Ann Arbor's City Place continues its strange journey

Wednesday, June 17, 2009 | Source: Concentrate

It's difficult to describe the City Place development without rolling your eyes, scratching your head or just throwing up your arms and walking away.

That's what the Ann Arbor City Council did Monday night, sending the controversial project back to the Planning Commission for further review and public comment. The latest reason for delay – errors in the documents.

The development has been kicked around and reshaped in a number of different ways. The latest version calls for a suburban-style apartment building with no sustainable features on the edge of downtown. Ann Arbor Builders plan to tear down seven historic homes, including one of the city's oldest, along Fifth Avenue just north of Packard to make way for the project.

The latest incarnation includes two apartment buildings separated by a surface parking lot. The 3-story buildings will have 144 bedrooms in 24 units geared for college students and 36 surface parking spaces. The buildings will be clad in cement board siding with high-pitched roofs and large dormers.

This is far from what the developer originally proposed. Those plans called for 90 brownstone-style condos in a long 4.5-story building that is reminiscent of Beacon Hill. The original proposal also included green, urban features such as 98 underground parking spaces and a geothermal heating-and-cooling system. The 750-1,500-square-foot units were geared toward young professionals looking to live near a vibrant downtown.

That proposal met with fierce resistance from local residents. Both sides and city officials tried working together for months, going through a number of costly redrawings for the project. Ann Arbor Builders finally gave up and submitted a plan that meets the legal zoning requirements for the area, which was thrown back to planning commission this week.

Attempts to reach both the developer and the president of the Germantown Neighborhood Association that is opposing the project proved unsuccessful.

Source: City of Ann Arbor
Writer: Jon Zemke