A group of citizens is suing the City of Ann Arbor, challenging what they claim was the improper rezoning of Morningside’s LowerTown development located on the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane. The site is known to city planners as the 1140 Broadway Lot, now renamed by Morningside Group as Nine99 Condominiums. The property, Master Planned and Zoned for a PUD to support a mixed use urban village, is currently underway as 99-100% residential. The citizen group contends that the site was rezoned to a designation intended for another part of town in order to mimic a PUD, but doing so relieved the developer from meeting the community benefit requirement of a PUD. The benefit requirement of a PUD would have represented 90 units of affordable housing built on site or, in lieu of compliance, $10 million paid into the public affordable housing fund. The plaintiffs claim that rezonings such as this, outside of the intended location, must be stopped because all other near downtown neighborhoods are threatened by this precedent.
For more background on this story, see Current’s article Ann Arbor Real Estate is on Fire
