Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the Tuesday, June 16th, 2026 regular meeting of the Ann Arbor Planning Commission. My name is Donnell Weitsch and I'll be chairing tonight's meeting. For detailed information on meeting procedures, please review the full printed meeting agenda, which is at each end of the dais. Manager Kelly, when you're ready, could you please call the roll? Beth Yuni.

Here. Norton. Here. Adams. Here. Weatherby. Here. Mills.

Here.

Dish.

Here.

Noted absence from Commissioner Lee. Hammerschmidt. Here.

Weish. Here. You have a quorum. Thank you. May I have a motion to approve tonight's agenda? Moved by Councilmember Dish, seconded by Commissioner Mills. Is there any discussion of the minutes? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. May I have a motion to approve the minutes of the June 2nd, 2026 meeting? Moved by Commissioner Adams, seconded by Councilmember Dish. Is there any discussion of the minutes? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

The motion carries. Next up are reports to the Planning Commission and written communications. We'll start with Councilmember Dish, if you're ready.

It was a big night for Planning Commission items at City Council. Council approved the South Town Development Agreement Amendment. It approved the Development Agreement for 805 Oxford Road. It approved, or rather it passed on first reading the 3785 varsity drive rezoning. But at the table, use and nuisance concerns were raised. Use concerns being the concern that they would not like to see this entire project turn into STRs. And of course, there is nothing that we can do affirmatively about that other than state that if conditions are, if anyone is favorably disposed to offer conditions, council might appreciate that. I don't know if, I hope that was an okay way of saying it, Ms. DeLeo. And Council Member Ackman in particular raised concerns that the people who live in this project might be sending a lot of emails to their council members with nuisance concerns because the people who live in that area, some of them that are close to the Comcast building there, they don't like the lighting and stuff like that. So I don't think that you know, that's just something that was raised I'm telling you we did talk and I've made it very clear that we talked about it was an interesting situation to be Thinking about the both the effect of the new building on the surrounding uses and the effect of the surrounding uses on the new building and I mentioned that some of us on Planning Commission whom I'm sitting next to had a very glass half full full as opposed to empty and reading of what it would be like to live in proximity to Zingerman's mail order and many other fun things. So I'm sorry if I'm going on at too much length. But there was also, so also council passed on first reading the UDC exceptions to height limits and Councilmember Malik asked the very excellent question of where will the payment in lieu go? And that is something that is in the works and will arrive at Council in time for a second reading and will all be illuminated by the answer to that question. But other Councilmembers said shouldn't we be asking for more? in order you know this is a lot of height to be giving and even though this is more than what we were asking for before maybe there's more and more there so there might be amendments at the table for second reading for that but I do think that council understands that this is an interim step and that it's in all of our interests not to belabor the point because of course all of this will be taken up as we implement the comp plan more fully Council voted yes for a resolution to make a report to figure out what it would take to develop a comprehensive anti-displacement plan. I am not entirely sure how the procedure will be for making that report, but my sense of it from talking to the city administrator is that this is not yet, this is not obviously a task or a burden for planning staff or planning commission, especially not at the report stage and even moving forward not at all. So I really have not really much more information on that. Yes for the 3400 Dexter Road annexation, and yes for the John Street vacation. But concerns raised that we didn't have anything in writing about the pedestrian through way being preserved. I don't think that anything is going to be added in writing, but we might be mindful of that. IN FUTURE INSTANCES WHERE THERE'S A STREET VACATION AND THERE'S CONNECTIVITY THAT COULD BE AT STAKE IF SOMETHING WERE PUT ON THE THING THAT THE CITY IS GIVING CONTROL OVER, GIVING UP CONTROL OVER. SO THAT'S A LONG REPORT, BUT IT WAS A LONG MEETING.

DID YOU MENTION 1601 SOUTH STATE, SOUTH TILE?

YEAH, I DID.

OKAY, GREAT, THANKS. MANAGER KELLY, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO REPORT?

I will also note that 225 and 235 South Wagner, I believe, passed at first reading, along with 700 North Main's conditional rezoning passed at first reading. For my report, I would like to ask the commission to please look for emails leading up to your organizational meeting on July 7th. and that there are two things in the works for upcoming working sessions, a solid waste presentation on July 14th and TBD put possibly on your June 23rd meeting, a presentation by Dr. Stultz on the Bryant geothermal project, which will be coming before this body later this year as a public project presentation.

All right. Thank you, Manager Kelly. Do any other commission officers or committee liaisons have anything to report? Commissioner Norton.

Just to let you all know, the Stormwater Advisory Group had its last meeting this last week that Planner Bennett and I have been participating on. And they're going to wrap up their work and produce some technical reports. And the good news is they're... working actively through the planning staff to fold what they've learned through that process into what we're starting to undertake through the admit the updates to the zoning code so that they'll be nicely integrated i think the timing has actually worked out quite well with the way this is all playing itself out and planner bennett's in the middle of all of that helping to negotiate that so i'm quite happy with the outcome of that effort i think it'll be really helpful thank you commissioner norton any other commissioners

Written communications are in today's packet. However, in order to access those written communications, you need to visit a2gov.legistar.com. You should click on Calendar. Then, when you get to Calendar, select This Year, 2026, and City Planning Commission. Then scroll down and find today's date, which will have a link for our agenda and all of the written communications as well as the site plans and other items that are on our agenda will be linked from that page. All right, that takes us to item number six, public comment. This is an opportunity for individuals to speak up to three minutes on issues not listed on our agenda as a public hearing or a dedicated comment period. 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 877-853-5... and Intermeeting ID 977-663-41226. City staff will identify callers by the last three digits of their phone number or by name if they're 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 online or in chambers, please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments. Is there anyone present who'd like to address us on issues not listed as a public comment or a public hearing on tonight's agenda and mr garber i can't see you because i think you're blocked by the pillar so hi manager kelly do we have remote participants joining us this evening

There are no hands raised currently.

Great. I shall close the public comment and take us to agenda item number seven, communications from commissioners. Is there any? On to agenda item number eight, public hearings scheduled for the next regular business meeting. Manager Kelly, do we have public hearings?

There will be for your July 7th regular planning commission meeting taking place at 7 p.m. in these chambers, the Woodbury Gardens rezoning and 1310 Wisteria site plan for city council approval. uh will be at the table proposing to rezone the existing 41.292 acre development that includes astor drive wisteria drive and woodbury drive from r3 multiple family r4 multiple family and pl public land districts to the transit corridor tc1 district with conditions capping the building height The site plan project would partially redevelop one parcel to construct three seven-story buildings containing 342 dwelling units and a five-level parking garage. An administrative land transfer is required and will be considered separately. This is located in Ward 4 and staff recommend approval of both conditional zoning and site plan.

Thank you so much. That takes us to agenda item number nine, unfinished business. And tonight we have unfinished business. We will hear from 850 Green Hills Drive, SP25-0022. This is a special exception use site plan for planning commission approval with landscape modification and wetland use permit. A request to amend the existing special exception use approval conditions from 545 students to 750 students and a proposed site plan to construct two additions with a total of 16,665 square feet to the existing school and to pave a fire access road around the building. A landscape modification is requested to allow previously approved landscaping to remain as non-conforming, and a wetland use permit is requested to impact and mitigate wetland buffer areas. The site is 30.5 acres. It's zoned R1B. Staff recommendation is approval with conditions. So what we'll do is we'll start with the petitioner. They have up to 10 minutes to make a presentation. Then we'll have a staff report by Planner DeLeo. After Planner DeLeo's staff report, we'll have a public comment on a public hearing, actually, on this item. And so those of you who are here to speak for that, I'll invite you up and give you sort of the spill about that. Then we'll turn to remote participants. Then I'll read the motion, and then the Planning Commission will have its discussion. And... make a determination. So with that, if the petitioner is ready, you can come up. And your 10 minutes starts when the green light starts, which usually is when you start talking.

OK, thank you. Thanks for meeting with us so soon after the last meeting. And since that meeting, we have been working really hard, both with Midwestern Consulting and Heath Hart and Tim Branstad are from Kimley Horn, as well as meeting with Rita and Lindsey from Earhart Village. I am an English teacher. I'm going to turn it over to the experts on all of this to let you know what we've been doing. And we've also been working closely with Alexis and Cyrus, and they are fabulous. It has been a real pleasure to work with them. So thank you. I will make one comment about the wetlands mitigation. And this is a great opportunity for us. We, for 30 years, have been monitoring the water in our current wetlands and in our pond that's behind the school. And we actually provide that data for Michigan and for the city. Wonderful teacher, Ann Novak. And this is a great opportunity for our students to be involved in this monitoring as well. So I'm going to turn it over to Tim. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter. Good evening, commissioners. As Peter talked about the wetlands, I got brought onto the team to talk about traffic. I believe at the last meeting that was concerns that you all had in terms of how does pick up and drop off work? What changes can we make to improve the operations with some of the issues that have been shared previously and may be shared tonight? So in terms of how pick up and drop off has been operating today, You can see there, there's the red loop and the green loop. The two loops have been split between the upper and middle school. at both the South driveway and the North driveway. So that's how things operate today. How can we make that better, noting the issues that were alluded to? So we started to look at that. We reviewed commentary from the last meeting, the videos taken in the February, some additional data, drone footage taken here recently, including on Friday when seniors were in session. So we got to look at a full campus, population to see what operation looks like. And there were definitely some observations that we made that are going to inform our recommended changes. First off here, if you look in, this is in the morning. If you look at the red circle there, being so close to where students are being dropped off, and let's see, will the hand, yeah, the hand shows up. So this is one of the drop off zones. With that close proximity to Green Hills, you can see there's vehicles northbound that are trying to turn right. This vehicle is trying to turn left and creating some congestion and you see a little bit of the back up here in the morning because of that concentrated arrival and the proximity to where the pickup and drop off is. Similar thing happens in the evening, right? During school pickup, there is that concentrated time and you start to see the backup and the stacking onto Green Hills. It's an extension of cars queuing out into the street. And that's not the purpose of Green Hills Drive. And I think we all recognize that. So those were our two charges. We have queuing issues of everyone concentrating at one time. We have congestion at both of those driveways during that concentrated time. So what is the plan to specifically address those two issues? Really, it gets rooted into create that one-way, that loop in the front of the school, and you can see that on the purple, as a one-way loop. And so that creates about 350 feet of additional stacking space. Furthermore, noting that when everything is so concentrated, providing more opportunities for vehicles to let kids off or pick them up, we looked at how can we create additional pickup and drop-off space. And so that's where you see here off to the right the blue loop with an additional curb front and that creates roughly 325 feet of stacking. So with this plan from a queue management standpoint, any of that distance of 675 feet, give or take, basically takes you all just about way to Earhart Drive. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to move that congestion onto campus, right? It gets it out of the road where it shouldn't be. It brings everyone down to lower speeds where that pickup drop-off should be happening and not out on the public road. That's not the right button. One of the things that that will do, that the school is looking to do, is staff some of these key decision points to help manage and mitigate. One of the observations that we had is that not necessarily all the entire sidewalks where we could pick up and drop off were being fully utilized. People wanted to get their kid right to the door, which we all, for us who are parents, can understand that. But having the teachers there, staff there, to encourage, no, we're going to use this whole block, and there's reasons for that. There's a commitment to staffing folks there. The other benefit by converting to a one-way loop that I wanted to point out to the commission is it simplifies those two driveway intersections by taking the left turns out of one or the other, depending on if you're going in and out. And that's what's really been exhibited here at these driveways. If we look at the southern driveway, and this would be the inn, if you look at the north, these left bounds left out of this driveway is going to conflict with anyone trying to turn left into Aheart Village. and anyone along Green Hills Drive. So by simplifying that as a one-way in, you can see here less dots, less conflicts, less potential to have crashes, decision-making, and then the same story we see on the northern driveway. And that's one of the items, right? We went back to the transportation plan, and you look at the various strategies that UAlba City has laid out. One of them is simplified intersections, and that's what we were trying to achieve here. The other one that earlier we talked about and you can see it when you watch some of the videos and hear it from folks is that transportation demand management. Right now with the school, everyone kind of shows up within that 15-minute bucket and that creates a spike and some demand. So one of the other recommendations that the school is going to enact is to spread that out. Shift when the middle school and the upper school starts. And so what that's going to do then is smooth out that peak where you really see kind of that upper level of congestion in that 5-10 minutes right when everyone's trying to get there and it smooths that out. It shows in the graph there, it's kind of what we think representative that would look like. Blue is based off existing counts and you can see the peak. When that gets split and divided, that smooths out and this is a projected peak and you can see it's much lower in terms of that intense moment of traffic. Anyone who gets really down into the traffic world in terms of improvements, you start to do see some delay per vehicle improvements. That's a calculation. Does that change our day-to-day? It's going to lessen those cues and that congestion. I think really where that is going to be most beneficial. Again, we wanted to at least show the calculations behind it with the table. You start to see along Green Hills by spreading that out, your delays drop down, particularly for those north and southbound movements along Green Hills. Let Green Hills Drive be the road it's supposed to be and let campus serve what campus is supposed to be. So from that, I guess in conclusion, The applicant is ready to commit to the wetlands mitigation, as was asked. And Heath here, being the civil engineer, could answer any questions. And in terms of the traffic operations, you see the recommendations. You've had them in the report. Creating that one-way traffic pattern, which creates markedly more queuing space to pull people off Green Hills. Add those additional drop-off points. So should we start to get close to the road, you're processing people through a little bit quicker. and then staggering the school start and the other piece that was enacted is you know i think staff has committed to this and alexis please commit me you know let me know if i'm wrong but once this is enacted work with the school to see okay right now i feel confident confident with this but it is projections let's meet with the city staff their traffic engineering team to figure out are there additional things beyond that should we not quite get it to where we wanted to be I think that's all I had. Peter, did you have any closing comments or any questions in the 10 minutes?

No, this is all your time. So we'll go on to the staff presentation and then the public hearing. Then I'll read the motion. We'll have our discussion. And then if we have questions, that's where our questions will come forward. Yeah, thank you so much. Planner DeLeo, or as I learned at our last meeting, Alexis, would you like to give us your staff presentation?

I would. Thank you. For the benefit of the room, this project was tabled by this body two meetings ago on May 19th because as proposed at the time, it did not meet the finding criteria required to approve a new or modified special exception use. Planning Commission noted concern about the nature and intensity of the use and felt the site layout caused inconvenience and unduly conflicted with the normal traffic of the neighborhood. There was also an inquiry about wetland mitigation maintenance responsibilities. Since the May 19th meeting, as you can tell by the presentation, the applicants have provided an analysis of the drop-off and pick-up operations, which staff has reviewed. And we re-reviewed the wetland use permit, found that there was the proposed duration of the monitoring plan was slightly less than was required. Again, for the benefit of the room, the Green Hills project contains four components, a request to modify an existing special exception use, a proposed site plan, a request for landscape modification with that site plan, and a wetland use permit. I believe that Mr. Branson has gone very deeply into the additional traffic report, although we do speak about it a bit in the staff report. regarding the wetland use question. I've lost my place and that's pretty normal these days. The UDC protects natural features including wetlands on land from being disturbed and removed along with any applicable state or federal protections. But there are no specific standards or responsibilities for general maintenance of natural features where they just exist. You leave them be while they're there, but their disturbance or removal and then mitigation is regulated. And it's done through the part of a site plan process. Most are done through a site plan process. Specific to wetlands, it's handled by a wetland use permit. A monitoring plan is required with that permit approval, and the reports must be submitted for five years. And then after that five-year period, it is assumed that the mitigation was successful, and the mitigated or restored wetland, or in this case, the wetland buffer, which has the same protections as a wetland itself, is treated just as before, as if it as if it never happens, it sort of reverses course. And we did find on re-review that the notes say two years, but it should be changed to five years. With this additional information and with the new circulation and layout plan, staff is recommending conditional approval simply because the layout plan should be shown on the site plan before it's sealed and the wetland monitoring note on sheet 11 should be updated. With those, staff is recommending approval because we find that the special exception use will not cause unduly inconvenience or conflict with any public system including transportation and the site plan will meet all applicable criteria.

Thank you for your presentation, Planner DeLeo. We will now have a public hearing on this matter. This is an opportunity for individuals to speak up to three minutes on this one 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 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 move to a quiet area and 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 in chambers who'd like to address us on this matter? If so, come right up. And as you make your way, I'll just point out a couple things. One, when you get to the dais, you can move the mic to a place that feels comfortable to you. There are three colored lights. Green light says you're good to go. A yellow light says you have 30 seconds, and a red light asks you to stop. There's also a countdown timer there. Just to remind you, we probably won't answer any direct questions, but we will write down any questions you give us, and then we'll address them when it's our turn to speak. We'll wait for your colleague to pass out the edition. I'm not sure what it is, and so I can't make it available to the public at this time. But if you sent it to us via email, it'll go into our packet so others can obtain it later. So with that, welcome.

Good evening, thank you. My name is Rita Ross. I represent Earhart Village Homes Association as its president at 835 Green Hills Drive. I'd like to first thank Green Hills School for inviting us to two meetings where we've discussed the concerns and they showed us their plan yesterday. You have my testimony from my letter and the meeting of May 19th and a letter dated earlier today that addresses enforcement of conditions and also requesting specific street signage. My concern still is that the plan submitted does not yet address the significant parking issue that there is. The drone footage, I'm not sure when it was taken, but seniors left the school May 1st. That was their last day of school. So if the report was taken or the drone footage is after May 1st, it doesn't include all the traffic. But the issue that I'm concerned with, and you'll see in the handout that I gave you, is a calculation regarding the demand for parking spaces. As I mentioned before, every single inch of Green Hills Drive is taken by parked cars. And If you look at the calculation, there's approximately a total demand of 320 parking spaces. The school has approximately 200 to 220 parking spaces, which would leave about 120 perfect parking spaces used by humans parking on Green Hills Drive. So the school already operates at 100% capacity for parking every single day, completely exhausting both the internal... and every legal inch of Green Hills Drive. We believe the Planning Commission should require Green Hills School to install additional parking spaces or permanently implement a shuttle-based parking system. The other item I'd like to address is the long-term improvements. Alexis didn't mention it, but one of the long-term improvements in her report was a recommendation that further down the line sidewalks be installed. And I think that this would create a hardship for Earhart Village when actually it's an issue for the regional students who are coming to Green Hill School, not Earhart Village. And you can see the detail of that in my report. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Ross. Is there anyone else in chambers who'd like to address us at this time? Come right on up. Same three lights. Green, you're good to go. Yellow, 30 seconds. Red, please stop.

Good evening. My name is Catherine Miller. I reside at 504 Concord Pines Drive. I'm a Green Hills neighbor and parent. During this Commission's meeting last month, you considered a plan for a sorority house. In your deliberations, you did not wonder about the make of the residents' cars, you did not speculate whether the residents would be precocious, and you did not question the income of the families paying tuition. Of course you didn't. These factors are irrelevant. And as you're charged in your bylaws to consider plans without prejudice or bias, those questions would have been unethical as well. Yet when Greenhill's plan came up for discussion, you asked cheerfully those exact questions. You wondered about Greenhill's family's cars, the precociousness of the students, and the median income of its families. I ask you, what on earth does my income have to do with geothermal systems, classroom construction, and wetland buffers? Since you seem to have a caricature of an independent school in mind rather than the actual school in front of you, my son and I are here tonight to put a human face on Green Hills for you so it does not continue to be reduced to the fancy pants, rich person fantasy land of your imaginations. To be clear, that Green Hills does not exist. A little about me, by way of profession, I'm a librarian in a public library. Librarians are another group with lots of debunkable stereotypes about them. I'm happy to chat with that about you afterwards. I like to watch birds and go for walks in the woods. I sing in two community choirs. My family and I enjoy hearing live music. We've probably sat next to you at the ARC, and we volunteer together removing invasive plants with the Washtenaw Bird and Nature Alliance. You might wonder why a family chooses an independent school. There are lots of reasons. I can only tell you our experience. My partner and I, graduates of public schools ourselves, were surprised when our son's nursery school teacher recommended we consider private school instead of public for our kiddo. I remember grimacing at her because I held the same biases about private schools that you apparently do. But I tried to be open-minded. And as we looked into the private schools in the area where we were living, we realized they defied almost every preconceived idea I held about them. And now here we are. If you're a parent, you understand that sometimes parenting takes you down roads you didn't expect. So now you know a little about me, and hopefully Green Hills feels a bit less like a scary anonymous specter. But here's the thing. What I do for work, my hobbies, and why my family chose Green Hills should not matter to you at all. It is not your job to decide if a petitioner is worthy of their project, or if they are, in your opinion, the right sort of people who deserve a paved fire road. Indulging in outdated independent school stereotypes undermines your credibility as a public serving body. You have one job. Determine if the proposed project fits within the city's land use plan. Please do your job without prejudice.

Thank you. Is there anyone else present in chambers who'd like to address this at this time?

Hi, everybody. My name is Henry, and I'm currently a sophomore student at Green Hill School. We are here today because my school wants to add additional classroom space for the robotics program, the visual arts, and to add additional space to the dining hall. Now, our neighbors here from Earhart Village have come to present some very good concerns, which are entirely valid, that there is way too much traffic on Green Hills Drive, which I entirely agree with. And it blocks them from exiting their driveways during drop off and pick up times. Now, Rita Ross here suggested that the school should add additional parking space. However, as part of this project, Green Hills School is adding an additional parking lot. They're converting a softball field into a parking lot. And as one of the primary issues regarding traffic on Green Hills Drive is the parked cars. This will help alleviate that problem significantly. Indeed, this project will make traffic better than it was before. In addition, and here I'm speaking from my experience as a student at Green Hill School, we need these additions to our school. One of my best friends is in the robotics program, and he and his 20-something teammates have to design and build their robots in a small classroom in the basement with a ceiling made of asbestos. With the additions, they will have an entire two-story room with a dedicated space on the floor to design their robots, test them, build them, and engage in competitions. I hope you'll understand that these additions will benefit the students of this school and our neighbors at Earhart Village in Mass Ripley. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else present in chambers who'd like to address us on this item at this time? Seeing none, Manager Cully, do we have remote participants?

There is one hand raised. Philip Miller, you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Philip White Miller. I live on Concord Pines Drive, which is immediately to the south of Green Hills School. I really wanted to join this evening just to share my experience that Green Hills School is a great neighbor. There are great kids at Green Hills School and great families and I consider myself lucky to have that school, those kids and those families in the neighborhood. Green Hills does a wonderful job of providing experiences in the arts and in sports and promoting civic engagement and I think the proposal from Green Hills would really improve all of those things by creating additional space for the students there to work and learn and grow in their experience with music and other performing arts. Of course, we hear the concern about traffic. But really, I think that's the case in Ann Arbor with many of our schools. We see this in our neighborhood with pick up and drop off from King Elementary, which is just on the west side of Earhart. And I appreciate that Green Hills working constructively with neighbors has proposed a plan to mitigate traffic issues. And I think all of us working together can do our best to create a safe and efficient way for families and kids to get to school and really get the benefits of what Green Hills can provide to the Ann Arbor community and to our close community just off of Earhart Road as well. Thank you all.

Thank you. You noted there was one. There are no other hands raised. All right. I will then read the proposed motion. The Ann Arbor Planning Commission hereby approves a modification to the Greenhill School 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 neighborhood in which the site is situated. Two, the location and size of the proposed use and its location and layout will not unduly inconvenience or conflict with public utility systems or the transportation network that serves the site and neighborhood. And three, all applicable standards for the proposed use have been met, and the Ann Arbor Planning Commission hereby approves the Greenhill School Site Plan dated March 20, 2026, 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 subject to the following conditions. A. The plan is revised to show... the recommended one-way vehicular circulation plan, and B, the wetland monitoring plan provided on sheet 11 is extended from two years to five. Moved by Commissioner Hammersmith, seconded by Councilmember Dish. We are now in discussion. Who would like to kick us off? We will start with Commissioner Hammersmith and then go straight to Commissioner Dish.

Sorry, I snuck in right ahead of you. Thank you. A couple quick questions for staff. The special exception use application, I know we had some discussion at the last meeting about some of the language about the traffic. It won't increase, but that was because the number of students currently is higher than what was in their last approved permit. Does any of that need to be updated or changed for the record? Acknowledged anything?

Thoughts? I do not think it needs to be changed. I believe that the sum total of the case is sufficient. That was the original petition. That's what it originally says. There's now a lot of additional documentation in the record. All of the staff comments, the review memos, plus the additional traffic reports and so forth. If the commission feels otherwise, we can get an updated petition. But I believe that as it currently stands, I think the application explains the trajectory of the case.

OK, thank you. And then the commitments that were in that slide, I think the last couple of things that Chair Weitz read answers part of this. But do we need to codify, so to speak, any of those? Or can we? I can't remember what they were now, but I know one of them was the one-way.

Yeah. Need to, probably not. Can you? Yes. Additional conditions could be in place in the special exception use part of the motion, but maybe subject to staggered start times and a one-way loop or something along those lines.

OK. Well, yes, but I have a couple more things to say. You guys pulled together what looks like a really thoughtful transportation plan in a not long amount of time. So I think that that's great. As the new plan is enacted, I would just, and I'm sure you will do this, I would just encourage continuing to work with Aher Village. But I do want to ask you directly, when was the drone footage taken?

Because I saw some head shakes about- It was taken on a day when- We can't hear you, so you have to come up to the microphone, please.

It was taken on a day when not only all the seniors were there, but also about 40 parents for an awards assembly. So in fact, the drone footage on that day were more vehicles than any other.

So that would be pretty representative of what a typical school would be like. And then, Henry, I just wanted to say, I don't know if that was your first public comment that you've made, but that was excellent. You're such a good advocate for your school. You should be really proud of yourself.

Thank you, Commissioner Hammerschmidt. We'll go to Councilmember Dish.

Thank you. And I would like to start by apologizing, because I am the person who used the word precocious. And it doesn't matter what I intended by that word. What matters is that the word, for many people, created an impression that I had preconceptions about the school. I've actually taught Green Hill students. I've had them in my introductory classes. And they are phenomenal. So that was my context for that comment. But again, you should not have to do the work to feel that, oh, are we being disrespected? Are we being heard open-mindedly and respectfully? All that, and thank you for your gracious acceptance of that apology. So wow, yes. Thank you for commissioning and presenting us with this supplemental operational analysis. It should be very reassuring to the Earhart residents, because it does document queues of 15 cars in the morning and 46 in the afternoon, extending up to the Green Hills-Earhart intersection. What we heard, we often hear concerns about traffic, and sometimes they're sort of worst-case scenarios, but this was clearly a challenge. And this report is excellent because it explains what happened, why that was happening, partly because these two driveways that were being used pretty much didn't work together to facilitate traffic flow, but rather to stall it. And so... That seems fixable. And this report very clearly explains how that can be fixed. And this is all new information for us. The only thing that we had heard at the last meeting was the staggered starts, which sounds like an excellent idea. But that plus making the flow of drop-off better And you have the space to do that on the Green Hills campus. That's an advantage that most Ann Arbor public schools do not have. And it is a problem for every school in Ann Arbor, whether public or private. There's cars clogging roads and people getting frustrated and churches giving up their parking lots on weekday mornings. Thank you very much. That's so helpful. But here you really have the ability on the campus to deal with this, and you've presented us with what looks like a great plan. So I also noted that, and you presented the plan really well. I had read it very closely, but there's really nothing more to bring to light. I did notice that There's also a lot about signage and pavement markings in addition to the increased staffing, and I'm sure all of that is going to get completed so that people have some visual cues to make them realize that we're not just fooling around here. This is like the airports started to be many years ago. It used to be you could just park and stay and have your lunch and wait for someone to come out, but now they move you along, and that's what you're going to be doing, and I think that's really terrific. I am... Also, I mean if we were to add additional conditions to the special exception use I would spell out that in addition to conversion of the driveway to a one-way loop, I would like to, if we end up doing this, I think it's worth spelling out that using the athletic parking lot to create additional queuing space would be great to spell out. Because I think that that's fantastic, because it directly maps on the area on Earhart Road. Just the amount of footage maps onto what's now being overflown into. That's not really a word. Overflowed into. In addition, and it's great that you mentioned follow-up. I'm delighted that city staff will continue to meet with Green Hills. There were a lot of further suggestions that could be really useful. The concerns about parking, I wonder if you've considered a permit-only parking system for students. And I did notice that one of the, so that the idea would be you can drive and park if you have a parking permit. Otherwise, you need a carpool. That would be more incentive to work on a carpool system or take a bus or something like that. I don't know if that's a good idea or not. It's just a thought. And I had brought up at our last meeting that I think that people who live off of Green Hills Road would, and Ms. DeLeo, I would love to just confirm this with you, people who are residents of Green Hills Road could make that residential-only parking, correct? Resident-only parking, I mean.

They can certainly apply to the program. I'm not sure the criteria for it, whether they would meet the criteria, but they can certainly apply to be considered.

Okay, that would be another thing to do if people wanted to do that, but maybe they don't. And the softball field has been mentioned, and so, I mean... Part of me wants to say, well, gee, how many parking spaces will that add? And oh, what a good idea. And another part of me wants to say, don't add parking. Let's be more green. So I don't know. Should I be asking a question or not? Do we all want to know?

You can if you'd like.

I know. Are we all burning to know how many spaces would be added by the softball field or what other options exist for reducing the need for parking on campus with that?

It's your time. So if you want to know, that's enough.

Okay. I guess I want to know both of those. How many spaces would the softball be able to create? And what are some options for reducing driving and parking?

Sure. The softball diamond is a temporary, for now, for the construction. Actually, it'll increase the number of parking spaces that we have. So it's about 180 cars. Our softball players aren't going to be crazy about that. But with that, and it's also a permeable surface. And we've worked with Joe Vig, and it's going to be that. I don't know it's gonna be a surface that grass will grow in but it's solid enough so it'll still be permeable but also once the construction is over we'll also have access again to where the geothermal wells are which is overflow parking for us right now so that's one of the reasons for the use of the overflow parking is why as Rita mentioned we're able to get all of our people on onto campus and absolutely parking on Green Hills Drive Yeah. And the permitting system, it's a great one. We've been toying around with it. One of the challenges with telling families that you just can't drive to school, we are a regional school. Unlike other schools, we have kids driving in from Monroe and Brighton. But we are looking at ways to do that. Thanks.

Are you good, Council Member Dish? Great. We'll go Norton, then Adams.

Just some comments. I totally understand the neighbors' concerns about the traffic and the parking, but I want to make some points and ask that we consider them. One, this is a school. All of the schools, I've lived by three different schools in the city of Ann Arbor now. They all get really busy at drop off and pick up times, and that's just the nature of being in a neighborhood that's got a public school. And that just comes with living by a school. So the fact that there are really fairly short periods of time where there's a lot of traffic shouldn't be that problematic or that difficult to work around. So that's the first point I want to make. The second point I want to make is public streets are public utilities. They're not private spaces for individual homeowners who happen to live in front of them. I would actually be quite opposed to the idea of creating a permit parking system so that only the residents can park there and block everybody else out and then force Green Hill School to build another parking lot. That's more impervious surface. It's taking away from green space. Using a street to park on is a really good use of that space that's just sitting there otherwise that's already paid. So I would encourage people to park on Green Hills. I know that's frustrating to the folks. I live on a street that's constantly parked up all the time. You just drive a little bit slower. And it's fine. The street is serving really good public utility service that way. And I would hate to see it be wide open. And the final point I'll make is, and it relates to this, When my children were young and going to a local city of Ann Arbor public school where a lot of folks had to drive in because of the location of where folks lived from, the thing I was really scared about was how fast people were driving to get their kids to the parking lot as fast as possible. And when things are kind of parked up a bit, that kind of naturally slows down the traffic. So it's not a bad thing for people to be slowing down and taking care and dropping off their kids. So I would urge you all, I think you've been very responsive to the concerns that were raised. I like the idea of the loop. I would encourage you to maybe make that a permanent thing. I don't know if the plan is just to make that during drop-off, but if you make it permanent, people will just get into that habit. I think that's a great solution. I understand folks not wanting to build sidewalks, but we're trying to build sidewalks in this city, too. I understand that can be a burden. Streets are public utilities. They're perfectly good places to park. I think you've addressed the problems that were raised, and I commend you for doing that. And I'm very happy to hear that you're going to be extending the period that you're monitoring the wetlands and turn that into part of your curriculum activities. That's great. So I'm quite satisfied that you've dealt with the concerns that were raised. And again, I understand the residents' frustrations. I think this is a good compromise that you're reaching on how to use these facilities. So I don't think we need to add any additional conditions to what's going on here. And I don't think it's a problem people are parking on the street. That's a good use of the street.

Thank you, Commissioner Norton. Commissioner Adams, then Bass Uni, then I have Mills, and then Weitsch.

Yeah, I agree with Commissioner Norton's comments. The changes, I think, to the application substantially address the issues that we identified at the last meeting. And just to be clear, and I think our record's clear on this, I think our concerns related to the fact that the enrollment of the school grew in a manner that wasn't consistent with the existing permit. and that the application failed to address the spillover effects or propose a plan to mitigate the impacts of that growth. The amended materials tonight I think do address that. As for things like parking and other sidewalks, I don't think the law requires Green Hills to operate. And this is consistent with your comments. I don't think the law requires Green Hills to operate in a manner that's dissimilar or more onerous than another neighborhood school in order to qualify for an SEU. That's not what the law requires. The law uses words like unduly conflict, hazard, compatibility, consistent with general character. You know, I live very close to Wines Elementary School. I don't think the neighbors view that as a hazard, even though there are parking problems, there are traffic problems. So I'm evaluating this petition through that lens, and I think it meets the standard for an SEU as revised. I do tend to support changing, either approving it with conditions or approving it with the condition that the site plan be modified. I'm not sure why we're already approving it with the condition that the site plan be modified to incorporate the wetlands change. If these changes are important, the conversion of the school driveway, a traffic management strategy the extension of the campus loop into the into the parking lot i'd prefer those to be incorporated into the site plan if possible if it's part of that same process that feels like something we can do without imposing any sort of administrative burden on the applicant and it's important for the neighborhood to have that enforcement mechanism if those things aren't done so i think i tend to support that but i'm open to other views

With the table's permission, can we stay on this? Because this is the second time the conditions have come up. Okay. Best Uni, would you be willing to allow Commissioner Mills to speak now to just this issue and then you're next in line? Is that okay?

From one Sarah to another, absolutely.

Okay.

I don't disagree. And I am curious about, I don't see anything in the conditions about the transportation demand management, the idea of shifting the start times, which was part of the presentation. And so I think neighbors and everyone else wants, like, I'm just curious if that's what we should expect. because that's not named, but it was part of the presentation. And it feels, based on the graph, that it would make a big difference. I do have questions about like, maybe it's just because I have a kid My children are spaced such that I would have a middle schooler and a high schooler at the same time. And so like, how do siblings feel about that? Because actually what I, and I don't know if that analysis takes into account, like parents are not going to be making two trips because that would be a perverse outcome. Let us name that. Please don't do that, parents. But I'm curious about, like, is that something that you're, you're already planning to do? You want to put it in writing? Have you thought about how it's going to work with siblings?

Before we get to just that piece, can we stay with the condition? So do you need that answer in order for you to determine whether you want to add that as a condition? Yes. Okay, great. I just wanted to make sure. No, I'm sorry.

I wasn't explicit about that.

No, it's okay. That's my job.

Yes, the easy answer is we've already communicated this to all of our families. And you're right. We've got some people who are not crazy about it. But again, the difference between us is you can drop your kid off anytime. So those families that have kids in both divisions we don't unlock the door at 8.30 and then keep everybody out. Most schools operate that way. We have kids there at 7 o'clock in the morning because their parents have to get to Detroit by 8. So they understand, OK, so this kid is just going to have to sleep, get up a little bit earlier with their little brother or little sister. But a lot of our older kids also drive their younger kids. So it is codified. I would leave town before I change this. Since we've already announced it to all of our families, we've dealt with all of the people who wanted to have conversations about it as well.

So to confirm, you would, based on Commissioner Mills' articulation, you would be comfortable if the Planning Commission added it as a condition to this approval?

Absolutely. We're doing it.

Sure. Yep. Let me go back to Mills. Are you good?

have further questions but I will you can come back to me that's conditions all right and then conditions for Commissioner dish can you just that I think we need to clarify a condition of the site plan approved yes and but or conditions to be added to the SEU right so I think what we just talked about would be a condition to be added to the SEU and not appropriate on the site plan

Right. And so the reason why I interrupted was just to see if the table wanted to entertain those conditions. And it sounds like there is some support. I think I have four or five commissioners who would like to do that. Commissioner Norton withstanding. So we'll go back to the queue. And I have Bassiouni, Mills again, then Weatherby, then Weitsch.

Excellent. Wonderful. So before I forget, I am also in support of entertaining the conditions. So yeah, starting off, as usual, thank you so much for the commenters for coming in and spending time with us on a very beautiful day, for the most part. I really appreciated your perspectives. I would also like to concur with Commissioner Hammerschmidt. Wonderful comment, especially if this is your first one. It can be very scary to go up there. So major kudos. I also wanted to reiterate somebody, I think a couple of points around the wetlands. I really like the creativity of incorporating it into the curriculum. There's something very wonderful about it being hands-on. I grew up in a rural area and it's kind of hard to compete with being able to experience something right there, so. Great job there. I also, I think, overall agree with Commissioner Adams' kind of dissection of the criteria of the SEU. I did have a question for, sorry, what was your name? It's okay.

You can just say the petitioner.

Wonderful. Thank you. The petitioner's support for the traffic operations report. I had a question around kind of induced demand. Right. Yeah. I think it's a very creative approach to do the one loop. It makes a lot of sense. I think it is wonderful that it's reducing conflict points. I was wondering about, is there an issue if you increase the capacity for the number of cars? Could there be more cars over time that start to show up as people decide to use the space that becomes available? Just thinking about it in the broader literature around induced demand. I've usually seen it around highways, but I've seen it also more granularly. So I would just love to hear your thoughts or perspective on if you think that might be an issue in the future. Yeah.

And you're right, the literature around that and our experiences in certain instances, whether it's a freeway, road project, even certain sites, induced demand does become a concern. If it's a mixed-use site and we added a new restaurant or entertainment source, that draws more people in. I think the uniqueness here is because it's a school, it is more of a self-contained... Entity so that concern of induced demand in my opinion is not really there because you have that number of this is who's here Today and that stays consistent

Gotcha, thank you. Yeah, so it sounds like you're saying that the whole number won't change. I think I was curious about maybe the number of students might not change, but would there be more willingness for students or parents to drive in, et cetera? But I think I've heard your take, and I appreciate that. I think just for the petitioner, just continue along with other commissioners' takes. I think it would be really great to continue encouraging folks to carpool, alternative transport methods. But yeah, those are my thoughts. Thank you. I appreciate the swiftness with which you came back with a very thorough report.

Thank you, Commissioner Bastiani. Commissioner Mills, then Weatherby, then White.

My question, particularly in light of adding conditions like this, are how enforcement works. Because we have had a situation where there's a cap on enrollment that has gone unenforced. And so, yeah, how does enforcement work here? Whose responsibility is it? What would you suggest if neighbors who are nearby who see things that are not in compliance with what we've talked about tonight are witnessing things that are not in what we've talked about tonight? What should they do?

And that's to staff?

I think that's to staff.

Great.

Enforcement is not linear, straightforward, cut and dry. Depends on what the thing that you're enforcing are. The first step, so as with everything, you know, we are sort of complaint based. You are expected to follow the rules and whatever conditions are in place. There can be violations that were very unintentional, but when we are made aware of something, first thing is, well, just can you go back? Can you comply? And if not, then our courses of action are either, well, let's address why not. If it's just something physical or some other condition, let's try to get the condition changed as we're doing with the enrollment capacity. Otherwise, it's a violation of the ordinance. And so I believe it's a civil infraction, but that doesn't really benefit anyone. I'm mumbling and I'm going on tangents here, but the bottom line is sometimes it's education around what the rule is for this particular case, and then there'll be voluntary compliance, they go back to complying. If there's some actual limitation that they cannot comply with the condition, well then we'll see what we can do. Is it, do we consider amending the condition? Do we, you know, what other changes need to be made to make it right? Maybe the just in the hypothetical, if the times can no longer be staggered, OK, but what else can you do to meet the overall standard of not zero conflict, but no undue conflicts?

And in terms of, again, it's complaint-based, complaint-driven. This is true for pretty much everything in our zoning. PS, we have a noise ordinance in the city of Ann Arbor, too. But there's not people driving around checking people's music levels.

So but if somebody does have an issue, is this an A to fix it?

How do they call it? Particularly persistent, not doing the additional loop inside. Or again, suddenly you hear that there's 800 students, right? What's the mechanism?

I do believe you're correct. A2Fixit is our general one-stop shopping. They will take any complaint of anything, and then staff will parse it out to the proper enforcement department. In this particular case, you can always call or email in planning at a2gov.org when you know it's a planning or zoning item.

Okay, thank you very much. And again, I hope it, you know... I am confident that after us talking about the fact that there are conditions, that this will be in compliance. And that's how those are the mechanisms across the city for enforcement of some of the operational aspects of our land uses.

Thank you, Commissioner Mills. Commissioner Hammer, excuse me, Weatherby.

I just wanted to kind of reiterate a couple of points. One, thank you for the five-year wetland buffer monitoring. A healthy wetland buffer and wetland is going to be better for all of us because they're awesome and a lot of invasives are not. So I think it'll be a win-win situation there. And I wanted to... to really and this is less for the the neighbors and just in general because we get this a lot of the Commissioner Norton's that streets are public utilities and the the parking spot in front of my house is as available to anyone as it is to me and I pay some tiny little And I live in a neighborhood two blocks north of the stadium, and so, and we have very little public parking, actually, on the street, because it's like Main Street, and there's not parking on Main Street. And everyone has a right to those spots. It can be, it can feel bad, especially if one neighbor is using up all the spots. You know, I have, we have one car and I have neighbors with three or four cars and they park on the streets, but those are, that's their prerogative and that's their ability. And if somebody gets there first, then that person has the right to that parking spot. So public parking is public parking and public streets are public streets. And It doesn't feel right if somebody from far away comes in and steals your spot, but that is the mechanism we have. And it is awfully great when you want to have people over and there are public spots that anyone can park in for your party. And I would assume a school most of the time has evenings open that those spots are not used during the evening, which is kind of nice. But, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, those are public spots, and we can't really, other than the residential parking program, It's not something we can monitor of like who gets to park in those public spots. So I just, again, it's for your neighborhood, it feels much more like they're your spots because there aren't a big influx from other places. But just generally around the city, it's something that I like to talk about in these when they come up because people do often feel like they own the spot in front of their house and that is not true.

Thank you, Commissioner Weatherby. I'm going to take a slightly different posture than my colleagues. And like Commissioner Weatherby, I contend with strangers who park in front of my house, our public utility, because I live near the stadium, not as close as Commissioner Weatherby does, which is why I didn't think it was going to be an issue 20 years ago when we bought our house. And then the first football Saturday, because we bought it in May, I had no idea what I was getting into. People were there at 6 a.m. throwing the pigskin around and starting to imbibe. So I think to Mrs. Ross's point in your letter that you sent to us that's dated today, In your fifth paragraph, you bring up the point, which I think I made at our last time, which is no one actually has the right to block a driveway, and it's four feet on either side. And the enforcement mechanism for that is community standards. I wouldn't do that through A2Fixit. I would call the non-emergency number for the police department. That'll get you to community standards. They will come out and they will either ticket or tow someone who is blocking your drive. That is not parking. So if they are legally parked, they have a right because it is a public utility, but they do not have a right to block your driveway. And you've stated the rule. So sharing that with your neighbors, I think, is very, very important. Also, I think my concern with all of this, which I don't think I shared in our last conversation, is about the potential harm to the physicality and the bodies of the individuals in the neighborhood. I live in the Lansdowne-Loughton neighborhood. I can walk to our elementary school. And for each of our three kids, I walked, either myself or my wife, walked them to school for all of the years that they were there. And I can tell you, on a five-day week, I was, or my child, was almost threatened by a car three or four days of those weeks. Whether we were walking, whether we were biking, People whose kids are inside the cars are their precious cargo and whose kids who are outside of the cars are obstacles. And I know that for sure. My street that our traffic dealt with was 7th, which was designed as a boulevard to go all the way to Eisenhower to connect over to State, but our neighbors blocked it with a park. And so the road is really wide, and because the road is really wide, we get the stacking, but we also get people who drive really fast. And a four-foot, 100-pound kid can't stop a car. And the statistics are quite significant. 2,500 kids are injured by cars every school year, and between 100 and 111 are killed. So the concern that we have in our statute around a special use exception is a real concern. That is why we are having this conversation. Otherwise, it would be permitted by right. And the conversation around traffic creating a nuisance or an impediment or a threat to the physicality of your students, your neighbors, your teachers, your staff, your vendors is a real concern. And my concern, which is why I support us figuring out how to add this either as a condition to the site plan or as a condition to this approval, is Green Hill School has not been a good faith actor. You had a special use exception permit for 545 students. You exceeded that. You understood the law as we understood the law. You could have come and said, we have enrolled more. What do we need to do to do that? You could have at any point other than at this point. And so that is the challenge. And given that we have no real enforcement mechanism, I share your concerns. There seems to be no impediment for the school to act in whatever way they choose to. And then you are left to deal with that as best you can. I see that in their actual actions. And so I just want to articulate that. We can't force them to do certain things. We can only stay inside the statute. And when they meet the statute, we have to approve it because that's what the statute says. But I think you have a real concern and it might be something to pick up with your city council representatives because city council is the mechanism or actually the keeper of the law of the city of Ann Arbor. And so they may have other tools at their disposal that we at our table do not. So with that, I'm going to go back to Commissioner Adams and Hammerschmidt to see if you all would like to make a motion to amend the conditions.

Yeah, I'm going to make a motion to amend the conditions to add the traffic management changes, the staggered starts, and the conversion of the school driveway to a one-way loop.

And I would say... Can you pause? Sure. Manager Kelly, how shall we receive this feedback from Commissioner Adams in a way that would be helpful for you and Planner DiLeo?

Let's do it by sharing a screen with the current motion and you could let me know if I'm capturing the desired amendment language. So here's the current motion. And so you would like to add to which portion of the motion?

Sorry, I'm just having trouble tracking it. These are conditions to the site plan. OK, so it's going to be changes to the site plan. The plan is revised to show the recommended one-way vehicle circulation plan and transportation demand management strategy by staggering the school start and end times.

And where would you like that? OK, so under A, you're adding an.

But can that be a condition to the site plan?

Well, let's capture it and then we'll figure out whether we put it as a site plan or a condition for the SEU.

I was imagining this as a change to the site plan because the site plan is enforceable. My understanding is it is enforceable by the city. I also don't view that as a, there is a difference between, just to push back a little bit on what you said.

Hold on for just one second because we need to get your changes and so that's where Manager Kelly is and then you and I can debate.

Yeah, I wasn't going to do that.

It's okay. We have a friendly table.

That's fine with me. Reflect, do we want to say as reflected in the staff report?

Yeah, because you had three things, I thought.

Those two. It's the one-way drive and it's the staggered starts, basically, which I believe refers to the Transportation Demand Management Plan. And that's, if you want to reference the staff report on the June 16, 2026 staff report as a way of folding in those details, that'd be fine, too.

So we're gonna wait until Manager Kelly finishes, then we'll check this language and see if there is agreement at the table.

I'd just like to get Planner DeLeo's take on this. Sure. Does this work for you? What do you think, Ms. DeLeo?

It does. I don't have any comments.

Okay. And does that look good to you, Commissioner Adams? Can we have a second? Because you're going to move that, move by. Great. And then second it by Hammerschmidt with support from Councilmember Dish if you need another... person. All right, we're in discussion of the motion as amended.

Yeah, I just wanted to say that, and this will take 10 seconds, I think the enforcement mechanism of citizen reports doesn't work for an enrollment increase. It does work for traffic. If this plan is not executed, people are going to notice, and that gives them a vehicle to actually squawk about it. So this is a requirement, and there is a meaningful remedy for it, so I'm satisfied with it.

Thank you, Commissioner Adams. Other commissioners? Are we ready to vote? Can we do this by a voice vote? Or would you like a roll call?

I'm wondering if we should just list the The items that you'd like instead of referencing the staff report. That's fine by me. Because going into the future, this will require going and finding the staff report, and then you have to figure out what is an intervention. So I think maybe spelling it out would be better.

Does the original... If you want to copy and paste from the bottom of page three of the staff report, there's items one and two. Okay, give me one moment. Yep.

I would just chime in that I don't have language in my head just yet, but what I'm trying to say is I think that perhaps the motion could reference the staff report.

And then you could fill it in later?

Right, that's what I'm trying to say.

Yes, which we are willing to do with Manager Kelly's permission.

I do agree that in the end, the wording on the site plan should not say reference to the staff report.

Sure.

But I think for the short term, the reference to the staff report is clear about what the planning commission expects, how the planning commission expects the site plan to change.

If you're good with it, I'm good with it.

That works for me.

Okay. And Hammersmith is good with that as the second. So we'll go now to Mills and then Dish.

I appreciate that change. I think it's more, I think being more explicit is important because farther down in the staff report, it talks about longer term improvements, which I don't think that there's commitment to tonight about raised crosswalks on campus or sidewalks. So I think being clear. enumerating what is in one and two on the staff report. I would also just mention that number one on the staff report is convert the school driveway to a one-way loop, which is also in what's shown on the screen. But I thought really important is extending the campus loop to include the athletic parking lot. And that's not named in the condition.

So I think the change that- But it is in the staff report.

But it is in the staff report. So I think that this change was good.

And Planner DeLeo, is that a note to pick up for that? Okay. Thank you so much. Council Member Dish.

That was my thing.

All right.

That was my thing.

I'm going to turn to you, Commissioner Norton, because you didn't think there were any conditions that were necessary to give you an opportunity to voice any of that, if you would prefer.

Yeah, I appreciate the need for these conditions, and I think they are helpful and useful, and they provide a mechanism for enforcement. So I'm okay with taking them.

Thank you. Commissioners Weatherby and Bassuni? Okay. Can we do a voice vote, or does it require a roll call for the amendment?

It can be a voice vote for the amendment.

Great. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? It is approved. So, we're going to return to the original motion as amended. Do we have any additional comment? Commissioner Norton.

I appreciate... I understand Chair Weish's concern about the total enrollment. And I understand the school got bigger than what it was originally chartered to be. In my mind, that's being rectified through this change. And I also understood from the presentation that was made last time that there's no reason to think that the school will continue to grow beyond what this new enrollment cap will be. So I'm taking that on faith that that's the case. The folks who have been most unhappy have been mainly complaining about the parking. I understand the frustrations with their parking, and I would never suggest that people parking in front of driveways is any time acceptable. So I don't hope that my comments should be taken to be that way. People parking legally should be able to park legally, and I think that includes the students to the school too. My big concern is the speed of drivers coming to the school to drop off kids who don't who are more concerned about getting to work than they are paying attention to folks. So anything else, I don't know how we can write this or add it, and I don't think this is unique to your school. I've seen it at every school that I've been by during periods. Whatever else you can do to get people to slow down. I was being honest when I said having a little bit more congestion actually has a beneficial side effect of getting people to slow down. um and it's kind of ironic that it has to happen that way but that's a that's a useful thing so whatever other activities you can take to get folks to slow down so that there's not a traffic hazard would be a commendable thing to do for the school but again i think you've responded quite nicely to the concerns that were raised and it's a school it's going to have periods where it's busy but most of the rest of time there's just a lot of empty nice space for people to use so um

that's all i'll say thank you commissioner norton any other commissioners planner delio you have everything you need before we take our vote um i believe we do i trust uh deputy manager kelly to speak up as well but i think we do okay are you good all right uh let's take a roll call vote then

On the motion as amended, Weish?

Yes.

Hammerschmidt? Yes. Dish? Yes. Mills? Yes. Weatherby? Yes. Adams? Yes. Norton? Yes. Basuni? Yes. That carries.

Thank you and good luck. That takes us to agenda item 10A, regular business. This is 3400 Dexter Road, SP25-0021. This is a site plan for City Council approval with accompanied annexation from Sile Township and proposed rezoning of R4B Multifamily Dwelling District. The site plan for a 4.31-acre parcel proposes the construction of 30 three-story attached townhome units in seven buildings. One three-unit building, three four-unit buildings, and three five-unit buildings. Each townhome will have two garage and two driveway parking spaces. There will also be three guest surface parking spaces. The site plan proposes 2.82 acres of open space and contains some wetland areas. It is adjacent to M-14 and is currently zoned TWP Township and would be in Ward 5. Staff recommendation is approval with conditions. We'll start with the petitioner presentation, which is 10 minutes, up to 10 minutes. Then we'll move to a planner presentation by Planner Shaik, who has joined us at the table. Then we will have a public hearing. I'll read the motion, and then Planning Commission will have its discussion after that. So with that, we'll start with the petitioner. Welcome.

Thank you and good evening Planning Commission for allowing me to come in this evening and talk about 3400 Dexter townhomes. So my name is Jason.

I'm sorry, hold on for just one second. Manager Kelly.

If you hit control L on the keyboard, it should take you to full screen. There we go. Thank you.

Thank you. No, again, my name is Jason Eichelangeli. I'm a planner on staff with Toll Brothers. And I'm here this evening with Jason Rickard from SKE, our engineering company, to just talk to you this evening about 3400 Dexter, which is a townhome project project. that currently is on Dexter Avenue, a budding M14. And it at one time was a single family home. There used to be sort of a ranch style house there. Years ago, there's still a couple of older outbuildings on the parcel that are left over from that time. The Sioux Township zoning allows for, it's sort of a general agricultural zoning, which would allow for one unit for two acres. So hence the reason why it only had one house on it at the time. When we submitted this project, the 2050 comprehensive plan had not yet been adopted and so the previous master plan specifically pointed out this particular parcel as sort of a transition or lower density townhome type development as to act as sort of as a buffer for m14 up against ironwood drive which is you know a single-family neighborhood And then across the street from this property is the Arbor Landings apartment community. The current master plan that was just adopted by the city, Arbor Landings is sort of shaded as a transition area. This particular parcel doesn't really have a land use designation because it's still inside the township. and so when we looked at this we thought that based on the master plan as when it was submitted that this met the spirit really an intent of the future land use plan because these will be attached single-family townhomes that sort of cater to young professionals or like family formation age you know families and this particular parcel lends itself well to sort of the neighborhood that it's up against and the Abbott Elementary School that's kind of nestled further there to the east. It'd be the sort of the southeast from this particular parcel. So again this is sort of a medium density townhome which is sort of the planners like to call it sort of the missing middle housing type. This is just a layout of the site plan. There's two wetlands on the property. Both were identified in the previous city master plan, one of which this master plan was exclusively called out that that wetland was to be maintained, which we're doing. The other wetland is already been sort of looked at and it kind of was sort of an agricultural depression from when the time that this particular piece of property was farmed. And so it has the wetland species and things that are growing up out of that wetland are not particularly of very high quality. But the one that's closest to M14, the larger one that you see sort of on the north end of the triangle of the parcel, is the one that the city's master plan specifically said needs to be preserved, and we're going to do that. And so we're looking to, we're requesting that the city designate this parcel once it's brought in from the township, the R4B zoning, which would allow for this type of townhome development. And again, this is just a slide that kind of talks about the comprehensive plan, the 2009 Ann Arbor Master Plan, which was the plan that was in place when this was submitted, which called for medium density, multiple family, or duplex development, or sort of this townhomes as a transition between the highway and the single family neighborhood that's on Ironwood Drive. And again, this project is proposing the annexation zoning designation of multiple family or R4B, which includes townhomes at a density of 15 dwelling units per acre, and this would be 7.5 dwelling units per acre. This is sort of just a representation of the architecture of these buildings. They're three-story towns. You go in on that floor where there's a garage and there's sort of like a mudroom, some other flexible space, and then you go upstairs to more of the living area, kitchen, and then the third floor of these townhomes would be more of your bedrooms, master bedroom, and laundry facilities are also up on the third floor. And then again, these are just the floor plans that kind of illustrate what I was just saying about sort of the garage, the flex space on the first floor. And then kitchen, living quarters sort of on the second floor with a great room. And then the third floor is everybody's bedroom, utilities, linen closet, and a place to have the washing machine. To summarize the project just briefly, it's a 4.31 acre site, general agriculture like I was saying. We're requesting multiple family dwelling district or R4B. The master plan designation is for transition or medium family residential. It would be 30 townhomes. These would be three-story townhomes with an attached two-car garage. They range roughly 1,900 to 2,000 square feet. We're proposing to commit 2.30 acres or is required of open space and our particular project will almost be three at 2.82. These will be EV ready garages, solar ready bylaws, which means Early on in the project, we spoke, had a meeting with the city's Office of Sustainability, and one of the projects was the ATSU project that they had a lot of interest in, and so did we, and so one of the things that was talked about that we'll incorporate is writing into the bylaws the ability to put solar panels on the roofs of the townhomes if the HOA decides that they want to join the program. So we'll make sure that that gets taken care of ahead of time. And then low E windows, and then these will be two by six construction. And that's sort of the project summary. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have, but... Yeah, we'll do that during our... No, that's fine.

We'll ask you questions for sure when it's our turn to talk. So we'll go now to our staff presentation by Planner Shakin.

Good evening. And just to contextualize before I get into the presentation, the proposed motion in front of you is once again a conditional approval statement. So if we get to having questions at that point, happy to address those. Just a brief summary to touch on a few points that weren't touched on. Again, this is a site plan for city council approval with the rezoning. The annexation was actually approved last night as city council because we can decouple the annexations from the site plans. Just because as a side, we've identified the annexation process is one of the parts where we lose a lot of time in our development review cycle. We used to see a lot of projects come to this body, everything together, the annexation, the recommendation for the rezoning, and the recommendation for the site plan. Once This body, once the council approves annexation, in this case, this township then needs to release it. So each of our neighboring townships has a slightly different process. So in this case, Sio Township will now start the process to release the parcel. Once all that documentation is compiled, it goes to Office of the Great Seal, which is not a giant marine mammal in Lansing. It is... Which, yeah, an ongoing joke is that it's a giant marine mammal with a stamp in its flipper, but it's not the case. As far as we know, at least. And then we get the information back. It can take two to four to six months, sometimes longer, just to get that information back from the state, from the city. And only then can staff bring the rezoning to council. So that's why things are kind of decoupled. We're looking at ways, more conditional approvals from this board, decoupling parts of things where we can to kind of speed up the development review process. That contextualization aside, a number of the features were already touched on in the applicant's presentation. Noted that there's two wetlands on site. One will be disturbed and does require a wetland use permit, which has already been Those conversations have been engaged with staff that manages those wetland use permits. Has four Class C bicycle parking spaces. This is still under the current bicycle parking regulations. All the garages will have a... a EVC and one EVR parking space for electric vehicle parking. And recall that for the rezoning portion of this, there are six conditions for rezoning, the extent to which, since Commissioner Lee is not here, I will recite them. The extent to which the rezoning is necessary, how the rezoning will affect the public welfare and property rights of persons located in the vicinity, how the rezoning will be advantageous to the city, how the particular location will meet the convenience and service requirements of potential users and occupants, Any change or changing conditions in the particular area or in the city generally which may have bearing on the request and other circumstances and factors which further justify the request. So in analyzing those factors and both the old land use plan and even under the current, we update our analysis to the current comprehensive plan 2050 land use element. The proposed rezoning does fit within both of those paradigms. Just a brief summary to the west of the site is M14 and some of the wetland area as shown. To the north, RESIDENTIAL, LOW-DENSITY RESIDENTIAL CLASSIFICATION, TO THE SOUTH IS A MEDIUM-DENSITY ARBOR LANDING, I THINK IS THE NAME OF THE APARTMENTS, AND TO THE EAST IS A SINGLE-FAMILY NEIGHBORHOOD ALONG IRONWOOD DRIVE. And with that, happy to entertain any questions once we get to that portion about the conditional motion statement or anything else. But staff's recommendation is a conditional approval recommendation for the approval with conditions for the site plan and a recommendation for approval of the rezoning.

Thank you, Planner Shaikh. That'll take us to a public hearing on 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'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, call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-663-41226. 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 and 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? in chambers who'd like to address this at this time.

Thank you, Chair Weish. Ken Garber, 28, Heaven Hill Court. I have a question about the R4B rezoning. Toll Brothers is proposing 30 units on four net acres, or 7.5 units per acre, with just over 65% open space. As Mr. Eichelangel, am I pronouncing your name right? Jason 1, mentioned that's far fewer units and far more open space that's required under R4B. But I believe that same unit count in open space also complies with R4A, which allows 10 units per acre and 65% open space, if I'm reading the UDC right, and I defer to staff on that. So if it complies with R4A, why not rezone to that? I mean, if this site plan isn't built under R4B, the next project could go up to 60 units, double the density of this one, and remove another 10% of the open space. Now, maybe that's something we want, but I'm just asking. I note that the Arbor Landings project across Dexter, I believe, is R4A. So maybe that's the natural zoning here, since, if I'm right, that this project would comply. Regarding sustainability features, there are a few, but in no way does this even remotely comply with 820. Gas heat, presumably. No solar, no net zero, few passive house elements. There was the mention of the solar permissive bylaws. you know, and to leave it up to the HOA or individual homeowners and whether they want to put solar on that. To respond to that, I'm just going to quote from the Toll Brothers 2025 sustainability report, quote, in our California market, Toll Brothers saw incredible results under a new California building code requiring new construction homes to have a solar photovoltaic system as an electricity source. These systems are designed to achieve a 100% offset of the building electricity production. Incredible results. It also quotes Toll Brothers Executive Chairman Douglas Yearly. In the past you'd see a house with solar panels and it really stood out. Now they have solar panels that integrate into the roof shingles or the tile on the roof and you can hardly tell, you can hardly see it. That will expand beyond California. They've also done at least one project with geothermal heat at Magnolia Square in Princeton. Regarding air source heat pumps, this body approved recently two Robertson Brothers projects, 75 on units, townhomes down on Silo Church, and 136 off Duverin, all with air source heat pumps. I'm sure you're familiar with this competitor, but you can ask them how they did it. Thanks.

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

There are no hands raised.

Great. I will read the motion, but not the two pages of the motion. Thank you, Planner Shake. And then we'll start our discussion. So, Motion 1. The Ann Arbor City Planning Commission recommends that the Mayor and City Council approve 3400 Dexter Road rezoning from TWP Township to R4B Multifamily Dwelling District. Motion 2. The Ann Arbor City Planning Commission recommends approval of SP26-0021-3400 Dexter Road Site Plan Version 6, dated April 30, 2026, subject to the execution and compliance with the development agreement and the following conditions listed on our agenda, which must be satisfied through the submission of revised plans within six months of of approval by the city council moved by Commissioner Adams seconded by Commissioner Mills. We're in discussion looks like Commissioner Adams wants to kick us off. So we'll start with Adams.

Yeah, clarification. To whom? Staffer. Thank you. The staff report states, and I think the petitioner also stated, and I think both statements are wrong, but I want to be corrected. This site, as I look at the land use map, and I'm colorblind, So when I look at the land use map, I'm kind of doing it by guessing. But it looks like it's not shaded residential. It looks like it's shaded township, like it's a shade of gray that is closer to township than residential or transition. The staff report states that this is recommended as residential in two spots. And I heard the petitioner state that this is recommended transition. And neither one of those is right. It's nothing, right?

Yeah. So in the old land use element, it was like a low to medium density residential. I don't know. Perhaps Deputy Planning Manager Kelly knows a little bit more of the context. I know. some, if not all, we had some issues with township parcels. It's within the maximum annexable boundary in the agreement with the neighboring townships, but I think there was some issue with some of the township parcels not having a land use designation in the new comprehensive plan.

Yeah, and I'm sensitive to it because the thing I don't want to do right out of the jump is take a parcel that is recommended as residential and recommend a zoning for it that is transition. And when I looked at this, when I'm looking at the land use map, I see a shade of gray. That is not a shade of gray that we used for residential. So I'm seeing some indeterminate parcel that I have a little bit of a free hand under the map or the recommendations in the map to say what I think is appropriate, especially given that we do have right across the street residential or transition. And I think that R4B is appropriate here, but I didn't want to break from our document right out of the jump.

So can you clarify what you...

I think I've got it clarified.

Okay, you had a question. Your question is answered. I think so. But you don't need anything else.

I support the rezoning in the site plan. I think that this is appropriate for this parcel, and I think we ought to do it. Okay.

So you're not asking for a correction to the staff report?

I wish it could be. I'd ask you to take a look at it, especially when it goes to council. I'd like that to be corrected, but I think I'll put that on record. Sorry.

Okay, I see you when, as we move along, we'll give you a chance to address it potentially. Other commissioners? We'll start with Weatherby.

Okay, so I just have some questions here. And one of the – can somebody on this map point to – is it the big – Which map?

I'm sorry.

There's the map that's in the site plan. I think the comment was the wetland that's up on the screen.

I see. So the wetland to the – Because somebody said the north, but it's actually... It's more the west, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's the one that's closest to M14. M14, okay. The smaller one is the one that is a wetland, but doesn't have anything that is useful in it.

It's mostly wet. Which is different, though.

if I understood the petitioner correctly.

Okay, so I did have just some questions on and sorry, I'm not really they're not really formed yet, but so it does require a wetlands use permit for the larger one and will there be like in our previous one that there would be does for a wetlands use permit does like the five-year monitoring come with the wetlands use permit so this is for staff yes this is for staff sorry and give me one second to check what the like default period is right because if we're talking conditions here, and we just did one that required a five year condition for wetlands monitoring, then

You want to make sure that this one has a five-year wetlands condition. So that's the condition where you're going with your question. Yeah. Okay. Was that it or do you want to keep going while they look for that?

I want to keep going. Okay. So then another one for I guess either the petitioner or staff is where is this I think I know where it is but where is the solid waste the dumpsters and the turnaround is it up

Why don't we start with the petitioner so someone can answer. So if you want to come up and if you have your site plan, a more detailed version that has that.

The dumpster enclosure is right here sort of at the end of the, I don't want to call it like a traditional cul-de-sac, but it's here at the end of the main drive.

And so that property right to the right or the east of this is an open piece of property, or is that owned by you all?

So that's a good question. There's a lot immediately adjacent to this parcel that's owned by the same property owner who is allowing the utility easements. And currently, the only thing that sits on that lot, which is on Ironwood, is a garage. There used to be a home, I believe, there at one time as well. But the property owner who owns this piece owns also the lot on Ironwood, which is allowing for the utility easement that will run through there. And it's, let me check the other map.

So will that be like an access drive also or just the utility?

No, the people who own the property would like to retain that lot. So you can see it. It's this lot here where there's a home missing, but you can see sort of the outbuilding that's still left in the back.

And from what I was looking at, it seemed like that should be removed, that outbuilding.

Was that the... Yeah, that would be something that we would do.

Because my concern here is that in this property, the thing that's going to be the noisiest, smelliest, most obnoxious is probably right there next to the neighbors. And that is of some concern to me. Like... there because it looks like all the internal car traffic is hidden by the buildings right it's up that main lane there between the buildings and and it's just that that you're putting the thing that's going to be the least neighborly is going to be closest to the neighbors. And did you have a plan for that? I mean, I know garbage pickup in my neighborhood is usually around 5.45 in the morning, which is not legal.

It is in the downtown, though.

I'm not in the downtown. But the university doesn't care. But so, you know, that's just a concern for me of putting those nuisances right closest to the neighbors. Okay.

And I don't know if there's a plan for that other than... We really struggled with the location of the enclosure to begin with. Our first impression was that there would be like the allowance of wheelie bins, but then we were quickly educated that that's not... That's a really nice way to put that. I was going to say disabused. We looked at putting them in the front so that they would be sort of the first thing. The problem with that is when you come home, the first thing you want to see is a dumpster enclosure. We also don't want it to be a burden on Ironwood.

Now, this is something that we've been contending with. And if you were here earlier when Manager Kelly went over our work session plan, we do have a conversation with Solid Waste because we're hearing this a lot. Sorry.

would say i would say what we could do is we can go back and take a look again um between now and the time of final and see i can ask jason to look into it again and maybe see if there's something that we can come up with it's just the homeowners right next door did send in a mess so i know that they are already concerned about the building and then i'm like well yeah you are i mean there is a concern there because right behind their house is going to be this um So that would be helpful.

Absolutely.

I realize that we have not, the city does not make it easy to find an equitable spot for those, but that is a concern. And then the other question I had was, with these being sort of just a standard three story, you are putting people right close to the highway. up high so there's not going to be any mitigation of noise or you know there won't I mean there are going to be there are some trees there that might help but but generally those are deciduous trees along there I think that would be at that level so what what are you doing to make these actually

Mean there's gonna be a pretty robust landscape buffer along the highway There's already a lot of existing mature trees there now that we anticipate not touching the other part of this is the The wetland area that we're looking to enhance Along with the sort of stormwater system will run up against sort of that side of it and we're anticipating that with the trees that are going to be planted, plus the mature trees that exist there now, that a lot of that sound will be mitigated. Plus, we use a 2x6 construction, which is a lot thicker walls and a lot more insulation for these types of units, as opposed to 2x4 construction, so they're a lot quieter. And these will roughly be equivalent to the same height as the apartment buildings that are on the south side of the road at Harbor Landings.

OK. Grow trees, grow. Because that's probably 30 foot or more for the bedrooms on the north side there.

Yeah, that's fair.

Were you able to get an answer? Thank you.

You're welcome. Just need to get my microphone turned on. So did something in the UDC 529.4 goes through our wetland use permit procedures and regulations. So not to get too deep in the wetland. Where mitigation plans are required part of the wetland use permit. So, like, there's 2 parts of to apply at the city. You have to also have, like, the receipt of application at the state. So you need to potentially state and local and municipal, but where there's mitigation plan as part of the wetland use, there's a minimum 5 year monitoring plan. And then, like. Part of that plan is also, like, the transition off of the 5 years of monitoring, like, what continuing activities as part of that plans. Okay. So that is so the receipt of that. Includes the fire. It's part of the yeah, probably it's a five-year monitoring plan is part of the application Okay, and that is in our contingencies or our conditions Required if no, it's not within the condition motion. It's a requirement for the UDC like Okay, thank you

Thank you, Commissioner Weatherby. Commissioner Bassuni, and then Mills.

Yes. Hello. So, okay. I think I have three questions. I'll start off with the petitioner. So I appreciate your explanation around the 2x6 versus 2x4 construction, because when Commissioner Weatherby was talking about the noise, I was thinking about a previous one where I think they also talk about windows. I live in a condo that is near the train tracks, and so the windows are perfect for a sound buffer. So I'm not familiar with 2x6 construction. Is that just the walls? Is it also the windows? I'm just trying to understand a little more.

No, the windows usually use the same sort of framing technique. They're not any thicker than a normal window for a home. Just the walls are thicker, but the framing for the individual windows is the same.

Gotcha. Okay, good to know. Thank you. And then for either you or Planner Shake, so on the, talking about the sidewalk gap that will be created between 3400 Dexter Road and Ironwood Drive, could you just show on the map where that gap is? It sounds like there's a plan to amend it or...

So it would be this gap here. Okay. So the current site plan has the ordinance requires that there be a frontage walk that would go from end to end of the parcel front, but then it would leave this gap between Ironwood Drive and the edge of our property. Okay. Currently, there's a ditch, an open ditch, for storm drainage at that intersection. But there is no sidewalk.

Gotcha. Thank you. Excellent. And then I think my third question, thank you, I think it's for Planner Shake. Again, just for my edification, I think this might go to Mr. Garber's comment, but when I was looking through the UDC, could you please explain a bit more R4B versus, I was looking at R4D, Apologies, Mr. Garber, if that's what you were referencing. But I think I was just curious, when we say R4b is intended to allow small tracts of land, and R4d is intended on substantial tracts of land, how do I parse the difference between the relative definition of small versus substantial? Just generally, and maybe in relation to this, but I'm just curious.

Yeah, that's a great question. I am not quite sure where those, like the actual, because you know at some point small becomes large, small becomes medium. This is like a philosophical question. I think part of it is that, and perhaps Deputy Planning Manager Kelly has a little bit more context, but are we considering a parcel that's small versus large? in a greenfield development or a place that has less site complications. And this parcel has some MDOT easement as part of it, which eats into some of the developable area, has wetlands that can or cannot or hopefully should not be developed. So I try to backtrack to when some of these zoning districts were created. Large versus small in a greenfield context is very different than an infill context. Just a little bit more like this parcel for whatever reason, you know, it's been within the City of Ann Arbor's annexable limits for 20 years, I think, since when the agreement was arrived at with the neighboring townships. But it's been within the de facto definition of Ann Arbor since M-14 was built. And it's never been developed beyond some lowest scale agricultural uses. So thinking back to what some of those development definitions for the zoning districts were created and trying to superimpose them on this, I struggle a little bit with that. I don't know if Deputy Planning Manager Kelly has any more context.

I think that was a good answer. I mean, it's come up recently. There are growing, and this is the benefit of moving into the implementation phase of the UDC read-write, is that some of our definitions, they are just older. And there are even things that I think there is something pointed out with a recent petition where it specified within the DDA boundaries. But we've expanded the DDA boundaries. And so one of the factors that When petitioners come to us with concepts to discuss potential zones, one of the things we do look at are the purpose statements, but more often there are these really practical conversations around what zone will allow you to achieve a vision that also matches the best interpretation of the comprehensive plan. I don't know. Yeah. What is this? It's not a defined term in the UDC. It's not an italics. What is a small tract? What's a medium tract? Large tract? I mean, it's part of the art of planning.

No, thank you. That's actually very validating to hear those perspectives there. Because yeah, I was looking. I forgot to mention that. Because when I was looking at R4B versus R4D, one of them was, OK, R4D sub-bullet B. It was talking about how the location would enhance, sorry, this is some of the criteria used in determining it. It was like, the location would enhance the bypasses and entranceways to the city and provide a community focal or identity point. And I remember looking at it on the map and I was like, look, it's right there, it's right on the highway, relatively. So that's why I think I was gravitating towards R4D and was curious about the distinction with R4B and then I fixated on the small versus substantial. All that to say, thank you. It sounds like, yeah, there's some nuance there. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

All right. Commissioner Mills. And then Norton.

Commissioner Bassuni. The way that you showed it out was great. Okay. Teed me up perfectly for this. And I'm going to effectively address the same things, but in reverse order. I want to start where you left off. I also was looking at the UDC, and specifically table 5.17-3, where it's laying out the different R4 districts. So the key difference that I find, and staff is welcome to double check me on this, but I think this does comply with R4A for everything except the side setbacks. So if we rezone it to R4B, it could add more units. It could have more... a lot area covered because R4B allows for less open space. The front setbacks and building spacing are the same. The height's the same. Rear is the same. But the key difference here and why it wouldn't fit within R4A is because, I think, of those setbacks. Is that fair?

Trying to project back. Should have included that in the staff report. I'm sorry to the commissioners. But reflecting back to early conversations and trying to find the best fit, that does ring a bell.

OK. But it's also from that table that on the one hand, R4D would allow you to get more units there, but it really wouldn't comply with the setbacks then. And so it's a trade-off. You get higher height, but in exchange, larger setbacks. And it is that minimum lot area in there. It's got to be minimum effectively two acres, which this one fits, but that's one of the... At least that's how I read it, and so maybe that's helpful. I similarly was wondering, with R4A across the street, why not R4A? I also recognize, we don't know what the transition district will be. Across the street is zoned for transition, or is planned for transition. And so I imagine that this would also be transition. But I'm with Commissioner Adams that it's not shown. And I think that's important to note in the future. I'm okay with R4B to be really honest, but I just want everybody else to know that if it's important to you in either way, or just to know like there could be more units, there could be less open space, and there could be smaller side setbacks if this is rezoned and this building doesn't get built, but something else does. Again, I'm okay with it. I want to get to the next one is the sidewalk gap. Does the condition mean that they're supposed to build that? Fill that sidewalk gap? Or what is the condition? Help me understand that.

Just to make sure, not paraphrasing. So kind of, and I did take the time, because we discussed this at a few other meetings, I did take the time to make sure the most recent transportation division memo was attached as one of the attachments to the agenda. So this condition, this proposed condition, would be to complete the...

DEXTA Road sidewalk project, the sidewalk connectivity?

Well, connecting to the, yeah, closing the sidewalk gap. Basically, they're on the DEXTA Road sidewalk project. Just bear with me. The discussion with transportation. So it's based in transportation plan and PROAG and providing connectivity to the closest bus stop. The closest bus stop is at Ironwood and Dexter. I think there's plans to redo some of that bus stop work. And so looking at connecting to that. I think there have been, there's an alternative. Just bear with me. proposed by the Transportation Division as a less optimal alternative about providing a mid-block crosswalk to bus stop across the other street. But before I get too deep down that rabbit hole, let me just make sure I pull up and get their exact comments from the agenda.

If it's going to take more than 30 seconds, I'll say the other part that I was going to say, which is if it's connecting to bus stop off the property, sure, that makes sense. But honestly, hearing that the property owner has that lot on Irwin, from my perspective, a bigger benefit would be a sneak path, like a public access across that. In part because I'm thinking about, I did Google Maps. The kids here walking to school, and we heard comments from neighbors about how are they going to not walk through our yards. It adds a half mile if you are effectively at the dumpster and you have to walk around to Ironwood and come out at that same place. rather than just walking across, if there were an access easement across that ironwood property. I think that also is a benefit to the neighborhood who might want to go farther out on Dexter. Again, I don't know. Especially things that are greater than 90 degree angles. My family loves sneak paths. It's made more pleasant. So I don't know how transportation feels about that, but if this is still a work in progress, in my mind, that would be a better location for extending off-site. I'm not going to change that, but I just thought I would. Has this been discussed at all? Yes. Can you tell us more about those conversations?

so that was one of the initial comments from transportation and as a planner myself the idea it would be something that i would totally buy into the issue with it is is the property owner who owns this piece who owns the lot on ironwood wants to build a home on that single family lot and retain the right to do it so the only thing that they're giving us is an easement for the underground utilities through that lot

that lot here's a question sure easement doesn't have like even an accent is access easement doesn't have to be super wide if if I don't know what it takes ten feet whatever five feet some of them are really narrow and that's just enough right does that make the lot

that lot now non-conforming from a width perspective if so I get it if not like five feet come on that's it's a much better amenity right no I understand completely I'd have to look more into it again but it was definitely something that we thought about at the onset and then was told by the property owner that again they just want to retain the right to build a house there and

I get that, and I'm just thinking if it's still a conforming lot, I would love for it to be a slightly narrower conforming lot.

Sure. I mean, I would have to work with Josh to see if adding a sidewalk to a portion of the lot would be something.

Offset, yeah. I mean, again, I don't know how it works. But from my perspective, that would be a huge win. And I do wonder, I mean, I've... I feel like you probably will get some foot traffic through there unless there's something else, just legitimately. And I don't blame people. And we don't want people on private property. So that's the balance, is knowing what human nature is. And we build sidewalks where people walk, the path.

What are the other things that were talked about just so the Planning Commissioner was...

I'm sorry, Petitioner. I'm sorry. Commissioner Mills has the floor and hasn't asked another question.

If there are issues on transportation, I would be willing to hear them.

Yeah, I was just going to say that we've gone back and forth with transportation quite a bit in the sense that... Currently, the plan shows the sidewalk across the entire frontage, which is required by the zoning ordinance. One of the options that we extended was to forego the portion from the entrance to the bridge because the bridge on the other side of the bridge is just a gravel shoulder that goes to the Wagner Road intersection. In lieu of installing that portion, we would give the city program that's doing the sidewalk extension the amount of money needed to build the gap between Ironwood and this development. Because we know that they're currently doing the active infill project now. And that was entertained by transportation, but then they decided they didn't want that. Then the next thing that was asked for is a mid-block crossing and we put on the plan a mid-block crossing that's sort of the same that was on is on air heart road by concord pines drive but then they came back with about 250 000 worth of extra improvements to the crosswalk that then became something that we couldn't entertain so we just went back to the walk across the frontage so we were hoping that maybe the planning commission could help Direct what option would be best in in that scenario? because we've looked at a number of options and So far we haven't you know come to an agreement on what would be best Thank you very much I'm curious

So we'll go first.

For staff, do we have discretion or what? Because I hear it. Again, I like the sneak path idea. But I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'll kind of run through. Run through things. So starting on the Dexter Road side. Dexter Road, yeah, I pulled off the exact language from the transportation's memo. Transportation recommend conditional approval to site plan subject to resolution of safe and accessible pedestrian connection to transit. So, their most direct and feasible solution is construction, the North side sidewalk between the site and the plan to ironwood roads, drive pedestrian crossing and transit node corresponding with the city's Dexter road sidewalk project. That was a proposed language in the motion. Transportation as a petitioner just mentioned, transportation. i guess second alternative is the mid block crossing near the site frontage it designed to the appropriate safety standard for dexter road operating conditions and coordinated with the city's transit and crossing strategy i think some of the underlying logic from the transportation division for that option b is that it's an entrance point of the city so where we see all of our entrance points in the city it's a point of higher velocity and a slower velocity so like looking at i think some of the level of intervention the transportation identified necessary for option B is to mitigate some of those Issues essentially coming in from the township area, more rural area, higher speeds to serve as not only pedestrian safety, but also traffic calming to slow vehicles down because the instance of. Pedestrian person bike person or bike pedestrian. automobile, bike-automobile interactions is much higher within an urbanized area. Just a few comments on the, this is just the staff's perspective on the sneak path. I worry about, so it's still kind of contextualizing where things sit. We have the sidewalk gap program. One of the goals is safe and accessible. One of the goals of PROAG and tied into moving to zero plan is multimodal connectivity, so connecting pedestrians with buses fits under those umbrellas. Where we're along public right-of-ways, there's potentially more space for easements, already existing easements or changing the dimensions of an easement to get a sidewalk in there. Cutting across a completely private parcel would be, I would be really reluctant to add that as a to recommend having that as staff to recommend for staff to recommend that as a condition given that it would just be contingent on two completely uh private party interactions and as applicant did mention how does that easement it how much of that easement could or could not overlay with the utility easements could they be superpositioned would they have to be next to each other um then you're getting into like minimum lot with not just from like uh zoning compliance standpoint, but also for that other property owner since he or they are not interested in selling it and want to retain some development possibility and interest in that parcel.

Okay.

Thank you. Let me just catch my list. I have Weatherby wanted to jump in. I hope that's okay to Norton. And then Dish wanted to jump in, and I hope that's okay to Hammerschmidt. Okay, great. So we'll go Weatherby, Dish, Norton, Hammerschmidt, Weitsch.

Okay, so just on this, and Planter Shake, you may know something different, but it does look like the bus stop is actually directly across from Arbor Landings or whatever that is. And I don't know if that's something that's going to change in the future, but it does look like if they do the bus stop across their proper, or the sidewalk across their property, it would actually encompass the current bus stop, which is not at Ironwood. And if you can even see this on Google Maps, is that it is a very wet ditch after that. I can see that there would be issues, more complicated issues there putting in a sidewalk. But I don't know if you have more to add on that. It isn't currently, I don't think, at Ironwood unless it's correct.

So the part of Transportation's plan is to move the bus stop down to Ironwood. And some of the sidewalk work that they're doing, I think they may have started already or planning on starting never out on that side of town. I think the intention is to start soon on some of that work at the Ironwood-Dexter Road intersection area. The idea is that the bus stop wouldn't be there as an alternative if the mid block cross was built at the drive entrance for this development, potentially both bus stops would be maintained.

Okay. Yeah, because it just seems to me like I absolutely think that they need to put a sidewalk in front of their property, but it does seem somewhat weird to put it in front of other people's property. I mean, which we do sometimes, but this one feels particularly kind of... Since the bus stop is currently there, and it is across from Arbor Landings, which seems like a good thing, I don't know. It feels like this is an appropriate spot to have them do their whole frontage, and then the rest of it can be picked up with the Dexter sidewalk project. But that's just my take on it.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Weatherby. Council Member Dish.

OK, I think this is confusing. And so I want to identify what my confusion is. And maybe it's just mine, because last night's meeting was late.

Sorry.

But OK, I just want to start by reading from the transportation memo, the last one. Dexter Road is served by the ride with stops near Landings Boulevard eastbound. and on the 3400 Dexter frontage westbound. Dexter is a two-lane rural highway cross-section which has a posted speed limit of 35 miles an hour, an average vehicle speed of 40 miles an hour, and an 85 percentile speed of 45 miles per hour. This area is a transition zone between faster vehicle speeds outside of Ann Arbor and slower vehicle speeds within the city. Due to vehicle speeds and the township-city transition, Dexter Road presents what the report calls challenges for pedestrians to cross safely at the bus stops. I think, Chair White, you have referred to this as there's a game. There's a video game. Yeah. Frogger. Frogger. OK. So there is a sidewalk gap along Dexter to Ironwood, where there is not currently a bus stop, but there might be a bus stop. There is also a need to get people across the street, because presumably one wants to take buses in both directions, not to be. And so I don't... Yes, but there's... You have to get across the street safely. So there's a gap problem and a crossing problem. And I just don't see the pedestrian advocates on council feeling like this plan meets, that either option fully meets what needs to be done. And I understand that these many things that the list of things, pedestrian refuge island, hawk light, or whatever, RRFB, I can never remember that, removing the right turn lane, positive contrast lightings, dah, dah, dah. I understand that those are expensive, but I just can't imagine having more homes and more humans there with no safe way to get across the street. And no, I mean, I guess not completing the sidewalk to Ironwood is fine if people are going to take the bus at landings. But either way, they have to get across Dexter. And I just see that these are both in the air. And I just don't think this will, council will not be happy with this. Okay. So there we go.

I'll take a note and we'll come back to it. I will go Norton, then Hammerschmidt, then White.

Okay, I'm noodling. I am noodling on this project. I have a question. This project, I think it's for staff. Is this project big enough that it requires tree protection or natural features? There's a wetland plan, but what's up with the trees?

As far as like mitigation?

Yeah, they're going to be taking trees to...

Yeah, all without having the site plan exactly in front of me, what the mitigation numbers and stuff are. There's a mitigation analysis that's done as part of the site plan. So the tree inventory list, and then how many landmark trees are.

They've done all of that assessment, and the site plan includes mitigation for trees.

Yeah, as necessary where landmark trees are being.

Did we get a copy of that site plan in our packet? Did I...

I don't think it is in the plan in the way that we have historically had them. It is linked on page eight of the staff report under the stream file number SP25-0021.

I was looking at that and I couldn't see a reference.

It's the second attachment under this agenda item.

Is it? Okay. So I'm trying to figure that out. I, too, am still scratching my head about accessibility. I drive this road fairly regularly. I've even run out here. It's pretty scary because of traffic. And I understand it's going to be scary for people who are trying to cross the road. But I don't know that it's fair to put on the developer's shoulders all of the cost of putting a crosswalk there.

I mean, this is a part of how infrastructure happens, and this is an infrastructure thing. So often, that's sometimes how it flows.

Sometimes. So I'm putting that on the table and noodling on that. I would suggest, so I live over in the old west side of in Arbor, and I can think of immediately a couple places on Pauline where I, what did you call them, sneak paths? Yes. Sneak paths that connect. It's been horribly laid out because all these cul-de-sacs which create these stupid traffic patterns. We have to drive 10 miles to get a half a mile, you know, So there are sneak paths there that are really pretty unobtrusive. You might look for examples of that to show to this fellow. I wouldn't suggest that we require it as a condition, but I think it's entirely possible to sneak a sneak path in there that would be pretty unobtrusive that would benefit this neighborhood by giving them a shorter way to get to the bus stop. So they might see some benefit from that. And then I guess the question for you.

And who is the who? You?

You, the petitioner, the designer, is this design finalized? Or is this still a conceptual design of the layout? Or is this what it's going to be? And let me tell you why I'm asking that. If you're going to create a sneak path, I'm looking at the map that's up on the screen, so that people can come down the middle of your street, is that going to be a private street? That's not going to be very walker, pedestrian friendly. Could you design it so there's a center parkway in the middle and then alleys off the back so that people driving in could get into the units from the backside and have more like a park-like path in the middle and they would have Front Large to look at, see what I'm getting at? So that's a conceptual design thing that maybe you're beyond being able to think about that. But if you're gonna do things to create more pedestrian access and usability, having a design that's not so heavily car-focused, I'm gonna drive into my pod and I'm never gonna get out of my car have more like a park like in the middle with a path in the middle, that might be a more amenable design. And if you do the alleys in the back, that might create an opening on the west side for the solid waste pickup so that you're not putting it right next to the neighbors to the east. Again, I'm kind of offering that as something to think about if you're still in the process of fine-tuning the conceptual layout and you can give that some thought. If this is what you're doing, then this is what you're doing. And I get that. So I guess I'm putting... questions on the table. I'm not really sure where that takes me. I don't have any solid questions.

Sure. I'll come to one thing that you said, and then I'll go to Deputy Manager Kelly. Let's see. So there's about a little over 250 54 trees, 94 trees on the site. I'm looking at the landscape response for the tree mitigation and it's updated to 399 inches. And so the canopy loss has been fixed at about $250 per inch. So that's about how much mitigation they have to re-mitigate, but the petitioner also indicated. that they would be planting additional trees on the site as well. So just to your original question, then we'll go to Manager Kelly. Yeah, you're welcome. It's on that stream website. It's under the landscape PDF, which is dated November 21st, 2025.

I just wanted to go back to something that Planner Shaikh mentioned in his opening comments, which is that you're seeing items for conditional approval more often because council has requested that we do that. And we usually, we do, it's a little bit of a, again, Planning is an art where we bring it and we say, OK, we think that there's a discrete set of items that can be finalized post approval, or maybe even in between the planning commission. city council approvals to move this into final form and the staff recommendation is in here across two different service areas so you have engineering and transportation recommending that in order to meet that to satisfaction the connectivity and the public right-of-way access to complete a sidewalk on the north side between the site and Ironwood. If that is not sounding in these conditions, I believe they were talked about with the applicant in terms of what would be put into the site staff report. And they've seen the memos from those departments in terms of what they expect moving into this meeting. So if it's not looking If it's not clear enough or that condition isn't working for the table, then probably we just presented it to you too soon and it should be tabled so that they can resolve that. Then you could see a plan that meets requirements without conditions or with conditions that don't involve unresolved transportation. But I don't think that it's the... Because of all of the different design dominoes that happen when you introduce changes to the layout that you have to you here, it has already checked so many boxes of approvals. And as you know from the recent conversations with fire and solid waste, that gets very intricate. So I would say if it's not feeling ripe for approval with the conditions as presented, maybe it wasn't ready.

Thank you, Manager Kelly. Let me check the table. So I have in the queue Hammerschmidt, Weitsch, and Adams. Adams, did you have something closer to what's been said, or are you in a different direction? Otherwise, I go to Hammerschmidt.

I'm in a different direction.

Okay, great. Let's go with Hammerschmidt, and then we'll go immediately to you.

I mostly have comments because I think I heard maybe we're coming back to transportation, although I was also sort of thinking postponement, honestly. But on transportation, I'll just say I think I agree we need both that gap filled and a mid-block crossing, but I'm sort of on with Commissioner Norton where it doesn't feel fair to put that mid-block crossing on the developer when this is an issue right now with the people that live at Arbor Landings. I want to go back to noise abatement. I'm just going to encourage you to look at triple pane windows, too, because that will help the noise tremendously. I do appreciate that you're not anticipating touching the trees that are adjacent to the highway, but I distinctly remember Concord Pines and whoever presented at that time swore to me that they were going to leave a ton of trees between the homes and the highways, and you drive by on the highway and the houses are right there. So I think triple pane windows. Just putting that, thinking about that now, that if you do have to take down more trees than you're anticipating, the noise, the sound from the highway should be mitigated a lot more for that, and with your two by six construction, which is great. I love annexations that bring us housing and tax revenue. I hate that we have to feel like we can't get everything that we want when it comes to both housing and sustainability. Because we can, it just takes, commitments and willingness to change the status quo and negotiations to make sure we're not value engineering out sustainability. So it's not easy, but it is possible. And we just have to keep pushing on these things with all of our petitioners for the future of our planet. This is we can't require it. I would encourage you to explore full electrification rather than putting new gas lines in this There might be a gas line that I saw a little like building. I don't know but you're gonna have to put in a lot more gas lines So just as you're proceeding with this project and refining just looking at renewables looking at electrification Would be a really good thing for the community And I'm going to stop there and see where we want to proceed or turn it to Adams.

Oh, no, you're okay. I was just checking my queue. Adams is next, then Weitsch.

Yeah, and I don't mean to sound cranky. I'm just a little lost on what we're talking about.

I can help you. I said, I can help you.

I'm fine with postponing the site plan if folks want to see how the other staff areas resolve some of these open issues. I do think that the rezoning is a right question, and I do think that the requesting zoning is appropriate. General principles in the land use plan, the economic development resolutions. I would say that, you know, we have that economic development report that talks about making the site planning process easier and more streamlined. And one of the ways we can help make it streamlined is by letting, like approving this tonight with these conditions that these things will get resolved and letting the city staff run the play. That's where my head is at. I would just defer all this to the staffing functions who have that role and move forward with this. This is housing that we need in a place that we don't have it. It's an underutilized parcel by the highway. It's just sitting there. We should take the opportunity and move forward.

All right. Thank you, Commissioner Adams. I think I concur, and I still have questions. So I'm going to connect in with those. But let me do my chair function first, which is at the table right now is a concern about the transportation. And the core transportation, as I understand it, is the frontage of the sidewalk, the potential of a connection for the development to the neighborhood so that kids could get to school safely without having to come all the way out to Dexter, down Dexter, then back up through Ironwood towards Ravenwood, back up towards the elementary school. There, according to the petitioner, there are at least two conversations that are at work, maybe three. So one is build it as the UDC requires it, build a mid-crossing or introduced by Commissioner Mills some kind of pathway from the development into the neighborhood. That feels soft. to me because the petitioner indicated that they were hoping that the Planning Commission could give direction to staff around the resolution of those requests. Did I understand what you articulated correctly? Okay, great. So that's something that is sitting at the table and I don't know who wants to, at the table, pick that up. Commissioner Adams has clearly articulated to move that into the staff direction and approve it with some condition that it gets resolved staff wise. Someone at the table could make a different resolution or recommendation and I'll leave that to the table as I make my comments. Does everyone So to understand what, okay, so that was the big thing that I heard that was at the table. The second big thing that I heard at the table, sorry, if I can just finish this and then I'll go right to you, Planner Shaikh, is the placement of the solid waste because it abuts the residential and it may create a rat, mice, rodent issue. The petitioner articulated that it abuts land that the property owner owns. They own the site that they are proposing, as well as this adjacent site. They're providing an easement, but the petitioner has articulated, given the requirements that they have, that this is the best placement. But we didn't resolve what mitigation would be there, whether that would be fencing, other kinds of anti-rodent... And so that is unresolved. So if the petitioner wants to respond to that, you can. I'm going to go to first to plan or shake. And I still haven't articulated the things I wanted to ask about. So I'm just doing my table function of what I heard at the table.

No, just point out clarification that 2 super or some super summarizing the 2 staff perspectives or transportation division staff staff. Perspectives were the sidewalk gap down to ironwood with the understanding that as part of their. Programming in that area, I think now the bus stop is intended to be moved down there or. mid block crossing where the bus stops presently are today and i think in conversation with transportation division just i think because this briefly came up if the mid block was

constructed they would probably still have the bus stops the new bus stops at ironwood and just have two bus stops um for what it's worth okay uh so my questions are slightly different uh for the petitioner and i agree with commissioner adams that i think the rezoning is fine i'm always going to ask for more housing so that's my first question to the petitioner If you could come up and talk with me just for a minute about why you're at the numbers you're at and not the numbers that the zoning provide. Is that a cost, a layout of the site? Are there other constraints because we don't have a lot of land lots like this and so it's an opportunity to put as much housing as we possibly can and the site could have more housing if

you could make it work so just questions about why you've presented it the way that you have i can um and mr chair those are all great questions sure i think i think the answer is both um the site is very constrained it's an oddly shaped polygon it has a wetland on it that's already been called out under the old master plan is being required to be saved and enhanced which we're having to put a wetland enhancement around the existing wetland to kind of... So that'll extend it. Yeah, to actually make it better than what it is now. And then the other part is we ran into an issue where the city's sewer that's located across the street, and our engineer is here tonight so he can talk more intelligently than me about it, but the city's sewer is stubbed off over at Arbor Landing. And that would be the gravity-led sewer that we would typically use and connect by gravity to get there. There was never any easement granted to get that sewer out of the apartment complex, so it's effectively locked there. And we've reached out to, I believe it's called Solomon Properties, who owns the apartment complex, and they have no interest in allowing us to tap into it at that location. So now we're having to work with the city engineering department to use it as a lift station to mechanically pump the sewage to a different sewer location, which is a lot more expensive than letting gravity take the effluent to that location.

I know this because I have a building and we have to pump sewer because we didn't have enough pitch and we have 18 inches of concrete that we didn't want to tear up.

So it's not that we were constrained by the cost of that. And I think also to Planning Commissioner Mills' point, I don't know that more densities Almost achievable because of the constraints of this sewer system because it would even cost more to add more density and more affluent and larger pump stations and then it upsizing all that So this project is and I know it's like a cliche of developers where they always say oh, you know It's almost not doable From a cost perspective and I'm not quite saying that but the sewer situation really does put it put a twist on the whole site development part of it, so So to answer your question, yeah, there's there's some physical constraints just from the site historically and then there's also some utility constraints that are also financially making it to where it's the the design is kind of maximized for the most benefit, most density in trying to meet the goals of the existing master plan. And Chairman Adams was correct. So if I articulated it incorrectly, the new 2050 plan shows this parcel as sort of just a grayed out, muted, arbor landings across the street sort of has that hatch transitional zoning so whether or not you know it's an extension of the district if or however but the old master plan from 20 2009 specifically had a call out like it there they were on a map that was black and white and there was numbers for all of these annexation parcels and this one um It was focused toward townhome development. So I don't know, Jason, if you have anything else to add to that question.

I mean, you've asked a few other questions.

We can't hear you from your chair, so if you're going to address this, you have to come to the podium.

Mr. Norton had some questions that I would be glad to answer, and I would be able to help. some of the sidewalk gap questions that are going around because whether we're tabled or we get a vote tonight, I think we would like to have some clear direction from the Planning Commission on what you're thinking. So from Mr. Norton.

I'm going to pause you because it's my time, and I'll go back to Norton if he wants to ask the question. I think your colleague was wondering if you wanted to contribute to my question around the density with the sewer. So if you don't have anything for that, I'll go on to my next question.

Okay. From the density perspective, we're maxed out on space.

Okay. So I assume these will be fire-suppressed developments, right? They are not. They're not required. We have fire rated walls. That's a part. I saw that that was a part of the condition and so I was trying to understand why there was a condition for the fire rated walls if they were suppressed. So my answer is they're not suppressed. Can you all talk to us about why you're not imagining this development as all electric or solar because you say solar ready but then you have a HOA and then with the HOA there's a lot of there's sub restrictions that sit within that inside the city.

One of the biggest issues that we're having right now is that for these pump stations to carry the sewage they require that you have a standby generator in the event of a power outage to make sure that affluent can get to the sewer and there isn't electricity available that the generators that would have to be on site would still have to be fed with gas. So it's like a Generac standby generator at someone's home.

Sure, but those seem separate to me. It seems like they might be being conflated, but I was just trying to understand why, just as a whole.

We had thought about that. It was one of the things that the Office of Sustainability had brought up to us very early on. But it became clear that once we were going to have to have lift stations for the sewer that the generators that are required in order to keep those running in the event of a power outage will still have to have gas. And so we would have to bring gas onto the site for that purpose as well.

Okay. So I'm going to come back to the transportation question to see if any colleague wanted to take that up. And if you didn't, if someone wanted to suggest a way forward. So we can either go forward with what we have in this current staff presentation. If there are questions, the petitioner is happy. They have indicated to answer. those questions or if we want to table to give more time so I'm just trying to read the table so I'll start with Commissioner Councilmember dish which may not be directly to my question because you put your hand up before I started talking so your question was the transportation yes yep and so I just want to clarify that we have raised

issues about connectivity with the adjacent neighborhood. And we have raised issues about pedestrian safety. Those are distinct. And both are addressed in this report. And both are tricky, right? The connectivity problem is not resolvable. And the pedestrian safety problem The staff report says, transportation staff and the applicant were ultimately unable to reach agreement regarding the extent of pedestrian infrastructure necessary to provide safe and accessible transit access consistent with the city's corridor planning objectives. I don't know what to do with that sentence. And there's several back and forths. And you have a memo that you wrote in January, which was acknowledging how hard you were all working, you and transportation staff. But so I don't know what to say about this question that you raised, Ms. Kelly, as to whether is this too soon or because for the reasons that Commissioner Adams suggested, council wants to see things that are approved with conditions so that we can move things more quickly. I feel as though there's a stalemate and some of the stalemate has to do with financial considerations and some of the stalemate has to do with the ongoing discussion of when we are in areas of underdeveloped infrastructure, What can we ask a developer to do, and what should the city do? And some of the stalemate is the real complexities of the site. Obviously, when you have an open site that you're able to annex into Ann Arbor, it's not going to be a simple site. The city is 250 years old. Right. Everything that's left is super challenging. So I feel extremely stymied because I do not know what city council will make of this. Or I can say I trust that if planning commission gives conditional approval, in the interim, some of these issues... I mean, please do not bring this to council with things that are just stalemated like this, because then you'll have 11 people, or at least 10 people, who don't even have the expertise on this board, you know, trying to hash something out, and I just don't think that's going to be productive. But I am willing to... I appreciate Commissioner Adams reminding me of the things that...

So we could split the motions, cause there are two. One is the rezoning and the other is the site plan. So we could follow city council and approve the rezoning, which would at least give the zoning through and they could move that part through. And then the second part is the site plan. And then we could have a separate conversation about what to do with that, whether we continue down this path to find conditions that we could approve or if we communicate enough to staff and the petitioner that they could then take something back and then come back with a revised site plan. So I'll hear from Planner Shaik. You don't have to speak to what I just said because you again had your hand up before I started talking.

Just a point of clarification, point of order for timelines. So the annexation was approved last night at council. It will probably go to the town, Sioux Township 3 weeks to a month. I don't know their exact public notice periods. So the earliest that I would estimate the council would see any action from tonight's planning commission meeting would be. Let's say 4 to 6 months that kind of timeline or 3 to let's say 3 to 6 months. Sure. Depends on how quickly the state goes and how quickly the township. It's their process and gives things back to us. We can't bring, staff cannot bring anything, whether it's a full recommendation for approval, denial, conditional approval.

Until that is finished. So then my clarifying question is, does motion one impact what the township and the state does, or is it just ancillary?

No, no. The sequence has to be annexation, but you can't rezone something that has not been annexed yet. But the annexation is always the first step.

So we don't have to separate the motions. We could keep them together and we could postpone a decision tonight to give the petitioner some opportunity to resolve the things that Commissioner Dish and other commissioners have raised around the transportation and the connectivity. yeah there's no and they could be separated or could be kept together because one neither of them can go to council immediately sure so i'm i'm going to start with uh commissioner norton because you uh made eye contact so and then we will uh after we hear from commissioner norton then i'll do another check at the table to see how we would like to proceed commissioner norton well um two things if you're looking for guidance from the planning commission on how to You're addressing the petitioner or staff?

The petitioner. You're looking for us to give some counsel to give some advice to staff on how to resolve this. The way I would approach it is to think through how much is this new development going to contribute to demand for bus access. I went through the memo quickly. I didn't see where there are counts of the numbers of people from the Ironwood Neighborhood or the landing how much bus activity it how much demand those for bus but presumably some of your units people would Use the bus It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to put a bus stop at Ironwood and then Retain the one that's already at landing Boulevard. Those are two really close Locations to have two different bus stops so my counsel to staff and transportation staff would be to do a more searching probe into what this development is likely to contribute to bus demand and have the developer contribute to that part of it. So it seems to me if most of the demand is gonna come out of the landings in this new development, I would keep the bus stops where they are and put a crossing so that people from either way could get there And then why isn't the city creating the gap? I don't understand why the developer is being required to fill a gap off of their property that they're not contributing to. So that's my thoughts.

Unfortunately, he didn't pose it as a question to you. He did not.

And then the question I had was, could you speak? I raised some questions about the site design. And you had some insights.

There you go. Yes, so what you were describing from kind of an alleyway with a more pedestrian-friendly mid-center line is 100% correct. But with the stipulations we have on our site, it's so narrow. We're already at setback to setback, wetland to, you know, we just didn't have that availability, but that was our first intent.

You don't have the space to do that. Yeah.

And then did you have a question on sidewalk gap?

Sure. Yes. Can you fill me in on your thoughts on the sidewalk gap?

So we did work with the Transportation Department on many different occasions. So we've had compromises back and forth that I'm sure that, you know, they have good intentions. There's already a current plan in that area for improvements. So the gap that's there in our minds should be incorporated into those existing plans because of our now proposed plan that will continue that sidewalk through there. What our concern is is there's a condition on the plans right now to put that gap in that's not required in your ordinance for us to put sidewalk off of our property. So those are the kind of restraints that we're nervous on. We were willing to work with them. We actually had a compromise with them to not build the section to the west to the highway because we all thought that would be extremely unused. Use that money to give to the city to build that gap with their project. That was on the plans and then it was taken away and I'm not saying that was wrong because putting our frontage sidewalk on is probably the right thing, which we are doing. The mid block crossing is a very awkward position between us and the landings because of the XLD cell lanes. So a better location for that is at Ironwood and Dexter. So I know people, you're not always going to get a crosswalk exactly where the most people are. You might have to go you know three hundred feet down the road to get to a safer crosswalk which that intersection drives which should be I think is part of their overall current plan so those are the kind of things that we're looking for on the sidewalk situation that we're just making sure that The transportation is putting a condition on this plan that we feel may not be part of the ordinance because it's not in front of our frontage. So we want to get your direction on that, whether it's tabled tonight so we can keep working on it, that's fine. But we want to make sure we understand exactly what your thoughts are to make this the best solution.

So I'm gonna interject just for a second because with the, oh, I'm good with you for now. The Robertson Brothers petition that you did, Plan or Shake, also had a sidewalk piece. Is this the same sort of conditional, which is it's sort of running with it and the city is building the infrastructure in the same way that they would be building the infrastructure because they're bringing a development into a place where infrastructure doesn't exist. And so we asked the developer to put that infrastructure in place. So that would be like a water main increase or a sewer line increase. And in this case, it just happens to be several hundred feet of sidewalk. You don't have to accept my framing, but I think you understand what I'm... Planning is always...

I think the lesson for everybody for time is planning is the big gray space in the middle. It's the best attempt to control humanity in code, and it's the absolute exercise in failure and the exceptions to the rule. At its very basic... If it was a 10 word definition, yes, that's the same. It's an offsite side account. The difference on that project was the staff recommended. Pursuing the sidewalk gap. Dependent upon further determination by staff and the public public services area administrator, because in that case. robertson brothers project was within the city of ann arbor the neighboring property was a township right so there were some other sites specific whether or not we even had the right-of-way there whether the city could enact a right-of-way on a township parcel there or not so there were okay okay thank you all right um let's get a check in at the table what um

Commissioner Norton gave some direct direction to the petitioner. The petitioner has some direct questions to the table. We are the table. Who would like to get a conversation with us started so that we can give some insight to both the petitioner and staff and satisfy Commissioner Adams' recommendation that something happens here shortly? All right, we'll start with Commissioner Mills.

Well, I have one sentence right now, which I think tries to summarize what we want to send back to staff, actually, like in the what's next. Because that's what I'm hearing is really helpful, like, help us figure out, right? And I think this is my feeling, and it doesn't even include about the sneak path yet, because that would be in a second sentence. But first sentence is, we recognize that, as proposed, this site introduces issues of connectivity and safety for the residents here and expect the petitioners to make proportional contributions to make sure that they're Future residents will be safe. But also, given the modest size of this development, because I think that's what's a little bit different. This is not a gigantic development. They should bear proportional costs. I think that that is a, that's what I have so far. And if transportation hasn't heard that, I think us sharing that might be helpful. Potentially. It's recorded. But I don't know. So I would propose that we, if we postpone this, that we send them back with that instruction from the Planning Commission to staff. I can also, the second sentence that I'm going to do on the fly is, If those goals of connectivity and or safety could be accomplished, not along Dexter.

Sure.

That is something that we are open to the conversation considering, knowing that there are, like, it's land issues, like, land access issues. But from my perspective, if that is resolved, whatever.

Okay. We'll go to Councilmember Dish and then see where we are.

Okay. I like your sentence. And I know from things that we've been muttering to each other that there's always this problem of last one in gets the big load of money and stuff. So the roundabout at Duvaren, Arbor Village is paying the big money for and you know, it's not their fault They're the last man in but they're the last minute. So that's your point. I like your sentence. It gets it I hearing that nothing can happen on this. Nothing's gonna come to council for three to six months I'm less inclined to table. I'm more inclined to say we should express some things like that sentence and think that our professional staff, they're smart and they'll work this out and there's time and there's a clock ticking because it's going to go to council and it's in everyone's best interests to have some more things tied up before it gets to council because it's hard for that body to know what to do when there's too much open. So the thing that I would add is that I would like some serious consideration of where is the best place for a crossing of Dexter Road, whether the entrance to this proposed development is a good idea. And let's posit that the bus stop is moving to Ironwood, and it's not remaining at Landings. It is close. It's really close to M14. Those cars are, either the transportation people are going to say they're going to be slowed down because of that, or they're going to still be speeding. I don't know. The transportation engineers, what do you think?

Yeah, they're not coming off of M14.

They're not coming off of it. But they have, what have they done? They've gone under it or over it? Over it.

It's over it. It's a bridge.

And they've gone over it. Yeah. So yeah, they're still flying. Yeah. So maybe the best place for the crossing is at Ironwood. And maybe the best thing is for the petitioner to participate in that crossing. but not participate in the frontage and not bear the full cost of the crossing. I mean, so.

Okay, we'll go to Commissioner Weatherby.

So I think I'm kind of the reverse of that. I think that they should pay for the property in front of their, or the sidewalk in front of their property. I think it's fine that it connects to the bridge, because you can take a bike over the bridge. You can get to Wagner. You can get, I mean, we don't want to preclude transit past that I think it's it's fine to have the sidewalk in front of their lot and it's a fairly big chunk that is filling in it does not go to ironwood but I'm looking and again there it's 30 units arbor landings has 328 units so right it's too late I mean but you know I do I do worry that if we are gonna do a lot of infill and we're making the infill pay for what we haven't paid for in the past I look at the there are multiple condos across from me from my house where they made each you know we made the city made each of them fill in their sidewalk and it means that there still is a sidewalk gap a fairly significant sidewalk gap further down but you know, it's going to get filled in. I mean, those most likely will fill in either with a gap sidewalk gap from the city or because of new development. And that just seems fair. And I know we don't, you know, sometimes we add on or, but they're not looking for higher, they're not looking for more height, they're not looking for, you know, they're just building I mean it's weird because it's a zoning change but they're kind of building what's allowed there and so I don't know it just feels like having them build their sidewalk in front of their lot fills in a big chunk that's needed of sidewalk but the rest of it can be filled in through an already existing project that probably wasn't going to I mean, this is taking some cost away from that already existing project.

I wasn't disputing that. I meant they shouldn't have to pay for this.

Oh, okay. No one can see the this.

No, this is the gap between.

Okay.

The off their site. It's the gap between them and Ironwood.

Okay, great. I understood what you meant. All right, we'll go to Commissioner Norton and then I'll try to summarize what I've heard and see where Planner Shaikh and I land.

I'm trying to understand, Council Member Dish, did you say you're less inclined to table or you're more inclined to table?

I am less inclined to table because there's time built into the process.

So we would approve this with the condition that they work it out. Yes. Given the council that we're kind of giving them on how to do that.

Right, and we're giving them, as usual, our perfectly clear and utterly consistent.

Unambiguous. We have two things.

So I'm mindful of Commissioner Adams and the city council's concern that we kind of drag things out and that makes it really hard to develop and we're trying to get away from that. Is that in this, now I'm looking at staff. If we don't table and we approve it with these conditions and say work it out, is that still going to allow things to proceed in an orderly manner and not get bogged down? And do you have enough guidance from us to actually figure out how to work it out in a way that's gonna be fruitful? Or would it be better to table it and really get it worked out?

So if this is tabled to a date certain, then it does not have to be re-noticed. So there would be predictability. I mean, we have three to four months just for the annexation to clear, it sounds like. And sometimes it takes considerably longer. There's no way for us to know. But give or take a month. If this were to be postponed to, I mean, I don't think that it would take two months to resolve these transportation challenges. So I think that there are a universe of available dates that this could be postponed to, to come back to your table, which would allow you to see a more final form plan, which could then move to city council with more clarity. and also not have some of this gray area or questions where you feel uncertain about your vote or what you're looking at, that would still be my advice to the table is to, I think the petitioner has heard what the priorities are for the planning commission and what you expect. They have had these conversations with staff, so they will have some decisions to make around what comes back. Okay.

So following up on that, I would recommend that we table it to a date certain and ask that these things get fine-tuned so there's some more solid conditions stated so that we know what exactly we're approving, given that we do have the time to do that in the time scheme. It sounds like a two-month? So now coming back to staff, what's the right time period to give you all the time to do this negotiation that has to happen?

I mean, I think the major outstanding some of the some of the issues around the, from my understanding, and I would defer to your perspectives, I think the biggest issue is the transportation, I think, because we are there are conditions around engineering as well. And the proposed motion statement.

Yes, I think the ones that are unresolved are the for from the tables point of view are the transportation, whether it's the mid block crossing, and the connectivity out of the development into the neighborhood so those are two things to see if there's a way to present a solution and bring that back i would throw in commissioner whether bees raise concern around solid waste as well that that gets resolved to the satisfaction of the neighbors so my my council is

My sense is we all agree that the petitioners should build the sidewalk in front of their own property. They should contribute something more to that to help resolve this transportation dilemma that it's going to create, but I don't like the idea that they should get stuck with the full bill of making the big, the entire, improvement just because they're the developer who happens to be proposing this development. So some tempering that last bit of oomph to get this final project built in a way that will leave the residents of this new development safe as they're trying to use the bus and cross the street. That's the sense I'm getting of what we're trying to navigate.

Yeah, I don't know that everyone the table has articulated it quite that way because there's some I think there is some agreement to what is on the plan the condition currently as it is a part of the motion goes from the development all the way to Ironwood so that is the condition and then what we raised at the table was whether or not there would be a mid block crossing, which we then discovered the petitioner has already had conversations around and was amenable to accept for enhancements to the mid-block assessment. That's what I heard, that it added an additional cost on top of what they were willing to contribute. So it sounded, from my point of view, that they were reluctant but okay to take the sidewalk where the transportation asks. They were entertaining the mid-block crossing, but then when they went down that path, it had additional costs that seemed to overrun their estimated budget for this contribution. So then that stopped. And it sits between those two things. And then the third thing that we brought to the table, which I didn't articulate but I agree with wholeheartedly, is we have to somehow get the humans out of this development into the neighborhood that doesn't bring them down to Dexter. And that is nearly impossible because it's all private development. So unless the city uses its... eminent domain to take five feet on a property and connect them to, it then requires that the petitioner go to the individual property owners to see if they can meet an arrangement. And then the fourth thing was the waste management, its placement, and its nuisance to the neighbors. So that is what I would summarize. Sorry, go ahead, Commissioner Dish.

Were you on fourth or fifth?

I was on fourth.

OK. The fifth thing is noise abatement.

Yes, but I just sort of dropped that because it's the highway. But you can still raise it.

No, I think the triple pane window suggestion was a really good one.

Yes. And the petitioner did write that down.

Yeah, because the constituents in Ward 1 and 5, and I think this project is in 5, not 1.

Yeah, it is on our agenda 5.

14. They are really sad when they realize how noisy that is. And so I think that that was another important issue of health that needs to be recognized. So the way we're feeling this sidewalk and mid-block crossing thing is there are two things that nobody wants to pay for right now. One is the gap between the petitioner's property and Ironwood. Petitioner's kind of willing, but they don't really think it's their job. And the other thing is the enhancements to the mid-block crossing, wherever it is, whether it's at the entrance, and this is where I would like more thoughtful advice about, or... at Ironwood, nobody wants to pay for the enhancements to that crossing. Now, we're not going to have a crossing with no enhancements, because that's a target. So that is something that there needs to be an agreement about. And this body doesn't think, because we've seen too many projects like this, where a latecomer gets burdened with more things than we think is fair. And so there needs to be something worked out about how those costs for those things are shared.

Okay. Is there general agreement with the way that Councilmember Dish articulated just that last point? Okay. So I think this side is clear. How about this side? It's you and Norton, sorry, the two lawyers.

It's kind of a mushy guidance, but that's a sense. But I think all that's leaving with us is kind of kicking it back to the staff. Could you work with transportation folks on this some more and try and come up with a more firm proposal that's going to work and have a more concrete condition that we can approve and do that in a date certain so that we're not slowing the project down but trying to navigate through this?

We can absolutely bring this back for that conversation to staff with the petitioner. I would suggest either the August 4th meeting seems like it would give... Ample time for revisions to plan to be looked at by staff. The 7-21 meeting could fit it, but that gives only three weeks with deadlines and so forth.

Yeah, isn't there, where's the election?

We actually, sorry, it is on the 5th, right? We moved that, so it would be on the 5th. Thank you.

Okay. So I will entertain a motion to postpone to August 5th. Someone would have to move that. Okay, so we'll move by whether it be seconded by Councilmember Dish. Any discussion? I know technically Robert's Rules of Order, once we do that, if it's a table or postponement, there's no more discussion, but let's just make sure everybody feels heard.

Just a question.

Yeah, go ahead. What does that do to the original motion? Can you turn your mic? Oh, your mic is on.

What does that do to the original motion to approve, which started this whole conversation?

We just postponed, so it just leaves it.

It just sets it aside.

It sets it aside. Go ahead, Commissioner Mills.

Just a question for staff. You feel like you have the language that you need to take back, and or for developers, like...

Yeah, I guess that's a good question since we're like in this mushy gray area to control humanity, which is an interesting way of thinking of planning. Is there anything else that you need from us that we haven't made clear to you in our discussion so far so that you have a good sense of where you feel like the table is?

good direction and I appreciate that.

Okay.

Staff has heard that and as long as they work with us and the transportation department, I think we can get something concrete and approvable.

Right. Bearing in mind that it may just come back to say do this and do that. Yep. Okay. All right. Okay. Is everyone okay? How about you, Commissioner Adams?

Yeah. All right. I have no idea what we've been talking about. I guess just since I've got the mic, they could go back to transportation staff and run into a brick wall.

That's what I just said. I just wanted to make sure. And that's why you're asking me.

I'm just like, not only did I have a hard time following the guidance because it was all over the map, but it doesn't. Anyway, best of luck.

Okay. All right. They seem to be okay from what they heard and what the conversation is, notwithstanding the brick wall that may exist. Everyone's good on this side? Okay. Do we do this as a voice vote?

Voice vote is fine. Okay.

All those in favor of the motion to postpone to August 5th, vote aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. okay it is postponed thank you so much and as commissioner adams so eloquently said good luck All right, that brings us to agenda item number 11A, other business. There is none. That brings us to agenda item number 12. This is a second opportunity for individuals to speak up to three minutes on any issue. We'll first hear from those of you who are present with us, then remote. There is no one present. Is there anyone remote? Therefore, I shall close the public comment and take us to agenda item 13, commission proposed business. Seeing none, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Moved by Commissioner Hammerschmidt, seconded by Commissioner Weatherby. All those in favor, say A. A. Or I. I. I. A. I. All right. The I's and A's have it. We are adjourned.