090826 ~ The Fate of the Kline's Lot - Marianne James

0:00What has to become of the Clines lot? I'm Lucy Ann Lancis as Ann Arbor's talk station, 1290 WLBY. Ann Arbor City Council will determine whether to sell a city-owned parking lot known as the Clines lot to a luxury housing developer. They had previously considered keeping the spot to build affordable housing. Some downtown business owners are concerned how the project is coming together and what it could mean for the future of Ann Arbor. Joining us in studio is Marianne James. She's the executive director of the Arc, considered one of the top music clubs in the world and one of the few non-profit music venues of its kind left in the country. It is located on Main Street and butts up right to that Clines lot. Marianne, great to have you here. Let's talk about first of all the latest news that came out just within the last day or so about tonight's vote Ann Arbor City Council was to take on this whether to proceed with this. There has been a slight change. Sure. Well, council members have let many of their constituents know that they do plan to

1:03pull this particular item off of the consent agenda. What that means is they'll pull it off so it's not automatically voted on when the consent agenda is approved and they'll have separate discussion for it in that meeting. It doesn't mean that they're going to postpone the vote necessarily. So they may still be voting on it tonight but they certainly will be as far as we know pulling it off of the consent agenda for separate discussion. What is your understanding of what this configuration is supposed to be and what they're voting on? They're voting on this this is a purchase agreement for the sale of the property to the developer Hines which was the developer that won basically the bid through the RFP process. So as far as we know from having been in meetings with Hines and seeing some of the plans the plans are not complete by any stretch at this point but they're looking to build a multi-use facility with retail on the ground floor and luxury apartments with some parking available to the apartment tenants. Originally parking was

2:03included for public parking too. That got pulled back. No, it was never included. It never was. It was often asked for but it was never included. All right so the arc has put together a point sheet on your website and what you would like to see happen with this and you've been very clear with city council on your ideas for this. Where does this stand? What are those ideas? What do you hope to see to make this the best situation possible for downtown Ann Arbor? Sure. Well we've always known that the client's lot would be developed because the question has been this is a city-owned parcel. It's a valuable piece of property in downtown Ann Arbor and is a parking lot a surface parking lot the highest and best use. That's not something that the arc has weighed in on. We've always been neutral about that. We don't take a stand on either the sale of the lot or the plans for it. We believe it's going to be developed and so we want that to be a great process. We want everybody

3:04in the neighborhood to win. We want the city of Ann Arbor in general to win and we believe the developer needs to win too of course. So everybody's got to win in that and we've told council and the developers this is what we're after win-win-win so let's go for that. So we really distilled down three things that we felt we needed in terms of our business operation. They're very basic. They're not super exciting but they're really important to the arc and that includes we need to be able to have access to the alley and the utilities back there for deliveries, for drop-off of equipment for our artists etc. And that's a truth for the whole neighborhood. Everybody needs access to that back alley. There's a lot of activity that happens back there. So everybody's very concerned. Let's make sure that we've got access all the time to that alley. That's one thing. We also need access to the side alley that runs along the Ann Arbor Arts Center. That's an east west sidewalk. I shouldn't call it an alley. It's a sidewalk. We need access to

4:06that to be able to to get through to our back door. And that relates to another important piece which is we park tour buses and school buses periodically throughout the year. And this is a subtlety that not a lot of people understand. We're do park those. We park them right off of Ashley Street, right abutting that parking lot. And that means that that's easy and safe access for artists when they're rolling large cases, you know, road cases they call them. They're on wheels. They're heavy. They're big. They need to be able to roll those quickly and easily to our freight elevator which is in the back off the alley. And also we have school kids that come periodically for field trips and we need to be able to load them out of their buses. Park their buses there. Get those kids easily around the block without having to cross streets and things like that. And it's not conceivable that that action could happen on Main Street. Not given the way that Main Street is operating now. So that's where that happens. And also our freight elevator for artists. It's in the it's in the back. In the back. Yeah. So those are three very simple things that we've asked for.

5:08And we want that from the beginning of this process. Yes, we have. We sure have. Back to 24. Yeah. What response did you get? You know, I will tell you that we've got periodically we've had a lot of really positive feedback from council members, from the mayor, from city staff. But that never made it into the plans. Did it? It did not until the 11th hour. So we've been asking for that right up until this past week when we saw the purchase agreement. And the mayor along the way had made some assurances to us and to our constituents about. In fact, he said, yes, you will have constant access to the alley on it uninterrupted. He called it and parking available on Ashley Street for your tour buses and school buses. But that wasn't included in the purchase. It wasn't originally. So we've had some back and forth this past week. And at about four o'clock on Friday, Joe Giant from the city. He's the economic development director at the city. Paid me a visit. He had a memo from administrator, Dihoni, addressed to me into the board saying, we're going to honor these things.

6:12Here's the language we're going to put in the purchase agreement. And here's what we're going to do for those things that are not in the purchase agreement. So again, we're getting in the weeds here. But parking on Ashley Street is governed by the city, not by by a purchase agreement with a developer. They don't have anything to do with that. So we were very pleased to see that the city had said we're going to memorialize these in the purchase agreement and in this memo. They I told them, hey, it's Friday at almost five o'clock now. And we've got to get this out to our board. We'll take a look at it. So because of the Labor Day, we can't it took some time for people to do that. We totally trust that they meant to do everything just as the mirror had said. But they missed a few things. So we got a memo out to them this morning after getting feedback from our board and our legal counsel and just said, hey, we love this. Make these changes. And these things are good. Have you had a response yet on that yet? So you'd like those to be added before they vote. They do need to be added before they vote. Otherwise, it's not really

7:15in compliance with what the mayor had put in writing about what happens if it takes place and they don't put that in. That's good question. I mean, everybody will be acting on faith, but you know, good fences make good neighbors. So are you concerned though that there still won't be any parking, public parking for your your patrons who come to the arc and all downtown? You know, that's an ongoing concern. And the loss of that parking is a loss. But you know, the mayor and others were very clear from the get go that that's not going to be part of this this project. So we honored their their decision and you know, on the other hand, you could have a whole new clientele coming in. That is exactly true. And so we talked to people on both sides of this who say, well, why aren't you advocating for parking? We say because we could it's not our that's not, you know, that's not right. The arc's business. And we could have many, many people coming to us from a new development. The key is surviving to get to that point. Right. And I think that's the concern that the arc has

8:16certainly. And probably some other folks in the neighborhood as well. Mary Ann James, executive director of the arc on the Lucian Lan show and Arbor's talk station 1290 WLBY. And to a point about this being luxury housing going up, the mayor and council have said that they believe that some of that money that comes in from that could funnel into some kind of affordable housing in the future. So I just wanted to make that point out to people since it originally was looked at to build affordable housing. But the big concern for a lot of people is no parking, the public parking that is going to go away down there. I love that the arc really drove the bus on this and was so thoughtful and how your board and staff put together information that made sense there. But so many rumors about this around town and concerns. And I really urge our listeners to go online to your website. You put together the points and people can read this and they can actually see the iteration of the dates and how things evolved throughout here. Have you done this before for other issues in downtown?

9:20We haven't had a need to. And as I said, we're focused really on how does this impact the arc? And let's get real granular about that so that we're not asking the city council or the city staff to go down rabbit holes that we really have no business asking them to go down. So we were trying to be very succinct about this particular issue, what's important to the arc about it, how it stands to impact us. And what we want to do to make a positive impact going forward because we love working with the city, you know, and we want that to be a very, very good relationship. The arc dot org for more information, click on the Climes Lot Sale and Development to get the perspective of the arc, the arc dot org. And it's such a great gem in our community started how many years ago? 1965. So last year we celebrated 60 years. And in that site, 30 years this year. And just think of all the greats who have come through and played on this stage, just amazing. Locals and professions. Yeah. We love the arc. And I always smile when I drive down Main Street and I

10:21see that long line waiting to get in to the arc to see something there. It's people love you guys. Thank you. Thank you. We love it too. Mary Ann James from the arc on the Lucy Ann Lent Show. Ann Arbor's Talk Station, 1290 WLBY.