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Shadow of a Doubt

Neighborhood associations are miffed that A2 government isn’t kowtowing to them on development issues. “As far as affordable housing is concerned, I personally don’t think there’s any point in protesting because I think the city council has an agenda, and they’re not going to listen to what we say,” says the president of the West Liberty Homeowners Association. We realize we have to give credit to the Old Fourth Ward Association for at least not having a name that specifically excludes neighborhood residents who rent their homes.

What could happen if their concerns are overlooked? “What happens is that more and more affordable housing keeps coming, and the risk is that you could just create a ghetto of some sort,” she says (emphasis ours.) More and more affordable housing? It’s an outrage! Anyway, she continues, the “snooty” residents of Burns Park should shoulder some of the burden of living with these undesirables too.

Some of the neighborhood associations would like to see affordable housing created downtown instead of in their areas, but that solution has detractors too, who worry that “taller buildings will not fit in with the character of the downtown and may cast undesirable shadows on other buildings.” Undesirable shadows? Like what, a dog or an alligator? Is the First National Building afraid that its wrinkles will be thrown into sharp relief by an unflattering shadow?

36 Responses to “Shadow of a Doubt”

You think AAIO is overrated now? Wait a few years.

Having spoken with a few bar/restaurant owners along the Liberty/Wash corridor, they have already told me that the new BW3’s is hurting their business *big time*. They are really scared.

The Ann Arbor that all of these homeowners like to talk about will be gone inside of a few years. So, by all means, keep shutting projects out so that we can have more chains, and let the REIT’S reap the rewards in the neighboring cities.

“More and more affordable housing keeps coming”?! That has to be the best quote ever.

It’s too late for Ann Arbor.
posted by todd leopold on December 10th, 2004 at 11:10 am
If A2 gets that much worse, won’t this site become less overrated? Although maybe you’re right - more distinctive local businesses means more distinctive things to skewer. A post every day bashing Starbucks and Jimmy John’s is not going to cut it.

Can’t the business owners form their own powerful lobby to counter the neighborhood associations?
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 10th, 2004 at 11:15 am
What’s BW3?
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on December 10th, 2004 at 11:22 am
Todd,
Sorry, I don’t what a BW3 is.
posted by tom on December 10th, 2004 at 11:26 am
Maybe he means Buffalo Wild Wings on State? BW3’s is a similar thing, I think.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 10th, 2004 at 11:29 am
They/we’ve tried. I know I’m being a broken record here, but as long as these people are allowed to comment on *individual* projects, this is the path that will be taken.

Again, the part of all of this that really bothers me is that these citizens are trying to keep the Ann Arbor that they used to know, and this is precisely why their city is getting more expensive, and also why all the unique things that were here are dissapearing.

All the committees and plans in the world won’t change this, so long as these people are allowed to veto projects.
posted by todd leopold on December 10th, 2004 at 11:31 am
Yeah, the new mega-sports bar on State street…I guess it’s called Buffalo Wild Wings.

It is going to hurt many businesses in that area.
posted by todd leopold on December 10th, 2004 at 11:33 am
Todd, I think you may be right - all that stuff Matt was saying on the 828 Greene thread about how everyone’s for development as long as it’s not on this particular piece of land that birds fly over sometimes is probably accurate, and they see no contradiction. Isn’t there any way we can reshape the debate so that complaining about individual projects is sort of socially stigmatized?
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 10th, 2004 at 11:39 am
You know, I had more fun doing this site when I didn’t understand anything about how this town worked.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 10th, 2004 at 11:44 am
We’ll always have Kid Rock. And Tara Reid. And one magical night at Conor O’Neills. They can’t take that away from us.
posted by Boris on December 10th, 2004 at 11:52 am
I’m on it. Gimme a little time.
posted by Murph on December 10th, 2004 at 11:58 am
AAIO, Murph put up a post about a Washtenaw Co. study that showed a 27% increase in population over the next ten years. He posed the thought that citizens in various areas around the city should have to, as an example, find a place to put 27% more housing in the Fourth Ward (feel free to correct me, Murph). Make them sit down with city planners and find a way to make this happen. Empower them. Make them responsible for shouldering their share of the burden. If they are against sprawl, make them prove it. If they don’t take this 27%, or close to it, either another part of the city take on more (which may very well make sense…the downtown area should take significantly more) or this percentage will wind up as tract housing.

Oh, and Larry,

You’ve been awfully quiet about this subject. I am interested in your opinion.
posted by todd leopold on December 10th, 2004 at 12:11 pm
Murph — ya better git some deputees, cuz there’ trouble comin’ fast.
posted by Dale on December 10th, 2004 at 12:12 pm
To be fair, Judith Marks, the head of the West Liberty Homeowners group, has a point: that area has more than its fair share of affordable housing. There are the ~10 new Habitat houses; the new prefab condos; and 2 different county-run low-income housing developments (one of them with 30 units, the other with 6), all within half a mile. I used to live right in the area. By and large, I never had any problems with crime or other ‘behaviours’ that people say come from living near the developments. Still, the concern about a low-income ghetto is real and should be addressed with more than a sentiment of ‘Ann Arbor properties never depreciate’.

I’d still love for a place like Burns Park to pull its fair share. Where is their affordable housing? there isn’t any that I know of, unless you count the hamstering of students in fraternities and sororities.
posted by KGS on December 10th, 2004 at 12:29 pm
Ive been visiting this blog off and on for a few weeks now…I must say, its refreshing to hear others out there are frustrated and think AA is overrated too. I moved here from Indiana in 2000. Ive had a love-hate relationship with this city from the start. Now that Im married, I am looking to possibly buy a home in the area. Even with an engineer husband, housing is still damn expensive for us here and a house in Ann Arbor seems like a pipe dream…Ive been following this matter in the paper…Im appalled, that the elitist neighborhood organizations are fighting affordable housing..but am I surprised? Not at all, especially when it comes to Burns Park folks…I agree that the Liberty area has got more condos, affordable housing complexes and such… How do folks left on the outskirts of Ann Arbor in apartments voice their views on this matter? And will we be heard?

And damn that BW whatever…pretty soon downtown will be nothing but chain establishments…The local businesses here are about the only thing I still like about this place.

Renee
posted by Renee on December 10th, 2004 at 1:00 pm
Renee, buy in Ypsilanti. The Normal Park area is a lot like Ann Arbor used to be, only with actual character, diversity, and warmth. Of course it’s rapidly becoming unaffordable too, so hurry.
posted by Kristi on December 10th, 2004 at 2:12 pm
Yeah, I think the goal of neighborhood associations is to make that whole 27% happen in Ypsi.
There’s a new article in December’s Observer about the Greenway that’s all boostery, but makes the whole thing seem really poorly concieved. It’s like these folks don’t understand that land is a limited resource…
posted by js on December 10th, 2004 at 4:41 pm
I can’t really complain about bw3’s coming in town. They blow the other downtown/south U area sports bars out of the water. Ann Arbor has had sub-par sports bars ever since I moved here. Now bw3’s has raised the bar. I don’t have a problem with that - chain restaurant or not.
posted by James on December 10th, 2004 at 5:11 pm
James, really? Are you really spouting about “good sports bars”? If only every corporate move to A2 could “raise the bar.”
posted by j-rod on December 10th, 2004 at 6:58 pm
Yes. I like sports bars. You have a problem with that? And I have no problem with a chain moving into town as long as they’re high quality.

Sure, it would suck if there were no locally owned businesses downtown, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a place for chain stores either.
posted by James on December 10th, 2004 at 7:31 pm
James, while I agree that there is a place for chains, the real problem is that the city has created a financial situation where *only* chains have a chance of surviving in the Ann Arbor market.

Boulder made the exact same mistake. God forbid the owner of, say, the Blind Pig/8-ball/Cavern Club building decides that it’s time to sell his building (with the new Eaton center project going in, this could happen sooner rather than later). When this happens, I can assure you that the math for both the 8-ball and the Blind Pig will expedite their closings.

$30-$38 per square foot is actually french for “I only want national chains”. There is no way that we would have even looked at Ann Arbor if this was the going rate for our building.
posted by todd leopold on December 11th, 2004 at 10:37 am
Buffalo Wild Wings = BW3s… same company, just changed their name a few years back. They know how to operate the sports bar format, that’s true. Question is, how hard is it to create and run a profitable independent sports bar? The new Buffalo Wild Wings has an excellent location and a great layout b/c it had the capital to afford such a new location. The Arena is just as nice, in my opinion, but has a lesser location… Until recently, I never thought I’d wish for a local sports bar (back in Holland), but as I get more into sports, it’s nice to have a good bar, and BW3s certainly fills that need…
posted by paul on December 11th, 2004 at 10:38 am
As an aggravated member of a certain neigh-boor-hood group, I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the infamous whine “why should Burns Park never have to shoulder its burden…blah-blah-blah” regarding halfway houses, shelters and rehab places that pepper the downtown. If I had a buck for everytime I have heard that complaint from OFW folk I am acquainted with, I would be filthy, stinkin’, rotten rich by now.

For the record, I live next door to a rehab house and they are OK in my book and I don’t know what all the freaking fuss is about. Burns Park isn’t really downtown anyway, and I feel if you are going to live downtown, you make a contract of sorts to live with downtown issues…living with students and non-students, seeing homeless people, putting up with traffic and parking issues (to some extent anyway– I’m still pissed off about the “stored” mini-cooper which, ironically, has taken up two parking spots for the last few weeks in my fave street parking location), and even ugly-ass couches.

Todd, I am calling Carl Porht from Shaman Drum who was discussing the issues you have been discussing on this blog and see if there is an increased density lobby of like-minded folk who can get together and brainstorm about some of these issues.
posted by OFW insurgent on December 11th, 2004 at 11:34 am
Although downtown housing and affordable housing overlap, I think we need to distinguish between downtown density and a new overall approach. An enormous amount of evidence shows that the best way to increase affordable housing without flipping particular neighborhoods on the campus/town fringe to “student ghettoes” is to use the scattered-site approach–mandate a particular amount (a “fair share”) in every section of the city. Montgomery County, MD, is an example of a place that has largely maintained neighborhood stability and moved beyond exclusionary zoning by scattering affordable housing more or less evenly throughout the county (it’s not perfect of course). If mass transit is decent, this can even be done without increasing traffic and sprawl too much.

There is a bit of a misconception, starting with the city leaders, that the choice is downtown density and suburban sprawl. But there is a lot of room inside the city to increase density in an architecturally sound and environmentally responsible way. The Northeast Area Plan is a start, although it is too watered down, and that area is effectively an annexed suburb and people living there would still be driving a lot and so on.

If every part of the city was required to accept a certain level of density and affordability, then the conversation would shift from yes or no on particular developments to what sort of development will go here. I do not think that the city council has the courage or the vision to do something like this. But it would actually be less politically explosive in the long run.

My biggest concern about the density debate is that, if you listen to the mayor, he is really thinking about upscale downtown housing targeted at people making well above the regional median income. Plus a couple dozen units of actual affordable housing here and there to make us feel a little less guilty about living in a limousine liberal paradise, but with no meaningful impact on equity indices. And if Boulder is any guide, and having spent time there I fear Ann Arbor is traveling down that path, we are going to get more and more chains downtown as well.
posted by Matt on December 11th, 2004 at 12:13 pm
“Question is, how hard is it to create and run a profitable independent sports bar?”

When you are comparing an independent sports bar to a true corportate chain sports bar, you are making a huge mistake in assuming that the financial situations are similar.

Pretend you are a local and you want to open a sports bar in the downtown area. You put together a business plan, find a building, get a loan, and sign the lease. The clock is now ticking on both your loan and your lease.

Your architect puts together your blueprints, and you submit it to the city for approval. The city if financial crisis (because it refuses to add more taxable buildings), so the planning staff has been cut, and is underpaid. As a result, instead of taking 14 days for approval it takes 90 days—three weeks of which the planning official actually *loses* your blueprints, and you have to resubmit the plans. All the while you are making your rent and bank payments.

You finally get the approval on your blueprints….except there is a catch: the building department and the fire department have decided that your plans call for nightclub zoning rather than restaurant zoning. In addition to the three $1,000 firedoors you are forced to install, you are required to put in sprinklers that run $60,000. You decide to appeal this decision to the Building Board of Appeals. But they don’t convene for another 45 days. All the while you are making your rent and bank payments.

You finally get to the Building Board of Appeals, and you lose your case, finding out later that one of the members of the Appeals board actually owns one of the city’s fire supression companies (sprinklers)….surprisingly, he voted that you have to have sprinklers in your building.

The Building department informs you that no matter how you configure your blueprints, this is a nightclub, and that’s the end of the story. You start construction. All the while you are making your rent and bank payments.

After construction, inspections are scheduled. Because of the budget cuts, the inspectors are vastly overworked, and underpaid…..this doesn’t put them in the best of moods. When it comes time to test your emergency lighting, the inspector informs you that he cannot come in either early or late enough for it to be dark out, so you have to put cardboard over the 2,000 square feet of windows in your place so that nary a beam of light can make it’s way in. This takes a day, but he can’t make it in for another week (remember the budget cuts has him overworked). You finally pass the light inspection a week later…but he notices other “problems”.

One problem is that one of the $1,000 fire doors swings the wrong way…you politely point out that we built it according to the approved plans, and the inspector politely points out that he doesn’t care…it’s swinging the wrong way. Since the door’s hinges are all wrong, you have to buy another $1,000 door….and the installer can’t show up until the next week.

The inspector also notices that your handicapped accessable entrance isn’t a gently enough slope. You politely point out that we built it according to the approved plans, and the inspector politely points out that he doesn’t care…it’s wrong (and of course, he is right to make you change it, but you sure would have liked to have known this in the blueprint stage). This costs you another $4,000 to rip out the old ramp and install a new one. It also costs you another two weeks. All the while you are making your rent and bank payments.

You finally open, but you notice that you have spent an additional unplanned 4.5 months to get open, and have spent an additional $68 K on unplanned expenses. Since the meter was running on the rent for the building (five payments), and rent is at a monumental $38 a square foot, and your building is 7,000 square feet, you have now paid out a total of $178,000 before you even open your doors. Guess how much is left in your capital reserves?…..and I haven’t even mentioned the payment on your bank loan.

…As for the chain: they don’t CARE that the meter is running. They have 50+ other operational units that are generating cash while all of these delays occur. Most of these companies operate with an eye towards either increasing sales or increasing market share. Start-up costs are of little interest to these firms. Ever notice that CNBC rarely talks about profits for companies?….they usually talk about improved sales numbers. These chains either open more locations each year, or the CEO gets canned. A piddly $180K means nothing to them. $180K can and will cripple a local business owner.

I’m sure that most of you know that most businesses fail in the first 2 years…the above example explains why. In Ann Arbor, this risk is increased many times over.

….I know this was long, but I thought a little perspective was needed, and I thought that Boris would appreciate the comedy (particularly the lost blueprints).
posted by todd leopold on December 11th, 2004 at 1:04 pm
Matt,

Having now had several conversations with the Boulder City Planner, he feels that Ann Arbor is taking the *identical* road that Boulder already has.

This should scare the hell out Ann Arborites. Boulder is nothing like it was even as recently as the 80’s. The uniqueness is almost completely gone, and people who don’t make over $100,000 have been evicerated from the city proper.
posted by todd leopold on December 11th, 2004 at 1:12 pm
Todd, sorry, I’ve been kind of busy getting ready to take office. Now that some of the biggest hurdles are behind me, I’m planning to reopen my blog and return to active commenting.

I’ve been thinking about urban density issues for a long time. In summer 1975, I was a construction volunteer at Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri’s arcology (vertical city) project in Arizona. As the only MSU student on the East Lansing Planning Commission in 1978-79, I pushed for student housing, and chaired the Housing element of the city’s comprehensive plan. Among other successes, we got the zoning code amended to legalize apartments in business zones, and some multi-use buildings resulted.

When I ran for Ann Arbor city council in 1999, the News slammed me for being too enthusiastic about density and development. I’m also a historic preservationist, and I don’t think those things are a contradiction. I’m very intrigued by the 27% idea.

Boulder’s rigid growth limits (which limit development throughout the area) don’t make it at all comparable to Ann Arbor, I think. Just about every place in America, regardless of local government policy, seems to be overrun with chain stores. I do wonder what’s going on these days in Ithaca NY, where I went to grad school.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on December 11th, 2004 at 10:27 pm
Todd — great comments as always.

My comment about “raising the bar” was directed at the other existing sportbars - Scorekeepers, Touchdowns, etc who have been content to sit on their hands for years (the Arena doesn’t fit into this category since they’ve been making improvements since they’ve opened - though they could do a world of good by getting rid of those air “fresheners” that stink up the place). Some of these places will now be forced to make some improvements or die, and most of these places should have some capital lying around to use so they have no excuse.

So, really, I see bw3 coming in and filling a market void successfully. This is different from Starbucks coming in and putting a shop on every corner in an obvious attempt to push out perfectly capable competition.
posted by James on December 12th, 2004 at 12:12 pm
To say nothing of the fact that there’s a demand side to the equation also. If people here don’t want places like BW3 or Starbucks in town, they do have the option of voting with their feet. Even large chains don’t necessarily go where they don’t make money. If locals don’t want BW3 here, why is it doing so much business? Same thing with Starbucks.

And Todd, I did appreciate your post about starting an independent bar. I’m sure that’s all fictional and not drawn from personal experience in any way. And for what it’s worth, Leopold Bros. is a nice place to watch a game on TV as well.
posted by Nick on December 12th, 2004 at 1:01 pm
Todd,

I agree about Boulder. At the big debate on the Greenbelt held at the Michigan Theater about a week or so before the vote, in front of at least five hundred witnesses, I asked the mayor what he would say to those of us who want to stop sprawl but also want to maintain an affordable and diverse city instead of becoming like Boulder. His answer, which I paraphrase, was something like “Boulder has high property values and is ranked high in quality-of-life surveys, so I don’t think that becoming more like Boulder would be a bad thing at all.”
posted by Matt on December 12th, 2004 at 2:48 pm
Todd, I was at Leopold’s tonight. I was hoping we could talk about missing blueprints, but I guess that wll have to wait till next time.
posted by Boris on December 13th, 2004 at 1:00 am
I grew up in Ann Arbor, but have lived in Seattle since the early 90’s. I’m no Starbucks fan either, but interestingly, the rumored death of independent coffee houses around here due to Starbuckization is just that — rumored. Many independent coffee shops find that they actually benefit from increased customers when a Starbucks opens nearby.

Don’t get me started on the growth and affordable housing issues around here. Median home price is now above 300k, and you can’t find those. Expect to pay at least 450k for a 1600 sf 3 bdrm house that will need some work.
posted by Junior on December 13th, 2004 at 12:43 pm
“Boulder’s rigid growth limits (which limit development throughout the area) don’t make it at all comparable to Ann Arbor, I think.”

You are correct in that Boulder literally had a hard cap on the number of building permits allowed per year. It got to the point where they had maxed out their allotment for the year, and they had to choose between a 50 year old factory that needed a small expansion, and a new day care center. Stupid beyond words.

What Ann Arbor has is a soft cap. It does not appear in any legislation, but rest assured that it is so difficult to build that developers look to build in neighboring cities that are desperate for cash….just like Boulder developers did. The results are identical.

“Just about every place in America, regardless of local government policy, seems to be overrun with chain stores.”

This is because cities are repeating the same mistakes over and over. People are afraid of this funny concept called sprawl. They think that sprawl means new construction in their neighborhood. They think that they should stop this new construction and put in more parks….

Developers and chains know this. But what they also know is that on the fringe of the demographic area (full of the rich-o’s that they want to sell stuff to) lies cheap land in a county/city that is *desperate* for money with a goverment that doesn’t know the first thing about urban planning. They know that these rich-o’s are more than willing to drive 15 minutes to get their *hit.

What the neighboring county knows is that money is a terrific thing, and they think of how much better their schools and services would be if the 5,000 unit development and mega-mall and its concomitant litany of strip malls ponied up all those property taxes.

This happens again, and again, and again. People who live in the existing cities feel that sprawl means that greedy developers want to build new stuff in their neighborhood, thereby changing their neighborhood. The reality is that because we aren’t proactively finding ways to get these developers *into* these cities, the big REIT’s are going to follow the exisiting model of buying up cheap land adjacent to the wealthy cities and *literally* build a city of their own.

I think that the prevailing attitude is that this is an inevitable conclusion. I don’t agree. America needs a city that is smart enough to break this cycle.
posted by todd leopold on December 13th, 2004 at 1:16 pm
For the record, no one got it right. BW3 is just that: three w’s Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck. Weck is their nasty ass bread. Eat there food regularly and you get to know firsthand what Chrone’s diesease is like. Gotta run…Todd: You’re business plan description is right on. As a project manager nothing suprises me anymore concerning the building department and costs of business. I hear some freinds come up with business ideas once in awhile (the unemployed, dreamer ones) and I have to laugh to myself. They have no freakin idea. Most think they will make it. Statistics tell another story that they ignore. Fools and their money……
posted by Ypsidweller on December 13th, 2004 at 1:44 pm
“So, really, I see bw3 coming in and filling a market void successfully.”

James, you are completely correct. To be clear, I am not against chains per se. What I *am* against is creating a financial environment where *only* chains can make a go of it.

….and for the record, I don’t believe that Touchdown or Scorekeepers is going to lose a single penny to BW3’s. Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe that they are catering to two completely different segments. The Arena is another story.
posted by todd leopold on December 13th, 2004 at 2:11 pm
I spoke to an economist with the Department of Housing and Urban Development a few weeks ago. She was researching rental housing in Washtenaw County and was contacting me to ask some questions about a project our firm was involved with.

But what was most interesting about this was that according to the researcher, there has been no construction of new rental complexes (defined as having 8 or more units) anywhere in Washtenaw County since the 2000 census. For an area undergoing the level of growth we have here, that is unprecedented. She was checking further to see if there was something that they had missed.

This is beyond Ann Arbor. This was for all of Washtenaw County. There have been lots of condominiums and other ownership properties built during that period. But, so far, they have found nothing new in the rental market.
posted by Archipunk on December 16th, 2004 at 10:49 am