The four-story Hoover and Greene Apartments, which replaced an entire Ann Arbor neighborhood block near Michigan Stadium, on May 5, 2025.

ANN ARBOR, MI — Successful cities grow, and with that comes growing pains.

Ann Arbor, consistently ranked one of the best places to live in the nation, has wrestled with its success most of the 21st century as the town has seen a steady wave of new development coinciding with the University of Michigan’s growth.

That includes luxury-branded apartment high-rises catering to students, condo buildings geared toward wealthy buyers and subdivisions on old farmland on the city’s outskirts. All the while, the city has grown increasingly pricey.

A three-story apartment building on Third Street in Ann Arbor on April 30, 2025. City officials are settling on a three-story height limit for new apartment and condo buildings in low-rise residential areas under a new comprehensive land-use plan.

The city’s gradual densification has been a divisive issue, pitting pro-density advocates against those who want to preserve small-town charms and neighborhood character.

“I don’t want to live in a big city. I don’t want to live in Chicago or New York. I want to have trees,” said Packard Street resident Wendy Ryan, echoing many others. “I want to be able to walk downtown and walk through neighborhoods and not feel like I’m being shadowed by buildings.”

What’s been a heated community debate is now reaching a boiling point as the city is finalizing a new comprehensive land-use plan to accelerate the city’s growth and allow significantly more development throughout the city, envisioning tens of thousands more housing units to better balance supply and demand to live in Tree Town.

Residents review a draft diagram showing how Ann Arbor could densify during a public engagement session for the city's comprehensive land-use plan update at the Traverwood Branch Library on May 7, 2025.

Emotions are high and residents have packed into city hall to give hours upon hours of testimony for and against the draft plan at recent Planning Commission meetings, some with signs carrying the message “Neighbors for More Neighbors,” in contrast to those saying “Pause the Plan.”

“This is one of the most quintessential college towns in America, and if you destroy that, it’s gone,” Minerva Road resident Tony Pinnell said as the debate continued at the latest meeting Tuesday night, May 13, with over two hours of public comment before another three hours of deliberation.

Packard Street resident Chuck Ream said he used to be a supporter of Mayor Christopher Taylor and the current City Council until he read what’s in the plan being drafted at their direction. He called it a sellout to developers.

A draft land-use plan for Ann Arbor on display during a public engagement session for the city's comprehensive land-use plan update at the Traverwood Branch Library on May 7, 2025.

“I didn’t think anything could call me out of political retirement, but the attempt to wreck our city has certainly done that,” Ream said, raising concerns about the possibility of seven-story buildings along his street if it’s reclassified as a transition district.

Ann Arbor Planning Manager Brett Lenart, right, listens to a resident during a public engagement session for the city's comprehensive land-use plan update at the Traverwood Branch Library on May 7, 2025.

“We’re going to kill the goose that laid our golden egg,” he said, arguing Ann Arbor’s central values are its character, trees and beauty and the plan threatens that.

Yeoman Court resident Peter Houk sees it differently, telling commissioners to open up Ann Arbor to everyone and avoid restrictions that limit density in such districts.

“We need more units there and everywhere in the city to keep housing prices in check, so that people like my daughter don’t have to move away in order to be able to afford to start their own lives,” Houk said.

“If we don’t allow new housing to get built, when people who have money want to move here, they will just displace people who are of lesser means from a fixed amount of housing stock,” said Charter Place resident Kirk Westphal, telling people to Google “supply skepticism revisited” to learn more.

Ann Arbor residents review a draft map during a public engagement session for the city's comprehensive land-use plan update at the Traverwood Branch Library on May 7, 2025.

“I’ll spoil it and say that more homes means lower rents,” said the former council member and urban planner.

City Council voted unanimously in April 2023 to go forward with the planning process, hiring a Philadelphia-based consultant. The city then announced in September 2023 the process had kicked off and was expected to take about 18 months.

“I’m excited about the opportunity for the comprehensive plan process to find ways to bring more neighbors into our neighborhoods, throughout our city,” Taylor said then. “The expansion of housing, with its affordability, carbon and desegregation benefits, will improve the quality of life for all members of our community.”

City officials have since held several public engagement sessions, conducted surveys and stakeholder interviews, and discussed the plan extensively at public meetings. It’s been seven months since the planning team unveiled a tentative plan and map, and now over a month since that was formally put into a 125-page draft document and released to the public.

Ann Arbor resident Donna Babcock shows a "Pause the Plan" flier at a public engagement session for the city's comprehensive land-use plan update at the Traverwood Branch Library on May 7, 2025.

But some residents who haven’t been following the process say they’re caught by surprise.

Hutchins Avenue resident Clare Kolevar said she doesn’t consider herself a disengaged citizen — she works at UM, attends a church downtown and talks to her neighbors — but she only heard about the plan a few weeks ago from a colleague.

“I was really quite surprised because I said why wouldn’t there have been a greater outreach from the city to engage the residents,” she said, joining in calls to pause the plan to bring more voices into the conversation.

Others point out there’s still several months to go before council is expected to vote on a final plan in November and there’s plenty of opportunity for people to weigh in. The process has been extended by several months since a previous timeline showed plan adoption in spring 2025.

Some also note a majority of votes in the last three city elections have gone to pro-density candidates who now control all 11 council seats, so voters have spoken in that regard.

Senior City Planner Michelle Bennett discussed the mixed feedback received from recent public engagement sessions, saying about 120 to 150 people have attended each, but there aren’t really any new arguments, nor is there really strong consensus on anything.

The draft plan divides the city into three types of districts: high-density hub districts like an expanded downtown and other places where big high-rises would be allowed, low-rise residential districts where condo and apartment buildings could replace single-family homes, and mixed-use transition districts along Packard Street, Miller Avenue and other similar corridors, allowing both commercial and residential development.

Officials previously discussed mid-rise buildings in the range of four to seven stories for transition districts, but no height limit has been established yet. Commissioners on Tuesday changed the plan to say anything from low-rises to high-rises could be allowed in transition districts, the thinking being high-rises may be OK if there’s enough buffer space from low-rise areas.

Ann Arbor city planners and residents mingle during a public engagement session for the city's comprehensive land-use plan update at the Traverwood Branch Library on May 7, 2025.

At the request of council, commissioners also recently changed the plan to call for a three-story height limit for low-rise areas, rather than four stories, though some suggested buildings still could go up to four stories with a 30% height bonus for affordable housing or sustainability features.

The plan is a high-level guiding document and finer details will be worked out through zoning changes to come later.

The commission concluded its first round of edits to the plan Tuesday with intentions to come back in June to review a second draft. Commissioners said they’re listening to public feedback.

“Policy is about tradeoffs and we will continue to work to balance the voices of everybody that we’ve heard,” said Chair Wonwoo Lee.

The newer four-story Hoover and Greene Apartments development at left, which replaced an entire Ann Arbor neighborhood block near Michigan Stadium, across the street from a row of older houses and apartments on May 5, 2025. The scene is emblematic of the divide over density in Ann Arbor.

“Since March, we’ve been presented with a near-constant drumbeat of demands to delay, suspend or otherwise halt what we’re doing here,” Commissioner Daniel Adams said.

He argues the longer the city waits to legalize more types of housing, the longer it deprives people of opportunity.

The plan outlines a goal to bring more missing-middle housing to Ann Arbor, including more duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, townhouses and cottage court housing.

“These types of housing fit well in existing neighborhoods and provide a gentle amount of density that helps to support walkability, local-serving retail and transit,” it states.

Commissioners decided to reword a section of the plan talking about preserving neighborhood character, striking the word “character” since it means different things to people and changing it to instead say “mass and scale.” They’ve suggested zoning regulations can guard against out-of-scale or badly designed developments.

Commissioners also have suggested limits on lot combinations, but whether an entire neighborhood block of homes could be replaced with a large-footprint apartment building was a question that came up Tuesday with no clear answer.

Commissioner Julie Weatherbee said there’s already been an example of that in her neighborhood with the four-story Hoover and Greene apartment development and she loves it.

“It responds to the neighborhood,” she said.

Olivia Avenue resident Erin Kenney, who is calling to delay the plan, said her biggest concern is the possibility of four-story buildings with “unlimited units” in neighborhoods like hers near campus. It will only accelerate the trend of developers buying, demolishing and replacing homes, she said.

“Once these historic homes are gone, so, too, is the fabric of our community,” she said.

Krause Street resident Kitty Kahn said she thinks people are mistaken to think the plan will make Ann Arbor affordable.

“It would be the opposite,” she said, arguing developers would go for the least-expensive properties where affordable homes would be replaced with more expensive housing.

Hilldale Drive resident Jonathan Levine, a UM urban planning professor in favor of more density, said limiting building heights to three stories in low-rise areas will mean many projects won’t pencil out for developers.

“So, it’s even more important that we allow other parts of the city, especially those with high housing potential, to help meet our urgent housing needs,” he said.

Westphal agreed.

“Allowing the flexibility to go to high-rises in the transition district is huge and that’s going to be a lot of where the housing will go,” he said, suggesting that should include Lower Town.

Ronald Koenig said he’s lived on Wynnstone Drive in Ann Arbor since 1988. He and his wife previously lived in New York City and Brookline, Massachusetts.

He supports density downtown and along major corridors, but strongly opposes it in single-family neighborhoods.

“Because that would destroy the small city feel of Ann Arbor that we love,” he said.

Dexter Avenue resident Christine Comer said the plan for mixed-use transition districts directly affects her. She lives across from a commercial property and she’s concerned about noise and light pollution from more neighborhood businesses.

“I currently live in a place that is like living across the street from a truck stop all night long,” she said, saying it’s a huge concern if entire swaths of the city will be affected.

Close to 80,000 people commute into the city, contributing to congestion and carbon emissions, the plan states, making the case for providing housing in the city for them.

But there’s still a lot of opposition and some people are freaked out, officials acknowledge.

Lisa Disch, City Council’s liaison to the Planning Commission, noted the community came together in recent years to approve new millages for affordable housing and climate action.

“We know there is cohesion in this community, and the plan might not be bringing it out, but that might be because we aren’t all coming to it with the same facts,” she said.

Between 2013 and 2023, Ann Arbor saw a meaningful increase in population in only one household category, Disch said.

“And that’s households earning $150,000 and over,” she said, saying the city added about 6,000 such households in that decade while losing about 4,000 households at 50% of the area median income and below.

“I can actually barely read that, because it is unbelievably distressing for me,” she said. “And I think a goal of the plan is to not go in that direction.”

To do nothing or to downzone would only increase housing prices, Disch said, but by welcoming more housing, over time that housing will “age into affordability.”

“As long as people keep moving into slightly more-expensive housing than they’re living in now, they will keep creating vacancies in somewhat less-expensive housing,” she said.

Austin Avenue resident Ann Arbaugh, a local real estate agent, pushes back, saying the plan calls for housing expansion with no evidence more market-rate units will lower prices.

“The plan leans too heavily on a basic supply-and-demand theory, ignoring factors like developer control over pricing, income inequality and speculative investment,” she said.

Weatherbee said she has found going through old news articles there’s been debate over new development in Ann Arbor for over 100 years.

“This is nothing new,” she said, saying it’s been a struggle and conversation in cities pretty much since cities started.

“So, I think we should give each other some grace and understand that there are points on all sides,” she said. “But also remember that we are all neighbors and we are all trying to do the best for the city.”

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