Say No! to NoMa

Last spring, I ran into Bill Godfrey at Ray Detter's downtown neighborhood party. Bill said 3 Oaks was no longer pursuing the Terraces on Main condo project. Instead, they were working with Avalon Housing to build "workforce" rental apartments on the site.

That seemed like quite a leap--Avalon's mission has always been to provide "supportive" housing, usually for people who were formerly homeless. But Avalon already has two well-run group homes on the block, and I told Bill I didn't see any problem with a new Avalon project in the area. And I told him that NCPOA would be glad to see the plans whenever they were ready.

It turned we were no longer part of their plan. The next anyone heard from 3 Oaks was in December--when we read about the "North Main" project in the Ann Arbor News. Avalon executive director Michael Appel was quoted as calling it "a neat opportunity for us to provide affordable housing downtown."

That was scary. I know and respect Michael, and most of the Area Committee know and respect Avalon. But here he was, throwing his good name and Avalon's political clout behind the project--and he didn't even know my block was not "downtown."

When we finally saw the planning documents, we knew why the developers had gone to the media rather than to the neighbors. It would have 60 units--more than twice the maximum allowed by the underlying R4C zoning. Under R4C, density on the site could triple, to 20,000 square feet. But "NoMa" had 64,000 square feet--ten times the current density, and more than three times the legal maximum.



And after more than four years of work, the developers were suddenly in a big rush. They announced that they would be submitting the project to the city for Planning review at the end of December.

NCPOA's Area Committee met and agreed that putting different tenants in the building did nothing to solve its problems. We put out a flier explaining the history of the project and why we opposed it, and urged neighbors to show up at the two neighborhood meetings organized by the developers.

Show up they did. After lengthy sales pitches by Bill Godfrey and Michael Appel, people peppered them with questions. Landladies were amazed to hear that the "affordable" units would rent for $750 a month. And everyone was shocked to see renderings of a seven-story building rising just a few feet off the sidewalk. When Michael said we lived "downtown," he obviously meant it.

Bill promised to take our comments into account before the plan was submitted to the city. We learned what that meant in January, when the developers unveiled a slightly downsized version of the project--which they're now calling "Near North."