Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I am speaking on behalf of the Living Economy Network, a network of locally-owned businesses and individuals dedicated to protecting the unique character and quality of life of our community.

Our full comments are already included in the packet that you have before you, so I’ll keep this short.

As the report stresses, we absolutely need to streamline our zoning ordinances and project approval processes, as well as apply them consistently. The businesses that suffer the most from the current contradictory requirements and long waits are small businesses and community-oriented developers. 

However, we believe that additional emphasis needs to be placed on making sure locally-owned businesses can compete fairly in the high-rent environment downtown.  As you’ve probably all noticed, almost all of the retail space within new buildings has been filled by chains and franchises willing to pay high lease rates, and often recruited by the building developers. If we do nothing, the businesses that move in will be continue to be 90% chains, and we don’t believe that Ann Arbor residents and visitors come to downtown to visit the same businesses they see everywhere else.  We want to note that this is not a reason not to build new, taller buildings – we need a larger residential base that will only come from increased development and density, and we do support this aspect of the Calthorpe plan.  However, it is a reason to make very sure that there are measures in places to specifically encourage local ownership of businesses. Right now there are none, and the report does not suggest any.   We need to offer strong incentives to building owners and developers to lease or sell their space to independent business owners - ownership of downtown space is a key, but often overlooked aspect to ensuring the viability of independent businesses. 

If we do recruit businesses for needed retail such as a drugstore downtown, we believe it is important to FIRST exhaust our supply of good locally-owned businesses before recruiting chains, which is not quite what the report suggests. Locally-owned businesses provide many benefits to our community that are provided to a much lesser extent by chain retailers.  They provide more than twice the economic benefit to the local community, and give us spaces that allow us to form connections with others in our community – key aspects of a successful downtown.  For instance, one reason that Sculpture plaza is a successful public place while Liberty plaza is less so, is because of the presence of a community-oriented and owned grocery shop and café right next door. 

We urge the Council to take this opportunity to be visionary.  We could be a downtown where people visit to admire the abundance of green buildings, where a healthy and vibrant civic and arts space is well-used by the community, and a place where interesting, community-oriented businesses thrive.  Or we could follow somebody else’s formula, and slowly become more like other cities, loosing our distinctiveness and vibrance as a result.  Now is a wonderful time to think big – to create a forward-thinking city that will set the standard for other cities.