Ann Arbor Is Terrified of Becoming a Big City

Ann Arbor — This used to be a college town. Now it’s a big city, rapidly growing with intense demand, with new high-rise apartments constantly springing up in the downtown area. Now, the city is proposing a new zoning initiative that would enable commercial development across every residential neighborhood in the city.

Ann Arbor homeowners are terrified, but they need to get a grip. Ann Arbor isn’t some quaint little town anymore. It’s a big city, and it needs to be built up like one.

Strolling through the south Packard neighborhood, you can already see the changes of the last few years. Previously a strictly quiet, residential neighborhood, new development has already sprung up down Packard street.

Next to single-family homes, a few large complexes of the much maligned “5-over-1” style apartment buildings. In this case, usually three stories tall, two floors of apartments with shops underneath.

New cafes, and restaurant complexes dot the scene. York Food & Drink, an Asian-fusion barbecue spot, a bakery with sandwiches, and wine bar in the back, was buzzing on a Sunday afternoon. Like most food spots in Ann Arbor these days, you could barely find a table.

Ann Arborites love nice apartments and fancy food, and there simply isn’t enough of it to go around. Just try walking into a downtown restaurant on a weekend without a reservation. You’ll end up saying screw it and walking over to Blimpy Burger instead of waiting two hours for a table.

It’s not just a housing demand crisis, it’s an Ann Arbor demand crisis. The demand for everything Ann Arbor, for the city itself, is sky high.

How, then, does the proposed rezoning initiative plan to sate this demand?

Surprisingly, it plans to do so with good old-fashioned capitalism. The plan would actually remove most zoning restrictions altogether across nearly the entire city. It would cap new buildings at three stories in previously zoned single-family neighborhoods, and five stories along the main streets, but that’s about it.

It’s not so much a rezoning as a dezoning.

This would allow new housing complexes to be built across the city, increasing the total housing stock and population density. Commercial development, shops and restaurants and such, would follow, in many cases mixed into the same complexes. It’s an obvious solution to the intense demand for the city, and a boon to commercial interests as well.

Why then is it so vociferously opposed?

Across more than half the lawns, Pause the Plan yard signs pleaded for a shutdown of the new zoning initiative. “Your Neighborhood is Being Rezoned” they proclaim in bold lettering.

For a certain type of homeowner, the word “rezoning” is scarier than a horror movie.

They fear that quiet residential neighborhoods will become commercial zones, or even worse, they’ll get busier and more populated. They fear, of course, that their neighborhoods might become less desirable, and their property values slide.

There’s an obvious contradiction here, in the sense that demand is clearly intense. The entire reason for the proposed “Future Land Use Initiative” is that the city needs to address the skyrocketing demand for housing, shops, and restaurants. Ann Arbor property values will not be going down anytime soon.

The main concern, it seems, has more to do with aesthetics and social perception. Ann Arbor homeowners relish their quiet, tree-lined streets, their prime placement within a city with so many cultural amenities.

They don’t want the student ghetto to spill further into their neighborhoods, or worse, to have a bunch of pseudo-intellectual grad students pontificating in coffee shops next door.

They want, essentially, for things to remain exactly as they are. Only, the value of their homes keeps going up because everyone wants them. It’s a classic case of NIMBY-ism, “not in my backyard.”

You can’t have it both ways, however, Ann Arbor homeowners. You can’t have your property values skyrocket without the demand that increases them in the first place. It needs to be addressed one way or another, or the city will become even more crowded and expensive with no way to address it.

Forget the nonsense you’ve heard from your politicians about the rezoning plan being equitable, increasing diversity, or whatever other liberal-ism they’re telling you, though most of you like that stuff anyways. That’s all a red herring.

The real bottom line is that this is the best way to actually make Ann Arbor nicer. More nice housing, more coffee shops, more restaurants. More cool neighborhoods to explore, fewer and smaller lines. That’s the real headline, and it’s something you should be excited for, not panicking because it means change.

You live in a nice place, so nice that everyone else wants to live there. That’s something you can be proud of, and build upon, instead of something to be feared. One hopes you learn the lesson that commercial interest will be the thing to solve Ann Arbor’s growing pains, not far-flung socialist ideals.