Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'm Dana Denha and you're watching FYI. Theatre Nova is known to audiences as a place to see new plays by new playwrights. Currently experienced love in many iterations as Lina and Mikola explore their feelings through alternate realities in the last wide open by Audrey Cefaly.

We are doing a play called The Last Wide Open. It is a rom-com in three movements, three acts, three different versions of two characters' lives and the choices that they make.

This play, we're kind of calling it a multiverse rom-com, and it drastically affects who they are and where they are in life and as they try to fall in love between the two of them. I also get the amazing opportunity to work with my wife in this project. She is my co-star in this play that we're doing together, so I actually get to fall in love with my wife every night.

take these journeys of these characters and fall in love in different ways throughout the play, too, because it's lots of different variations on these characters' lives.

You know, every day we make decisions big and small, so this play, like, digs into your brain and makes you think about that and considers what you've decided in your life and who you are as a person.

This play is all about having the courage to say yes to jumping into love and that it's worth it to take that dive.

I've never seen a multiverse rom-com like this one. It's very special, deep dive into who these characters are, and has a lot of heart and love to it.

There's going to be a lot of humor, a lot of laughter, and a lot of heart.

The last Wide Open will be at the Big Yellow Barn Fridays to Sundays, now through June 14th. For more, visit theaternova.org. Stay tuned, and we'll be back with more in exactly 30 seconds. The Michigan Taiwanese American Organization, or MITAI, celebrates Asian American Pacific Islanders Month and Taiwanese American Heritage Week through a celebration of arts, culture, and awareness right here in Ann Arbor.

This is glorious Taiwan. We are coming from the Yilan of northern part of Taiwan to come here to do a performance.

It was this really cool performance that combined different aspects of Taiwanese culture. It was dance as well as music.

The whole idea is to bring the culture of Taiwan to different communities around the world.

How the director Lee, Vincent Lee, presented it just really making The visual art from the video, from the background, as well as the actual performance, it's kind of tight and beautiful. I can see that everyone really just like a wow and truly enjoy it.

Every year they bring some gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous paintings that were done in Taiwan and they present them to our library here in Ann Arbor.

We chose one culture ambassador to representing the culture and understanding of Taiwanese American culture.

I was chosen, I think, because of the work that I'm doing with Embracing Our Differences, which is an art and education program about diversity. We have these huge banners in Gallup Park and Riverside Park, and we work to bring people together to understand differences, to see how differences enhance our lives.

Everyone comes from different countries to begin with, and being able to tie in together truly shows the beauty of the U.S.

Ann Arbor is dedicated to making a positive environmental impact, and the Office of Sustainability makes learning about protecting the Earth fun and interactive. Watch some of the highlights from last year's A20 Week, and this year's will be held on May 31st through June 6th.

We're here for our A20 Ward 3 party. Really excited to have it right here in my neighborhood in Bryant at Arbor Oaks Park and an opportunity for folks to come out and celebrate in the neighborhood but also see some of the incredible work that we're doing with A20.

Ward parties are hosted by the Office of Sustainability and Innovations and each council members for each ward. And so we've got plant-based food, a clothing swap, lemon sorbet from Washtenaw Dairy, a kids station, a little bit of everything for everybody.

using things like the circular economy to share things out rather than throwing things into a landfill. You know, that piece of clothing that you're maybe tired of is maybe something that somebody else is gonna get really excited about and be able to wear. So, you know, donating those things, sharing them, participating in clothing swaps, and then just introducing a little bit more plant-based food into your diet. Our local governments can step up, our local communities can step up, and we can do our part to make sure that we're keeping our planet healthy and clean and safe for the next generation.

There's no better way to celebrate America's independence than watching bright lights bursting in the air. Before you put on your own fireworks display, there's some pertinent safety information. Learn about fireworks safety and laws in this month's City Roundup in 60.

Hi there, Mike Kennedy, Fire Chief for the City of Ann Arbor, here to talk about some safety measures for the upcoming July 4th holiday weekend. First, we want to remind everyone that fireworks can only be set off in the City of Ann Arbor between June 29th and July 4th, between the hours of 11 a.m. and 1145 p.m. Fireworks are not allowed to be set off in city parks, city right-of-way, streets, And you need to have permission if you were to go onto anyone's private property to set off fireworks. July 4th is the number one holiday for emergency room visits for burns. So please, you do not want to spend your July 4th holiday in the emergency room. So please, please, please be careful. We recommend professional fireworks displays are the safest way to enjoy the holiday weekend. If you already use fireworks, make sure that you have a water source, either a bucket of water or a garden hose nearby. After you use fireworks, make sure that you soak those fireworks in a bucket of water for several hours before you throw them in a trash can. Here in Ann Arbor we've had several fires where people put used fireworks in a trash can that set the trash can on fire that then set a structure on fire. July 4th holiday is also the number one holiday for lost pets. Please make sure that you have your pets on a good leash or make sure that your pets are kept indoors because you certainly don't want to have a pet get loose during this time period. You are responsible for any fire or damage that's created from any fireworks that you set off. And if a firework fails to go off, never look at it, never try to relight it. Please just throw it in a bucket of water, let it soak for a couple hours, and then throw it away. We hope these tips will help ensure that you have a happy and safe July 4th holiday. Thank you.

The South Side of Ann Arbor is about to get a facelift as medians on State Street Corridor will be transformed, closing the chapter on the crumbling infrastructure that so desperately needed improvements throughout the area. The South Side Business Improvement Zone works with numerous community partners to revitalize and make this area of A2 inviting. Joining me is Jeff Hauptman, CEO of Oxford Companies and the chair of the South Side Business Improvement Zone, or BIS. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Thank you.

Pleasure to be here.

Jeff, tell us a little bit about yourself, your work with Oxford Companies, and how that sort of invests you in the vitality of Ann Arbor.

Well, Oxford is Ann Arbor's largest office landlord. And we also manage a lot of housing. So between the two, we have a real responsibility to the city to deliver on making sure that what we do is good for everyone. There's a lot of people that live in our houses and apartment buildings and work in our office buildings and retail centers. Our goal is to make sure that we are the nicest buildings on the block and we work really hard to accomplish that. So Oxford has a hundred people in our crew and they do everything from the management and the maintenance to the leasing to the construction. We're kind of soup to nuts.

Yeah, I will say CTN is currently in an Oxford retail space, or not retail, I guess, a space. And it is very nice. And I will say, I always appreciate the landscaping. Those landscapes are artists. They come in, they'll pluck every dead flower. They want everything to look great. And it does. It looks amazing. What we're going to see on State Street, right? It's going to be like this beautiful landscaping.

Well, that's our goal because, as I'm sure you have observed, the south side, south of Eisenhower, has, for as long as I can remember, medians that are just covered over with asphalt. And it's cracked, and you get weeds coming up through it, and it's just a real eyesore. So our goal, one of our goals as the south side biz, is to change that.

Can you explain what Southside Biz is and sort of why it was started?

Absolutely. A biz is short for business improvement zone, and it's a state-sanctioned tax overlay, which is a fancy way of basically saying that if the people in a certain geography all agree or the majority agree to tax themselves additional taxes, so this is over and above their normal city taxes, then through this law, city council has the ability to say, okay, Go for it. Go tax yourselves. Spend the money wisely. And the people within that district can elect leaders to a board. And city council also puts someone that they decide is good. person to sit with that board. And after the races, the city takes care of the collections, and it's our responsibility to carefully spend that money toward aesthetics for the area, wayfinding. types of capital improvements that the city may not have the resources for and then also augmenting just the general aesthetic as you probably are aware you drive down eisenhower some years and the weeds are you know a foot tall and it's like the the people in the area just got to a point where we just didn't want to see it anymore so we're just like we have to do something about this uh we're mimicking it in some ways main street has a biz oh that was formed years ago i think it was uh mike martin and ed shaffer got together and they kind of had the same vision for for main street in their case it was uh better snow plowing for example so ours is better aesthetics better wayfinding we just want the area to be nicer and more welcoming because when you come off the freeway at state 94 you're like this is ann arbor

Well, that was like sort of my when I was thinking about this, because I actually work and live on this side of town. So this is my side of town, too. Right. And when you go to other like towards the downtown, everything looks so beautiful and there's art and all this stuff. But then it almost feels like this side of town is forgotten. But when I think about like getting off the expressway, this is almost always my stop, that State Street stop where it doesn't look that great. I also don't know if you guys are changing orientation of any of those areas, because I do find I'm not confused, but people seem to be confused by that exit when they have to merge all the way over.

Yeah, that's a really good point. I'm glad you said that. We want to make it easier to get around. We want people that are coming to visit. Because let's face it, when you're coming to a football game, I mean, a lot of people are coming through that entrance, right? Art fair. We do so much in this town where people are coming off of State 94. And we want to make it easier and more welcoming for people to come off 94. Go north on State Street and eventually south too, but right now the south side business focus is the north. And just make it so they go, I've arrived. I've arrived?

Yeah, because they probably don't feel like that until they hit the stadium then. When they're going to a football game or get to that area in downtown where the art fair is or whatever that event might be. But really, I think people in Ann Arbor really take pride in the city. And so it would be really lovely to have that pride go throughout the whole city. And instead of it just feeling like this dense area in the middle of it.

Right. The beauty of the biz, this Southside biz, is that it's not only about the tax authority piece that we have and spending the money. It's about bringing a lot of the people that are involved in this area together. This area has, you know, people joke about how the Midwest is a flyover state, that flyover states, right? Michigan flyovers. This part of town is kind of a drive-through neighborhood. I mean, unless you have a reason to come here, you drive on through. You drive past us on State Street. You drive past us on Eisenhower. But people forget that this is the largest office market and the largest retail market in the county. And so we feel that this group came together and said, we have to basically be able to go to the city and go to the county and say, hey, we can do more. You know, let's all work together to do more. So that's what we've accomplished. And we're really fortunate. We have people at Briarwood involved. We have people at some of the hotels like the Kensington involved. the guys at MAV, the developers of the big office complex just to the north of 777. So just a lot of great people. Destination Ann Arbor has a seat on the table. It's a really great group of people that are dedicated to figuring out how we can just make this area nicer.

My gosh, when you think about... This median transformation and coming into this side of town, everything that Briarwood is doing, because Briarwood is about to be a big destination. That harvest market is absolutely beautiful. There's that housing next to it. And the mall is boasting that they're going to be better this year. It's going to be more exciting this year. So a lot of it is all coming together right in beautiful timing.

It is. In fact, there's a new hotel that will be going up just off of Briarwood Circle, the Drury. I think that's like a 170-key hotel. As you are probably well aware, Wolverine Tower is coming down so that the U of M can build their orthopedic center there. And of course, then you have Arbor South, which is also, that's gonna be the opposite of Wolverine Tower, the northeast corner of State and Eisenhower, and there'll be 1,000 units of housing, 200 of which are affordable. Getting more affordable and more workforce housing into this neighborhood is something we're working really hard on because we recognize that with the TC1 zoning, there's no better place to do high density housing. So there's just so much potential. I'd love to, 10 years from now, see a lot fewer parking lots and a lot more people walking around.

Yeah, because if you the way you're talking, this area could be walkable then. I mean, right now there's some walkableness, you know, on Packard. There's like some businesses and stuff over there. But you really have to sort of live in the neighborhood I'm in near the George and those sort of places to really enjoy that walkability. But, yeah, it would be really nice to see it. Where you could just kind of go anywhere and ride, get on your bike and not feel like it's too far. Because sometimes I feel like I don't want to ride my bike too far because then it's like I got the kids and it's too much work. Like you're like, oh, it's going to rain or whatever it might be. You start worrying too much about taking your bike too far. But if it's more bikeable and more stuff to see in this area, then you don't have to go far.

Absolutely. Georgetown neighborhood, which is just to the east, just over the bridge. We'd like to be able to give them something where they can easily walk or bike with the family and have easy access to restaurants, entertainment, the whole works. We just don't have that now. A big part of this and what started a lot of the projects we're working on is we want to get cars off the road. Mm hmm. We have a lot of property in this area that we pay attention and we see how its traffic is backed up. You know, at five o'clock, it goes way upstate. How can we make this a better place to be? So that's a big part.

Can you talk about what we might see on these medians? Because this is the first real project, right, that you guys are getting off the ground? Correct.

Correct.

And when will we see it?

So we have an understanding with the city right now where we're going to begin late summer and tear up the first three asphalt covered medians. In partnership, there'll be tearing out the asphalt and then putting in ground covering, flowers, trees, really beautifully landscaping the first three medias. Those three are our focus because those are three that the city has total control over. The next, I think the next three are state controlled, but the state will let the city do it with permission. And then as you get further down, it's entirely the state. And so we're also talking to MDOT about partnering on the city, Southside Biz and MDOT, how we can make it nicer at the exit with better signage there. So that's probably, so the first part to answer your initial question, the three medians, you'll probably start seeing some action end of the summer with the goal of getting all the plantings in in the fall, because we don't want to do it at the height of summer. So you'll see it ideally looking clean and nice before winter hits. Uh, and then by 2028, we're working on more of the signage right off the freeway. Uh, and then, you know, where do we go from there? People want to see more sculpture, more art up and down state streets. So we're talking. I love it.

I love when the art shows up. I think it just enhances the city so much.

We would love it too. That's going to be a big part of what we want to do. It's going to take a lot of fundraising. So we're going to be, we're talking to a lot of people. We got to find it to do it. Right. It's a very expensive proposition, but there is a lot of interest, which is the great part. When you see the city, the county, and the township all coming together and saying, we like this. This is good for the area. It makes it a lot easier to start to get things done. But again, the hardest part, got to raise the money for that. But we do have the money for the median, so that part is happening.

You mentioned wayfinding signs and stuff. One of the things I think about a lot, because I do video production, so I shoot a lot of video, and I'm always looking for beauty shots of Ann Arbor and stuff. The one thing I've never seen, and I don't know if it exists or not, is there a welcome to Ann Arbor sign? You know how you go into a city, and they're like, welcome to Canton. It's just something that I've thought a lot about. Why does Ann Arbor not welcome us?

Why are we not welcoming you? That's a big question.

That's my joke, but yeah.

Well, it's funny, but it's also unfortunately kind of true. When you come off 94 going north on state, I mean, you look at that signage. I wouldn't be shocked if that's been there for 50 years. And a lot of it's not real impressive. There is some signage in parts of this area that is a little more modern, nicer, but we think we can do better. So we're going to push ourselves to do something much more welcoming so that that question that you ask is not really a question mark because you know it. You know when you get off of State 94, you're like, yeah, I'm here. This is Ann Arbor.

Yeah. That's how I feel. I feel like that currently because that's where I live. And I'm like, now I'm home. But I want everyone to feel that way because I personally think that that area can be confusing to people. And we all know that Ann Arbor gets a lot of visitors. And if you're not local to the area, you can be confused coming off of that exit.

You know, just from a commuter standpoint, I believe Semcog figured out that there's about 76,000 people coming into Ann Arbor every day and leaving every night. So that's our commuter traffic. And not quite half comes through State in 94. So there's just, and then like we talked about earlier, you've got, whether it's art fair or a football game or a basketball game or a concert, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for people to come into Ann Arbor. And we're not doing a very good job of welcoming them. I think we just kind of assume, well, they're going to come here. But Southside Biz feels that we can do a nice job of improving the area.

Yeah, you want people to come in and be like, wow, I'm in Ann Arbor. Yeah.

Exactly.

Well, we're almost out of time, Jeff. Do you want to tell me any hopes you have for the future of the Southside biz? Because it all sounds really fun and exciting, and I'm really happy about it, honestly, as someone that lives on this side of town.

Thank you. I would like to see, over the next five years, the state and Eisenhower area, up and down state, up and down Eisenhower, to just be a lot more welcoming, a lot cleaner, right? We don't have the capital to do some of the ideal moves, which would be to shrink the streets in some ways, remove medians, make it more walkable, like from a more narrow... I mean, we know that you need to have a lot of two-way lanes on State Street. We get that. But how do we work with the city to at least get their investment to speed up a little bit? There's been capital studies for a long time about how to overhaul State Street, traffic circles, more walkability, more ability to cross the street and not play human frogger. Yeah. But that's where we're going to be more as a voice to the area as opposed to we just we don't have that kind of taxing authority. Ours is a very small amount. That's why it's more aesthetic. But we'd love to work with the city to encourage more of that significant capital investment in this area because this area sorely needs it.

Well, I look forward to seeing these changes. And thank you so much for talking to me on FYI.

Thank you. It was a real pleasure.

For more on this and other programs, visit a2gov.org. Visit youtube.com. See all that we have to offer. Remember to like, subscribe, and ring that notification. Thanks for watching, and tune in next time to FYI.