power outage, they don't have to join the SEU. They could put that in on themselves.

So I'm going to make a note for that and then come back to it. Is that okay?

That sounds great. Thank you.

All right. We'll go to Commissioner Bashuni, please.

Hello again. So originally I was just going to do a comment, but I do now have one, potentially two, quick questions. I think this will go back to the planner. One is, is this building ADA accessible? I may have missed it in the plan, but I just wanted to confirm.

It should be, because that's what our building code requires. Excellent.

Thank you. So the building itself is ADA accessible, since I'm still learning this. Does that mean that rooms, so if a resident is in a room, that that room would also be ADA accessible?

I think you're getting a little bit out of my wheelhouse and more into the building code wheelhouse. OK.

Thank you. So I'll leave it there, because I will just investigate that wheelhouse another time just for future. So thank you all for your patience. Thank you to fellow commissioners for this very lively and informative discussion. Commissioner Mills, you mentioned there was a war going on inside of you. I think I also have a bit of a battle in my head, but in a maybe different way. So I was not a commissioner when this petition was first presented back on April 7. But I have watched the recording. I've heard the comments and the discussion at that time. And when I first heard this petition with this property, I'll just move this here so I don't keep turning. I found that I had to disentangle my own personal reticence around Greek life in general, because Greek life has a documented history of incidents with hazing, racism, fatphobia, and other issues at campuses here, but also across the United States. With that said, fundamentally, we live in a town that has a large and world-renowned university. Students, staff, and faculty are a part of our community. Some of you are here in this room. And we are all a part of the fabric of that city. And this parcel is very nicely located near the university. In fact, I actually lived at the Michigan branch of the Telluride Association during the first two years of my PhD. I don't usually see it out in public. So seeing it, I was like, oh, I remember that place. So while its mailing address is 1735 Washtenaw Avenue, I myself often walk through those many neighboring streets that some of you mentioned, including one previous commenter, because I don't like walking down Washtenaw. It's fast, and I didn't like being that close to cars. So I, walking between School of Public Health and Telluride, I would meander through the neighborhoods, and I loved it. I was often struck how relatively quiet and peaceful the side streets were, barring Friday and Saturday nights, because I expected that I'm living next to campus, there are a lot of students and families, and Friday and Saturday nights are hopping. That being said, I also walked and took the bus primarily to get to campus, as did many of my housemates. I definitely understand that there are students who will Uber. There are times that you need to because our bus system, while better than many cities, is still not robust enough to take you everywhere without a car. I had multiple housemates who biked, one to the dental school where she was a dental student, and another student all the way to North Campus. Actually, I think it was two. And as a student, at the time I was still a student, but especially then, I was extremely grateful that I could live in a scholarship house that allowed me to pursue a degree with less financial burden, and that my commute to the School of Public Health was a glorious 15 to 20 minute walk, even on really cold winter days. At least two of the faculty who are at the School of Public Health currently live in this same neighborhood, one with a family and another who now has an empty nest. As someone who's earlier in my career, it really felt like I was part of the city. It felt amazing to live in a neighborhood where I could see people of all ages going about their day, whether that be the kids going to Angel, undergrads walking to Vertex Coffee, or older folks tending to their lawns. So with all of that said, I am cognizant that we need to return or keep in mind the parameters around our decision making here as commission. And based on the petitioner's submission, based on the questions and answers that we've gotten, I believe that this meets the R2B zoning and has substantially met the criteria for an SEU, not the Sustainable Energy Unit. And so that being said, I would also like to echo that I would also like the number to be increased to the maximum allowed, which I understand to be 75. I would also, let's see, yes, I concur that I would also like the all electric to be documented in our motion. As I think it was Commissioner Dish said, I will defer to Chair Weish and the Deputy Manager on what the specific parliamentary procedure is there. And so overall, once again, I lean to support. Thank you very much. I cede back to the Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner Basciutti.

uh commissioner norton do you want to weigh in before i go okay well you have to do it on your mic thank you i didn't say and i understand the neighbors frustrations and i do appreciate you coming out and speaking with us um we're like we usually are stuck having to make a really difficult decision and i'm looking at the criteria that we have to work with and making the judgment i think is the appropriate judgment for the decision we have to make

Thank you Commissioner Norton. So there are two things that are outstanding. Staff is working on a motion proposed by Councilmember Dish and then once we take that up we will see if we can take up Commissioner Mills potential motion as well but we'll do those one at a time. Before we get to that, I'd just like to make some general comments myself. So first, to the neighbors, thank you all. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for your time, your energy, your research, your care about your neighborhood, the care about your properties, and that your voice matters in these proceedings. I hope that you saw five weeks ago that we took the concerns that you articulated then seriously and tonight we continue in that same vein what i would like to note just for the neighbors just a couple things which are the nature of our unified development code The reason why we can talk about trees on this property is because it is site plan review. Single family homes that are zoned as such in our community do not go under site plan review, which means a single family home owner who would own this property could cut down every single tree. They could build a house up to 30 feet and whatever the setbacks are in R2B and they could build directly to those setbacks. They also wouldn't have to put in a driveway for the fire because the fire marshal and the fire department also don't review single family homes because they're not subject to site plan review. That's the key word. The key word is site plan review. So your advocacy is not over in terms of what you might want to see in your community and in your neighborhood because as you know we're taking up the comprehensive land use plan to start to implement it and so that is a place where we can begin to address some of these concerns including the concerns that Commissioner Mills articulated at the beginning of her first set of comments around the massing of a facility or building like this. I also wanted to address the street parking. Street parking, as Commissioner Weatherby noted, is public, it's available. My neighbors to the east just had their HOAs driveway replaced and they wrote us a nice letter and said, we'd like to park in front of your house. And I was like, it's a city street, you can park there. And I live not as close as Commissioner Weatherby to the stadium. but close enough that people park in front of our house eight Saturdays a year. And I, let me just be honest with you for a moment. Not that I've been lying to you up until this point. I had no idea that people parked as far out as they did. So like the first Saturday, all these cars arrived, the noise, the tailgating, the passing of the football. I was like, what is going on? And you all don't know this, but my occupation is a pastor, and I'm the senior pastor of a church here in town. And I had moments, you know, just questioning my faith and my relationship with those who were at my house at 5 and 6 in the morning, right? All right, good. Now I'm done with that part. So the street parking. is just the nature of what it is. And then I want to echo something else that Commissioner said tonight that sort of means a lot to me is I wish this was more dense. So now I'm going to turn to the petitioner. 43 people in a 23 500 square foot dwelling uh at about 523 square feet we can go back and forth on the numbers that's that's quite interesting um and uh i i think i understand why you moved from 47 to 44 as a i think one of the neighbors said as a small maybe insignificant sort of communication that you might have heard the neighbors. But I would like to ask the petitioner to consider, and I forget the resident who's here in the fuchsia color, top listed a list of things that you could articulate to your neighbors, which would go a long way. You don't have to do it. Of course you don't. But it would go a long way. The first thing that I would recommend that you do is you have a point of contact. that there's a single phone number that someone can call when they have a problem. It just makes everything go better. My church is across the street from two developments, Viridian and The Grove, and their vendors would park in our parking lot and would block our members and our tenants from having access to our parking lot. And it is laborious to track down who to call to ask someone to move a vehicle. Just doing that, it's goodwill and it smooths out rough spaces. I think staff can articulate for us what the city's requirements are for construction and if there are a point of contact within the city. Cause I know when there's runoff, there's like a runoff coordinator when something's leaving a site, going somewhere else. And I know construction is supposed to fence things and catch those things. So I know we have those tools already within the city and at an appropriate time if staff can share that with us. um that would be great the other aspects that i wanted to address with the petitioner was one thank you for hearing us about the parking i don't like parking i just think it's just not necessary and your neighbors are telling you the many of the students aren't going to use it anyway so the reduction by 50 is appreciated Moving to an all-electric building is also appreciated here and I think it mitigates some of the concerns that we have in 529 D1 A through E and in particular E. And then the screening. So increasing the screening on the fencing especially with the neighbors who are immediately adjacent at the rear. I think it's 1835 Cambridge. Just talk to them, figure out what they need on that side of the property. This is a very, very small thing, and it will go a very, very long way if I can just be as direct as I'm being with you right now. Okay. Anyone else? So I'm implying to support and for the same reasons that my colleague Commissioner Adams articulated so well at the table. I think I've articulated the concerns that I have which are around the density. I still am like Commissioner Norton frustrated with the location of the building on the site, but that's not my issue. And then you have to mitigate it because of where you've placed it so that the fire can access it, which then creates the other harms that are there. I think the other thing that you all, and this might be a question for the petitioner, are you increasing the sewer connections on that street? like increasing the size of it. I think it was an eight inch and you're going to a 12 inch. And now are there any other improvements that you're doing for the infrastructure for this building, which will have an impact, a positive impact on the neighbors? We know of all the negative impacts.

Yeah, I'm Joe Mayer with Washtenaw Engineering. We are improving the water main down the street from a six inch to a 12 inch water main. We're also extending the sanitary sewer in front of our property. And we're also extending the storm sewer uh from hill street all the way down oxford to our property for our storm water detention take discharge are you doing any remediation of the road or the sidewalks adjacent to the property the roadway will be completely remediated okay um because of the construction all the construction is within the street so curb to curb it'll all get replaced and then there are some sidewalk connections that will need to be replaced

especially in front of our property where we're going to have to grade so that sidewalk there will be removed to replace as well okay great thank you so much manager kelly are you ready with the motion for us to review yes i can pull that up thank you and uh you may want to just well i know that's the purpose here but just make sure that i've got it right

Well, we'll start with Councilmember Dish to review and then we'll work our way from there.

So here is the motion that was presented and... Oh, I'm sorry.

Can I interrupt you just for one second? Sure. To my colleagues, the motion is set for 75 occupants. So it's not actually set for the 61 that they proposed. so we i don't think we need to adjust up because it's already set there because they could go to 143 ish i like that ish okay i'm sorry manager kelly please continue

I was just going to say this is the motion that was read at the outset of the meeting and presented in the staff report. What is in blue is what I would like to clarify to understand your intentions for the amendment. So I heard any building constructed will be fully electric and I just wanted to understand if it's your intention to allow them some leeway for emergency backup systems.

Commissioner Mills would not like to allow that.

Okay and noting that many battery backup systems require separate encasements and housing that that could later become a challenge with the need for an accessory building on site. It would necessitate a site plan for planning manager if it's not incorporated here into the amendment. So there's a second item that is added to allow them to accommodate that for a review as part of this same proposal to meet the to the satisfaction this motion.

Let me start with Commissioner Mills. Did we strike the wrong thing in the first part?

no you struck exactly as i anticipated okay all right and then we'll turn to commissioner hammerschmidt thanks um i thought we would want to keep on there though that with no connection to natural gas

I was going to say, for the first part, as I would put on, I understand number two, but I would actually potentially add a third. Or you could say with no connection to fossil fuels. I mean, natural gas and propane are more or less the same thing.

No. Sorry. No. I am confused a little bit about number two because I think it's already, is this just like an extra review?

it's to avoid having a separate petition for a site plan for planning manager because if they're not if they do not have on their site plan now anticipated a location for a backup battery housing it it depending on the size it could necessitate a separate site plan and we want to make sure it's all covered through this motion similar to when you have conditional approval and the applicant needs to meet this to the satisfaction the conditions of that approval before it is officially in fact approved this would accomplish the same thing so it would let them figure out how if they need to accommodate backup battery storage on site if they find that to create the fully electric building they want to place that on

Yeah, I mean, I guess my confusion is just because I, so I, I did a battery and we, you know, we pulled permits and did all of that stuff and we had to make sure it was in a place cause you can't, you have to like, there's the fire code stuff for it now. So how is this like, they would have to do that. Either way, they would have to, like, if they do this in, like, 3 years, the building's built and then they decide they want battery storage. You do that. You would, you would have to go through those same, like, pulling permits and getting inspections and stuff like that. Oh, because that wouldn't bring. Okay. I think I get it. You would have to change the site plan if you add battery storage?

Accessory buildings over 300 square feet require a site plan for planning managers. So the intention would be to just cover anything that might trigger a site plan threshold within the motion. Okay. Thanks.

Colleagues, have you had a chance to review? Great. Does everyone at the table feel comfortable? Nope. Commissioner Norton, I'm sorry.

I just want to be clear. Have we ever told a proponent you can't have gas backup as an originate backup?

I mean, I know we have said that from the table. I don't know that What is your specific question? Have we made it a condition?

Is there a public health and safety concern? I'm looking more at, I'm actually looking at the planning manager. I don't, because I think we're in a space where is this going a bit too far if there are valid public health and safety concerns about a power backup source that isn't fully developed yet.

So I'm going to first go to Commissioner Hammerschmidt and then it looked like Manager Leonard was going for his mic.

I thought you were going to say it. Verde and the county farm has this same type of, I don't know exactly where it is and if it's in the development agreement, but the site does not allow natural gas and they have a mix of residential and commercial. So it's doable.

It is doable, yes. All right. Great. Thank you, Mr. Leonard. I appreciate that. Back to my question to the commissioners. Are we comfortable with what is presented here as an amendment? Great. Who would like to move it? Moved by Councilmember Dish, seconded by Commissioner Mills, which brings us into discussion of the motion as amended. We already did that. But is there additional discussion? Go ahead, you turn your mic on. just to be real clear we're we haven't voted yet on the amendments on the conditions we have amended the original motion and then we are discussing it yes right now and then once we finish discussing it i'm going to do a roll call vote and then if it prevails this will be the new motion

Ah, got it. Okay, got it. Yep. Okay. Thank you.

And then that'll end this petition because this stops here at Planning Commission. It doesn't go on to City Council, so this would be final.

Yep.

Any further discussion? Council Member Dish, are you satisfied?

Yes.

Do you have any questions for the petitioner? No. For staff?

Okay.

Manager Kelly, are you satisfied?

uh yes abundantly thank you for allowing the putting it in the word document the mover seconder you're the best very helpful it's a team effort are we ready to vote manager kelly would you please call the roll on the motion as amended weish yes Hammerschmidt. Yes. Dish. Yes. Mills. Yes. Weatherby. Yes. Adams. Yes. Norton. Yes. Bessuni. Yes. That carries.

Thank you and good luck. We will continue with our agenda. Thanks everyone for your patience. It's going to be a long night. We still have more. Would you like a break? Okay, let's take a three-minute break. i'm going to call us back into session if you okay great uh that takes us to 10 b No, it does not. It takes us to 11A. I do apologize. This is a petition for 850 Green Hills Drive, SP250022, special exception use and site plan for planning commission approval, SP25-0022. A request to amend the existing special exception approval for a four, excuse me, a 545 student, private school to 750 students and a proposed site plan to construct two additions totaling 16,000 square feet or 16,665 square feet to an existing school to the existing school and to pave a fire access road around the building. This site is 30 1⁄2 acres. It's zoned R1B, and it is in Ward 2. Staff recommendation is approval. We'll start with the petitioner's presentation, followed by a staff presentation by Planner DeLito, followed by the public hearing, and then the Planning Commission will read the motion and have our discussion. Welcome. And since you've been here since the beginning, you know you have a green light and a yellow light and a red light. And I think your time is set at 10 minutes because you didn't request additional time, but you need your presentation to be loaded. Great. I can't help you with that, but Manager Kelly will.

And so you can use this if you want there's okay or and to move it forward, okay Sorry, I don't know what these pop-ups are about but you can also use these I Thank you, everyone. Good evening. I ran up here because we're going to save you some time. My name is Krista Azar. I'm an architect and project manager with Integrated Design Solutions. And we have with us Heath Hart from Midwest Consulting. And we have members of the Green Hills School. So this petition is for two editions and some site work. And? We wanted to talk about what the program is, which is a North Dining and Visual Arts edition. Another edition, they're somewhat connected, but two parts is applied engineering, which will help expand their robotics and engineering systems and just give them that space. And we wanted to... Oh, I'm sorry, yes. And we wanted to talk about the expansion of the geothermal and the sustainability aspect of this project. This is on the north and the east side of the building. The existing building you can see mostly in white and the red outline of the two additions. Let me go back a second. Also shown between the woods and the building is an existing gravel fire route, and that is one that will be improved to paved fire route. The two additions, you can see the applied engineering infill, and that will have a large robotics arena, a two-story volume, and a storage workroom next to it so they can keep their equipment nearby. The dining addition expands the dining area. It does not include like any kitchen or food service. That service supports the students. This increases the size of the dining room so that they can have larger lunch periods instead of having multiple, I don't know, two or three. Now they can get all the students into a single or at least two lunch periods. And then the visual arts is taking the existing fine arts and ceramics and expanding those programs so that they're large enough now for the students, a whole class size to go in and have room to do the arts. So these are existing programs, but it is giving them better facilities to do these programs in. That's the main level. And then the upper level, again, the applied engineering is mostly a two volume space. The fine arts and ceramics are tucked in below and north of the dining. Heath, if you'd like to speak to the floor plan.

I'm sorry the site? So I'll talk quickly and briefly about the site which I know is of interest to everyone. We are applying for the SEU exception and the reason is that is because of an increase we're I'll speak into this. We're requesting an increase in the allowable student population. They're currently about 700-ish right now. We're asking to allow for a maximum of 750. That did trigger the requirement for a traffic study which we did perform. One thing I will note is on the Green Hills Drive, which is the loop from Earhart to Earhart, they have recently installed traffic circles at both those intersections, which graciously greatly helps with the traffic movements. So results of the study showed minimal impact to the traffic for that increase to up to 750. the other thing I want to mention is we did have a citizens part participations meeting which we held I think we had three residents that showed up very positive feedback overall in that I think that report was part of your study talk quickly on natural features impact The site plan that you see is rotated so north is to the left, but up at the top, which would be the east side, at the very tip up there, there is one landmark tree. The critical root zone of that tree actually comes right up to the edge of the existing school. and straight through the that critical root zone is where the existing gravel fire lane resides so with us removing that that that gravel lot gravel lane and replace it with a asphalt drive which is required for the fire marshal we didn't really want to do the grab with the asphalt but it is a requirement because of that disturbance in that critical root zone we did we did lose that one landmark tree and we are mitigating on site for that impact the wetland impact it is not impact to the wetlands themselves it is the impact to the wetland buffer which is a 25-foot space going around the wetlands and same situation where the existing drive was going through that wetland buffer so as we take out the existing drive and replace it with a net gravel that that is the wetland impact that we're we're looking for to the top of your screen that is the area where we're installing the geothermal and when we're we disturb that area as we come back with it the thought is we're going back with a what a grass paved system so it's almost like a honeycomb system and that can serve as like an overflow parking area for special events but it is not a pervious surface it I'm sorry it's not an impervious surface it still allows that impervious surface to stay grass comes up through it so it still gives the appearance of a field but it is stabilized to allow for overflow parking in that area with that if Peter if you want to talk

My name is Peter Feyroyan, and I'm the head of Green Hill School. I began my career as head of school in 2005. In 1968, the University of Michigan Lab, actually in 1967, University of Michigan Laboratory School closed, and a group of parents and professors and people in the community wanted that kind of education for their kids so they started Green Hills School with about 60 kids. That was also a time when University of Michigan only had 35,000 students and Ann Arbor metropolitan area had about 135,000 people. We've grown exponentially the same way in which this community and the university has grown over half of our email addresses from our parents are umich.edu or umich.edu. So we have enjoyed our success because of this community and we've grown by 100 kids every decade. We started with about 50-60 kids and now we are at 709 and we are absolutely at of where we want to be. We want to be 100 kids in every grade. We couldn't get that right away for all kinds of reasons, but 100 students in a grade is small for public school standards or other standards, but it's ideal for a class to have the kind of class consciousness And we have small class sizes, and we want to maintain this. And we've done the demographics. We know we can sustain this. We're a regional school. We don't draw just from Ann Arbor. We draw from Plymouth, Clanton, Novi, and Northville. And I just wanted to clarify, that's where we are today. And we not only have no intention of getting bigger, but enrollment size, it's ideal. It's the perfect sized school. Thank you.

one other thing that I forgot to mention if you look at the plan you'll notice that the additions are to the to the northeast side of the school which actually abuts the interstate 23 US 23 but the buffer between where the addition is going and the adjacent properties there's a large existing woodland there. So visually impacting from the neighbors and communities there will be not any noticeable difference from what is there currently. The use will be the same except for the construction. Following the construction they're going to notice essentially no difference in the visual appearance or the impact of this of the school on their on their community. So just wanted to mention that also.

Thank you. I will jump back to a couple items. I was going pretty quick but this, Heath had mentioned the geothermal field. There is an existing one for a portion of the building. We're expanding that and being able to do an HVAC system for the additions by expanding that system. So It has energy recovery heating and cooling systems and high efficiency building envelope. We focused on a lot of daylighting just to make it a better experience. Actually, you really pushed us to keep those views out to the, okay, open area. I'll finish, thank you.

Okay. Okay, thanks. Thank you. We'll go now to a staff presentation by Planner DiLeo.

Thank you. I believe the team did a very good job of explaining what is being proposed. So I'll just hit some procedural and code highlights. This project has four components to it. It is a special exception use request to modify an existing special exception use. It is a site plan, a request for a landscape modification approval, and a wetland use permit application. I'll hit on, we did go over a little bit of history. Green Hills was site planned and approved in 1967, opened apparently in 1968. We've done 10 site plan amendments over the years. When it was first approved, private schools such as this did not, were not special exception uses. They were by right uses in the single family districts. I believe it was in the 1980s when special exception use was then required. which they then received in 1994 and it was amended again. The special exception use was amended again in 2007. Today, the Green Hills Middle and Upper School Campus, which is at 850 Green Hills Drive, has about 140,000 square foot academic building. It has a gymnasium and as well as a football stadium, track and field facilities, tennis court, soccer, baseball, about 195 parking spaces. And it does have bicycle parking, but it did receive a substantial variance for bicycle parking. the requirements are quite high for a school. So the petition components, the special exception use modification, it is a condition that has been imposed to have a maximum enrollment capacity of 554 students, and they're asking for an increase to 750 students. I will note that unlike fraternities and sororities, there is not a requirement to have a maximum enrollment as part of a condition. The site plan proposes two small building additions with a total of about 16,000 square feet and to improve the existing gravel path to an asphalt fire access road. It was mentioned, but more specifically, it will have the removal of a 36-inch cottonwood landmark tree and impact two areas of required wetland buffer. The landscape modification, there is a section in code that allows modifications to certain things for specific circumstances and one of which is when no alterations to existing landscape elements are proposed to a site plan with an approved site plan already on file. Landscaping is always, or landscaping is generally tied to parking. The required landscaping elements are interior vehicular use islands, to shade the parking lot right-of-way screening when parking is visible from the right-of-way and conflicting land use buffers actually it's district buffers now none of this work none of this work impacts the existing parking lot and that is why they are eligible for this modification and finally the wetland use permit Wetland buffers are provided the same protections as the wetlands themselves. This development will impact a total of 4,828 square feet of wetland buffer area in two different spots. And the impacts will be mitigated by removing invasive species in the wetland and wetland buffer areas at a ratio of 1.5 to 1. So the total restored area will be about 7,242 square feet. Staff is recommending approval of all four components, the special exception use modification, the site plan, the request for landscape modification, and the wetland use permit.

Thank you, Planner DiLeo. Let's turn now to our public hearing. This is an opportunity for individuals to speak up to three minutes on this item. We'll first hear from those of you who are present with us in chambers, then we'll turn to remote participants. To speak remotely, press star nine if on phone, or use the raise hand feature if on Zoom. For phone access, dial 877-853-5247 and Intermeeting ID 977-6634-1226. City staff will identify callers by the last three digits of their phone number or by name if on Zoom. You'll hear an announcement when it's your turn to speak. Please move to a quiet area and mute any background noise. For all participants, whether in chambers or remote, please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments. Is there anyone present in chambers who'd like to address the commission on this issue? Now, come right on up.

you've been here the whole time so you know the green light yellow and the gray you got it thank you my name is rita ross i live at 782 green hills drive and i am here as the president of earhart village homes association whose address is 835 green hills drive We're a community of 174 households that are adjacent. We live around that semicircular drive called Green Hills. And I understand the school's desire to grow. We've been good partners with the school for its many years. We've been an association for 52 years. But it does have an impact on our daily life. We've adjusted to many accommodations have been made where they can be. But our concern is that this particular project does not accommodate the severe negative impact that traffic and parking has on our homeowners. Many in our community are concerned about the raise from 545 students to 750. We know that there's already 700, about 700, 719 students there now. So my question is, what mechanism do you have to monitor this? If they jump from 545 and they're at 719 and they never came back for a correction of that, even though the head of school says they're not going to grow more than that, how are you going to monitor that? Because that's a big concern of ours. There's no way that it should grow any more than it already has. Traffic and parking congestion is very severe. the during especially during a course drop off and pick up times so students come in and they park on they park in the parking lots but they park on the street and they take up the entire street we've had problems with them coming in and parking in our cul-de-sacs it's very dangerous because we have an air they park on the street their parents come to pick up and their park next to them and then more parents come to pick up and so we're in a private resident we're in a residential street and there are three rows cars there we can't get in no one can get out and it's a terrible safety hazard I've explained it more in detail in the letter that I provided to you but the LOS for pedestrians is rated E the worst possible score that you can get so we believe that green hills should have more parking space or they should they should use a permanent shuttle service so that their students park somewhere else and are shuttled into the property that would be a better solution and take some of the danger away not only for their students but for all of our residents thank you very much thanks miss ross

My name is Carol Galler, and I live at 817 Green Hills Drive, so I'm directly across the street from Green Hills Middle School. I can look out my bedroom window and see the traffic every morning as it comes through, and it is incredible that for a half an hour in the mornings, you see the stream of cars coming in and having the same situation which she was talking about as people coming in and then going the other way. And if I live here and I want to get out to go anywhere myself in the morning, I have to play dodge them. And some people get aggressive and want to beat the car in front of them. And so there's not just one row of cars, but another one coming up to pass. And then I'm trying to get out, and it's really it's really not a good situation at all. And then, you know, like she was saying that all these, I didn't realize they were students, but I guess they were. I mean, there's nothing but cars parked all along the side of our streets during the day. Yeah, I mean, you don't dare walk across the street at that time of the day. And then at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, if I don't get out and do errands, and then I suddenly think, oh, I've got to go to the store, and then I look out the door, and school's out. It's just the same thing as what you have in the morning. So it's really a surprise to me how congested it is. And also, just yesterday, I was pulling out, and someone came by my car so fast, they almost hit me. And they looked at me, and they went like that. And I was thinking to myself, wait a minute. What is this entitlement about you having to be first? And this is my home. It's just really amazing. the problems with the with the traffic and um so anyway I appreciate you listening and I didn't plan on speaking I just thought somebody else would speak and I'm glad Rita did the lion's share but I did want to give my lived experience because I can see it and I'm like watching it grow and I'm hearing that it may be growing even more and I just really don't know where all those cars are going to go so yeah I hope they get more parking thanks thank you I'm also concerned about the condition of the road. Okay, I'm sorry.

Your time did expire.

With the construction going in and out.

Sure, thank you.

Hello, my name is Joseph Caffey. I'm in residence 716 Green Hill. And so I live in this complex and I've been there probably two years. Unfortunately, as mentioned from the other two people that came up here, the traffic is horrendous during certain times of the day. and it makes it nearly impossible to come and go during those times there is a good amount of road rage that happens this is an affluent school i understand they are driving you know very expensive vehicles and they expect that they pick up their children on time but unfortunately what happens is blocks it blocks the driveways of our residents And so this causes problems. I have pictures of cars blocking the driveway. And I don't know who puts out the signs, and maybe you can let us know, but signs need to be put up on a regular basis every day to say, please don't block the driveways. So this is obviously somewhat being addressed. But the driveways, and I have pictures of that, are still being blocked even with the signs being there. So there is, I don't know if a traffic study was done, I don't know if there's one to be planned, but the idea is that it's not being attended to and there are hazards that happen on a daily basis with the students driving or parking on the side of the street, blocking driveways, and then also not being able to get in and out of the residence during those two times of the day, every single day. And it's an issue. I understand there's a good amount of people who do drive. I don't know the number of students who are above 16 years old. but they do seem to have cars and they have access to cars. And so there is a fair amount of parking that happens outside of the school, within the establishment. And again, that's just leading to other issues for those who do live there and being able to get in and out on a regular basis. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in chambers who'd like to address this on this matter? Manager Kelly, do we have remote participants?

It's okay, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to invite the last speaker to email any pictures we can put them in tonight's packet as part of the public comment if you'd like to email planning at a2gov.org. There are no hands raised on mine.

Thank you. I will close the public hearing and read the proposed motion. I close the public hearing. The Ann Arbor Planning Commission hereby approves the modification to the Greenhill School's special exception use for a private school in the R1B single-family dwelling district to increase the maximum enrollment to 750 students based on the following findings. One. The location, size, and character of the proposed use is compatible with the R1B single-family dwelling district and the neighborhood in which the site is situated. Two, the location and size of the proposed use and its location and layout will not unduly conflict with public utility systems or the transportation network that serves the site and the neighborhood. And three, all applicable standards for the proposed use have been met. And the Ann Arbor Planning Commission hereby approves the Green Hills School Site Plan, dated March 20, 2026, to construct two additions to the existing building and pave a fire access road and landscape modification to allow landscape elements, which are part of a previously approved site plan, to be maintained and continued as non-conforming. and wetland use permit to impact 4,828 square feet of wetland buffer area and mitigate 7,242 square feet. Moved by Council Member Dish, seconded by Commissioner Weatherby, I would love to ask the first question, but I, with the permission of the table, great. Planner DiLeo, can you help me understand something that escaped my understanding, which is how has Green Hill School been allowed to exceed the 545 student enrollment to reach an enrollment of 719 and are now asking for a maximum of 750. And your comment in your staff presentation that there was no maximum here that you made as you were moving through. So there were like three things in there. well to be clear it's not allowed how were they allowed so because I wasn't sure if this was non-conforming so that's what I originally thought was because they incorporated in 67 the law changed in 80 then they became non-conforming and then that came forward but that's not what you're saying yes I am saying that you know they were a lawfully established school yes um the

whatever the corresponding date was, but after private schools required a special exception use, when they did a site plan work which triggered the need to upgrade or conform, they did apply for and receive special exception use. They have received several site plans over the years. Not every single site plan automatically requires a modification to the special exception use. But they have grown. My understanding is that it mostly was from the pandemic. And when the public schools did not reopen, they gained a lot of students. But the first step for any enforcement of this nature, whether it be someone put up a fence without a permit, first step is, well, let's make this right. Let's get the proper permits. Let's get the proper approvals. So part of the site plan review process, it was very apparent, well, this is what the records say. This is what your current enrollment is. Let's request a special exception use modification to increase the enrollment. So it is not like they asked and we said, yes, sure, go ahead and increase enrollment. But it has happened. But the first step for any of this type process when something has happened that did not get prior approval is to seek approval. There are certain aspects in the code that have penalties involved. This does not. And then the final, there are no use specific standards for private schools. okay some uses have some use specific standards example just because it's fresh tonight fraternities and sororities require a specific lot area and other things but and it says right there the fraternity and sorority the maximum capacity shall be established by the planning commission there there is no such there is no such I'm just so so among the choices tonight they have asked for 750 maximum capacity that could be 800 that could be none that could be lower just for point of clarification the there is no use specific standard that says there must be a maximum enrollment

So, and thank you, Planner DeLeo. With the permission of the chair, can I ask a follow up? I mean, with the table, can I ask a follow up? Okay. And maybe this is to Mr. Leonard. So since there is no penalty for enforcement, then is this just a pro forma activity here? Because if we grant 750, they could go to 900 and there is no penalty, there is no requirement for there to come back.

Yeah, so I want to clarify, any violation of the UDC is a potential municipal civil infraction. So what that means is it could be eligible for a citation of $500, a maximum of $500 per day by which the ordinance is being violated. Is that retroactive? Potentially. In this case, I want to just also I know it's late. Laws are weird. In this case, private schools and public schools have some distinct requirements in how they comply with local regulations. Private schools are subject to site planning. However, as schools, they are not subject to local permitting processes. Schools are permitted through the state fire marshal, or whatever the equivalent position is, unless a school affirmatively asks the city to perform that function. So just another, I would say, a factor in how us on a special exception use establishing a level was not maintained is because we are not the ones on a regular basis inspecting that property for occupancy loads as well like we might do in other similar circumstances. I think what Alexis was emphasizing is there's nothing in the code, unlike fraternities and sororities, that specify there has to be a cap of the number of people as part of the special exception use permit.

Thank you. We'll start with Commissioner Adams, and then who do I have in my queue? Commissioner Mills. Okay. Maybe Councilmember Dish. Okay. So Adams, Mills, and Dish. Thank you.

So this is a question for the petitioner. I'm not sure who's best situated to answer it. I'm less concerned about the violation. What I'm concerned about is as I read the application, I'm concerned it doesn't carry a burden of proof. And I'll be specific in what I mean. So with respect to several elements of the legal standard, your application argues that you've met that element because what you're proposing, quote, doesn't alter existing relationships. That seems to read to me that you're saying that we're already at this enrollment, so you should grant the enrollment that we're requesting. The problem with that is it treats the violation as a basis to grant what you're asking me to do, and that doesn't seem quite right. So several neighbors have submitted written comments that urge us to reject your petition. And they've created an issue of fact around the impact that your modification will make to the surrounding community, especially as it relates to traffic. And there are elements in the legal standard that ask me to analyze traffic impact. And when I read, I went to your application as I'm listening to the comments, and I'm looking to see, all right, how did they respond? and the response is it doesn't alter existing relationships it's very tough for me to say that you've satisfied that element because the reason that it's not altering existing relationships is that you're violating a condition in your seu um the if you have a traffic i'd be i guess the question i have is what did your traffic study evaluate did it evaluate against permitted or did it evaluate against existing because existing okay so that that doesn't really evaluate i think what we need that to evaluate and i'm concerned that i have to vote to deny what you're asking i don't want to i support the mission i support i understand what you want to do is expand the school that's serving the community but i'm concerned that your application doesn't meet the legal standard that's my worry you said you had a question for the petitioner

oh okay about when the traffic state okay thank you commissioner adams commissioner mills you took care of that part on my list so thank you for that i'm curious um i could probably dig in it but in particular generally speaking we don't ask for more people to put more parking on their lot but i'm again curious from your traffic study it looks like you've got at least you're planning for at least 170 people to park there how many parking spots do you currently have I'm trying to.

That is a question for the petitioner. So if someone could come and answer.

So that I'm understanding like how the experience of what's happening offsite like meshes with what the traffic study suggests is coming in at 7.30 to 8.30.

yeah and first the traffic study was done with the existing population so at 700 students okay we aim for 100 kids in the class sometimes that's a couple more sometimes it's a few less so um so the traffic city was just study was just done and it was done with the existing 719 kids that we have in the school right now we are not i know i'm just saying this we're not getting bigger i mean enrollment wise

I don't mean to interrupt you, but Commissioner Mills asked a specific question. Are you good? Right. Are you preparing to answer that?

I just wanted to clarify that. We have 210 parking spots on the campus right now. Okay. And we are adding, we're turning the softball field into additional parking.

138 more parking spots and with the where the geothermal wells are we're going to be adding overflow parking there as well okay I guess I need to go back now to the no actually I didn't I do still have it in the traffic study maybe my math is wrong but I was looking at the ins and outs in the morning and Your parking lot, your existing parking lot, if the traffic study is right, your existing parking lot should not be filling up. Because I was seeing you had, obviously, more ins than outs. But the difference between the two should be the number of people parking there. So help me understand that. Maybe that's not you. Maybe it's the folks who did the traffic study. But help me understand that, because that's what I'm curious about.

And sometimes it doesn't. Remember that we have, of the 700 students in the school, depending on when they turn 16 or if their parents allow them to have a car. 400 or 500 of them don't even have cars. But then what happens is then seniors are released early, about a month and a half early. Sophomores get their licenses. And so things shift. But we've always had adequate parking. And people have always parked on Green Hills Drive. And actually, a lot of faculty park on Green Hills Drive as well. And that's always been the case.

I guess the traffic study shows the morning as 745 to 845. So again, maybe it's saying that there's 463 cars coming in, 298 going out. So the difference between those is 175. So you've got more parking spots right now. So I'm curious about. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding of how the traffic study is done, but it feels like it might be underestimating the amount of traffic is what I'm saying. And this is important because the traffic is one of our keys is a standard.

And please know one of the things we're doing beginning in the fall, we've been wanting to do this, but we've changed our schedule so that we have different drop-offs and pickups for middle school. So that's basically cutting that time in half. Most of our, most of the parents are parents of middle schoolers who are dropping their kids off. We're now going to have middle school start at 8 and upper school start at 8.30, which will make a huge difference in terms of everyone not showing up at one time and doing drop-offs and pickups. And we also have in We're also not a school that just opens the doors and locks the doors. We allow parents, working parents, to drop their kids off at 7.15 if they have to get to work. So whenever the traffic study was conducted, it may not also have accounted for so many parents who drop their kids off as early as 7.15, 7.30 in the morning for them to be in the school.

OK. I think that Commissioner Adams, your concerns over the traffic study and kind of what is the baseline, which is something that's not quite, I think that that's more important, but I would just highlight, I'm not, the numbers don't seem to match with me. Thank you. Very good. I do have a question about the critical root zone of the tree, the cottonwood. Do you actually need to remove it or did you mitigate it because it might be impacted but you're not actually

you're not actually taking it out unless it doesn't last because you've impacted its critical root zone so the existing drive which aligns very closely with the proposed drive that's kind of a pinch point right there so by the time we essentially cut out the gravel put new aggregate base in that supports the pavement you're to be cutting in more than you know 40 of the critical roots of that tree so it's not just a little I know even if it's a little bit you've got to mitigate for it but this sounds like it's not going to last regardless of whether we try to save that or we don't we would be required to mitigate it because of the percentage of the impact of the critical root zone but there's also a concern with the proximity of that tree to the school which is only you know 25 feet away from the school so there's always that concern of that tree coming down especially after you compromise that whole root system on that side of the tree so yeah yeah the shade that it provides is also helpful so i bet i get you that's why i wanted to ask about it thanks thank you commissioner mills councilmember dish and then uh commissioner basuni weatherby and norton

OK. I, too, am trying to puzzle through the traffic issue, because it is one of the criteria. And I have too many things open on my screen, so I cannot cite chapter and verse. But it is a standard that we need to look at. So the traffic study explicitly states that, Trip generation for the change in the number of students is conservatively assumed to be 30 additional drop-off trips. And the study finds that a modest 30-student increase is not expected to significantly, I'll just use the word, affect the traffic in the study area. So that, to me, is a problem because the traffic study is being based on, I mean, it makes sense because the traffic is what it is. It is the current traffic. what has what this allows it allows to be evaded is the fact that the school is what percent one third over enrolled and has been for the last whatever six years, five years. And so what isn't being captured is how that increase, which was not allowed, did significantly affect traffic and is significantly affecting residents. So I really do think that the traffic situation is a concern for me. And when I read this, all right, and when I read the report, I read Green Hills Drive is not a complete street as it lacks sidewalks for pedestrian travel from Earhart Road to from either from the school or the existing residential uses. Some pedestrians walked in the street to reach parked vehicles along Green Hills Drive. Drivers occasionally traveled in the opposing side of the road to pass a vehicle that was waiting to enter a driveway. This sounds like a lot of conflict, just in ways that we are really trying not to have. Is Green Hills Drive an HOA road or a city street? It's city. It's city, thank you. Okay, that's good. Do not, well, oh, right, and there's this too. Current design practices encourage the separation of bus traffic and student-parent traffic. However, bus and student-parent traffic tended to mix, as some bus drop-offs occurred both on-site and along Green Hills Drive at the South. The school driveway, which is, of course, the situation that we used to have at the Central Campus Transit Center and was a ridiculous nightmare. So I just, this is not efficient. And for some reason, it seems like your parking, your legitimate parking, is not being used because numbers of parents drop off because either their children are too young to drive, which is good that they're not allowing them. I'm sure they're precocious, but not that precocious. Oh, it's late. I'm sorry. So that is fine, but it... And I don't know, perhaps not a lot of your upper level students actually have a car at their disposal that can just be sitting in a parking lot during the day. But whatever is or is not happening, this isn't just about, oh, it's a public street. People get to park on it. This, for the time period in the morning, appears to be really a mess and quite dangerous. So I really appreciate that you've now staggered your drop-offs. But the period that the traffic study looks at is 815 to 845. I think that was it. So even staggering isn't probably going to be enough here. I think part of the problem is people are doing the wrong thing. Or you need a drop-off spot. and need to either walk people or shuttle bus them, although that seems a bit odd, from the drop-off spot to the school. And we have this problem with our Ann Arbor public schools. And the solution really is finding a drop-off spot that doesn't clog streets and doesn't mean that there are persistent conflicts with cars driving in ridiculous ways to continue flowing. So I would really, I feel as though, I don't know if this is a real condition, so I would love to have help formulating. But I think that a meaningful traffic flow plan for a managed and orderly and safe drop off of students needs to happen for the safety of the students and the safety of the residents. and the safety of any cars who are driving in that area at that time. So I will voice my concern in terms of the part. And I'm sorry, I didn't identify the place in the UDC. But OK, so that's enough.

Okay. Do you want me to return to you to see if you wanted to make a motion about that? On your mic, sorry.

Sorry, yep. It would be great if staff could write an appropriate condition, or if they think it's appropriate. I mean, I'd sort of, actually, I'd like staff advice on whether such a condition is appropriate and can be um maybe the transportation people need to help us frame it or maybe you guys can frame it I don't know but I don't think I'm the person who should be trying to okay so now now there's two things one is um

if we're getting support outside of staff at the table that would mean are you um and i'm not asking you to decide this now but do you would you want to table this or defer it until you were able to get the answer from traffic around how you could construct a condition for the safe passage or do you want to just try to ask staff if we can form a motion tonight

I want to ask for staff advice on both of those things. What should we say and how should we, how, what is the best change to the process?

I would think that this is a little more complicated than crafting a condition. So typically for what is being proposed here is a transportation and man management and that is something that the school could come up with a plan for and present it alongside this petition if desired to address some of these concerns with the criteria for approval. um so those transportation demand management or tdm could include things like carpooling plans it could include things like the shuttle or drop-off ideas that were suggested it could include bicycle share it could include a lot of different types of things but i don't know that um if you just put a condition that they come up with a plan, if it would meet all of the expectations of the commission. So I suspect that you would want to see the details of that and know that it is robust and what you're really after and meets the concerns of the neighborhood that you're hearing. So I would, I think some type of postponement would be appropriate. I'm curious what Ms. DeLeo thinks, looks like she concurs.

still check in with the table before we move immediately to postponement. So let's hear from Planner DeLeo first.

I would have echoed the same thing like unless you definitely know what it is you're asking for but to me it sounds like you have there's a little bit of agreement that it doesn't yet meet the criteria for a special exception use approval specifically the one regarding traffic impact and so an option would be yes postpone it make that make that clear that you don't think that it currently meets the criteria for approval perhaps allow them an opportunity to modify their site plan or special exception use.

And then can I just add something here with your permission, which is if we go down that road, can we do it from the 545, not from the 719? Because then that tells us, because that's where it's supposed to be, but it is not. And so the increment of what we're seeing in the traffic study says 30, but it's not 30, it's 185. And so like, is that a part, is that something we could ask for as a commission or is that not permitted? Manager Kelly.

think that if the Commission has intentions to not allow them an official increase in the enrollment to match their current enrollment that that should be stated because they'll have to I'm sure that that would put them back at the drawing board for certain things related to maybe their

site plan these are plans that are accommodating a larger student body so sure um okay so then on your advice um and again i i have a cue so i will turn to the queue in just a second if we are thinking about postponing uh that's one decision another just with the intent of getting a you had an acronym for it i didn't write down all the letters I wrote it down correctly. TDM. Oh, great. All right. So to retrieve one of those, but we'd have to communicate. That's one thing. The second thing is there. Commissioner Adams has raised and I concur with Commissioner Adams. I'm going to quote Commissioner Hammersmith and say he said it more eloquently than I could. There you go. that I don't think this meets the legal standard because it is based on what you currently are not what you were approved for and so now you've made what you currently are the floor which is not in fact the truth. The truth is supposed to be 545 but you've exceeded to 719 and now you're asking us to make a decision based on something that was not permitted in the first place. So if there is four affirmative votes that direction, that would be a denial because it could be a tie at the table. So there's a second part, which Manager Kelly just articulated, which is that this may fail either at the table because we do not want to approve this increase to 750, but we haven't considered that question. So those also exist.

everybody okay with what i've articulated so far commissioner adams and then we'll go to the queue i'm sorry go ahead i guess if it's it's procedurally permissible i'd like to give them a chance to amend okay that's where i'd like to go with it i mean i it's a hole in the application um we can't grant it with that hole there but they deserve an opportunity to amend

At the table or through a postponement? Through a postponement. Okay, so that's different. Yeah, bring it back. Okay, great, thank you. All right, in my queue, I have Bassuni, Weatherby, Norton, Hammerschmidt, and then Weitsch.

Excellent. Thank you, everyone, for your patience and commitment to sitting through this with us. So I have a question for the planners. To clarify, OK, so I think it's 5.29.5, point D, point 1, point E. will not have a detrimental effect on the natural environment. Could you please share with me what the scope of the natural environment is? And I'll give some context. I was curious because the head of school had shared that there are currently students coming in from, since it's a regional school, there is a draw from, I think he listed off Plymouth, Northville, Canton, and other environs. And so I'm curious about the environmental impact parents and students driving in from this larger catchment area and so with that that's why I was curious about for E the detrimental effects on the natural environment where where's the catchment area for RUDC in this case if there is one I sort of wish our city attorneys were here

It is my opinion that it's not that deep, that these are talking about the physical effects of the use and the building. Maybe if the standards were written today, but I don't think that it encompasses that. I think that it is talking about the mere fact that it is a school and does the school fit on this land as a land use. and then the the building itself and water you know does does things like pollution things like um air quality things like water quality um just i think that that those are the That was what the criteria was at the time it was written.

Thank you. Yeah, that sounds good, barring the attorney's presence. And then for the, I believe it was the petitioner, I had a question. I guess I have two questions. I don't know if you can answer them, but let's find out. One is, if you're able to share, I was curious what the median income of families whose children attend Green Hills School is, given that it's a private school. I was curious.

There have been a couple comments made about the precociousness of our kids and also affluent kids. We award over three and a half million dollars a year in financial aid per year for a student body of 700 kids. I don't have off the top of my head exactly what the average median household is but I can tell you that we did a lot of demographics and looking at the future of the school and one of the really startling things was that we have 5% of the market share of households in Ann Arbor with school-aged children who have $450,000 or higher. So what that tells me is not all of our kids are Barton Hills Country Club members. We have very modest families. Our tuition is based on a two-professor household. It's how we started. We began back in the days when professors actually could live in Arbor Hills or Brents Park. That was who our kids were. That's who our kids are now. I'm joking when I say that over half of our email addresses are University of Michigan professors. So last I checked, they're not making a million dollars a year. So it's a startlingly modest school.

Thank you. So it was a bit of a left field question. But I was like, if you had that number, I would be interested. And then my second question was, for the traffic study, I'm not sure if I missed this. Could you give an estimate of how many of your enrolled students drive, on average, to school? I understand the current enrollment, about 719. And you did mention that 400 to 500 don't have a car. But I was wondering of the remainder, or of the entire student population, on average, how many do you think drive to school?

sure uh no more than at any again it depends on when when kids get their licenses but uh not all of our seniors drive so that's 100 kids but you know probably 80 90 of them we have about 19 of our kids have siblings in the school so they drive siblings and that might be where one of the gaps is we're not taking into account that we have seniors who are driving their younger siblings to school we send buses to plymouth canton northville and nova as well as to ypsilanti so a number of of cars i i don't know what the exact number is but i am sure there's no more than a hundred and 50 160 on average right again and that's for students or is that total with faculty right and then we have faculty and staff as well thank you sure thank you i think those are all my questions so i'll see you back thank you commissioner weatherby then norton then hammersmith then weich

Okay, so while I agree with what everybody said about traffic, I'm going to take a different turn. I'm more of a plant person than a car person. So the buffer area for invasive management, while I appreciate that you are cleaning up that area, it does look like that area is already under your purview as a wetlands or nature area and is actually featured on your website. And so I'm wondering, this is again sort of a concern of you're getting credit for cleaning up something that maybe already should have been cleaned up. And I don't know, again, this is probably for staff of like, is there any requirement when they have you know a wetlands buffer or a wetlands to keep that in any sort of state or is that just a um it exists on their property and that's what exists because then a follow-up for me would be what can we add to make sure that going forward there isn't just yeah they cut down the invasives see you later bye because then they will be back next year all right I'm blanking on the question okay so the first question is should that buffer area already have been monitored for invasives or other health of that area.

It is my understanding, no. Although the buffer area are offered the same protections as the wetland area, the management expectations are not the same. The buffer is, I think, somewhat new in the arc of code requirements. The purpose of the buffer is so that they protect the wetland from physical construction. It's a don't put your building at the edge of the wetland because building that building or whatever improvement will obviously impacted, so it's a 25-foot buffer to make sure that nothing happens to the actual wetland. I can consult with our environmental coordinator, but I do believe that is correct.

then the second question was what can we add something to make sure that sort of the cleanup that is proposed is is cleanup moving forward that it's not just a oh a one-time cut of invasive plants and

um for that i would have to follow up i'm not as familiar with the administration of a wetland use permit um and i can see if it could be attached or already attached to that or if it's part of the special exception use i would follow up on that question okay thank you commissioner norton

I have a couple of comments, I guess. I want to point out, we don't know for sure why the limit was originally set at 540 students, and whether that was because of traffic. Presumably it was, and I'm guessing that having more than that number of students has had an impact. So I don't want to like over-prescribe what the logic of the original limit was. Having said that, I agree with Commissioner Adams that it's highly problematic to, violate the rule and then come in and say, well, we're not going to have an impact because we're just going to do what we're already doing. So I would have to not go along with voting to approve this as is. So I'm in favor of giving the petitioner time to go back and remedy the problems that they've created by presumably exceeding the number of students who should be there. So that in bringing up the allowable number to amend the SEU, we're addressing the traffic problems that have come along with the exceeding numbers. I want to point out there are two distinct problems here that I'm hearing. One is a parking problem, and the other is people coming and going. And those are distinct. I also want to point out that they're not unique to this school. Every city school has this problem. I saw it with my own kids when they were in school and people racing to get to drop off their kids. So they're not unique that way, although I think with the design of this road network, it's probably maybe more problematic. because of the way the school is kind of sitting at the end of a loop. So if we're going to ask the petitioner to do a traffic demand study, I also want to point out, I'm really reticent for us to say, build more parking, because we keep trying to say, stop building more parking. So I'm not sure that that's a solution, but maybe some additional turnoff areas to allow for drop-off in a more safe way. Would building sidewalks on Green Hills Drive make it more safe if there's a real traffic safety concern if people are walking in the road? So I guess I would ask the petitioner to think carefully and long about how to fix the problem that they're dealing with now and not just say, well, we're not going to have more problems because we're already there. That's not acceptable. But can you do a traffic demand study that really deals with those two distinct aspects of what's going on the parking situation but also the access and people coming and going and in demand management i wouldn't be very much in favor of of giving the petitioner time to address those concerns thank you thank you commissioner norton commissioner hammerschmidt

Thank you. So before I am in full agreement of everything that's been discussed with the post woman, I'm not going to beat that to death. But I do want to ask, is there currently a process for drop off and pick up from a transportation demand management type of perspective?

Yes, we have buses. We also have public school. The Ann Arbor Public Schools also brings kids as well and we have crossing guards. We've got our in the morning, I'm out there in the morning, but yes there is a process. We have a the parents know how to go through the loop at both sides of the building every morning we have five staff members you know bringing people in and pausing people and and and we have put cones and signs and we've had a great relationship with Earhart Village and it is as you said Commissioner Norton like I've dropped my own kids off at public schools here and and elsewhere it's you know I I plan my days sometimes not to go by Huron at that time or not try to get to Greenville so but we have been working on it and we have been trying and that's one of the reasons why we have this staggered schedule which I would maintain is gonna make a huge difference because not everybody's coming in at the same time and that also goes for for departures as well

So I am across Earhart at King dropping my kids off, so I have not experienced what happens. It sounds like a very similar process to what we have at King. However, what I'm hearing from some of the neighbors is that it's impassable on Green Hills, which I have my share of road rage in the mornings as I'm trying to navigate around people that are just sitting there waiting for a driveline. But it's navigable. And it sounds like there's cars parked places and blocking driveways. We don't have that problem. Again, I don't know if this is happening or not, although there are pictures, apparently. Do you see these things? Because from what you're saying, it sounds like you have a process that works on paper, maybe.

I drive in every morning. I drive out in the afternoon. Are there times I have to wait a little bit? Absolutely. I would say it's not fabulous, but I also live right across the street from Eberwhite. I don't leave at certain times, or I know it's going to take longer. i want to work we want to work in a better way that's why we have this plan it's where we have traffic guards out there we're even looking at you know permitting maybe not even allowing sophomores i'd be the most unpopular head of school in the history of schools to say to sophomores you can't drive at all i'm sorry so we're we are looking at it absolutely and and again i i just want to underscore the we've been at 650 plus for 10 years now and the traffic study has been done at this population that we are not at five right ever which is kind of the the whole crux of the idea yeah yeah yeah right but but the traffic study did not find anything that was absolutely untenable so

Yeah, I don't know if that's what we can discern from that. I get it.

But we still want to work on it, absolutely.

Yeah, so it would be great to get different, better answers.

There's something else I was going to say that just flew out of my head.

Oh, I think. And I think with School of Choice, a lot of other neighborhood schools are starting to experience this, too. But I think something unique about Green Hills is that you are pulling from such a large catchment area. And you can't have walkers and bikers. And so I think the buses and the private vehicles are probably close to 100% of the way that kids get to this school. So I guess I would just encourage you to keep trying to,

educate the drivers i mean if you did ban sophomores driving on campus like that might help i mean yeah maybe you wouldn't be popular but they yeah no one no i and and we're working 40 years in schools and driving is always with kids and parents yeah absolutely i get it okay thank you thanks thank you anyone else before i make my comments uh commissioner mills

Just a real quick thing that as we're going back to the drawing board to think about a plan, I would say a plan needs to be implemented. And I'm much more interested in the implementation aspect of it, and particularly things that aren't just on paper, but that have teeth in them, in part because we know what happened in terms of the cap of number of students. if there's a plan to say ban sophomores from driving, for example, like how do we do, how do we enforce that? And so like, exactly. So thinking, I mean, this idea of sidewalks, like that is the thing that is failing right now. And there's not sidewalks there. Like if that helps people not get run over, like awesome. So that's, I think that that would be something that I'm interested in thinking about.

Council Member Dish.

Thank you very much, Chair Wyche. Yeah, I just want to clarify, precocious does not connote rich, so that was not my comment. My comment was a late night joke, which is never good, but I wasn't making a class judgment about your students. I also just think that it's a plan. We also need some ideas about physical infrastructure. The STEAM school struggles with the same thing, which is in my neighborhood, because there's a lot of dropping off there. And so many different locations for for drop-off sites have been tried. And the best, the most successful seem to be the church parking lot right across the street and many crossing guards. But I think that there is a problem with drop-off being constrained. I would urge the neighbors that live on Green Hills Drive to organize and ask for residential parking only. You made the comment that people have always been parking on Green Hills Drive. I don't know why that should be. I don't know why people are not, your lot capacity seems adequate, or I'd like to know if you're, I think Commissioner Mills brought this up, if your lot capacity is adequate for your faculty, staff, and students. You actually don't seem, you don't have a lot of students driving. it's it's a question of trying to figure out how much of it is a parking problem and how much of it is a drop-off problem and those are two different things to solve but i don't see why people are parking on green hills drive especially since it's that just makes the drop-off issue worse because drop-off is probably the one place where we like flow Normally, we're not so interested in preserving the speed of flow, but in this case, that's part of what's getting dangerous. So I just think we need some traffic professionals, which I am not one, to help with a redesign of a meaningful plan and some actual infrastructural considerations. And so... whatever condition it is that I'm asking for, it's something like that. And I agree that we should postpone because I don't wanna, it's not that I don't think this increase is okay, the increase is necessary and serving a good purpose. But it hasn't met the legal standards that we need in order to approve it.

Thank you, colleagues. First, I want to address the neighbors, because I read your comments as well as many of my colleagues. So if you could put in the public record the photos that you had on your phone and just send them to planning at a2gov.org. For the neighbors whose driveways are being blocked, I would invite you to call Ann Arbor Community Standards. I'm going to give you their number. It's 734. It'll be on the recording later. 794-6942. They will come out. They will cite and ticket if someone is blocking your driveway. People park in front of my house for the football games, and I come out and I tell them, your tire is too far into my driveway. If you just move your car 100 feet... It'll be here when you get back. If you leave it here, I can't guarantee that. And so that is an enforcement tool that you have. It's non-police and they'll ask if you want it ticketed or towed. And if you request that it's towed so that you can have access to your drive, that is your right. And so that helps with enforcement because when people's cars disappear, they make different choices, I have learned. Just community standards is part of the police. but it's not armed, that's what I meant when I said not the police, I was talking about guns. But thank you, Commissioner Weatherby. So Manager Kelly, it looks like if I were counting the votes at the table, this would not pass tonight as it is presented. I don't know that for sure because I haven't done a roll call vote, but given the words that many commissioners have articulated, I don't think we have five affirmative votes at the table to move this forward. So there seemed to be interest in postponement to give the petitioner opportunity to address some of the concerns that were articulated. but i want to stop and start with planner delio to make sure that what we've articulated can be transmitted to the petitioner and if not what you might need from the table so that that could be clear if we did ask for a postponement and ask for something to come back now i i do think i understand the

that it does not meet the traffic standard and that the there's a variety of options but something will need to come with a revised plan okay does it uh commissioner weatherby and also a little bit about the uh the plants the the continuous uh saving of the wetland buffer

Okay. So then with that, Manager Kelly, what is the best course of action for postponement? Do we want to postpone to a date certain or do we want to just postpone indefinitely?

Well, I would be curious to know from the applicant how much time you would like to address these concerns. In my understanding, it's probably not another traffic study, but likely some type of transportation planning proposal that includes a suite of solutions to reduce the vehicle traffic on site. And I'm happy to follow up with Ms. DiLeo to give you some ideas and directions for that. I don't know if it's something that you already have someone on retainer for, or if you would have to go seek those services that can take time. So I'm not sure what your timeline is, or could you give us some insight into how this would affect you? Because it would have to be, if it's to a date uncertain, then it would have to be re-noticed, and that's a minimum three-week process in and of itself.

Right. The quick answer is immediately as soon as we will get after this right away. So the sooner we're going to get after this right away. We actually, as I said, we already have plans. We will just solidify them and get them in front of you. And because As you can imagine, we have children that are going to have to start a school. We've got mods that we're going to put kids in while their classrooms are offline. We have construction, and it's already May. So we are highly motivated to get something in front of you right away. So I don't know. you know, what that means in terms of when the next meeting is, but a matter of days.

So there's, I mean, there's proposals and there's proposals. If you had a plan, it could go as deep into the weeds as modeling different types of travel behavior on your site based on specific interventions. That can take time, so just keep that in mind. If your timeline is immediately, it still takes time to prepare that. We have the 6-16 agenda and 7-7 agendas have room for you.

We would like to be on the 6-16 agenda for sure.

Does that sound amenable to the table? Okay, then you could...

I'm gonna just check in with Commissioner Norton, sorry. Your face is not transmitting.

I perceive what we're asking for is something a bit more than just saying we've got some plans, we'll just write them down.

Sure.

There are meaningful issues that we're hearing here. You're already over capacity by 200 students. It's causing a lot of conflicts as people are coming and going. and maybe you're gonna want to build sidewalks or something so I'm okay with 616 but I I would be really unhappy if you come back and say basically the same thing and we've just written down how we changed the timing and we don't own the property we would love to have sidewalks there we don't own that property that's well I'm not saying that you need don't I'm sorry don't don't take that as I'm telling you you need to build sidewalks I'm just I'm a little bit concerned that you'll come back and say, well, we're going to start our classes at two different times, and that'll solve the problem, which clearly didn't convince anybody here that's going to by itself solve the problem. So some meaningful Talk to the transportation experts about what is likely to really solve the problem. If you can do that by 616, great. I have no objections to that. I was just kind of reacting to what you said off the cuff about we'll just kind of write stuff, our plans down.

Yeah, and I think the concern for us is we don't, there's no benefit for us to have to do this multiple times with you. right so like the i think the table as articulated by commissioner adams is uh we want to give you an opportunity to address the concerns that we have raised and uh 616 is um three regular meeting no it's two regular meetings from today right so that's a total of four weeks and there you'll have to get time with the planner you'll have to get something yeah So there's a lot going on. So I think what Commissioner Norton is saying is we recognize your concern for urgency. And if you want to go on the 616th, make sure you are reading and understanding the table correctly because we're trying to be as clear and as articulate as we possibly can be. Okay.

and and the last if i just make a request i i know we're very aware of challenges as we all are at all schools you some of you said you walked hill street with the previous petitioner i invite you to drive green hills drive as well sure i i i mean i think that it would be important i have no doubt that it's problematic for folks we've talked about it a lot you're basing this on uh some people's rightful concerns, I would say, experience it yourself as well.

Well, can I follow up?

You may.

I want to get into the debate. We're basing it on the fact that you are enrolling more than 200, almost 200 students more than what you are permitted to enroll. That creates a legal problem for us. It creates a permitting problem for us. I think the sense I'm getting is we're all amenable to what you're trying to do in terms of expanding your program. I'm worried about wetlands too, but I think that's remediable. So I think the message I'm trying to convey is that traffic is an issue. It is at every school. That doesn't mean you're going to solve it completely, but a meaningful effort to try and deal with what are real issues going on here. And please, just something more than we're going to write down our change of schedule.

Absolutely. That's what I'm asking. And to answer your previous question, if i could turn back the clock when we had an architect who was working with us ac3 dan jacobs when we did that last one where did that 540 number come he just made it up we were he was seeing our growth we were at 500 there was nothing he just threw it out there to the planning committee I wasn't, it's not something that I kept track of. If I could turn back, I would have had him put 750. And we probably might not even be here today. But I think that's where that number came from. There was no study. There was no nothing. We were at 520 at that time. OK.

you're committed to you want to come back on 6 16. all right well we'll let you work with planning staff on that and we wish you good luck what we're going to do now is fig yes i'm getting there i was just like helping him finish So planning manager, is it a simple commissioner moves that we postpone this to a date certain? Do you have language for us?

Just the date with a motion, a seconder and a voice vote.

all right looks like uh commissioner adams is going to do that for us yeah i'll move to postpone this to 6 16. seconded by commissioner mills all those in favor say aye aye any opposed it is postponed so friends we are at 11 37 commissioner mills is going to exit the table that changes our count from eight commissioners to seven we still have a quorum we're not taking up new business because the agenda is already in place do we have to vote since we are past 11 because our bylaws require it yes please take a motion to take up the next agenda item okay so um okay so so moved i move all right so we have a moved by council member dish seconded by commissioner adams all those in favor say aye aye any opposed all right That allows us to move forward to the next agenda item which is 1710 Devarin Road, SP 25026. Also 1680 Devarin Road and 2520, 2540, 2600, 2670, 2672, 2678-2682 Pontiac Trail. This is a site plan on a 78-acre site for 616 multifamily housing units, including 136 for sale attached townhomes, and 480 rental apartments of one, two, and three bedrooms. The central portion of the site was previously used as a landfill, and a 10-acre portion of this area will be undeveloped and used as open space. Necessary remediation activities will also occur as a part of this development. The plan includes connections to Devarin Road on the north and Pontiac Trail to the west, along with an internal connection to the open portion of Leslie Park to the east and an internal north-south circulation. The parcel is zoned, are for a multifamily dwelling zoning district, and is located in Ward 1. Staff recommendation is conditional approval. we'll start with a presentation from robertson brothers then we'll have a staff presentation by planner shake and then we will have a public hearing followed by the motion being read and our discussion good evening it's almost good morning but thank you for enduring and you have your full 10 minutes well thank you i'm back

tim locker and with robertson holmes and you've seen this many times so i'm not going to belabor it too much but i do want to show what the difference is from the last time the last two times you have approved this and i've no idea where that came from i think this is it good all right Again, thank you for the time tonight. Again, Tim Lockman with Robertson Homes. You've seen me several times here. You've seen this project several times. And it is essentially, I believe, in a position where we could get EGLE support, which is really, and I'll get into that in a little bit, of why we're here tonight. I think this works. So again, I think most of you are familiar. Essentially, it's at DuVern and Pontiac Trail. And I kind of think of it as between Olsen Park and Leslie Park. And it is, as Chair Weish, as you mentioned, was a former landfill, city of Ann Arbor landfill. We're not building on that, but we're building on the other sections. And one of the reasons why we're here tonight is we have kind of shifted the site plan a little bit to meet EGLE's requirements, which I'll show you in a second. But we're staying away from the area that was previously mined and then filled back in with a construction debris and the landfill. So why are we here tonight? Essentially, we're asking for an amendment to the existing site plan for the Village of Ann Arbor. And if you recall back in 2023, we had received approval from you for what was a site plan amendment at the time, and we actually had a brownfield approved, a pretty large brownfield, because there is a lot of work to do on the site. We were about to close on the property, and EGLE, we were asking for a last letter from EGLE, and they said, No, we've shifted the way that we've our policy for methane guidance. You know, I don't want to speak too ill of EGLE because, you know, obviously that wouldn't do so well for me. With that shift in the methane guidance, it basically put a complete pause on the development. We had to start from scratch, essentially. They had no guidance. So we were the guinea pig. It was us and another large project in the Grand Rapids area where we were kind of the guinea pigs for this. So it's been a long time. It's been over two years, which is exactly very frustrating. but essentially we help them get to the point where there's a guidance policy and that could tell us how close we could get to some of the areas of the methane by the way the methane is extremely low which is the really frustrating part of this so it's not like anything's gonna you know blow up here but it was just over the residential levels which put us in kind of a bad spot so we've worked very closely with them for the new standards it's been a long time we've amended the plan and essentially we're here tonight to show you the new plan just quickly on the summary same acreage 78 acres the master plan is seven to ten units per acre and we're just right kind of in the middle of that previously I think there's a 604 units tonight I'm proposing 616 but it's essentially the same plan but for one area which I'll show you and still a village concept we did get rid of the two-story townhomes which is something I think was was a really good part of the plan we just can't do it we can't build in that area where those two-story townhomes were so what we're left with on the plan today is 136 for sale townhomes there was a three-story and then 360 garden style apartments and 120 what i call three-story walk-ups so it's about eight units per acre and so they do range from 685 square feet all the way up to 865 square feet anywhere from one to three bedrooms so it's still got that village feel which is something we're really excited about and we have for sale attached single family town homes we also have apartments and there's a lot of amenities which i'll go through in a second and we are over 65 open space which really kind of speaks to the to the nature of the project This is the plan. It's about the same that you'd seen before and that you'd approved before. The only difference is this area here which was not part of the landfill but it was part of the original mining operation area that because it was filled with some construction debris really it's like they put trees in there and things like that organics and that's what created the methane. We have to stay off of that area. So we pulled everything back and we basically kept the town homes here, kept the apartments up here, and we just expanded some of the apartments here. And we created, it's allowed us to actually have a nice centralized open space area. We still are proposing the road connections to Leslie Park. which would also have a multi multi-use trail which would allow people to come right through the park area here we're also proposing some paths in the former landfill as well and we do have equal approval to do that as well and we could have a community amenity here we're proposing a dog park and that keeps happening dog park and some community gardens that sort of thing This is just a couple of things that I showed you last time. Really, not much has changed. We are proposing an all-electric component for the townhomes, the for sale townhomes, yet the apartments would be gas. And I know that there'll be people speaking on behalf of that. By the way, I feel like Rich and our friends, we've worked so well together. But the all-electric component would be the for sale townhomes. And you can see a lot of this. We already have a wetland permit. A lot of these things are things that we agreed to last time. Clubhouse would have solar panels and street and solar streetlights throughout. And of course, all those over a mile bike and pedestrian paths. So this is really what I wanted to show you. This is the approved plan, which was on the left, and then the amended plan on the right. And really all it is is taking that center area, making it, it's shifting where that previous open space amenity was and shifting the apartments over a little bit. So that's really it. That took us two and a half years, which sounds ridiculous, but it did. And that's why we're here tonight. Just quickly, this is the design of the townhomes, the three-story townhomes, which would have rooftop decks. And then this would be the apartments. DTN is our partner. They do a great job. I know they're from Lansing, but, you know, let's... let's give them give them a chance here and then just a few highlights i don't need to read through all of these i think you all understand what we're what we're trying to do we're really trying to clean up a site that needs to be cleaned up and it's good for the city it's good for the neighborhood it's good for you know just the project in general and you know we're trying the best we can to make it a family village type of community and again clean up the area and And I didn't want to belabor the point too much, so that's all I have to speak to. There are some conditions of approval. Most of them really are minor things that we can address in final engineering. I do want to speak to two of them. One of the comments conditions is for some off-site sidewalk along DuVarn. and you know this is a buy right site plan it's not something we're confused why it's a requirement and it's also really kind of impossible to implement I think because there are some town Ann Arbor Township parcels there's no right-of-way dedicated for it so it's really not even possible but again we're kind of confused why there's an off-site requirement for a buy right project So we've told Josh our objections on that. Then there was a comment about the paths through the open space. We're opening that to the public. We think this is a nice public amenity. One of the requirements is that we have to replace trees for three years that might fall. And we don't think that that's fair to do that. So that's something we've objected to as well. I can't really be responsible for people that are walking through there for the next three years and trees fall down. So other than that, I really don't have any issues with the conditions. I think we're on the same page with staff. We work very well with staff. on multiple projects. So I'm here to answer any questions.

I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. We'll turn now to Planner Shaikh to have a staff presentation.

Yeah, thank you for reading through the whole summary of the project. It helps get things going. Thank you, Tim, for showing the images to contextualize things. So I'll just draw attention to a few things. So as Tim mentioned, or as the applicant mentioned, there were two previous iterations of the site plan. and SP23-0009. So just to track a little bit the evolution, I think the number of parcels has grown a little bit through some of these previous iterations. SP21-24 was approved in September of 2022, proposed 484 residential units, 164 for sale townhomes and 320 rental apartments spread over 68 acres. So I think there were, I don't remember if it's two or four parcels that were later annexed and rezoned. There was some annexations and rezonings for the original SP21-0024. Then there were a couple of additional parcels that were added for SP, 23-0009, which was approved in December of 23, which had 604 total units and mostly increasing the number of apartment units by 120. And that previously approved site plan increase the total site area to 78 acres and and as tim showed visually a lot of the sim a lot of similar features uh so you may be asking a while why are we looking at this again there were enough significant changes to the previous iteration that it does warrant a new site plan shifting the units around and the circulation and all those types of things staff recommendation um The staff recommendation is conditional approval. The proposed motion statement has the list of conditions. It may set a record for the longest that you may have to read as chair so far, but I'm happy to open or answer any other questions once we get to that phase.

Thank you, Planner Shaikh, for your staff presentation. I will now open the public hearing for this item. This is an opportunity for individuals to speak up to three minutes on this item. We'll first hear from those of you who are present with us in chambers, then we will turn to remote participants if there are any. To speak remotely, press star 9 if on phone or use the raise hand feature if on Zoom. For phone access, dial 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226. City staff will identify callers by the last three digits of their phone number or by name if on Zoom. you will hear an announcement when it's your turn to speak please move to a quiet area mute any background noise for all participants please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments i see that you're ready to present so come right up i won't even ask

Hello. I'm Rich Fine. I reside at 618 Duane Court. I'm actually here representing the Ann Arbor chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby. I'm here to talk about electrification of the four rent units at the village. Some of you might be aware that with the help of Mr. Garber, we've been tracking whether new developments are being heated with gas or with electric. Since December of 2023, I'm going to state a statistic here. We're going to focus on the living units. Ideally, I'd like to also focus on electrification of the common areas, but we spotted 25 medium to large multifamily developments that have been through this commission since December of 23. Of those, 23 had living units that have either been approved or are being proposed as all electric. 23 out of 25. That's two left. One of those, 711 Church, was originally proposed as all electric, but there was a miscommunication from our discussions with DTE as to whether there was enough capacity or not. So that may have been all electric, too, if it wasn't for that miscommunication. The one that's left goes back to December of 23, and that is the village. We understand that gas was what was originally approved. for the four rent units but we're wondering if the petitioner has done any type of analysis of all going all electric and what they may have determined from that effort we know that back in 2023 there was some concerns about the increase in costs the operating costs of this runs it costs a little bit more to run with electricity than it does with gas but we've seen 23 other developments that are able to have all electric units so we're wondering why we can't have that here We have a great streak going, and basically we're just hoping that we can keep that streak going by having the villages switch their gas units, their for-rent units to all electric.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fine. Mr. Garber, are you coming?

Yes, thank you, Chair Walsh. Ken Garber, 28, Have Arrow Court. As always, I'm impressed by your stamina. You also still have a major agenda item still to address tonight. So you have my sympathy. Yeah, so you have my calculations in my letter from yesterday showing that gas heat for these 480 apartments will result in about 1500 metric tons more CO2 annually than would be the case for scope 2 emissions with heat pumps on those units. Just for perspective, that's about, that's like putting 400 more long distance commuting vehicles on the road each year. Just the difference between gas and electric. Mr. Fine has talked about the past rationalizations for going with gas here that would put this project at a competitive advantage with other projects. That's one thing that's very different from the last time you saw this project. Mr. Fine is documented. Just about everything you're approving these days is all electric. That's now the competitive space, not gas projects in new construction. And while it's true that utility costs are modestly higher with electric due to DTE's artificially high rates here in Southeast Michigan, the cost is not so great. Refer to my analysis. The cost difference is not that great. My analysis shows it'd be about $42 a month on average, and DTN, the property manager, could choose to pay that instead of the tenants. if rents were an issue for the developer. There's a bigger picture here. There's a brownfield plan that will be presented very soon on this project. If it's like the last one, it will include non-environmental cost reimbursement through TIF. The city's policy in such cases is to require 15% of units be affordable housing or payment in lieu. So it doesn't sound like the petitioner is planning affordable housing here, yet I'm fairly certain that there will be non-environmental cost TIF. Last time the city chose to violate its own policy and not require that affordable housing, but it may choose otherwise this time. So I think that It's important for us to take a holistic view of this project, and I suggest postponement until we get clarity on the level of public subsidy for this project through the Brownfield plan, so we can address all these issues.

Thank you, Mr. Garber. Is there anyone else present who'd like to address us at this time? Manager Kelly, do we have remote participants who would like to address us?

We have one remote participant whose hand is not raised.

Oh, okay. All right, I will close the public hearing. With the permission of everybody here, because this is a two-page motion, can I read the first part? And then when we get to the conditions, I just refer to the conditions as listed on the agenda. Is everyone okay with that? Thank you. No, it's two pages. As listed in the staff report. As listed in the staff report. Thank you, Mr. Leonard. So, the motion. The Ann Arbor City Planning Commission approves the Village of Ann Arbor Site Plan Version 3, dated March 27, 2026, SP 5-0026, 1710 Durbaran Road and 1680 Devaren Road and 2520, 2540, 2600, 2670, 2672, 2678, 2682 Pontiac Trail subject to the execution and compliance with the development agreement and the following conditions which must be satisfied through the submission of revised plans within six months of approval by the Planning Commission. Those conditions are listed in the staff report. All conditions must be fully satisfied through the submission of the compliant plans prior to the city's acceptance and or review of civil engineering plans and prior to the issuance of any associated permits for development. Moved by Councilmember Dish, seconded by Commissioner Hammerschmidt. We are in discussion. Who would like to kick us off? Commissioner Hammerschmidt.

Thank you. Glad to see you back. Totally thought this project had started already, so I'm sorry for everything you've been through. I'm going to ask a question that I think I know the answer is no, but I'm going to ask it anyway, because I remember before you moved the buildings around, the answer was no. But now I'm seeing there's a nice little connection that could be made to that community to the west where the little, I don't know, what are those? I don't know.

You're talking about right here?

Well, I'm talking about, I remember that's what we talked about two years ago. So down below where you've got a road that connects in, I guess my question is, any further communication with that community to see if you could connect in?

We have not had those conversations. I mean, it's essentially the same location. I think we moved that up just a little bit north. I believe there's a grade issue there. He's talking about, or she's talking about right here. She's talking about right where?

Right where, like, the east-west, like, probably, there's, like, garage entries or something would connect to the west. Yeah.

Gotcha. So Matt Bush, Atwell. Up here, we are making the connection to a sidewalk up here. Oh, OK. Pedestrian connection. That remains unchanged there. There is grade difficulties there, but also in addition to that, just easements, inability to connect due to easements with the adjacent property.

OK. Staff, the sidewalk condition. Is that, I could be wrong, is that just like a sidewalk gap that because they're doing a development they have to fill or is this a new thing?

Yeah so the the person question since Tim had or the applicant has the map up it's the so you see the connection on Duvaren from the the proposed development to Duvaren. I'm trying to move my mouse on my computer. expecting it to move on the screen to the north the parcel just to the west thanks is a township parcel so so the the directive comes from from pro-ag uh guidance that um transportation connections should be made to the closest uh bus stops basically the multimodal stops so that's whether the the transportation division um recommendation or condition comes in the underlying issue is as the applicant pointed out it is a township parcel so the the condition has been phrased such that potential right-of-way issues shall be determined at a later date to not have this be a determinant factor tonight but the condition is phrased such that the final outcome of that sidewalk gap whether or not it is feasible or not because there potentially could be feasibility issues if it is just a township parcel documentation we need to do staff needs to do more work digging into potential right-of-way where the right-of-way is outlining across documentation because it's not officially within the city of ann arbor but there appears in some of our documentation that there is right away so just giving us that time to explore that and deferring that final decision to the public services area administrator or their designee as to whether that gap is closable or not.

Okay, well let's hypothetically say that it is closable, but it sounds like the petitioner is very much like not I don't know the right word at midnight. Amenable. I was like excited to like, say we prove this and it goes forward, blah, and you do your research and it's like, okay, it can be closed. But they're like, no, this isn't our property. I don't know. Like, is there a, what am I trying to ask here? I'm so tired, guys. Mr. Leonard?

You might be, so when we evaluate a site plan, we are considering how it functions within our transportation network. And sometimes that does require off-site improvements to accommodate this proposed scale or typology of development. In the case of something like this, we're adding a lot of households, making sure that we have improved non-motorized networks where possible to significant locations I think is a really important part of a site plan approval. Sometimes it manifests in other projects that you've seen where it might include a pedestrian crossing, for example, or something. So I just want to be clear that while it is off-site, sometimes that is finding it as a necessity in order for this development to function within our transportation network.

And the reason why it's a condition is because there still needs to be work done to assess the feasibility of it. OK.

We recognize that, I mean, just to echo Mr. Loughran's comments, there are questions to be determined there. And so we want to keep some flexibility. But I do want to be clear that if desired, that's going to be our expectation to put on this to accomplish that network. And that's why it's as a condition.

OK. Do you want to respond to anything that either of our public commenters said about the electrification of the apartments?

So I understand it. Two of those 23 projects are Robertson projects. So, I mean, we do agree to it and we're agreeing to it with the for sale. It really becomes the for rent. And it's not just for rent compared to upcoming for rent developments. What are the options somebody has to rent up here? All the other apartments in this whole area, all along DuVern and to the east, they're all gas. And so they'll have a lower utility rate. And it is a relevant thing when you're talking about utility costs. We think with the for sale, they can absorb that. They're buying a house, they know what it's going to be. But when we're talking about, you know, a little bit more of a transient population, that is a significant amount. And I believe Mr. Garber's numbers, we think that is a relevant amount. So we've been consistent with that. Yes, we still have a brownfield to go through from a site plan perspective. Yes, we want to hold firm on the gas on the apartments.

Well, I would just encourage you, because things change quickly. And two years from now, you still haven't built.

maybe just reassess and see where things are at i think that that's very relevant um we have learned a lot from rich and ken in fact i think we're members of the wolf pack but um and and so we have learned a lot in the last few years and um again we've agreed to it on two other projects so um it is something we know it's important it's something we do which is because of that gap in in pricing it's something that that um you know we're we're holding firm on at this point at this point i like that okay thank you

other commissioners. Commissioner Weatherby.

I just want to see and I think again I know the answer to this but one of my things that kind of makes me crazy is lack of connection between neighborhoods. And I think Commissioner Hammerschmidt brought this up, but also are there any connections pedestrian, I mean, I don't think there's any car connections down to Arrowwood, but are there any pedestrian connections? Are there pedestrian connections to anything other than that one up at the top?

Yes. So there is a connection that this one that we just talked about. But generally speaking, this is just one big connection from Pontiac Trail to Leslie Park and from Duvaren to Leslie Park. Right now, there is one connection to Leslie Park. and that's through a neighborhood with a private road, essentially, with an easement for the city to use. This opens that up. So we're adding multi-use paths on both of those roads. So there is a lot of connection that's just inherent as part of the project. To your point, no, we do not have a connection to the south. We added that connection, which I don't think we had this in the last one. And then, you know, we have these pathways, but there's nowhere to connect here. Obviously, you get into this neighborhood with Leslie Park, and then they can go north, and they can, I believe, I know there is an access to Arrowhead there.

Okay.

Thank you. Other commissioners?

Okay.

Commissioner Bastiani.

I have a small comment. Thank you, again, to petitioner, staff, and commenters for your own stamina for being here. A small thing, Commissioner Weatherby, you said this makes you crazy. I think, for me, that equivalent is the inadvertent conflation of renters with being a transient population. Just wanted to flag that as someone who has rented. And I know many renters who live long term in many communities. So just wanted to flag that for future discussions, presentations. Just please keep that in mind if you could. Thank you. I know it's late, too. So thank you.

I appreciate that. Other commissioners? Am I reading the lower map correctly that there is a either car or bike connection towards Leslie Park to the east in the bottom section? Yeah, right about there. There's trees over it. So is that just a main road and there's a sidewalk that's there?

Yes, the connection of the North and East Trail on the east-west road. So it's a vehicle and pedestrian connection. Okay, yeah.

Just, you know, as you know with your project on Sioux Church, just trying to open up more connection points between the neighborhoods is vital that you don't have to drive all the way out to the to the amenity in order to get out but that you can get out other places for certain and we'll work with parks on on that connection there so we've had those conversations okay great other commissioners are we ready to vote all right we need to do a roll call vote so manager kelly when you're ready somehow

The course of the evening, I lost my pen.

OK.

I don't know how that happened. OK. On the motion with conditions as presented, Weish? Yes. Hammerschmidt? Yes. Dish? Yes. Mills? Is gone. Weatherby. Yes. Adams. Yes. Norton. Yes. Bess Uni. Yes. That carries.

Good luck. Hopefully it doesn't take another two years. right we have to take another motion in order to continue with the agenda moved okay quick question could i have like a three minute break to go to the bathroom yeah yes yes yes we'll recess till 12 15. i will call us back to order but in order for us to continue we need a motion to take up our last well no you you started it but we didn't vote we went to the bathroom instead so so we it's a agenda item on my list uh 11a It is. This is the comprehensive plan implementation UDC amendment. So who's this move by? Adams and seconded by Councilmember Dish. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, the motion carries.

OK, can I jump into it? Yes, sir. Thank you so much. We did receive a couple of questions. Given the hour, I'm going to skip a few of the questions, unless they want to specifically be raised. Question 1, the draft RFP directs the UDC rewrite to, quote, use the current format as much as possible. What's the rationale for committing the rewrite to the existing UDC structure? Question 2, page 11, 2A, project goals, using the current UDC format as much as feasible. Is this referring to the modern framework referenced in the second paragraph of the introduction on the same page? If so, what metrics are being used to characterize it as modern? The response to both of these are starting with the existing articles. When I'm talking about the existing framework, I'm literally just talking about the articles and the numbering system. That provides a structure for us to begin working on the content updates rather than spending a lot of time exploring a myriad of other organizations or other outlines. And I would note that the structure has worked really well for us for modifications and amendments over time since its adoption in 2018. Question three, pages one and two of the memo are intended to clarify for the commissioners the CPC's role in the execution phase of the plan process, what the CPC's role in the execution phase of the plan process is, as both a matter of law and city practice, purely advisory, correct? In other words, staff will take whatever motion we pass on Tuesday night under advisement, but may modify or deviate from that recommendation in their sole discretion, question. That's how I read it, but it might be helpful to have that explained, clarified at the table before we deliberate and pass anything. that is correct the planning commission is advisory to the extent that the approach also involves any financial resources such as a consultant contract that discretion is solely with the city council in fact planning staff does intend to follow the desired direction of planning commission in regards to the selection amongst the options presented tonight Question four, page two, table one, how does refining differ from drafting the code? Is this part of a larger question I have for the role of CPC during this implementation process? The response to this question, drafting code is creating the initial text. Refining what I mean is editing, testing the language with scenarios and adjusting the text until it is in a form desirable for consideration and adoption by the planning commission and or the city council. Question five, page three, paragraph one. Quote, I will be providing regular engagement, quoting me. I appreciate that you can't predict more precise timeframes, but I was curious what you foresee as the estimated cadence of this engagement. You're not gonna trick me into committing to a cadence. For any options selected, there will be regular touchpoints with the Planning Commission on progress, but I haven't yet determined what such specific frequency would be. Question six, page four, paragraph one. Quote, likely a phased presentation of sections or portions of a final document. As with the previous question, what do you foresee as the estimated cadence of this and would it be more of a ramp up cadence or a consistent one? It's gonna depend on the work plan developed with any consultant or our collective work plan to complete different portions of the code or articles or sections of the code. I do speculate that the cadence would be consistent as we worked through the refinement and adoption process. There were 11 other questions submitted. They were all focused on questions about a draft work scope that we had attached to the memorandum. The scope is just a draft intended to illustrate what it may include. There will be lots of opportunities for staff to finalize that or make changes to it, frankly, before that goes. Again, I'm happy to address any of those specific questions. But given that it's just provided as an example of how that might look like, I'm not going to spend all the time at this juncture. All of that is, thank you for those questions. Those are in response to a memorandum that I shared with you that on page three tidily provides you with a proposed motion that selects either option A, B, or C. In short, option A would be the work scope that we have been discussing most consistently up to this date this would be going through different land use categories of the comprehensive plan on a one-off basis we would do hub we would do transition we would do residential then in good time we would take on things like the development standards the authority standards other aspects of the code This process generally I anticipate would take longer because we're going to be starting different phases, we're going to be going through exercises, refinement, and I think it has a greater opportunity for us to have to revisit a decision early in the process as we make decisions later in the process. Option B, which is staff's recommended scenario, is let's commit to a new modern ordinance. We would issue an RFP ideally, help identify a consultant who has been through this process with more frequency than we have. Help us do it. I think this is the best chance to complete all of the work within a three-year timeframe. I've shared some examples in previous memos of other communities that have fallen both within and without that range. Again, I am not promising. I'm just telling you relatively speaking, I think there's a greater likelihood of accomplishing everything. This also has the benefit that we can address multiple facets of the code on a parallel basis. That is, if you wanted to consider not only a land use category but also in the context of changes to parking or changes to landscape what have you it gives us the ability to do those things simultaneously rather than bouncing back and forth and then option c is provided in response to a gracious conversation that i had with chair weich and commissioner dish as chair of this board and a representative to city council to share that I was my intention of giving the Planning Commission these options and have included this option which is somewhat of a hybrid of let's do something with hub and then Comprehensively deal with the balance of the ordinance. I think that has the same pros and cons relatively speaking as I've described for options a and B and Less of a likelihood for having to bounce back because we'd only be doing one section before we undertake the other sections, but I do think it has the impact, the potential to impact the timing to a longer extent than just jumping right into the full ordinance debate. If you do pass a motion to choose option A, going land use category by land use category, I would be grateful for your consideration of the ancillary motion that says, do you want to tackle the text independently and then consider map amendments? This is how the TC1 experience was done, or would you like to do those things simultaneously?

Thank you.

Thank you. I will read the proposed. No, I won't because there isn't a motion yet before us. So I think we'd go just straight to discussion to create a motion for us to read. So who would like to kick us off? All right, Commissioner Weatherby.

All right. So in my day job, I have done something that is not similar to this, but taken an existing complicated project, took parts of it, moved it forward to a new project, and we're still dealing with that old project guck. three years down the road. It turns out it is, in my mind, easier to just kind of start fresh and be clean about these things. So I see why option B would be what seems like the cleanest. We could deal with things without Without worrying about the existing, I mean, granted, there's going to be a lot of overlap here, but I like the idea of a rewrite because I think if you count too much on the existing older stuff, it then creeps in to the new stuff in ways that you don't anticipate and ends up being kind of more complicated and less visionary than if you start new. So I... UNLESS OTHERWISE CONVINCED, INITIALLY STARTING WITH I LIKE OPTION B.

THANK YOU, COMMISSIONER WEATHERBY. COUNCIL MEMBER DISH.

THANK YOU, CHAIR WEITZ. Commissioner Weatherby, I've been thinking about this a lot. And I've been trying to think about what is the most important thing we get to do now that we've passed a comprehensive land use plan. And I think that it is that we get to have new housing opportunity, but I think the fastest path to new housing opportunity is to make the creation of plentiful new housing opportunity the rule rather than the exception. Because if it's the exception, then people have to get an exception in order to create it. And Ann Arbor's current zoning code, which, as we all know, dates to the 1960s and got even worse in the 80s, treats plentiful new housing opportunity as an exception and makes those exceptions hard to get. So we have a costly process full of extra steps and delays that drive up housing costs. This process, as one of the memos we received from the public, is also inequitable, because some people have the know-how and cash reserves to get through the process, and others get crushed by it. So what's the smoothest way to legalizing density citywide and getting it on the map? I, too, lean towards the idea, and I'm pretty persuaded, that writing a new zoning law is the best way to avoid having to keep retracing our steps to correct unforeseen obstacles that could arise from the serial approach. I am, though, wanting to put on the table that I feel a concern about what are we going to do in the meantime. I don't love that we have to stick with a piecemeal approach. And I would love it if we could get some things not piecemeal, but we may not be able to. And I really am concerned about whether we have tools. We've been using certain tools to provide density uh with the vision of the comp plan in mind and i'm worried that those tools are just got ruled out last night so i really don't know how to proceed from here i would love to have some advice on that thank you council member dish commissioner norton

I have a question and then an observation or two. The question is, if I'm understanding, Mr. Landau, you're really suggesting both of these options are pretty much the same timeline. They just play themselves out differently. Or do you think one is actually going to be quicker than the other?

i believe that option b would be quicker all in all once you step through it all i think that option a is going to again i'm modeling it a lot largely on tc1 i think it's going to be sort of project initiation multiple times determining questions about engagement multiple times taking action refining multiple times I don't sit here and signing in blood that option B guarantees less than three years and option A would be guaranteed to be four years. But just looking at the methods, my advice is that I think option B

is low is longer before changes happen but probably faster for all of the changes to have to get them and i have in the past stressed some concerns that we not move quickly to solve one problem and ended up creating other problems and my sense is option b would give us a better chance to avoid doing that as well um So I'm inclined to go along with option B. I want to go back to the first part of your memo. I think I'm disagreeing with you, Mr. Leonard, about the role of the Planning Commission vis-a-vis the staff. I'm reading from the... michigan zoning enabling act the zoning commission or in our case the planning commission shall adopt and file with the legislative body the following recommendations a zoning plan the establishment of zoning districts the text of a zoning ordinance and the necessary maps the manner of administering and enforcing the zoning ordinance i don't believe the planning commission is only advisory to the planning staff on proposing amendments to the Zoning code. I think that's the policy part of the Planning Commission. I told I totally get that the planning staff is in charge of the I'm sorry. I'm not talking in the Planning staff and you and your who you report to are make the decisions about how to allocate resources and i completely with you but i don't i'm if i'm hearing you correctly you're saying but you're all if you disagree with the policy that we select you would set that aside because we're advisory to the planning staff when it comes and i don't think that's correct your advisory to the city council Correct, yes. But we're the body that's making the recommendation to the city council on how we think the planning code. Is that correct?

So it's my responsibility to, like you said, the city administrator has resources, decides staffing of those resources. In the case of planning services, I determine how to allocate those resources as well. Part of those resources we do. is we support this board. You know, we had four or five people here this evening. So that is part of the decision that we make to do that. Yeah, I don't the planning commission is not advisory to you don't You are not simply an advisor to the planning staff. At the same time, I do make independent resource decisions that might be different from what this group's desire is. We have to work collectively to fulfill your obligation and for me to staff you in such a way so that you can advise the city council.

Yes, okay. I'm completely in line with all of that. I'm just waiting to make... clarify that it's and i'm not i don't want to we need to work together and i we have a an excellent planning staff and um we're utterly dependent on you to help us draft things and work them up but at the end of the day it's the planning commission who decides these are the recommendations we're making to the city council on how we think the zoning code should be amended i just wanted to clarify that yeah it's my job to put things on the table for you to react to yeah yeah okay all right thank you

other commissioners uh commissioner hammerschmidt thank you um sorry for thank you for doing the mail notice that sounds perfect um I think in terms of... So I also really like the idea of a full rewrite, but I also feel like we need to do something that shows that we're doing something. So I like B over A. Let's just get rid of A. But I'm intrigued by C, and I'm wondering if... if we started on Hub, but simultaneously started a consultant, if there's any path to that. Doing those two things concurrently and seeing where Hub goes. And if it becomes something, like you just mentioned, Kushner and Norton, we don't want to do something that we're going to have to undo because we're doing something too fast. And if we get into this process and it just feels like it's not going the way we want it to go for whatever reason. Like maybe we just fold that in with the consultants. Do you see any sort of flexibility there, I guess? Like we hire a consultant, but we also like Alexis gets to write Hub.

so if that's your desire i don't i wouldn't i would urge you not to think about timing or resources pick the direction if you want to start something with hub that's what we're going to do we're going to try to figure out how to do that just as an example i know that there's been some public comments and we've had some internal staff conversations I don't know exactly what that looks like. One of the things, for example, we could do is we could say, we're just going to rezone everything in the hub to D1 or TC1. We could make that as an interim step. I don't sit here and advise that because there's a lot of, there's some nuance in the comprehensive plan about how is it gonna relate to other districts. And you have not yet, nor has the council of course yet, made any conclusions about the adequacy of how TC1 satisfies that or doesn't satisfy that. And to rezone everything to TC1 and then go backwards, I think is really challenging. On the flip side, you could do something like rezone all hub areas that aren't D1 or D2 or TC1 to D2. That would be like a really incremental step. I will point out, based on my experience with city council last night, I don't see that as an easy step either when we're talking about bringing uses. If that's something you want to do, I don't sit here and say that I have the answer about what the timing or what our approach is. But if you like that option, I would urge you to consider option C. And we're going to start working to resource that, put together our thoughts about what are the ways that we can accomplish that.

One more thing. Does city council have to approve whatever implementation plan we put? No.

only if we desire to hire a consultant then they would approve any contract for that got it thank you commissioner adams and then councilmember dish sorry um i think i agree with everything that's been said um i think i'm an option b guy um There's two reasons for that. The first is what you just pointed out about last night's discussion about Ashley Muse. That's concerning and I think disabuses me, I think, of the notion that it would be easy or fast to apply D1 across Hub or something like that. It creates landmines that I'm not sure how I would navigate. The other part of it is I take seriously the fact that staff are recommending this as the pathway with the fewest landmines in your view, and I'm inclined to take that relatively seriously. I mean, you heard from me, no problems with this approach. It's going to go smooth.

Right.

It does avoid, though, going back to the first point, it does avoid the potential conflicts between existing zones, plan recommendations. current political wins, whatever we're operating in, if I have a complete rewrite, then I might stand a chance of getting that done on some reasonable time scale. That doesn't mean, though, going back to some of the comments about if there are quick wins out there that are something that we can allocate resources to in the interim, that's a conversation worth having, but I think I'm an option B guy.

Thank you, Commissioner Adams. Councilmember Dish, then Commissioner Bassuni, and then Commissioner Norton.

I just want to clarify that it's not that City Council has to approve our work plan. It's that what they showed last night was that if we send them something that broadly permits STRs, non-owner-occupied STRs, they will vote against it. And so unless they want to go back on that and say, oh, we didn't realize that that was the implication and we would actually delay your... doing a quick fix so that we could have something to show. We didn't mean to do that, right? I wouldn't risk it because then what it means is that the quick fix involves not at all a quick thing, which is clarifying the STR or revisiting, not clarifying, it's a perfectly clear ordinance. It's revisiting the STR ordinance and making some evidence-based and systematic decisions about where we would want to forbid or limit owner-occupied, excuse me, non-owner-occupied short-term rentals. And that's not a short project. So all of a sudden, the quick win isn't a quick win anymore because we've just had something turned down with the rationale that they don't want more of that.

Thank you, Councilmember Dish. Commissioner Basciuni.

Hello. OK, so thank you for Manager Leonard. It is also 1239 AM, so let's see how sharp my brain is. But thank you, Manager Leonard, for that speed run through some of my many questions. I really appreciated that. I think I'm going to table the remaining 11. I think there's only one I just wanted to kind of revisit, which is regarding the timeline. Sorry, yes. I think I'd referenced a later page, but going back to option B, which I am also currently leaning towards, that two-year time frame, I just want to understand a little bit better about the timeline regarding the consultant. It stems from just a worry that We may have a two-year time frame from the point of the RFP being awarded and work commencing, but can you give me an estimate when, like basically how long does it usually take for something like this or what you would expect for an RFP being posted and then work commencing? I just don't want it to take like a couple years and then we get to the two-year time frame.

Yeah, no, that's a good question. When I'm talking about those time frames, I... I'm referencing it off other community examples, and again, to be clear, some of those communities did work in 12 months, some of those communities did it in four years, and after four years, some of those are being revoked now. So there's a wide range of examples. Just for reference, the consultant that was selected to help with the comprehensive plan, from issuing the RFP until the contract at Council was about a six-month process. I will say, as noted, we've already taken liberty of starting a draft of this, so I'm not in any desire to prolong this. But it's a good point. It will take some months for us to issue it, provide consultant teams the opportunity to respond to it, ask questions, and for us to do an appropriate evaluation. I'll say that I hope it's less than six months but I think that's a good question we're talking about the actual my estimate is about two years and again I do think we can draft a new code in two years and that gives like any year a year of adoption after if need be so I don't want this to take years we took nine years for the last time It's easy for me to say Alexis bore a lot of that pain. I'm trying to keep her happier.

I think we all are, absolutely. We want you all to be happy, because I can only imagine just how sandwiched you are given the just day-to-day site plans and then a fun little adventure like zoning implementation. Excellent. And then the other thing I just kind of wanted to share with the commission a bit more widely and with the planners Just a general desire, and I think we all share this, but just for transparency, I think it's a key pillar for me as we embark on this process, which hopefully will not be too rocky. I think it will help cement not just public trust, but kind of public buy-in. As someone who just a few months ago was a member of the public not on this side of the dais, I think having, and especially during the comprehensive land use plan drafts that were coming out, things like I would have loved track changes versus me trying to literally merge documents on my own to try to see what the differences were. forms of transparency that can take as granular as track changes, but also things like if there is a possibility for the consultant to share drafts with us as the commission on the public record in addition to staff seeing it and reviewing it, editing, et cetera. I think that's something I would really desire, and I think it would really be valuable. I understand timing and all that, but I think it's just something I would really like us to consider as we move forward.

I think one of your other questions was the frequency. Just as an example, we have put an expectation that if we engage a consultant, they would be meeting with this body at least 10 times over the course of that. we will be refining that. If we select a consultant, we're going to be leaning on them to an extent, too. Part of the reason of doing this is engaging a partner that does this on a more routine basis, has, frankly, a work plan that they know that they have delivered in other communities within an 18-month or 24-month time frame or whatever that is. But One of the things I learned from the comprehensive plan, too, is I'm going to put an expectation in that contract because having consultants sit through a meeting like this to get to an agenda item is pretty costly. And so I just want to be really clear whether it's travel costs or like, so that'll be a part of it. But undoubtedly, that is part of the refinement. I don't intend to just drop something on this body and say, please vote on it. You are going to have agency to help shape that to make sure it's speaking to not only the comprehensive plan, but what you think will be successful. Thank you, Mr. Leonard.

Commissioner Nord.

Really, just two quick things. I understand Commissioner Hammersmith's desire to try and move and make some progress and show that we're making progress. And I know that we're under a lot of pressure from folks saying, you can do this. It's quick. It'll be easy and painless. Let's start with this. And I think all of our conversations and the bumps we've already run into are just showing that's not going to be true. So I'm reiterating, I really like the option B better than trying to do the morphed I think it would be better to just start from that perspective and do it in a coherent way. I hope, Manager Leonard, that you'll look for opportunities when you come across decision points, especially like we could go this or we could go there or we could approach it this way, that those are the kinds of questions you can bring to us to give some feedback on. And then I wanted to say, again, I really liked the public engagement approach that you're heading down and what Planner Bennett worked up. And I don't want us to go back and redo the whole public engagement thing again, but I think we need to think carefully about where are the places where we do need to do meaningful public engagement. And starting off with postcards is an appropriate way to go. So I wanted to reiterate my support for the way you're laying out the public engagement piece and how you're approaching that. So I think that's a sensible way to do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Norton. Any other commissioners? For me, I proposed option C, but that was before last night's councilman meeting that I watched and was somewhat surprised by the action at the table, especially because it was first reading. I think in my five years of watching, I had not observed a council meeting voting no on something at first reading so and i don't i'm not making that a an absolute statement but i was surprised so given that surprise i I am no longer convinced that just collapsing TC1, D1 and D2 into HUB and presenting a text amendment for that and moving that through the regulatory process would actually happen as quickly as Planner DiLeo indicated at our work session, somewhere around eight to 10 months. And I think, That is also an area of concern for me because that petition daylighted a concern that was not before the Commission as clearly articulated. And I wonder if they're like so for staff to help us in the coming weeks to figure out how we can daylight any of those things because i think you are both correct that if we were to present or sorry not you mr leonard council member dish is correct that if we were to present a hub that included all of the per permitted uses in D1, that it would be rejected and that would delay the implementation of HUB. but we don't have a memo, we don't have a communication that tells us what other things may sit there. And that is also a little disquieting for me because even the consultative process could very well suggest a hub that has all of the permitted uses in D1, and we would be back here, but now two years later. And so I'm not proposing a specific change today. I think I'll vote with the with the table to take up option B, as recommended by staff. But I do want to highlight, I think we need some kind of conversation around how do we move forward in this way and maybe it's just strs and if it's just strs i think you told the council last night that if it were removed from whatever new zoning district is created The uses that are already in place would then therefore become non-conforming uses and would be permitted to stay. And I think the council table accepted your answer. I don't know. I think they accepted it because that was the answer that you gave. I don't know that they accepted it because that is the way that they want to move forward. So yeah, I just want to highlight that because that was illuminating for me.

all right so with nope go ahead Commissioner Adams oh no you were ready to vote all right one more from councilmember dish I'm just thinking that there are some other things I mean things that and I don't know because I can't read their mind but I think natural features are do get raised and stormwater Gets raised and I think mr Leonard had mentioned the idea of working groups around some of these things and maybe I don't want members of council to be I think it would be burdensome to them to sit on those but they could advise as to what are the things of the code that what are current features of the UDC that they think need rethinking as we move forward in a higher density infill development supportive era. So I don't know if that's helpful at all, but I agree with your idea that it would be great to flush out these little animals before they eat our crop.

all right uh so it looks like there is agreement at the table for um taking up option b so uh who would like to get that motion moving looks like commissioner adams is willing and or um did you have a comment whether b or you want to vote okay sorry i didn't want to stop you go ahead uh commissioner adams

uh the i moved to uh recommend that staff move forward with comprehensive plan execution execution pursuant to option b is outlined in the staff memo on tonight's agenda move move bike and then second it by commissioner whether it be so moved by commissioner adams seconded by commissioner weatherby discussion of the motion

Okay. Is this a roll call or a voice vote? Voice vote would be fine. Excellent. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. You all, we have to do, we have to do the last public comment that is by law in the Open Meetings Act. So this is a second opportunity for individuals to speak up to three minutes on any issue. We will first hear from those of you present with us, then remote participants. And for those watching, there is a human in the chambers that is not a commissioner. To speak remotely, press star 9 if on phone or use the raise hand feature if on Zoom. For phone access, dial 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226. City staff will identify callers by the last three digits of their phone number or by name if on Zoom. You'll hear an announcement when it's your turn to speak. Please ensure you're in a quiet area. Mute any background noise. For all participants, whether in chambers or online, please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments. Is there anyone present who would like to address us at this time? I can't see your head because of the monitor. Do we have remote participants who would like to address us? With that, I shall close the public comment. Ask if there is any commission proposed business. Seeing none, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Moved by Commissioner Weatherby, seconded by Commissioner Basiuni. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We are adjourned.