In April 2021, the Ann Arbor City Council adopted a resolution directing the city administrator to implement an unarmed public safety response program team. The resolution argued that an unarmed response team could better assist individuals facing mental health crises and human services challenges, like homelessness and substance abuse, as compared to police officers. Over two years later, The Michigan Daily spoke with city officials and community activists to understand Ann Arbor’s progress toward this goal.

In an interview with The Daily, City Administrator Milton Dohoney said the city has already completed the community engagement process, which sought to collect feedback from an array of stakeholders through group discussions and interviews. Dohoney said the city staff would soon submit final recommendations to the City Council based on the findings and expects City Council to follow up with a contract-bidding process to determine who would implement the program.

“Ultimately, we want the City Council to act upon the recommendation that we make,” Dohoney said. “Then we would go forward with an RFP and that would be seeking a vendor or contractor that would actually implement the unarmed response program. So conceptually, it’s not a program that the city will be doing itself. We will contract with someone external to the city government to run.”

Previous police reform advocacy and actions

In November 2014, police officer David Ried fatally shot Aura Rosser, who had been suffering from a mental health crisis, in Westside Ann Arbor while responding to a call about a domestic dispute. Brian Mackie, Washtenaw County Prosecutor at the time of the shooting, said the use of force was justified as officers reported that Rosser was holding a knife and refused to drop it. Mackie’s decision not to bring charges against the officer responsible for Rosser’s death was met with backlash from Ann Arbor community members who believed Rosser should have recused himself from the case due to the close relationship between local prosecutors and the police. 

The incident happened only three months after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., prompting nationwide protests against police brutality. Soon after, the  Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office held a community forum intended to build trust between law enforcement and civilians and prevent similar events from taking place in Washtenaw County. 

In 2019, the city established the Independent Community Police Oversight Commission to increase the transparency of the Ann Arbor Police Department. In an interview with The Daily, Lisa Jackson, one of its founding members, said the process of establishing the police oversight framework as well as the continuous accounts of negative interactions with law enforcement have pushed her to focus more on alternatives to policing. 

“I think the police have the ability to improve,” Jackson said. “But I think that trying to change police culture, overall, will take decades, and I think it will take a very special person to do that. In the interim, there are people who deserve care and safety who will never ever call the police.” 

Ann Arbor is not the first city to explore the possibility of establishing an unarmed team as an alternative to police for responding to mental health crises. In 1989, Eugene, Ore. became one of the first cities to deploy mental health professionals instead of police officers to assist people experiencing mental health issues. Since then, other cities including San Francisco and Oakland, Calif. have sought to model Eugene’s program.  

Councilmember Erica Briggs, D-Ward 5, was one of the council members who initially introduced the resolution to create an unarmed response team in Ann Arbor. In an interview with The Daily, she said the funding the city received through the American Rescue Plan Act made this vision financially possible. In April 2022, the City Council voted to allocate $3.5 million from the ARPA fund for a pilot of the unarmed crisis response team. 

“Before I got into City Council in 2020, there was already significant community advocacy around the idea of developing an unarmed crisis response,” Briggs said. “As folks are doing research around ‘What are the models for having mental health responses?’ unarmed crisis response is something that has emerged from research across the nation, and so especially when we had access to additional funds to the ARPA funding, this (seemed) like the appropriate time for us to begin exploring what that would look like in our community.”

Leveraging the existing community resources

In August 2022, Ann Arbor launched a program called “Supportive Connections,” which connects people to social services in hopes of addressing underlying factors in crime including substance abuse and mental health issues. Dohoney said that while the program was developed independently of the unarmed crisis response team, it still provides important insight on how to provide social services without police involvement.

“Ann Arbor is attempting to serve its residents in a variety of ways with different approaches,” Dohoney said. “So we created Supportive Connections to help people stay out of the judicial system, to help connect them to services. The response program that we’re working on setting up hopefully will be a model that will respond and help people resolve issues in a manner that doesn’t require the police department to do.”

Karen Field, program director of Supportive Connections, told The Daily in an interview that while it is a small program, they face very high demand.

“We have a case manager and myself,” Field said. “There are two people. We started taking referrals since November and we have had 66 participants referred to the program. We can provide assistance such as mental health treatments, substance abuse treatments, and we have funding for some other things such as identification and school fees.”

Field said the most frequently cited need is housing, but Supportive Connections does not run its own shelter due to limited funding. According to Field, this means people still need to apply through the county’s system, which is experiencing a backlog, to access temporary housing. 

Community expectations of the program

In a city survey conducted at the end of 2022, 93.1% of respondents indicated that they support the creation of the unarmed response team. In addition, 62.9% of the respondents said that they would prefer to access the team through a phone number different from 911. 

Dohoney said while the details of the program are still in the works, he has set out general expectations based on the community engagement process and the city’s capacity.

“The response team will be led by a contractor, and their staff and the city government will figure out what their role is,” Dohoney said. “In fact, I would be a little surprised if the unarmed response program is going to dispatch people walking through downtown. It would be more likely to be that people call and say ‘I have a situation, can you send an unarmed response?’ ”

William Lopez, assistant professor at the School of Public Health and a member of Coalition for Re-Envisioning Our Safety, a community organization raising awareness about the benefits of an unarmed response team, told The Daily in an interview that he hopes to see organizational separation of the unarmed team from the police department. Lopez said one step toward achieving this is having a phone number independent from 911 to request an unarmed crisis response.

“Armed officers inherently escalate the risk of firearm violence over the absence of an armed officer,” Lopez said. “And lots of the officer training is responding with force to dangerous situations. In cases where the situation isn’t dangerous, it may be easy to interpret it as dangerous and therefore respond with violence.”

Councilmember Linh Song, D-Ward 2, another councilmember involved in the initial proposal, told The Daily in an interview that she was inspired by the unanimous support for this program from two city councils and she is eager to see an unarmed team come to fruition.

“It wasn’t a controversial program when it came to the council table,” Song said. “Both our police chief(s) at the time, and now our interim police chief supports this too. I think we’ve kind of exhausted ourselves talking about it, and we’re really, really ready to implement it.”

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu. 

The post City officials, community members discuss Ann Arbor’s progress toward unarmed crisis response team appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Over 100 University of Michigan students and faculty members, as well as Ypsilanti community members, packed the Historical Ypsilanti Freighthouse Thursday evening to attend the public participatory event “Reconnecting Currents: A Healing at the Huron.”  

The event was organized by Marsae Lynette, a graduating Music, Theatre & Dance senior who has dedicated the past two years to researching dances and songs about the connection between women of the African diaspora and freshwater. The event was part of a collaborative effort between the University Musical Society and the city of Ypsilanti to provide interactive arts programming for Ypsilanti residents. 

Upon entering the Freighthouse, attendees were greeted with a setting meant to introduce them to African Yoruba traditions. It included the aroma of incense, sunflowers, cinnamon and palo santo sticks, which represent the spirit of the Yoruba fertility goddess Oshun. They were also asked to write a wish on a biodegradable piece of paper made of seeds that will eventually be planted.

The event opened with a libation ritual in Yoruba, meant to honor Oshun and the ancestors, as well as wish for a peaceful experience for all the attendees. 

Lynette then played a documentary about her participatory research project in Cuba during the summer of 2022. Around 70% of Cubans practice Santería — a syncretic religion largely drawn from Yoruba tradition — or some other religion based in African tradition. She told the audience Cuba provided her with geographical and cultural context that helped advance her understanding of Yoruba heritage.

“I traveled to Cuba in July 2022 to learn more about the traditions, rituals and dances of Santería Lucumí, an Afro-Cuban belief system that is the descendant of the Yoruba spiritual system. ” Lynette said. “I had the opportunity to take classes at both the Havana Middle School for the Arts and the High School for the Arts, and I can tell you these kids were terrific.”

After the documentary, Lynette and other dancers performed a Yoruba dance accompanied by rhythmic African drums. She also led a procession across Frog Island Park from the Freighthouse to the Huron River. After singing the Chant to Oshun, the audience offered sunflowers to the river and watched the streams carry their sunflowers and thoughts for their ancestors away.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily after the event, Lynette said the performance not only highlighted the connection between the human body and water, but also between the U-M and Ypsilanti communities. She credited an Ypsilanti community member with introducing her to Burns-Stokes Preserve, where she was inspired to explore artistic forms in the context of rivers.

“It was (an Ypsilanti resident) who introduced a person who introduced another person who then introduced me to Burns-Stokes Preserve,” Lynette said. “They called it ‘the river church,’ which is a very beautiful and holy space. Without them, my project could not have become what it is today.”

Some of Lynette’s friends from the University also participated in the event. LSA graduating senior Anika Love told The Daily she has visited Burns-Stokes Preserve with Lynette in the past and has since attended her other river-themed performances. She said she could relate to Lynette’s spiritual feelings for the rivers.

“Every time I listen to the river, I feel clarity and serenity,” Love said. “Just watching the water flow allows me to surrender to my emotions and the flow of my mind.”

In an interview with The Daily after the event, Music, Theatre & Dance graduate student Njeri Rutherford, who traveled to Cuba in the same cohort as Lynette, said learning Yoruba dance in a place permeated by Yoruba culture made it a genuinely educational experience.

“I had never done any traditional Yoruba dances prior to coming to the dancing department,” Rutherford said. “They invited a Cuban dancer to come to the dancing department to teach us Yoruba dance and that was my first introduction to it. And (then) we traveled to Cuba last summer … Learning a dance in a geographical region where it was derived from and influenced was very impactful for me.”

Ypsilanti resident Donald Fields told The Daily after the event that he heard about this performance through a family friend and wanted to attend because of how his own religious practices are connected to rivers. He said he felt Lynette’s performance empowered community members regardless of their religious beliefs.

“The river is related to baptism and my religion,” Fields said. “But for me, my biggest takeaway is the self-affirmation of African females in the creation and its spiritual root in our Black community.”

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu.

The post ‘A Healing at the Huron’ – U-M student-led interactive dance at Ypsilanti Freighthouse appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

In June 2021, Ann Arbor finalized their Vision Zero plan, which aims to eliminate all deaths and serious injuries from car crashes by 2025. From 2020 to 2021, the fatal and serious injuries resulting from crashes have been reduced by 15%. However, crashes still caused more than a dozen deaths and critical injuries on Ann Arbor roads in 2021. The Michigan Daily spoke with government officials, students and local activists to understand Ann Arbor’s efforts toward pedestrian safety. 

In an email to The Michigan Daily, Raymond Hess, Ann Arbor transportation manager, wrote that the main cause of these fatal crashes is speeding. Studies show that at an impact speed of 20 mph, pedestrians have a 95% chance of survival. When impact speed increases to 40 mph, the chance of survival drops to 15%. Hess wrote that despite local governments’ limited jurisdiction to set speed limits, there are still many road design components the city can employ to reduce speeding.

“We are currently engaged in a multipronged approach to address speeds in Ann Arbor,” Hess wrote. “1) We review capital projects for opportunities to make improvements that can reduce speeds and/or provide better facilities for people who walk/use a wheelchair, bike, or take transit. 2) Absent a major capital project, we look for opportunities to implement quick build improvements. 3) The City is working on a Speed Management Program for Major Roads — this can be thought of as a traffic calming program for arterials and collectors. ”

Hess wrote that the metrics on current progress are still unavailable due to a normal delay in state data sharing and the city’s ongoing efforts to create a dashboard to visualize the progress.

In response to persisting pedestrian deaths and injuries, U-M students have taken action to foster discussions surrounding pedestrian safety and urban planning on campus. The Urbanism Club is a U-M student organization dedicated to informing the University and Ann Arbor communities about pedestrian safety and sustainable development. One of the club’s current objectives has been making the stretch of North University Avenue near the Central Campus Transit Center open for buses and emergency vehicles only. Engineering senior Shane Guenther, one of the co-presidents of the club, told The Daily he believes this would make the area safer for students and easier for buses to navigate.

“There’s no parking there (and) there (are) no destinations,” Guenther said. “The only reason for private cars to be going through is to get to the other side just as through-traffic … (prohibiting cars) is essentially a free way to speed up the bus system.”

Guenther elaborated further on how urban planning directly impacts the behavior of city residents.

“As we all know, the design and structures around you impact your behavior,” Guenther said. “They guide the behavior of people walking, of people driving. So it’s not just putting a lower speed limit on a road, it’s designing that road to be driven at a lower speed.”

Both Guenther and his co-president, LSA senior Hazel Magoon, believe the Ann Arbor City Council has the right idea surrounding efforts toward improving pedestrian safety, but must ensure they are executed correctly. Magoon said the Urbanism Club is working to support the council’s efforts however they can.

“We’re also working with the City Council to just help them in any way possible to improve the bike lanes around Ann Arbor,” Magoon said. “Whether that’s going to City Council meetings or just being a voice for students who can’t show up to these City Council meetings and express that it’s something that the students are really interested in, as well as trying to spread the word around campus that pedestrian safety, biking and transportation (are) important.”

Peter Houk, a Transportation Commission member and owner of the Facebook page Safe on Scio Church, said his advocacy work has yielded results, with the city agreeing to install a pedestrian refuge island in the center lane to discourage high-speed passing. Houk said he was generally satisfied with the city’s road diet plan along Scio Church Road, but he does not believe it addresses the fundamental problem that roads are often not designed to protect pedestrians. 

“There are a few things that I disagree with,” Houk said. “What we don’t have in the plan is the right elements to break up this very long, very straight section of road. The nearest stop light from (the corner of Scio Church and South Seventh) is 4000 feet. This is really straight, really flat and really wide. This makes people want to go fast.”

Kirk Westphal, former City Council member and a member of Walk Bike Washtenaw, a non-profit advocating for pedestrian and cyclist safety in Washtenaw County, has been calling for lane-reductions along Huron Parkway since 2017. Westphal told The Daily his current advocacy is driven by concerns for the safety of his son, and the memory of a crash on Huron Parkway involving one of his neighbor’s children.

“The issue here on Huron Parkway is of particular relevance to me because I lived close to it,” Westphal said. “A neighbor’s child was hit while going to school, and now I have my own son who mostly goes to school by foot or by bike. So it is personal for me in this instance.”

Although the city’s maintenance plan for Huron Parkway at the end of last year included lane-narrowing in an attempt to increase pedestrian safety, Westphal said he was disappointed the plan didn’t include lane reduction and other safety-enhancing reconfigurations like roundabouts. He said he believed wide roads would inadvertently encourage speeding, and said in his personal experience he has continued to observe speeding near school zones despite previous changes. “Since I have moved here, they have implemented school zone speed reduction, and more recently, the flashing lights near crosswalks and speed feedback signs,” Westphal said. “However, it took me three minutes standing down the Parkway (to take) a photo of someone speeding down at 54 miles in a maximum 25 mph school zone … there just seems to be nothing advantageous to keep Huron Parkway as a four-lane route.”

In an email to The Daily, Hess wrote the city has not ruled out the possibility of future modifications along Huron Parkway.

“Huron Parkway is a preventative maintenance project, which is a project of a lesser magnitude than resurfacing,” Hess wrote. “It was not analyzed for a road reconfiguration or lane reduction at this time. But nothing precludes us from revisiting this topic in the future.”

Daily Staff Reporters Chen Lyu and Alexandra Vena can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu and alexvena@umich.edu.

The post A walk through Ann Arbor’s pedestrian safety efforts appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

The Ann Arbor City Council met at Larcom City Hall Monday evening to vote on an ordinance requiring all residential rental units to install carbon monoxide detectors. The council also passed a resolution concerning the future of energy production and distribution in the city and state, as well as another resolution to support pollinator habitats in Ann Arbor. 

The council voted on the adoption of a new ordinance that would require all owners of residential rental units in Ann Arbor to install and adequately maintain carbon monoxide detectors. Renters would also have an obligation to report any issues to the city if the detectors become inoperative. If landlords fail to provide adequate carbon monoxide monitoring in their properties as laid out in the ordinance, they could receive a civil infraction and up to $500 in fines. 

The ordinance was recommended by the Ann Arbor Renters Commission at its Feb 16 meeting.

Mayor Christopher Taylor expressed his support for the measure, emphasizing that the majority of Ann Arbor residents are renters and it is important to ensure their homes are safe to live in.

“It is an important public health change,” Taylor said. “We want to make sure that the majority of our residents who do indeed rent are as safe as we can help make them. This is going to be an important step in that direction.”

The council unanimously passed the ordinance.

The council went on to approve a resolution holding DTE Energy, Ann Arbor’s utility service provider, accountable for the massive power outages the city has experienced in the past couple of months. The resolution comes after the council’s discussions in March during which several residents and council members asked for increased oversight of DTE.  

Councilmember Ayesha Ghazi Edwin, D-Ward 3, said the current resolution was drafted with input from the city’s Energy Commission.

“I believe that (the energy commission) provided really valuable input that helped to strengthen this resolution,” Ghazi Edwin said. “One of them was not allowing DTE to use ratepayer money for lobbying.”

Councilmember Dharma Akmon, D-Ward 4, said she was excited by a provision in the resolution that calls for the Michigan Public Service Commission to eliminate the 1% state cap which dictates the maximum amount of energy DTE is required to purchase from individuals and redistribute through its electric grid. Essentially, because of state law, DTE can choose to only purchase up to 1% of the electricity they provide for the state from residents who have rooftop solar panels. Akmon said she believed the cap limits the state’s ability to make a fast switch to solar energy.

“Why is this important?” Akmon said. “DTE Energy is predicting that they’re going to reach this 1% milestone this July. And that means that they’re going to be able to cut the rate that they pay for home solar that goes back into the grid to customers who have installed the solar panels. It makes it harder for people to pay off their home solar system. It hurts businesses that are doing solar.”

The council unanimously passed the resolution.

The council also unanimously voted to pass a resolution which asks homeowners to reduce the frequency of lawn-mowing and to increase the diversity of native planting — all to protect pollinators. In 2022, Ann Arbor introduced “No Mow May,” which encourages homeowners to not mow their lawns during May.

Both the resolution and “No Mow May” recognize the importance of pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, in agriculture and food production, especially in the early spring. Akmon said the city welcomed No Mow May and has since discussed measures to encourage pollinators protection measures year-round. 

“We did learn from (No Mow May), like we don’t need to literally stop mowing our lawns for a whole month,” Akmon said. “But also there is a lot of residents’ interest. The Environmental Commission is looking at this, along with the culture of turf grass, concentrating on what we can do year-round and practices that will minimize impact for pollinators.”

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu.

The post City Council mandates carbon monoxide detectors in rentals, talks energy justice and protecting pollinators appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

In April 1993, a brand new tea and coffee business called Sweetwaters Coffee and Tea opened in a 100-year-old building at the corner of South Ashley and West Washington streets. The business was founded by Lisa Bee and Wei Bee, both then-recent University of Michigan graduates and children of Chinese immigrants who had spent their childhoods working in restaurants to support their family. 

The original cafe is still a hotspot for coffee lovers as it celebrates its 30th birthday in 2023, though Sweetwaters has since expanded to 38 different locations across the U.S. — seven of which are in Ann Arbor.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Lisa Bee said entering the tea and coffee business after graduation seemed like both a natural next step and a leap of faith for her at the time. She said the idea was inspired by the emerging coffee scene in Ann Arbor in the early ’90s and her and her husbands’ shared love of coffee as college students.

“My husband and I both love food and drink businesses,” Lisa Bee said. “You meet a lot of people and there is always something new. But being in our early 20s, a full-scale restaurant would be very expensive. We went to the coffee houses that were starting to pop up at that time, and we thought, ‘Wow! This is kind of like doing a restaurant, but not as intense,’ and we thought it would be a lot of fun for us to do.”

For Lisa Bee, Sweetwaters has always been a source of pride. Three decades later, college students and townies alike have come to recognize the iconic red Sweetwaters logo at a glance, which features two ancient Chinese ancient characters meaning “sweet” and “water.”

Though the menu has changed over time and hundreds of baristas have come and gone, Sweetwaters’ staff, owners and customers can all attest to the sense of community the cafe has continuously facilitated since the day it was founded 30 years ago.

A local business inspired by global flavors

Austin Green, a barista who works the morning shift at Sweetwaters and serves as a firefighter in Livingston County, told The Daily he first encountered Sweetwaters when he visited the cafe in the Michigan Union at the University of Michigan and ordered a mocha. He said when he first applied for a job as a Sweetwaters barista, he was unsure about the variety of products sold at the business. Instead, he said it shattered his expectations with the wide selection of beverages and working there broadened his knowledge about international coffee and tea culture.

“There’s a very big learning curve here,” Green said. “I first thought (the drinks were) mainly Chinese or Japanese, but I learned that we even have teas that originated in Greece, because a lot of (instructions on packages and jars) just tell you where it’s from and where it originated. It is also pretty cool to see the story behind them.”

Lisa Bee said when she first started the business, both she and her husband were most familiar with Chinese tea beverages. As the couple traveled and immersed themselves in different cultures, however, Lisa Bee said they wanted Sweetwaters’ tea and coffee menu to reflect the refreshments being enjoyed in cafes all around the world. 

“When we first started, we had the idea that we could bring in a lot of products that we personally and culturally know about,” Lisa Bee said. “Today, you see French Vietnamese coffee, milk tea and things that are not at a typical Italian-based coffee house. Many other cultures have tea and coffee, and we adapt operationally to bring them to our guests.”

Brian Kung, the manager of the Sweetwaters located on Plymouth and Green roads, told The Daily his life has had a similar life trajectory as that of the Bee family. Kung, who is a second generation Taiwanese immigrant, said he was involved with the Taiwanese business community in Metro Detroit for several years before starting at Sweetwaters. Through the Taiwanese community, Kung said he started following the Michigan Lion Dance team, a group of middle and high school students in the Metro Detroit area who perform the traditional Asian dance in a custom lion costume. The team performed at Sweetwaters’ annual Lunar New Year celebration, with Kung being the one to initially connect the dance team with the cafe — and the rest was history.

Kung told The Daily that he has continued to lean on his cultural community as he has navigated the challenges of managing a business.

“We fight a lot of battles as business owners, like just keeping the lights on,” Kung said. “Sometimes it feels like you are against the world. But if you have friends and family or just people who have been through what you’re going through, you know that you aren’t doing it alone. It’s good to have that support.”

A sweet space for community

When Lisa Bee and Wei Bee first founded Sweetwaters, they said they didn’t initially envision it as a place to get “sweet” beverages. As a matter of fact, many traditional Chinese teas, like dragon pearl jasmine, are naturally floral-tasting and can potentially be bitter.

For community members like City Councilmember Linh Song, D-Ward 2, the brand name has always suggested that Sweetwaters provides a ‘sweet’ escape from the hustle and bustle of downtown Ann Arbor. Song, who was born in a Vietnamese refugee family, told The Daily she first befriended Lisa Bee in the late ’90s when Song was working for one of her relatives at a since-closed Asian bakery called Eastern Accents. Song said she became closer with Lisa Bee when Song founded Mam Non, a nonprofit helping adopted Asian children build community and connect with their cultural roots through a mentorship program. Song said Sweetwaters provided the children and their mentors an inviting and intimate space to connect with one another. 

“At Sweetwaters, girls would meet with their mentors for tea and cookies,” Song said. “(Sweetwaters) has been really essential because it is important for the adoption community to have a space other than public spaces like libraries, where (Lisa Bee), the owner, would always come out to welcome our groups who felt they were kind of on the edge of the community.”

Song said she has also visited a number of Sweetwaters locations in Metro Detroit, an area in which the Asian community has been growing Asian over the past several years. Whenever she visits any of the locations she said she can taste Lisa Bee’s commitment to her family and her culture in every sip of her tea.

“It is a family operation,” Song said. “It is so hard to have a multi-generational family business like that which is also dedicated to our community. They are good examples of what community leaders could be like.” 

In the meantime, back at the original location on the corner of South Ashley and West Washington streets, another community has been taking shape. A board game club, founded by Ann Arbor resident Victor Volkman in 2018, brings together community members from all over southeast Michigan to socialize and play board games at Sweetwaters every other Friday evening. In an email to The Daily, Volkman said the group is appreciative that Sweetwaters is willing to host them week after week.

“We started Ann Arbor board game nights in 2018 after the Friday club we used to attend at Livonia closed down,” Volkman wrote. “The (Sweetwaters) management was extremely receptive to our approach and permitted us to use their nicely-sized sideroom … the only condition they ever imposed was that each person buy a drink, which is extremely reasonable because they do rent the space for catered events at fairly high rates.”

Volkman wrote that the group aimed to provide a low-stress social atmosphere for people in the area from all different walks of life. 

“Because of the transient nature of Ann Arbor’s population, I predicted it would be a rough start,” Volkman wrote. “But I was wrong, as people were starving for community and good gaming fun. … We have members on fixed disability income, equally important are the many international people that are looking for something other than hanging out in a bar with loud music and actually interacting with people.”

Moving past 30

Unlike 30 years ago, Sweetwaters is now a national brand spanning 12 states from North Dakota to New Jersey. It has even released a line of Sweetwaters-branded merchandise, including mugs and T-shirts.

With every new cafe, Lisa Bee said she continues to learn new lessons about her business and the world around her. At some southern locations, Lisa Bee said they have started selling Sweetwaters’ take on traditional southern sweet-tea.

“It is really interesting to get that perspective from people from down South,” Lisa Bee said. “It is really interesting to see the perspectives around the country, and they definitely have an influence on our brand.”

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu.

The post Sweetwaters turns 30, celebrating a legacy of community and coffee appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

The Ann Arbor City Council met at Larcom City Hall Monday evening to pass a contract with Bell Equipment Company about purchasing electric snow sweepers for the city’s bike lanes. The council also discussed ways to advance energy equity and hold DTE, the main energy provider for Ann Arbor and much of southeastern Michigan, accountable for the massive outage following the two winter storms that took place in late February and last week. The council included specific concerns residents raised around the outages, including DTE rate hikes and inaccurate representation of the extent of the outage.

During the public commentary section, multiple residents expressed disappointment regarding DTE’s handling of the power outages, both historically and presently. 

Ann Arbor resident Rachel Pooley said she was astonished to find out how heavily DTE has donated to Michigan politicians and lawmakers, saying the company should have invested more in its utility infrastructure to prevent the hundreds of thousands of outages that occurred. Pooley said the council should exclude DTE from the Energy Commission, a group advising the City on energy-related issues, as the city examines ways to implement its own energy utility through an ongoing study into the feasibility of a public power utility for the city.

“One hundred and two of 148 Michigan lawmakers accepted campaign donations from DTE, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer accepted more (donations) than any other state elected officials,” Pooley said. “We should bypass the state and work at (the) city level when we have the opportunity to do that. I really liked to see the feasibility study to show us what options we have, but I would like to see DTE removed (from this process). I don’t think they have acted in good faith with our state.”

Councilmember Dharma Akmon, D-Ward 4, responded to public comments for DTE to be removed from the Energy Commission. Akmon said she thought asking DTE to attend regular commission meetings would provide the community an opportunity to hold DTE accountable.

“They’re spending tons of money on propaganda through advertising,” Akmon said. “On the (Energy) Commission, they wouldn’t be allowed to do advertising and could be held accountable and had to be responsive.”

Ann Arbor resident Derrick Miller is the executive director of Community Action Network, a community service organization for under-resourced families in Washtenaw County. Miller said he witnessed firsthand the disproportionate impact of massive outages on marginalized communities and he urged the city to aim for utility resilience.

“There has been a widespread disruption to services for under-resourced families with pockets of outages still persisting,” Miller said. “With expectations that severe weather will only become more volatile, we need to tackle climate change, and we also need to ensure top levels of accountability from our utility providers as well as explore options in which to build community resilience.”

The council then discussed resolution DC-5, which requests the city to engage with the state legislature and the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC), which oversees utility providers in the state, to hold DTE accountable for damages from the outage. The resolution also calls for MPSC to reject the nearly 14% residential rate hikes DTE proposed early February and for the state legislature to take steps to make community solar more accessible, which would give local communities more autonomy over their energy source. Under DC-5, the city would also adopt an energy equity framework in light of inequities  in DTE’s energy service.

Councilmember Ayesha Ghazi Edwin, D-Ward 3, who authored the resolution, said hearing her constituents’ personal experiences throughout the storms motivated her to write the resolution. The agenda was co-sponsored by Councilmember Linh Song, D-Ward 2 and Councilmember Cynthia Harrison, D-Ward 1.

“During the last 12 days, we have heard from so many constituents about lives being upended,” Ghazi Edwin said. “I have heard from a neighbor who has lost power for six days, and due to having to care for ailing family members, they are forced to stay while their thermostat hovered at 40 degrees. My colleague and I have heard from a neighbor who is 89 years old and has been without power for nine days, with another winter storm on its way. The elderly neighbor was lucky enough to stay with the family member, but not everyone has that luxury.”

Councilmember Erica Briggs, D-Ward 5, said she agreed with the resolution but motioned to postpone voting so the council can ask for input from the Energy Commission. The motion for postponement was approved unanimously.

The council also voted unanimously to authorize a contract to purchase new sweeping equipment for bike lanes in the city. 

Ann Arbor currently has more than 90 miles of bike lanes and 11.4 miles of buffered bike lanes, but only 1.8 miles of protected bike lanes separated from drive lines by physical barriers, all of which are located downtown. Ann Arbor cyclists have been calling for better protected bike lanes in the city for years. The city has also identified its lack of adequate maintenance equipment as a barrier to creating more protected bike lanes.

In an email to The Michigan Daily, Akmon, who is also the city’s liaison to Ann Arbor Transportation Commission, wrote that the size of the city’s current sweeping equipment could only fit into the double-way protected bike lanes downtown. By purchasing smaller equipment, she wrote that the city would be able to effectively sweep one-way bike lanes. Akmon wrote that she anticipated the contract would allow the city to upgrade the buffered single-way bike lanes to protected bike lanes.

“What we envision for most of the city’s all ages and all abilities bike network, is buffered single lanes with vertical delineators,” Akmon wrote. “The purchase of a new small sweeper (will mean we can) upgrade buffered bike lanes into protected bike lanes by installing the several hundred vertical delineators we already have in inventory and ready for deployment. We will have a much bigger bike network that meets the needs of a broader range of people on bikes.”

Akmon also wrote about how she heard complaints from her constituents about vehicles illegally parking in bike lanes. She wrote that she thought more protected bike lanes could tackle vehicle encroachment of bike lanes at the root.

“I get many resident complaints about this (illegal parking),” Akmon wrote. “ … a big part of the solution is engineering them so it’s not so easy to do this.”

The city appropriates $129,223 to complete the purchase. In an email to The Daily, Robert Kellar, communication specialist of Ann Arbor Public Service Administration, wrote that the city staff are currently collecting materials in order to expand the protected bike lanes this year.

Correction 3/8: the small sweeper that was approved to maintain bike lanes Monday night was not related to clearing snow.

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu.

The post Ann Arbor City Council talks DTE, bike lane protection appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

In 2020, Ann Arbor kicked off a 10-year journey to a carbon neutral future. The ambition was encapsulated in a 138-page carbon neutrality plan which addressed high-emission sectors ranging from electric grid changes to transportation initiatives to residential constructions. Buildings account for the largest output of greenhouse gasses locally and in 2020, residential buildings alone accounted for more than one-fourth of the overall greenhouse gas emissions in Ann Arbor.

In line with the plan’s third strategy to achieve carbon neutrality, the plan proposes that all new constructions from 2022 to 2030 have net-zero carbon emissions, meaning new properties should only use electric energy and should be able to generate their own renewable energy on-site. More than two years into the plan, where does Ann Arbor currently stand with respect to its transformative vision?

In an email to The Michigan Daily, Brett Lenart, planning manager at the Ann Arbor Planning Commission, wrote that only a small fraction of the buildings that have been planned or built since 2020 are conforming to the city’s sustainability goals. 

“I know of one net-zero building proposed, two approved developments that require/have committed to some level of electrification and a handful of other projects that have identified electrification as a goal, but it is not required,” Lenart wrote. 

The Daily spoke to developers and city officials about the progresses and obstacles underlying Ann Arbor’s efficient building commitment.

Process improvements that enable cost-saving sustainable construction

In small- and middle-scale housing developments, some local developers are leading the way for sustainable initiatives.

In particular, two proposed projects have garnered attention from Ann Arbor residents over the past couple of months. One of them is a quadplex, which has been called the most sustainable building in Ann Arbor and even the world. The quadplex is a new apartment building which is slated for construction in the Ann Arbor Old Fourth Ward neighborhood on North Division Street, and is designed to generate more energy on-site than it consumes. The development’s sustainability feats earned it the title of a “passive house,” or a building that is voluntarily energy efficient. 

The other project is a 79-unit apartment building which will be built on North Maple Street and relies solely on electric energy and geothermal heating — with 15% of the units being priced at a more affordable cost, the building might just be the perfect recipe for Ann Arbor’s sustainability and affordability goals. 

For many developers, sustainability can be hard to achieve because of the high price tag often associated with environmentally-friendly features like built-in renewable energy generation. According to the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, 55% of the energy U.S. households consume is used to power heating and cooling systems. While heat pumps are more sustainable than traditional heating and cooling systems, it could also cost more to install them. 

Doug Selby, the long-time Ann Arbor developer and co-founder of Meadowlark Builders behind the Old Fourth Ward quadplex, told The Daily in an interview that efficient building envelope design — architectural models which prevent heat-loss to the outside environment and insulates the interior of the house by balancing internal and external environmental forces — could allow sustainable heating systems to be deployed in less costly ways. In general, better insulation means that less heat or air-conditioned air is lost to the outside environment.

“What do we do to make all the energy that we need to run this building on site?” Selby said. “The first thing I need to do is bring the energy consumption of this building way, way down. If you are building a low-energy building envelope, it offers the opportunity to redesign an HVAC system that uses a lot less ductwork and the equipment needs to be a lot smaller in capacity.”

Jeff Wilkerson, a local developer who leads the development of the North Maple project, said he also placed high value on constructing buildings with the envelope design. He said the reduced cost of energy has allowed him to plan for more affordable units in the building while upholding his commitment to full-electrification.

“When you can beef up the thermal envelope, you get one chance to get that right,” Wilkerson said. “The biggest part of the expense on the whole electrification is in the heating and cooling …Typically landlords pass that on to the renters. So, unfortunately, (renters) can be the ones who get hurt by that. I think, as developers, if we’re being responsible to our community, this is something to be considered.”

Opportunity with high-rises and future challenges

Wilkerson said he has recently been considering the use of recyclable mass timber, a type of solid wood panel, as an alternative building material to concrete and steel in his project. Because recyclable wood could absorb carbon, mass-timber could further reduce construction costs and carbon emissions related to the construction process. 

However, Wilkerson said he eventually decided that using mass timber would not be financially efficient for his four-story North Maple project.

“In our examination, with cross laminated timber (a type of mass timber), something in the seven or eight story range is like the sweet spot where the costs can be very competitive against steel and concrete construction,” Wilkerson said. “For the three or four story building — which is what we’ve designed on North Maple Street — traditional (concrete and steel) framing is still the most cost effective option.”

Lisa Sauvé, an Ann Arbor planning commissioner and the founder of Ann Arbor-based Synecdoche Design Studio, included mass timber in her project design for “Southtown,” an eight-story high-rise building she has planned on developing on South State Street with Prentice 4M, a developer of lifestyle assets. Sauvé said using mass-timber for an eight story building is still not allowed by current Michigan building code. However, Sauvé said she is optimistic that the new Michigan building code, which is currently in the planning stage, would allow the technique to be applied to high-rises, as early as this summer.

“Mass timber would be included in the 2021 building code for Michigan,” Sauvé said. “I know that there is a group led by Sandra Lupien at Michigan State University trying to get some of the language included (in the Michigan building code), which would allow even taller mass timber structures. That would allow mass timber structures to really happen downtown as an opportunity.”

While the “Southtown” project was designed to only use electric energy, Sauvé said she realized that increasing energy demand from future tenants might pose an issue. The prospective energy demand currently exceeds what could be supplied by local electrical substations, Sauvé said, meaning that she would have to source electricity from other substations farther away from the site. 

“We need to first work with DTE to upgrade the amount of electrical service in the neighborhood so that there is enough electricity to (allow) the building to be entirely electric,” Sauvé said. 

Howard Frehsee, the developer behind two high-rise buildings in downtown Ann Arbor, said he had similar concerns related to energy demand when the city first considered requiring all new buildings to be fully-electrified last year. While his current high-rise project behind The Michigan Theater features solar panels, Frehsee said the high energy demand in the building relative to the limited available land made many other sustainability features unattainable.

“We have been researching geothermal as a new source of heating, but in a downtown environment, it is very difficult to use the geothermal (energy) because you have to anchor over a large amount of land and do substantial amounts of piping,” Frehsee said. “You don’t have enough area in Downtown to do that.”

The future of affordable green housing

Ann Arbor has also outlined sustainability goals for affordable housing in their Carbon Neutrality Plan. 

In an interview with The Daily, Wendy Carty-Saxon, the director of real estate development for Ann Arbor’s non-profit affordable housing developer Avalon Housing, said the organization hasn’t developed any net-zero carbon emission buildings yet. She said they are gradually working to achieve the city’s carbon neutrality goal for new development.

“Fifteen of our properties, with over 190 units (in total), have made commitments to enterprise green community standards on books,” Carty-Saxon said. “We have also installed (electric) air-source heat pumps for three of our new constructions.”

Carty-Saxon said rising construction costs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic affected all parts of the real-estate planning and construction processes. For instance, the Catherine Street Project, a large-scale development planned by Avalon, has seen the construction cost per-unit rise over the past two years to $450,000.

Despite the challenges, Carty-Saxon said the group was not discouraged and has continued to focus on projects at the intersection of green and affordable housing. Unlike many private, for-profit developers, Avalon also paid utility bills for its residents. Carty-Saxon said this model incentivizes increasing energy efficiency in the long-term.

“We own and develop our properties,” Carty-Saxon said. “We do all this with the intention of really operating these properties essentially in perpetuity. We considered our long-term fiscal responsibility to be different (than for-profit) … we are always trying to figure out what are the things we are able to (build to benefit our) future, even if we can’t do it immediately.”

Lessons on regulatory impact

As developers consider ways to improve energy efficiency, Ann Arbor officials are discussing measures to make their goals happen as quickly as possible. In an interview with The Daily, Lenart and Planning Commissioner Ellie Abrons, the latter of whom is an associate professor at the University of Michigan, a Planning Commissioner and a local architect, said passing sweeping city regulations takes time. For instance, codifying certain sustainable features like full-electrification into the city’s zoning code is not something that can happen overnight.

Ellie Abrons said the City Planning Commission doesn’t want to make the rules for new developments so restrictive that developers will build elsewhere and force residents to commute, thus inadvertently increasing carbon emissions from vehicles.

“It’s a fine-line,” Abrons said. “We need housing so badly in this city. So, should we be prioritizing that or should we maybe throttle the amount of housing a bit and make sure all of them are built sustainably? It is a very difficult decision.”

There is, nevertheless, one leverage in Ann Arbor official’s toolbox to nudge the developers to build more sustainably. Currently, housing developers often have to go through Planned Unit Development (PUD), a rezoning process that would allow them to build high-density housing. 

Abrons said the Planning Commission has been using this leverage to reflect the city’s evolving expectations of sustainability.

“I do think we are seeing more site plans that include solar panels and identify building electrification as a goal,” Abrons said. “That is not enough, but we are seeing more. I think we have established for the development community that if they come to the Planning Commission and consider sustainable features to a larger degree, they will be better received.”

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu.

The post <strong>Ann Arbor wants more green buildings, how quickly could developers adjust?</strong> appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

When Ann Arbor resident Anne Hiller first moved to ‘Tree City’ from the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004, she was looking forward to settling in the Wildwood Park subdivision, a scenic suburban neighborhood surrounded by nature on the city’s west side. Before she was about to close the deal on her house, however, Hiller noticed that her deed contained an archaic clause — a racially restrictive covenant that read “No portion of the land herein described should be occupied by persons other than the Caucasian race, except as servants or guests.” 

Though Hiller does not identify as a person of Color, she wrote in an email to The Michigan Daily that seeing the covenant appalled her. When she asked for the line to be removed from the deed, Hiller claimed she was told that wouldn’t be possible because it would require a large majority of homeowners across the neighborhood to vote to eliminate the covenant from all deeds in the subdivision. She would have to either sign the document as it was or pass on the house.

“(I) asked to strike the sentence during the actual closing appointment,” Hiller wrote. “The title company officer explained the deed covenants and why it wasn’t possible, and then said ‘but it’s okay because the language isn’t enforceable.’ It was a stain on the day. I didn’t like signing my name to that language, but my only alternative was to walk away from the house.”

An effort led by a small but mighty coalition of advocates, “Welcoming Neighborhood,” has recently changed that. By the end of 2022, Welcoming Neighborhood helped Wildwood Park pass an amendment eliminating the racially restrictive covenants in their neighborhood. Hiller, who ended up joining the coalition, personally worked to collect and verify resident signatures so that the covenants could be permanently eliminated. 

Hiller told The Daily that any changes to the Wildwood Park deed required approval from homeowners representing two-thirds of the property values comprising the entire neighborhood. Though collecting the signatures was a challenge, Hiller said it paid off with the eventual repealment of the covenants. 

“Right out of the gate, we attained 60% of the (signature) threshold during a 2-hour ‘cider and donuts kick-off,’” Hiller wrote. “(We) exceeded the two-thirds threshold in just 6 weeks.”

Wildwood Park was one of 13 neighborhoods developed in the 1910s and 1920s on the west side of Ann Arbor that instituted racially restrictive policies. During that time, Catherine Street and Miller Avenue became a demographic fault line separating predominantly-white neighborhoods like Arborview and Wildwood from neighborhoods like Waterhill and Kerrytown, which were historically the heart of the Black community in Ann Arbor.

While restrictive policies were deemed unenforceable across the nation by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, the restrictive covenants and discrimination in home sales continued to plague the Ann Arbor housing market until the city passed a fair housing ordinance in 1963. While the ordinance barred new development from instituting racially restrictive policies it did not provide a way to remove existing racially restrictive language from existing deeds. That’s why the covenants, though unenforceable, still exist in housing deeds like Hiller’s in more than 120 neighborhoods across Washtenaw County, according to research conducted by Justice InDeed, a University of Michigan-based collaborative project aiming to map where the covenants still exist in the county.

Ann Arbor’s Hannah subdivision became the first neighborhood in the state of Michigan to repeal the racially restrictive language in all of the deeds to properties in the neighborhood in February 2022. In an interview with The Daily, Tom Crawford, a resident of Wildwood Park, which is located right next to Hannah subdivision, said the work of Justice InDeed educated him about the remnants of racial discrimination in Wildwood deeds and motivated him to organize community events to advocate for the repealment of racially restrictive covenants in his neighborhood.

His effort soon attracted five other volunteers, including Hiller, who said she is still troubled by the language in her deed even after 18 years, when she first bought her house in Wildwood Park. Since its founding, though, Welcoming Neighborhood has pursued activism in a variety of ways, Crawford said.

“We had a member who is more engaged online and helped contact neighbors,” Crawford said. “We had two members who were willing to go door to door to get the (word) out to the neighbors. … My wife was the lead on getting many of (the signing) events organized and made sure they were interesting. Everyone was super helpful.”

Crawford said he wants Wildwood Park to follow in the footsteps of the Hannah subdivision and modify the language of their deeds in the same way. The Welcoming Neighborhood group drafted an amendment to the deed to the entire neighborhood which would eliminate the racially restrictive covenants. They also invited Wildwood Park residents to sign their names on the amendment to endorse the proposed changes so that Welcoming Neighborhood could send the amended deed to Washtenaw County Register of Deeds for approval.

“We modeled our revised language off of (the Hannah subdivision’s),” Crawford said. “We not only eliminate the offensive language, but then also replace it with inclusive language. I also ran it by an attorney to make sure there is no (legal) issue with it.”

The impact of eliminating the covenants in Wildwood Park was almost fourfold what it was in the Hannah neighborhood. The Hannah subdivision has 44 homes, whereas Wildwood has more than 160. Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, a biracial social worker and homeowner in Wildwood Park, told The Daily she appreciated the efforts of the Welcoming Neighborhood to address the legacy of racism in their neighborhood.

“A lot of us want to be very progressive and inclusive,” Bryan-Podvin said. “But then we do things like this, myself included, where we buy houses and ignore the language that is exclusive. So to me, it’s taking a step in the right direction and actually practicing what we preach.”

As the Welcoming Neighborhood has worked to spread awareness and replace racially restrictive language in Wildwood Park, the state legislature in Michigan also passed House Bill 4416 in December 2022 to make it easier for neighborhoods to repeal racially restrictive covenants. Nina Gerdes, a third-year U-M Law School student and a research assistant for Justice InDeed, told The Daily the legislation provides a reliable toolkit for amending the language of deeds and could empower more residents to initiate the repeal process.

“The law provides tools such as a form that people can fill out and plug in relevant language,” Gerdes said. “It enables people who might have not otherwise had either the power or the tools to repeal their covenants, such as renters. Through this legislation, individuals have the ability to ask owners of the property, or ask their condo associations to repeal the covenants.”

In an email to The Daily, Crawford said he is currently advising residents in three other Ann Arbor neighborhoods with restrictive covenants on the processes to repeal them. Crawford said he hopes homeowners throughout Ann Arbor will continue to participate in the process and affirm their stances on inclusion.

“It is more than changing a legal document that is already unenforceable,” Crawford wrote. “The point is to establish and encourage real neighborhood inclusivity by including affirmative & inclusive language and connecting neighbors with this shared value. It’s through community building efforts like this that neighborhoods truly become more connected and welcoming.”

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu.

The post <strong>Ann Arbor community members expand efforts to remove racially restrictive covenants</strong> appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Ann Arbor’s City Planning Commission met at Larcom City Hall Tuesday evening to vote on a petition calling for the rezoning of the city-owned 415 W. Washington site from Public Land to Planned Unit Development.

The rezoning would allow for the possibility of new housing developments on the site. The Planning Commission also discussed revising the current incentives offered to developers who provide affordable housing and use sustainable practices in downtown developments.

The 415 W. Washington property, which is located across from the Ann Arbor YMCA, is one of the six city-owned sites that are being considered for affordable housing development — all of which are current parking lots. The West Washington site is currently occupied by a 90-year-old blighted building, and a parking lot. The majority of the site also sits on a floodplain adjacent to the Allen Creek stream, branching off the Huron River. 

Michael Johnson, vice president of SmithGroup, an urban planning and architecture firm based in Ann Arbor that was hired by the city to advise city development projects, spoke to the Planning Commission on Tuesday about what future development on the Washington site might look like. Johnson said the design would aim to provide affordable housing units while also leaving space for Chimney Swift preservation and The Treeline Trail, a non-motorized urban trail currently being developed by the city.

“These recommendations for the area plan will require a minimum of 15 affordable housing units or 15% of the total (units of development), whichever is greater,” Johnson said. “There is also special consideration to preserve the Chimney Swift habitat and a minimum 30-foot wide easement for trail access, including 15 feet for non-motorized treeline trail.”

In a presentation to the Planning Commission during their Tuesday session, Derek Delacourt, Ann Arbor Service Area administrator, said the city would look into issuing permits that would allow building development on the site after ensuring that any future housing development on the site would be financially feasible for the city. Delacourt said though a development with entirely affordable housing would be ideal, it would not be financially viable for this particular lot.

“We know that the primary goal for use of these properties would have been to do a 100% affordable housing project,” Delacourt said. “That doesn’t work on the financing standpoint for this site. … Due to what we’re able to do, allowing for the inclusion of 15% affordable units is what is possible.”

During the public comment portion of the meeting, several Ann Arbor residents expressed their concerns about the rezoning plan. Ann Arbor resident Kitty Kahn said she thought the floodplain would make the site unsuitable for housing development. Kahn said she became concerned about the floodplain after reading a letter that was submitted to the Planning Commission Monday by Jerry Hancock, Ann Arbor Stormwater and Floodplain Programs manager.

“(Floodplains) increase responsibility of emergency services and creates risk for accidental injury,” Kahn said.

Planning Commission Chair Shannan Gibb-Randall said the plan already addresses Kahn’s concern by elevating the building one-foot above the floodplain. Delacourt added that elevating the building was necessary to comply with Michigan Building Code.

Jennifer Hall, Ann Arbor Housing Commission executive director, also noted that the new units could be made available under tenant-based voucher programs. 

The Planning Commission unanimously voted to approve the rezoning plan, which will now be forwarded to the Ann Arbor City Council for final approval.

Planning Commissioners went on to discuss a report from consulting firm Carlisle & Wortman Associates, which asks the city to reconsider the incentives for developers to provide affordable and sustainable housing downtown. The downtown zoning rules were introduced in 2009, which designate zoning categories by floor area and height. Incentives for affordable housing are currently available for any development projects that are affordable for people earning less than 60% of Ann Arbor’s Area Median Income, down from the previous 80%. The report suggests that the current incentive plan is adversely encouraging the development of luxury condominiums downtown, rather than affordable housing options.

Phil Santer, senior vice president of Ann Arbor SPARK — an economic development agency in the city — told The Michigan Daily in an interview prior to the Planning Commission meeting that he believes downtown Ann Arbor needs more low-priced housing options to accommodate both workers and students.

“Housing is one (need in Ann Arbor), that I think is pretty clear,” Santer said. “A variety of all types of housing are really, really important. I think it’s always exciting to be able to see offices being able to be converted into a different kind of housing.”

During the meeting, multiple commissioners said they wanted to see more housing being built downtown that would support a variety of income-levels. Planning Commission Chair Shannan Gibb-Randall said she is disappointed by the absence of affordable housing and unit development in Ann Arbor.

“I think we have all seen this trend toward 5- to 6-bedroom units or low-rise, million-dollar condos,” Gibb-Randall said. “I would like to incentivize anything in between, like units for teachers who wish to live downtown.” 

Planning Commissioner Sadira Clarke said downtown Ann Arbor currently lacks accessible housing units for new families to settle in.

“One of the hardest types of housing to find, from my experience with non-profit housing, was multi-family units,” Clarke said. “Not necessarily six-bedroom units, but units for women with children.”

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu.

The post Ann Arbor Planning Commission discusses West Washington rezoning, downtown development appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, residents of Ann Arbor’s Old West Side neighborhood say their community was close-knit, characterized by neighbors laughing with each other on streets and porches. But pandemic lockdowns put a pause on all that. On one hot summer day in 2020, Nadine Hubbs, a Women’s and Gender Studies professor at the University of Michigan, was staying in her house in the Old West Side. All of a sudden, Hubbs heard the sound of mariachi music slipping through her open window, leading her to discover what would become one of historic neighborhood’s new charms: its local food trucks.

“I knew it was mariachi music because I studied Mexican American country music bands,” Hubbs said. “I came down here and I saw the (food) truck. And then my neighbor, John Carson, who is in the (U-M) History Department, was walking by with food. I must have been sitting on my porch and I asked what’s up and they explained to me, and then John gave me the email so that I could join their email group.”

Hubbs had stumbled across one of the trucks in her neighborhood’s “food truck series,” where local vendors whip up different food options in the back of their trucks along Murray Avenue to serve to residents. The event was first organized by Art & Design professor Rebekah Modrak and real estate broker Marygrace Liparoto. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Modrak said she was inspired to start the food truck series after witnessing the challenges so many local food businesses experienced during the pandemic.

“My husband and I used to like going to Ray’s Red Hots,” Modrak said. “During the pandemic, we went over to get a hot dog, and they told us that they were really struggling. They mentioned that they have this food cart and that it can go out into neighborhoods, so we invited them to come to Murray Avenue on a Tuesday and sell hotdogs. It was hugely successful. Everyone came out because we (had) all been in our homes and were just so excited to have something happening on the street.”

Modrak said the list of food trucks that come to the neighborhood has now expanded to include 14 different vendors, including cuisines such as Latin American, Asian and Soul food. Throughout the year, Modrak said, the trucks cycled through a rotation with a different one coming to the neighborhood every Tuesday — even in the winter. Modrak said they are also working to increase vegetarian options.

“We kind of lean towards having more trucks that have vegetarian options, so they have kind of like slightly healthier food,” Modrak said. “There is a completely vegan comfort food truck that now comes … To be honest, it’s gotten to the point where we almost have more trucks than we can handle.”

Among the vendors who frequent the neighborhood is El Mariachi Loco, a local food truck selling traditional Mexican food which is often accompanied by live mariachi music. Gabriel Hernandez Maya, the owner of the truck, has been living in Ann Arbor and working in the food industry for more than 26 years. Hernandez Maya has established a regular presence both on Murray Avenue and at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market in Kerrytown.

“It was fun doing business (on Murray Avenue),” Hernandez Maya said. “During the summertime, they sometimes invite mariachi bands to play music. You know, Mexican food plus Mexican music.”

Liparoto told The Daily that Hernandez Maya’s dedication to serving the neighborhood exemplifies the relationship the residents have built with Ann Arbor food vendors over the years. She said residents know that they can always rely on El Mariachi Loco to provide them with a warm taco, even on a cold winter night.

“There was once when we had a power outage overnight in winter,” Liparoto said. “That might not even (have been) a Tuesday. I called (Hernandez Maya) and he came so everyone could have a meal at their doorsteps.”

Despite Murray Avenue being more than 10 blocks away from Central Campus, U-M students have also made the trek to visit the food trucks on occasion, Hubbs said. She said she enjoyed the cross-cultural relationships she has built with students over diverse cuisine options thanks to the food trucks.

“I remembered last year when Fork In Nigeria came,” Liparoto said. “I remembered it so well because I met so many people, especially (U-M) graduate students from nearby countries in West Africa who shared with me what they thought was the same or different. Many students knew each other and it really became a socializing event.”

The weekly food truck events have also provided student entrepreneurs, such as Rackham student Mary Garza, with the opportunity to showcase their creativity and share their cultures. Garza is the founder of pop-up bakery Mi ReinA2 Patisserie, named in honor of her Mexican-born grandparents: her grandfather would refer to her grandmother as “mi reina,” or “my queen.”

“I was perfecting my pumpkin empanada, which was my grandpa’s favorite sweet bread,” Garza said. “Whenever I sit down with something sweet and a hot drink, I like to think of my grandpa. When (my grandparents) passed away during my time here (at the University), I kind of felt like I was losing the connection to my culture. I’m taking that back into my studies, into what my dissertation focuses on and this business.”

Garza said running her bakery has connected her to the broader Ann Arbor community and she has received support from fellow bakers to help her jump through the regulatory hoops of operating out of a home-based kitchen. Garza said the restrictions come from the Michigan Cottage Food Law which restricts the food items that can be sold out of home-based kitchens. Garza said she has received offers from other bakers to share space in commercial kitchens, which would allow her to expand her operation.

“A lot of the bakers around town operate in shared kitchens,” Garza said. “I got offers to share kitchens or to go set up at other events. I don’t feel like a threat to anyone getting started and, you know, everyone in the area kind of has their own niche. And so (Ann Arbor) seems to be a pretty supportive environment.”

According to a schedule of the upcoming food truck options obtained by The Daily, the organizers have planned out their lineup of vendors from now until March. Students and residents can experience a peek into the Ann Arbor street food scene at the intersection of Murray Avenue and Liberty Street between 5:00 and 7:30 p.m. every Tuesday.

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu.

The post <strong>Ann Arbor food truck series inspires cultural exchange in Old West Side neighborhood</strong> appeared first on The Michigan Daily.