Press enter after choosing selection

Will Seek Waiver On Building's Required Setback

Will Seek Waiver On Building's Required Setback image
Parent Issue
Day
27
Month
October
Year
1964
Copyright
Copyright Protected
Rights Held By
Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

The city's Housing Board of Appeals will be asked to grant a waiver of side-yard setback of an 18-story apartment building to permit construction to proceed. 

Construction work on the high-rise facility on the northwest corner of S. University Ave. and S. Forest was hailed after the city’s Department of Building and Engineering Safety revoked a building permit. Clare J. Wheeler is acting director of the department.

City Administrator Guy C. Larcom Jr. and S. Daniel Tishberg of Milwaukee. Wis., a representative of Towne Realty, Inc., one of the developers of the apartment building, both said the city's Housing Board of Appeals would be asked a grant a side-yard set back requirement. Date of the meeting has not been set.

Decision to ask the board for a waiver was made at a meeting today at City Hall.

City Attorney Jacob F. Fahrner Jr. said it appears a 19-foot side-yard setback is required, whereas the building was planned with a 10-foot setback on the west side. The building would front on S. University. 

Tishberg said, "We will ask the Housing Board of Appeals for a variation. The amount of the variation we will ask for has not been determined. Our architects are studying the matter."

The city revoked the 18-story apartment building's building permit after the Ann Arbor Property Owners Association contended the structure, as planned, is in violation of the 1917 state housing law.

Jack L. Shipman and John C. Stegeman, both of Ann Arbor, and both incorporators of the association, along with other local apartment developers, were in the City Hall meeting today.

Other association members are John Gunn, president, and Dennis Dahlmann, Kenneth Levy, James Kelly Newton, Richard D. Barnhill and Duncan B. Robertson.

The association was incorporated Oct. 2 with the Michigan Corporation Securities Commission and incorporation papers were filed with the county clerk Oct. 3. 

Incorporation papers say the association was formed to:

"Advance and promote the commercial and civic interests of apartment and commercial building owners in the city of Ann Arbor to study and disseminate information of interest to such owners and in general to provide an organization for the clearing of ideas and the solving of problems common to all such property owners."

Mayor Cecil O. Creal, who was at the City Hall meeting, called the building's violation of the state housing law, the association effort to get the building to conform to the law and interpretation of the law "confusion-plus."

"I'm hoping the problem can be solved amicably and in the interests of all concerned," Creal said. 

Larcom reported that Shipman and Stegeman said the association is not in opposition to the 18-story building if it conforms to the state housing law.

Creal, who disclosed that Stegeman and Shipman were withdrawing from the association, said the city may have to act to see whether the state housing law can be changed.

"If we don't get legal matters solved on the 18-story apartment building, it could stymie the growth of the Central Business District," Creal said. He added:

"A few selfish persons have got to realize in the common good of all that they have to contain some of their opinions."

Representatives of Towne Realty and R. W. Weaver Co. of Ann Arbor, the other developer of the 18-story building, both appeared before the Housing Board of Appeals in July to get a waiver of back and side-yard setbacks for twin 14-story buildings.

The request was refused unanimously by the board because the S. University-S. Forest site was considered a "normal" one, similar to thousands of other sites in the city which are not unusual.

Tishberg said that legal counsel believes the Housing Board of Appeals can grant waivers on projects which do not conform to state law.

Hardship and impracticality are historic tests before appeals boards.

Some footings of the 18-story apartment building have been constructed under a temporary building permit the city's Department of Building and Engineering issued. Tishberg indicated that work still remains to be done on footings. 

However, all work on the building's site has been halted, pending the outcome of the Housing Board of Appeals' meeting.