Supersize Me

Near North's developers have repeatedly claimed that they want to create a project that will win approval from the neighbors. NCPOA has a long, well-documented history of supporting appropriate change in our area. So why don't we support it?

The short answer: 3 Oaks keeps saying, "Supersize Me." In the five years that they they have owned this property, every plan that they have shown has called for at least twice the legal maximum density on this site.

As noted previously, the zoning would permit a building size of about 20,000 square feet here. December's "NoMa" plan, with 64,000 square feet, was more than three times that maximum.

When 3 0aks and Avalon presented the "Near North" plan at the January public meeting, Bill Godfrey complained that they'd "cut and cut and cut" its size. Yet Near North still included 44,000 square feet--more than double the 20,000 permitted.

And now it turns out that even the 44,000-square-foot figure was "miscalculated."

That's how City Planner Matt Kowalski put it when Tom Fitzsimmons, Peter Pollack, Ray Detter, and I met with him on Monday. Matt explained that when he went over the plans, he couldn't get the developers' figures to add up. He asked them to recalculate the building's floor area.

Sure enough--instead of 44,000 square feet, the latest plans now show a total 52,000 square feet. According to my calculator, that's more than 2.5 times the legal limit.

Matt told us he'd sent four rounds of comments to the developers, and every time he'd pointed out that a massive, institutionally styled apartment building is out of character and scale with the neighborhood. Yet they've changed nothing. The current plans look virtually identical to the ones we saw at the January meeting.

Near North violates the site's zoning in so many ways that even Matt hadn't fully tallied them yet. But for starters, it would have a "floor area ratio" of 99 percent--2.5 times the maximum allowed under the current zoning. Its five-story north face would be 50 feet tall--20 feet over the height limit for buildings on this block.

The existing homes here are set back a minimum of 19 feet from the sidewalk. Near North's minimum front setback is 7.5 feet. And the houses' setback is measured to their single-story front porches--the average setback to the body of the building is 30 feet. Near North would raise a sheer, four-story wall right off the sidewalk.

At their public meetings, the developers' claimed they had to violate the front setback so much to maintain a required 30-foot "conflicting use" buffer in back. But it turns out they didn't do that, either. In back, the current plans show a minimum setback of 18.5 feet.

Matt hadn't officially determined the project's setback requirements, but they will almost certainly be stricter than my rule-of-thumb assumptions, because the city requires extra setbacks for buildings this tall. But even without taking that into account, I calculate that Near North would violate the height limit by 60 percent, the rear setback by 38 percent, and the front setback by 61 percent.

If Planning were a poker game, the neighbors trying to stop Near North should be holding a royal flush: this supersized building violates almost every planning and zoning requirement for its site. Yet 3 Oaks and Avalon keep on pushing it, even in the face of Planning's negative comments.

I think the developers are going all-in: they're betting that even if Planning Staff and Planning Commission oppose the project, Avalon's good name and political connections will win the pot when they get to City Council.

That's a really fightening prospect--not just for North Central, but for every neighborhood in the city. Because if Council is willing to ignore such egregious zoning violations, there's a new trump card in the Planning game.

There are plenty of developers who overpaid for Ann Arbor real estate back in the bubbble. And like 3 Oaks, every one of them would love to have a "get-out-of-zoning-free" card.

If Council approves Near North, that's exactly what affordable housing will become. And the next supersized project could be anywhere in Ann Arbor.