ANN ARBOR, MI — Revised plans for a six-story, 63-unit affordable housing development in downtown Ann Arbor’s Kerrytown district are now approved.

The city’s Planning Commission this week enthusiastically OK’d the project planned for the city-owned parking lot at the northwest corner of Catherine Street and Fourth Avenue.

The Ann Arbor Housing Commission has chosen nonprofit Avalon Housing to be the developer for the project, which in part aims to honor the Kerrytown area’s Black history.

Black community leaders have been consulting on the project through a Community Leadership Council, which is working on designing a community and cultural space in the building to support and honor the historically Black neighborhood and business district, Housing Commission Executive Director Jennifer Hall said, saying Black residents and Black-owned businesses have been displaced due to gentrification.

“We all know what is at stake,” Angela Davis, one of the Black leaders on the project, told the commission, adding Ann Arbor has a housing crisis and affordable housing is needed.

‘We are losing our Black history.’ New Ann Arbor housing project looks to past

The plan is to reserve half the apartments as affordable housing with supportive services, including for people exiting homelessness, and half for people working in hobbyist or creative fields, including artists. Tenants must earn no more than 60% of the area median income to qualify.

The roughly 52,000-square-foot building would have mixed uses on the ground floor and 16-18 public parking spaces under and behind the building. The building is planned to be all-electric and “net-zero ready,” prepped for future solar panels.

Plans also include electric vehicle charging stations, rainwater capture on the roof, low-flow water fixtures and energy-efficient lighting and appliances.

Commissioner Donnell Wyche expressed strong support.

“I’ve lived in Ann Arbor now since 1997 and I did not know about the sort of African American community that was in residence in Kerrytown until Rev. Roger Brown, who is a minister in Ypsilanti but grew up in the area near Wheeler Park, took me on a walking tour,” he said, adding that sent him on a journey of learning about the historical contributions of Black community members and their place in Kerrytown’s history.

“I’m grateful that you are reclaiming this space,” he told the project team.

Ann Arbor library creates self-guided walking tour of historically Black neighborhood

Wyche suggested he would have liked to see an even bigger building and less parking, saying the city could be doing a better job of promoting where there’s available parking in the area and not asking the development to provide public parking. The site is across from the Ann Arbor Farmers Market.

Hall said the small footprint limits the site to a five- or six-story building.

“And once our construction costs came in, it made it even harder,” she said, explaining costs have gone up significantly and the building design has changed as a result.

“The layers and layers of regulations that the city puts on our project really made the cost go up even further,” Hall said. “And so one of the things we had to change was the facade of the building. It’s much flatter, plainer, unattractive.”

She’s hoping to incorporate more artistic design after it’s built, so it isn’t as plain, she said.

The parking is not a costly part of the project, Hall said, noting there are different opinions about it and some people want it to be tenant parking, not public parking. She sees it as a flexible space that could be put to different use later, she said, suggesting activity at what’s imagined as a vibrant first-floor space could spill outside.

The Catherine Street site is one of 10 city-owned properties City Council in 2019 directed the Housing Commission to evaluate for affordable housing. In 2020, city voters approved a new affordable housing millage to help fund such projects.

Plans call for 62 one-bedroom apartments and one two-bedroom apartment for the Kerrytown project. The apartments will be surrounded by a number of popular Ann Arbor businesses, including the People’s Food Co-Op.

Commissioner Sadira Clarke said she’s excited to see such a central location activated, developed and managed by an organization that’s demonstrated its investment in the community for decades.

“We’re really lucky to be having Avalon build this here,” she said, adding Avalon lives the values of kindness, openness and radical acceptance and represents the best of Ann Arbor.

Because the project meets the D2 zoning requirements, it does not require City Council approval.

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