Illustration by Tabi Walters
It is not easy to find out what is happening at 215–217 S. Main, now a backless three-story brick shell. Eye surgeon and developer Reza Rahmani finally got permission to gut, renovate, and add two stories to the prize piece of nineteenth-century downtown real estate after several years of wrangling with the Historic District Commission and the Ann Arbor Planning and Development Department. Work started. Then it stopped, and nothing on the boarded-up exterior explains why.
Urban Jewelers is gone and a “We’ve Moved” sign for another former tenant, Footprints, is stapled to the boarded-up front.
Old news, yes. Even older news is that some other former tenants left a forwarding address: the Freemasons. For months, other “We’ve Moved” signs were taped to the boards, their photos sent to the Observer by a sharp-eyed passerby. The Royal Arch Masons (Washtenaw Chapter 6) noted they’ve moved to Ypsilanti, as have the Knights Templar (Ann Arbor Commandery No. 13). As for the Ann Arbor-Fraternity Lodge No. 262 of the Free & Accepted Masons, they’ve moved over to the Zal Gaz Grotto on W. Stadium: their website, aaf262.org, gives a rich and detailed history of the Ann Arbor Freemasons and when and why the various chapters were occupying the building, not always harmoniously.
Three of these moves happened over a hundred years ago: 1885 for the Zal Gaz Masons, and even before that for the other two. But as the history notes, it remains “the Cradle of Ann Arbor Masonry.” Though the lodges’ signs are no longer there, if you stand in front of the building and gaze upward you’ll see two emblems of Freemasonry: a skull and crossbones and Templar cross, set into two of the building’s window arches.
But what is going on with this building? Why would work on the hard-won plan, approved a year and a half ago by the city, have been stopped? Queries to the Ann Arbor Building Department directed us upstream to Engineering, which in turn directed us upstream to the planning department.
At press time the planning department hadn’t returned calls, but another local developer has a theory: he thinks the city pushed Rahmani too far by asking him to cover costs that should be its own responsibility. For what it’s worth, public records indicate that the city is requesting resubmission of plans regarding manhole covers and sidewalk replacement.