Michigan Environmental Council’s take on Ann Arbor’s Land Use
As we know, the so-called “Skyline” high school is a reality as will be the land use ramifications brought on by a school administration stronger than a city’s master plan or leadership, and by a sleeping community that only pretends to care about things environmental. It’s way too late now for Ann Arbor, but it is interesting that the Michigan Environmental Council uses Ann Arbor, for all its “greenness”, as a prime example of a failure.
This has just come to our attention: Slide 19 of an old Michigan Environmental Council Powerpoint presentation, from MEC’s website, describes what impact the new high school means / will mean to Ann Arbor.
http://www.mecprotects.org/smartinvestmentspp.ppt
The MEC slide states:
- The site of Ann Arbor’s new high school is in the middle of the “greenbelt” around the city, created in 2003.
- The site increased the amount of water and traffic infrastructure in the area, driving sprawl.
- Ann Arbor went through a community planning process, but without matching zoning, could not enforce their vision.
Of course the only “vision” was on the part of the Planning Commission which, though impotent against the Ann Arbor Public School administration and the Michigan laws that exempt school districts from zoning laws, voted against the plan. Mayor John Hieftje and the city council did not even display as much courage. The Mayor said he and the city had no power to change the course of events, but of course he wouldn’t say he opposed the oncoming train wreck.
The slide’s notes:
“Ann Arbor has taken great strides towards creating a sustainable Smart Growth community by recently completing a $200,000 community visioning process that produced the Recommended Policy Framework for Downtown Ann Arbor. In 2003 the city passed Proposal B to create a joint “greenbelt” land preservation framework with surrounding townships. However, these advances are threatened by the siting of the new Ann Arbor Public School building (300,000 sq.ft., 1,600 students, 800 parking spots, a football stadium, three ball fields, four tennis courts, and a practice field with a track) just outside the western limits of the city and along the M-14 highway. While much of the new growth in the City of Ann Arbor has been effectively directed inward or south towards Ypsilanti, the new school will push development into a forest and wetlands area, requiring the extension of roads, sewer and water mains out to the new school which will encourage new residential development in the area.”
Also see “Michigan Environmental Council’s Smart Investment Series” (as a PDF file or in HTML).
