Another Giant PUD

Today's annarbor.com features some astonishing quotes from Newcombe Clark and Jeff Helminski, developers of the Moravian--another giant PUD proposed for a Near Downtown Neighborhood.

Clark and Helminski paint themselves as advocates for a generation of creative young professionals who just don't like any of Ann Arbor's 25,000 rental apartments--and who therefore, they claim, need a civic handout. This handout would take the form of a zoning giveaway that would greatly increase the value of--wait for it!--the developers' property.

Helminski and Clark could build dozens of new apartment units on their site "by right" within the present zoning. But they don't want to do that. Though they paid R4C and M1 prices for their property, they're demanding the right to develop it at downtown densities.

Their first, 11-story design would have been right at home on the D1 downtown core. Their current, 5-story plan would fit nicely in the D2 zone at the edge of downtown. Yet they pretend to have no idea why people are opposed to building it in an R4C neighborhood--Clark characterizes the public opposition as "an unforseen gauntlet."

NCPOA opposes the Moravian. Like Near North, it trashes both the current zoning and the Central Area Plan, which for more than 30 years have protected the Near Downtown Neighborhoods as a "downtown greenbelt" of residentially-scaled and -landscaped homes and apartments. Approving this institutionally designed and scaled building would instantly change the character and scale of the neighborhood from family-friendly to urban.

Like Near North, the Moravian is the right building in the wrong place. There are plenty of sites in the D1 and D2 zones where buildings on this scale are appropriate and welcome. For reasons known only to themselves, Helminski and Clark chose instead to buy land outside downtown, then panhandle the city to rezone it.

Now that it looks like the city may not give them what they want, they're pouting as if they've been deprived of an entitlement. Childish, self-righteous, and whiny, they dishonor the generation they claim to represent.

Destroying Downtown's Greenbelt, Phase II

City Council votes Monday on yet another "supersized" development in a Near Downtown Neighborhood. Like Near North, the developers of the Moravian are asking for the right to develop at Downtown density in an R4C neighborhood. If granted, the PUD rezoning and site plan would permit construction of a building that overwhelms the surrounding houses, and sets an even more destructive precedent than Near North.

NCPOA wrote to City Council on March 28 to oppose the Moravian's "blatant violation of both current zoning and the Central Area Plan....In accepting Near North, our biggest fear was that it might set a precedent for allowing future, even bigger projects. If the Moravian is approved, our fears will be realized, and another family neighborhood will be annexed to downtown."

Read our full letter here.

Last summer we asked, "If downtown doesn't end at Kingsley Street, where does it end?" Now we ask Council same question on the south side of downtown--if downtown doesn't end at William Street, where does it end?