In mid-April, Ann Arbor’s planning commission held its first working session aimed at figuring out zoning and other legal language changes based on the city’s new Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP). Planning staff arrived with three proposed outlines of implementation steps the commission could take, including a set of seven priorities the planners recommended.
They suggested commissioners explore the idea of a new “floating residential” district amid single-family home areas that could be used by developers to build multifamily units. They also called for a use analysis, which could help the city modernize or add regulations for short-term rentals and data centers. The planners suggested the commission wait to set out procedures and standards, and tackle residential land use later in the process.
However, Brett Lenart, planning manager for Ann Arbor, says the goal was to get moving. “There’s no right way or wrong way about what we do first.”
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Concrete steps won’t come until at least late April, when formal commission meetings are scheduled. But in nearly three hours of discussion, the commissioners gave a hint at the first suggestion they seem willing to explore: the Hub land use category, which will concentrate mixed-use residential and commercial development around transit hubs.
Ann Arbor’s nine potential Hub areas are downtown, Plymouth Rd. at US-23, South University, Maple at W. Stadium, Eisenhower at S. State, Washtenaw Ave. at US-23, Plymouth Rd. at Nixon, Washtenaw Ave. at W. Stadium, and Plymouth Rd. at Upland. The combined areas cover 1,597 acres of land and range across thirty-three different zoning districts.
Eight of nine commissioners indicated support for or an interest in tackling Hubs up front. Commissioner Julie Weatherbee seemed reluctant during the meeting to begin there. “I don’t know that Hubs is going to be as easy as what we want or give us what we want,” she said during the meeting.
“Everything will be complex,” said commission vice chair Ellie Abrons, who backed the idea. “I wish we could do everything at once, but since we have to prioritize, I would be in favor of prioritizing Hubs.”
Based on that input, Lenart says the commission staff will ask commissioners questions to figure out whether to modify existing zoning laws or craft new ones. The staff will draft language to present to the commissioners and city council for approval, with public feedback. He says the staff could propose drafting new regulations and rezoning simultaneously.
How did this process go in other cities? Burlington, Vermont provides one comparison. Although it’s less than half the size of Ann Arbor, at 44,743 people, it has a major hospital center and is home to the University of Vermont. It enacted a comprehensive plan in 2019.
Setting an immediate priority is a good step, says Charles Dillard, director of Burlington’s city planning. He also worked as an urban designer and city planner for Raleigh, North Carolina, which has a CLUP, as well as in New York City, which does not.
“It is really important to have quick wins that demonstrate momentum, and continue momentum,” Dillard advises. Commissioners should decide, “What do we most care about happening quickly, this year, and the next five years?” then come up with ten to twenty goals.
Ann Arbor’s commission has said full implementation of the CLUP will take up to three years. Within the first year, says Lenart, “I want us to be on a good work plan where we [planners] know what’s first, what’s second, and we have our marching orders.”
By then, under direction from the commission and city council, regulations should begin to change. Within five years, the city hopes to have “a good set of data of what we are accomplishing and have accomplished,” he says.
After surveying other cities that have implemented land use plans, Ann Arbor’s city planners said in a memo that progress moved at different paces.
It took three years of discussion to craft Minneapolis 2040, which went into effect in 2020. The city required another four years to update zoning ordinances, dealing with a lawsuit that paused the revisions. Minneapolis eliminated parking space minimums, permitted up to three-family housing in single-family zones, and implemented new restrictions on residential heights in parts of the city.
Charlottesville, Virginia adopted a new zoning ordinance just two years after its CLUP was adopted. It saved time, according to the planners’ report, because it rewrote its zoning while the CLUP was under discussion.
Austin, Texas, meanwhile, adopted its CLUP in 2012, began rewriting its zoning ordinance in 2014, and stopped in 2019 due to a lawsuit. That work never resumed. But Austin adopted two housing amendments allowing for three residential units per parcel, removing restrictions on the number of unrelated adults permitted to live in the same home, and allowing for smaller lots for single-family homes.
In Burlington, Dillard says economic assumptions in its CLUP were upended by the pandemic, which began a year after it began implementing its plan. But as in Ann Arbor, demand has continued for housing, especially in the “missing middle,” meaning smaller multifamily units. He says Burlington now allows up to eight housing units per lot on three floors. It rezoned eighty acres in former industrial area along Lake Champlain, and is seeing its first development of 1,500 homes.
Dillard thinks the Ann Arbor commission has an opportunity to be a model for other cities as it moves toward implementing the CLUP. “If you do it well, and if it’s done in a way that includes robust community engagement, that will build trust in the community,” he says.
A successful effort “will also establish a good frame of reference for future projects that will show change doesn’t have to be bad. Change doesn’t have to be scary. Tall buildings don’t mean a lower quality of life.”