The best that can be said about "Near North" is that it's not as big as its predecessors, the "Terraces on Main" and "NoMa". Yet it would still be a disaster for our neighborhood.
Tom Fitzsimmons's February letter to Planning Commission explains the city's zoning and planning for this block, and spells out how badly the Near North plan would violate them. Here, I'll try to give my own layman's summary of how it became the first project opposed by NCPOA in the past thirty years.
Near North, by the developers' own description, is meant to be a "gateway to downtown." It is an institutional structure, scaled and designed to announce to those who see it that they are entering Ann Arbor's urban core.
Yet by zoning, planning, and history, this block is not part of the city's core. It is a near-downtown neighborhood--and that's a huge difference.
As discussed in the posts below, North Central has a tremendously diverse population. Some of us live in asphalt-shingled "shotgun shacks," some in apartments of every vintage, and others in condos that, at the height of the real estate bubble, sold for more than $1 million.
Yet all these buildings share a domestic scale. Walking down tree-lined streets, we encounter one another on our front porches, tending our small patches of lawn or garden, or working on the larger gardens we plant in our city parks. This physical setting creates the experience we all share--that of living in a residential neighborhood.
NCPOA opposes Near North because if it is built, that experience will be lost forever. Instead of a neighborhood, our block will become an extension of downtown.
From the city's founding, Kingsley Street has been a key boundary. On the original 1824 map of "Annarbour," Kingsley is "North Street," the outer edge of the original village plat. To this day, Kingsley remains the edge of the urban core--the northernmost limit of the DDA area and of downtown zoning.
The A2D2 Planning process will allow greater residential density in the existing downtown. NCPOA supports this goal. But again--North Central is not downtown!
To our knowledge, during the entire lengthy A2D2 process, no planner or policy maker ever argued that downtown should expand into the adjacent neighborhoods. On the contrary, the low-rise "D2" zone was created specifically to buffer the high-rise city center from nearby neighborhoods.
Near North, located two blocks north of Kingsley, would make that buffer meaningless. At five stories and 52,000 square feet, it overwhelm its site, the street, and the surrounding homes--which is why, to approve it, Planning Commission and City Council would have to toss out both the site's zoning and the city's long-range plan.
We urge them not to do that. North Central is a city planner's dream: a thriving, diverse neighborhood that welcomes change. To abandon the plans that have successfully shaped our area for half a century would break faith with every Ann Arborite who's trusted the city's zoning and planning processes when deciding where to live and raise our families--not just in North Central, but throughout the city.
Tom Fitzsimmons's February letter to Planning Commission explains the city's zoning and planning for this block, and spells out how badly the Near North plan would violate them. Here, I'll try to give my own layman's summary of how it became the first project opposed by NCPOA in the past thirty years.
Near North, by the developers' own description, is meant to be a "gateway to downtown." It is an institutional structure, scaled and designed to announce to those who see it that they are entering Ann Arbor's urban core.
Yet by zoning, planning, and history, this block is not part of the city's core. It is a near-downtown neighborhood--and that's a huge difference.
As discussed in the posts below, North Central has a tremendously diverse population. Some of us live in asphalt-shingled "shotgun shacks," some in apartments of every vintage, and others in condos that, at the height of the real estate bubble, sold for more than $1 million.
Yet all these buildings share a domestic scale. Walking down tree-lined streets, we encounter one another on our front porches, tending our small patches of lawn or garden, or working on the larger gardens we plant in our city parks. This physical setting creates the experience we all share--that of living in a residential neighborhood.
NCPOA opposes Near North because if it is built, that experience will be lost forever. Instead of a neighborhood, our block will become an extension of downtown.
From the city's founding, Kingsley Street has been a key boundary. On the original 1824 map of "Annarbour," Kingsley is "North Street," the outer edge of the original village plat. To this day, Kingsley remains the edge of the urban core--the northernmost limit of the DDA area and of downtown zoning.
The A2D2 Planning process will allow greater residential density in the existing downtown. NCPOA supports this goal. But again--North Central is not downtown!
To our knowledge, during the entire lengthy A2D2 process, no planner or policy maker ever argued that downtown should expand into the adjacent neighborhoods. On the contrary, the low-rise "D2" zone was created specifically to buffer the high-rise city center from nearby neighborhoods.
Near North, located two blocks north of Kingsley, would make that buffer meaningless. At five stories and 52,000 square feet, it overwhelm its site, the street, and the surrounding homes--which is why, to approve it, Planning Commission and City Council would have to toss out both the site's zoning and the city's long-range plan.
We urge them not to do that. North Central is a city planner's dream: a thriving, diverse neighborhood that welcomes change. To abandon the plans that have successfully shaped our area for half a century would break faith with every Ann Arborite who's trusted the city's zoning and planning processes when deciding where to live and raise our families--not just in North Central, but throughout the city.
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