Cutting Downtown’s Greenbelt

“The [Near North] project is on a main road where the placement of such a building is not only permissible but expected”

--Diane, commenting on arborupdate.com

No, Near North is not remotely “permissible.” The existing zoning would allow the developers to more than triple the floor area on their proposed site. They’re asking for a rezoning that will permit nearly ten times the current density.

And No, an industrial-style, five-story building ten feet from the sidewalk is not “expected” just because Main Street is “a main road.” Like every other street leading into downtown, Main Street is zoned differently in different places.

The photo above shows the 500 block of W. Liberty. Like the proposed Near North site in the 600 block of N. Main, it is two blocks from the DDA boundary. Whether you go into town on N. Main or W. Liberty, Washtenaw, Packard, South Main, or Jackson/Huron, every "main route" begins in fringe commercial near the city limits and ends in downtown commercial in the urban core. And in between, every street passes through a green, tree-lined neighborhood.

This is no accident. Since the 1970s, the city has protected the residential character of the near-downtown neighborhoods. It’s permitted redevelopment--the North Central neighborhood has added more than sixty bedrooms in the past twenty-five years--but always within setback and height limits that preserve a residential landscape by leaving room for mature trees. Thanks to the city’s foresight, North Central joins with other near-downtown neighborhoods to form a “greenbelt” surrounding the urban core.

No one “expects” a building like Near North on Packard in Burns Park, on Liberty in the Old West Side, or on Washtenaw in the Oxbridge neighborhood. Nothing in the city’s planning or zoning “expects” it on this block of North Main, either--which is why the city planning staff has consistently opposed the project.

When the Three Oaks Group first proposed a supersized condo on this site five years ago, they falsely claimed that our neighborhood was in Main Street’s industrial zone along the river. This time, they’ve falsely claimed it’s downtown. Unfortunately, some naive new urbanists believed them.

The truth is that Near North will cut a gash in downtown’s greenbelt. It will reverse decades of good planning, and badly hurt both our neighborhood and the city.