For seven years, a simmering dispute over a prime piece of property in the heart of Ann Arbor’s downtown has kept it from being developed.
It's the concrete top of an underground parking structure, called the Library Lane Parking Structure. The vote in the Tuesday, August 5 primary on Proposals A and B will give city residents yet another chance to decide its fate.
I asked Ann Arbor District Library Director Eli Neiburger to meet me at the lot and describe what he saw.
"Well, we're standing on the surface parking lot on the top of the Library Lane parking structure," he began. "Most of the site is taken up by stairs and ramps and elevators. And there's a few planters and a lot of parked cars."
He didn't mention what was in some of the planters: dying trees.
Neiburger said the library could do a lot better job with the area — if Proposals A and B pass. The proposals would transfer development rights to the lot from the city to the library, and terminate a city charter amendment that set aside the area as a public park.
Neiberger said the library would plan to build a multi-tenant high rise, including a dramatically enlarged library.
They wouldn’t have to keep turning away hundreds of vendors, and thousands of patrons, from sell-out library events, he said. The plan could include a well managed outdoor space for public use.
"And then we'd also love to have some outdoor space up above the ground, on top of part of the library. And then above that, housing. Senior housing, affordable housing, artist housing, market rate housing, a little bit of everything."
An "a little bit of everything" high-rise development is close to what the city had been in the process of making happen here, seven years ago, while leaving a new downtown library up to the library system. The city had inked a deal to sell development rights to a company for $10 million.
But a citizen group convinced a majority of voters to approve a park instead. The sales pitch was for a green space — maybe with beautiful mature trees. Since then, most of the concepts have changed focus.
"A park can be seen in multiple ways," said Rita Mitchell, president of the Library Green Conservancy, looking over the same site. "An urban park is different from a green space park. It’s usually smaller. This is smaller. This does have a lot of hard surface. But you can see that there are areas where there are planters and green things that are growing, and I think we can make this even better."
Mitchell said it was undemocratic for the city to refuse to advance the park's development, after voters said that’s what they wanted.
She proffered her own vision — she called it a fantasy — for what she'd like to see here.
"Oh my gosh, there are so many good things you could do here!" Mitchell enthused. "Concerts. I envision jump rope contests. All kinds of music. We could have poetry recitals. We could have a merry-go-round put up here. People have talked for a long time about having a fountain. The list is endless."
But Ann Arbor Mayor Chris Taylor said the whole idea of a park was a fantasy from the very beginning. He said while the library plan would rely mostly on revenue from the development, not tax dollars, it would cost the city millions to try to put a park on a site that was designed to support a high rise building.
"The location simply cannot be a central, beautiful, verdant park. It is, in fact, in reality, a parking structure. That initiative was never reality-based," Taylor said.
Tom Wieder is head of another pro-park group, the Vote No on Proposals A and B Ballot Committee. He said city leaders could find the money for a park; they just don't want to.
He said the park could be created and maintained with a combination of funds from a private-public partnership, including Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority funds.
"If it's a fantasy, it's a fantasy that has come true in many cities around the country," Wieder said. "In Chicago, Millennium Park, the wonderful park there, sits atop three parking garages and a rail yard. Union Square in San Francisco sits atop the first underground parking garage in the world."
Wieder has some concerns that some voters could be tired of waiting for the park.
Others could be influenced by the library’s popularity and its proven track record for building attractive and high-traffic branch libraries all over town.
"What really is going on here, I call it the evil genius of this campaign. We can tell people we want to have a new library, and the affection for the library gets people to vote against also having a park," he said.
Wieder’s concern could be warranted. Greg Matthews was new to Ann Arbor when he voted for a downtown park. He didn’t realize it would be on top of a parking garage. We met in one of the downtown library's small meeting rooms.
"I probably didn't do enough research when I came to vote, but I liked the idea of a park," Matthews said. He now thinks the library plan is better, and he trusts the library's expertise in developing public spaces. So he voted yes on A and B.
"And they'll do amazing programming because I bring my kids to the library. I probably average once a week all year round. We love it. And so I'm excited to see what the library can do with it."
But pro-park groups hope a "No" vote on A and B will convince city leaders that voters meant what they said the first time — and they'll finally make the park happen.
Without seven more years of waiting.
