The Terraces on Main

In August 2004, Kathie Baxter and I met with Bill Godfrey of the 3 Oaks Group. He was seeking NCPOA's support for the "Terraces on Main." The proposed 29-unit condo project would replace seven houses on Main south of Summit.

We told Bill that the Area Planning Committee supported new housing. But we also told him we knew there would be serious questions, because NCPOA expects new construction to fit into the existing neighborhood. He wanted to replace a row of modest homes with a building the size of Ann Arbor's City Hall.

He agreed to present the plan at a neighborhood meeting. Margaret Schankler and Steve Glauberman volunteered their living room, we leafletted the area, and about 30 people showed up.

Bill's a great salesman (he used to be a fundraiser), and he painted the economic benefits of the project in glowing terms. But the renderings he presented were shocking: a massive 71,000-square-foot block dug into the side of the hill, without so much as a front door--the residents would drive in and out through an underground garage.

My first question was, How was this supposed to fit into the existing neighborhood? The architect seemed surprised--he said he hadn't even been asked to consider that.

The architect tried to adapt the design, adding sidwalks to the street and creating some variation in the facade. But it was still huge. The Area Planning Committee unanimously agreed that it would completely destroy the character of the block.

We wrote to 3 Oaks to tell them we would oppose the Terraces. But because we're YIMBYs, we also told them what we would support: a well-designed project at the maximum size permitted by the zoning. This would have more than tripled the current density on the site and permitted a structure of 20,000 square feet--nearly as big as Bill Martin's new 201 Depot Street office building.

They never even responded to our offer. Eventually, Tom Fitzsimmons, Peter Pollack, and I met with Bill. We told him that if 3 Oaks went ahead with the project, we would fight them at Planning Commission and City Council. Bill said they'd take their chances.

And that was the last we heard about the Terraces on Main. We thought they'd finally accepted that there are good reasons the city prohibits putting downtown buildings in residential neighborhoods.

It turned out they hadn't. They just decided to pole-vault over Planning into Politics.