The History of the Kline’s Lot (or Kline Lot if You’re Nasty)

In 1930, Kline’s department store opened in Ann Arbor at 306 S Main St. It stayed open for 64 years, before closing in 1994. Today, the building is home to businesses like The Rocket, Renaissance, and one of my favorite spots in Ann Arbor, LeDog. While the department store has been gone for over 30 years, the surface lot that shares its name remains next to the building. In 2026, the lot is one of the major wedge issues of the upcoming mayoral election. The city is proposing selling the Kline’s Lot for $17.4M to a developer to create market rate housing. The money from the deal will go to things like the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, the Sustainable Energy Utility, and a “strategic property acquisition fund to become more proactive in protecting the city’s tax base.” Mayoral challenger and County Commissioner Yousef Rabhi opposes this sale, suggesting that the city keep the lot, and use it to build permanently affordable housing. This debate has been the subject to many contentious discussions. But this is not the first time there has been a political firestorm surrounding the Kline’s Lot. For that, we have to hop in our DeLorean, get up to 88 mph, and head back to the 80s.

In 1986, the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce conducted a survey about how people felt about downtown Ann Arbor. The results were that people “Like the character of downtown, but think it’s too congested and lacks enough parking.”[1]  Over the years, proposals like the one below got debated and discussed, and in 1988, city council approved, in concept, one of the largest housing and parking project in the history of the downtown.[2]

The project included building a parking structure where the Kline’s Lot is now, building the Ann Arbor Civic Theater atop that structure, and creating Ashley Plaza across the street, which would be a 120 units of low and moderate rental housing. At the time, there was a separate proposal regarding what to do at Packard and Main. Democrats wanted to go with a plan that would build 200 rental units for low and moderate incomes, and also have 600 parking spaces. Republicans wanted to go with a plan that would construct an office with a condominium tower next door. There would be 50 market rate condos, and no parking [4].

At the time, Republicans had a 6-5 majority on city council, including the mayor, and because of this they had the votes to move forward with their proposal for the Kline's lot and Packard at Main. But, in order to move complete their plan for the Kline's Lot, the city would need to purchase four privately owned parcels at the corner of Ashley and William, which would require 8 votes in order to authorize the city purchasing the land. While Democrats could not vote to get their way on the Packard and Main project, they could stop a vote purchasing the land required for the Kline's Lot parking structure, effectively killing the deal.

One of those private parcels was 116 W William St, and was a house owned by George Hotzel. Hotzel was a WWII veteran who had lived at his home for 46 years and he was not thrilled at the idea of selling his home to the city. When asked about the proposed parking structure. Hotzel said “I feel that I don’t have much to say about that because if they want it they are going to get it because if I don’t cooperate with them then they’ll condemn it.” [3] Hotzel was able to keep his home until he passed away in 1990 at the age of 80.

While the council debated which projects should move forward, there was also opposition to doing anything at all. In October of 1988, the Old West Side Association wrote a letter to the Ann Arbor news saying “Building plans ignore principles of [the] Downtown Plan.” They feared this project was too large in scale. They opposed both plans at Main and Packard. They opposed the Civic Theater on top of the proposed Kline’s structure because it was too large, and would create a barrier between downtown and the old west side. They opposed the affordable housing at Ashley Plaza because the building was too tall and would “create a tunnel along  First Street and Tower over the houses along Ashley.” They wanted the parking structure on the Kline’s Lot to be smaller, to make sure it did not “Damage our fragile nearby neighborhoods”[5]

Also at this point, another opposition to the parking structure was growing from the Homeless Action Committee, or HAC. They demanded “House People Not Cars.” They believed the city had misplaced priorities, and should be focused on creating homes for the homeless, instead of more storage for automobiles. They organized protests, like the one seen below, on the Kline’s Lot. One of the people protesting as part of HAC was Jennifer Hall, the current director of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission

A year later, in 1989, Republicans had gained a seat on city council, to make it a 7-4 majority, but they were still one vote shy of the super majority needed to move forward with the project, and there is still no agreement on the DDA’s proposals. 

At this point, the Ashley Plaza plans had fizzled out, but the city council was still trying to move forward with the parking structure. The Democrat minority, led by Larry Hunter, Ann Marie Coleman, and Liz Brater were now demanding the DDA use half of its bonding capacity on creating affordable housing. Hunter said “The DDA thus far has spend [sic] $100,000 on downtown housing but $14 million on parking. You can get an awful lot of housing with that kind of money” Terry Martin, Republican, said the parking structure was needed “to save a downtown which could collapse and become boarded up.” Brater proposed a resolution to move forward with the parking project in exchange for the DDA using $5M of its bonding capacity for housing, but that vote failed along party lines. At this point, the city had spent $200K with the architectural firm Sasaki and Associates [6]

In 1990, after George Hotzel passed away, the city would acquire his house at 116 W William St. Once it was city property, HAC got 50 volunteers to help two unhoused families move into the now empty house. [7] The city was now forced to balance “their dislike of the trespass used to move the families in with their unwillingness to appear insensitive by order the families evicted” [8] Ann Arbor went to court, and obtained a writ of eviction to remove the squatters. City government also decided rather than demolish the house, it would sell the house to a local family, and the building would get moved across the street to 340 S. Ashley St. The city also made a deal with the families living in the home, allowing them to stay until it became time to move the building. After about a year, the house was moved to its Ashley St lot. Unfortunately, it was discovered that the ground at 340 S. Ashley was contaminated with oil, leaving the house homeless. The owners of the home would end up moving the house again onto Miner St, where it still resides[9]

In March of 1991, city council voted 8-3 to approve $8.7 million in bonds to build the parking structure. A month later, Ann Arbor holds its elections, and control of city council flips. Democrat Liz Brater, who ran on a campaign of opposing construction of the parking structure on the Kline’s Lot, is elected mayor, and Democrats now hold an 8-3 majority in city council. HAC starts collecting signatures in an attempt to put the Kline’s Lot on the ballot in an effort to prevent construction of the parking structure.

In April of 1991, HAC’s efforts to collect enough failed, but in a 6-5 vote, city council approved an advisory election. Voters would be asked if they support or oppose issuing $8.7M in bonds in a special June 24th vote. Washtenaw County’s Election Scheduling Committee unanimously rejected this date because it was too close to the June 10th Ann Arbor Public Schools election, and moved the election to July 15th.

On May 5th, 1991, The Ann Arbor News wrote an oped criticizing the council for the advisory election. “Although City Attorney R. Bruce Laidlaw defends the use of advisory votes for cities under the powers of the Home Rule Act, the legal issue is overshadowed by common sense, dollars and cents concerns.”[10] A special election would cost an estimated $25,000. The Ann Arbor News also suggested this vote was “a poorly disguised strategy to duck responsibility, refuse to stand up and be counted, and hope voters kill the project” Two days later, the plan was dead. Mayor Brater told council she would not pursue an advisory election, and she would keep a previous council order to city staff to not sell bonds.

In the end, the city spent $1.5M on this project over the course of four years. and all that happened was that a couple houses on the Kline's Lot were either demolished or moved, to make room for more parking spots. The political winner of this ordeal was the Old West Side Neighborhood Association, who pushed for nothing to change. Mayor Liz Brater, who championed the cause of affordable housing being built on the lot, would end up leading a vote to expand the number of parking spots on the Kline’s Lot. In a 2024 interview, Mayor Brater would say about the proposed Kline’s Lot structure “I felt surface parking was an important thing for some older people to have and women at night aren't that comfortable going to parking structures.”

[1] July 17, 1986 Ann Arbor News
[2] September 7, 1988 Ann Arbor News
[3] May 8, 1988 Ann Arbor News
[4] September 9, 1988 Ann Arbor News
[5] October 16, 1988 Ann Arbor News
[6] July 25, 1989 Ann Arbor News
[7] April 7, 1990 Ann Arbor News
[8] April 10, 1990 Ann Arbor News
[9] Nov 15, 1991 Ann Arbor News
[10] May 5, 1991 Ann Arbor News

Opinion: Ideology vs Progress - Why I'm voting for Taylor, not Rabhi

Note: This piece by Adam Goodman reflects his own views, not those of any group or organization

A recent Guardian article chronicling the rise of leaders and candidates like Zohran Mamdani, Katie Wilson, Janeese Lewis George, and Nithya Raman noted "... the common criticism of Democratic socialism is that its proponents put their ideological interests before matters of effective governance." It has been thrilling to see progressive leaders across the country breaking this mold and focusing instead on getting stuff done. Unfortunately, in Ann Arbor, it appears our DSA-aligned candidates for local office are not among them.

In the last few years, County Commissioner Yousef Rabhi has shown a distinct pattern of reacting with anger and accusation when proposals do not meet his ideological purity tests, regardless of real world consequences. This pattern should give voters pause when considering how he would approach the job of Mayor of Ann Arbor. This piece will discuss three prominent cases that highlight this aspect of Rabhi's approach to governance.

1. The HSHV Contract

On April 19, 2023, after an hour-long discussion, Commissioner Rabhi voted against renewing the county's contract with the Humane Society of Huron Valley (HSHV) to provide animal control services for the county, some of which are mandated by state law. To some extent, Rabhi's consternation was understandable, and shared by other commissioners - HSHV had demanded a major increase in county funding. HSHV stated that the previous amount did not even come close to covering HSHV's costs in providing contracted services. County staff, seemingly finding HSHV's cost analysis credible, had negotiated a one-year contract to give the parties more time to negotiate a longer-term agreement, and/or to enable the county to explore other possibilities besides contracting with HSHV.

Commissioner Rabhi expressed a view that the county should only be paying for state-mandated services, which - according to county staff - would include housing all dogs for 7-10 days, as well as housing animals with abuse/neglect allegations or involved in court cases. State law notably does not mandate any specific services for cats. Rabhi stated:

"... it is my continued opinion that we should be paying for what is mandated as the County to provide in terms of services … if we have to choose between helping the Humane Society to fulfill its Mission as a non-profit, and housing people in our community that are homeless, there's no scenario in which I'm going to … not vote to keep the money and use it for those that are humans that are without homes in our community right now."

This may seem like a reasonable - even laudable - viewpoint. However, Commissioner Rabhi was unwilling to engage with the real-world implications of taking such a stand: that Washtenaw County would abandon its longstanding commitment to no-kill animal sheltering, and instead see dogs routinely euthanized after the required holding period, and cats … likely even sooner.

A frank discussion of these tradeoffs would have been healthy for the Board of Commissioners to entertain, but Rabhi refused to contemplate any negative outcomes that would result from his position. He instead suggested to HSHV that "...what you're doing is great and you should continue to do it…", i.e. by raising private donations to cover the remaining costs. HSHV representatives explained that in spite of their private fundraising efforts, they had recorded a net operating loss of over $1.8 Million in the previous year - an unsustainable situation. Rabhi also commented that "cats can survive in nature" and "there are several communities all across our planet that have very healthy feral cat populations". Finally, it's worth noting that a failure to approve this short-term contract risked leaving the county without any provider for state-mandated animal-control services at all. Commissioner Rabhi voted against it anyway.

On November 15, 2023, county staff brought forward a 4-year proposed contract they'd negotiated with HSHV in the intervening months. Rabhi once again voted against its approval.

2. Veridian

On July 12, 2023, representatives from THRIVE Collaborative and Avalon Housing presented an update to the Board of Commissioners on the Veridian at County Farm mixed-income development. The concept for this project dates back to at least 2016, when Washtenaw County released a Request For Proposals for affordable or mixed-income housing developments on the site of the old juvenile detention facility (discussions about the future of that site began 5+ years earlier). Six proposals were submitted, and out of those the Board of Commissioners ultimately selected the joint proposal from THRIVE and Avalon, to build around 50 affordable and 100 market-rate units. THRIVE is a market-rate housing developer focused on environmental sustainability; Avalon is one of the largest providers of subsidized-affordable housing in the county.

Following the Avalon + THRIVE presentation at the July 12, 2023 meeting, Commissioner Rabhi angrily berated the presenters from THRIVE (the market-rate developer):

"... I'll be honest with you, this was a mistake. It was a mistake for me politically and it was a mistake for me from a policy perspective to have ever gotten behind this project; it should have all been affordable housing if the county was going to basically give this property away... I'm very disappointed that we are here now and that you are building housing for rich people on land that was owned by the taxpayers of this County, on land that used to be the poor farm of Washtenaw County, that is an insult; you owe it to Avalon to financially contribute to their Housing Development to make sure it gets off the ground and to make sure it gets done, and the fact that you've washed your hands of it pisses me off to no end."

Rabhi’s invective was grounded in two main objections to the project. First: that the Avalon and THRIVE portions of the project had been separated into separate parcels and buildings, rather than having the affordable housing units mixed into the same buildings and sites as the market-rate units. However, this decision was not made primarily at the behest of THRIVE, but Avalon. In a 2018 letter included in a county Ways and Means Committee packet, Avalon stated:

"We understand that Board members were looking for additional information on why we are not proposing to fully intersperse the Avalon and Thrive units throughout the site. This is primarily due to the challenges of low income housing tax credit [LIHTC] development... Since LIHTC is awarded through a competitive process, it is critical that the design and structuring of the Veridian site is done with an eye toward maximizing our ability to use LIHTC in an attainable and successful manner."

Avalon also attached a more detailed communication from their real estate development attorney, who had raised several concerns about complications arising from the need to create a "site condominium" structure, as well as differing regulatory requirements for low-income vs market-rate housing. Though not stated in the letter, it is also conceivable that Avalon was looking to de-risk themselves from the outcome of THRIVE's development, whose success was not guaranteed - between the two developers, Avalon was by far the more experienced and proven entity. Though THRIVE's proposal was ambitious and exciting, that team had never previously developed anything at this scale.

Rabhi's second objection was that THRIVE had purchased their land from the county at a low cost - around $1M - but was building expensive market-rate housing "for rich people." He stated that in retrospect "... it should have all been affordable housing." In fact, Avalon had offered to do exactly that - they submitted a second response to the 2016 RFP to develop 50 units of affordable housing on their own, and leave the majority of the site undeveloped. This would have yielded exactly the same number of affordable units as the THRIVE + Avalon partnership, but no market-rate units, and none of the other community amenities that will be offered by the THRIVE development. This would have been a strictly worse outcome for the community and the county - more market-rate housing meets a critical local need, and even if the up-front land purchase price was low, the market-rate housing will contribute significant new revenue to local taxing authorities over time. That's to say nothing of the impressive and innovative environmental sustainability features built into the project that serve as a model for future developments.

Of course, like any good politician, Commissioner Rabhi brought up none of these objections at Avalon's ribbon-cutting ceremony for The Grove at Veridian two years later, instead praising the development (and his own stated role in helping usher it along).

3: Broadway Park West

The Broadway Park West project was a major topic of discussion at two consecutive Board of Commissioners meetings last summer. The site for this project - 841 Broadway - had, a century ago, been the home of Ann Arbor's coal gasification plant; coal gasification is a horrifyingly-toxic process that left the riverfront site as perhaps the most polluted in all of Ann Arbor (its early prevalence is also the reason we refer to methane as "natural gas"). Plans to clean up and re-develop this site had been underway since at least 2018, and were initially approved by the city and county in 2019. Commissioner Rabhi had been serving as a State Representative at that time, so he did not directly participate in these deliberations. While the Commissioners' votes last summer were ostensibly on relatively narrow funding issues, Rabhi took those opportunities to excoriate the developer over the fundamental structure of the project.

On August 3, 2025, Commissioners considered a $500,000 grant application to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) to help fund additional environmental remediation for public recreation areas. Commissioner Rabhi raised two major objections. First, he suggested that DTE should have paid the entire cost for environmental remediation out of its own funds, as the inheritor of corporate responsibility for the site's contamination (through its acquisition of MichCon). While many may agree it's unreasonable that public funds must be spent to clean up after a private corporation, this was simply out of the County's hands - EGLE had already determined to discharge DTE's responsibility for further cleanup.

Second, Rabhi was even more adamantly opposed to the ownership and management structure of the public recreation space, i.e. that it is owned and managed by a nonprofit conservancy rather than the city parks department:

"I am in vehement disagreement with the whole concept that you guys have outlined ... I think the idea of having a developer-controlled private park is antithetical to everything that I believe ... I believe that the public's role in subsidizing this development has been completely out of proportion to what should be contributed in this type of situation. And I have a true belief that a public space of this caliber with so much public funding should be a public park and not a private park ... I am in vehement uh ideological disagreement with the concept that you are presenting."

Developer David Di Rita responded to these criticisms by pointing out that this "conservancy" model is increasingly common in our region (e.g. the Detroit Riverwalk), and further that:

"… the city of Ann Arbor did not want one more publicly-owned public space, and they understood that to get to that public space was going to cost the better part of what we thought … would be something on the order of $20 million. It turned out to be more like $37 [million]."

I have been unable to find any specific statement by the City of Ann Arbor that it "did not want" new parkland, but it would have been entirely rational for the city to take that position. The maintenance and capital improvement budget for Ann Arbor's park system is severely underfunded. The city cannot afford to maintain its existing parks assets in a good state of repair, much less take on the burden of a new signature facility. Back in 2019, Ann Arbor City Planning Commissioners had also expressed some concern about the conservancy model, but ultimately recognized the upside - that it would create and provide sustaining funding for a new public amenity, without placing any ongoing burden on the city's taxpayers.

Commissioner Rabhi responded in part:

"It's a vomit inducing concept that shouldn't have ever been approved by city council or any other government body... Shame on every elected official that participated in helping to make that project happen, because that should be a public park."

And after making clear he "won't be setting foot in that park" he ended with:

"I will just close by saying that this model that you guys have proposed is frankly dystopian. It makes me feel like uh we're already in some dystopian novel of the future where corporations control everything."

Rabhi voted against submitting the grant application, a move that would effectively reject "free money" from the state for a project in his own district.

Next month, on September 5, 2025, commissioners deliberated over an update to Broadway Park West's brownfield tax-increment financing plan. Commissioner Rabhi reiterated some of his previous objections, and also objected to the use of the brownfield TIF to fund "non-environmental" activities (even if those activities are eligible for such funding under state law). Rabhi suggested that approving the brownfield plan would deprive local taxing authorities of significant revenue - a frequently recurring, but incorrect, narrative about the TIF mechanism.

Tax Increment Financing can be difficult to wrap one's head around, but the crux of it is that a TIF plan will "capture" only net-new tax revenue (the "increment") that is enabled by the TIF plan itself. That is, the owner of a property with a newly-implemented brownfield plan will continue paying the same taxes as before, but - for a limited period of time - newly increased tax revenue attributed to new development will be diverted toward refunding environmental cleanup and other eligible activities. After that period expires, all such tax revenue will again go to local governments and taxing authorities.

The typical standard of approval for a brownfield TIF plan is that a developer must prove their development could not possibly succeed "but for" the TIF, meaning that if local officials deny such a TIF, the theoretical new tax revenue won't exist. (Commissioner Rabhi replied "I don't buy the but-for argument" without any specific analysis or evidence). Approving a brownfield TIF plan can essentially be a matter of playing the long game when it comes to city/county finances - local taxing authorities won't see immediate fiscal benefit from a development, but eventually, the benefit could be very, very significant. 

Rabhi voted against approving Broadway Park West's revised brownfield plan.

Broadway Park West is a transformational upgrade for Ann Arbor's riverfront; repairing almost a century of blight, adding key non-motorized transportation connections, creating new public recreational amenities, and adding badly-need housing (both market-rate and affordable). Some of these improvements are already open and accessible to the public, and seeing the development fully built will be even more exciting. But if other Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County leaders had taken the same approach to this project that Commissioner Rabhi has, 841 Broadway would likely have remained fallow and toxic to this day.

What about Mayor Taylor?

If I am guilty of having a catch-phrase, it is probably this: "don't make the perfect the enemy of the good". By now it should be clear that - all too often - Yousef Rabhi does exactly that. I consider myself a progressive in a very literal way; I want to see progress. Privileging ideological purity over other concerns is the opposite of that; whether intended or not, the effect of that approach to politics is nothing but a strident defense of the status quo.

But "don't make the perfect the enemy of the good" is also my advice to the voters in this election. Because Ann Arbor under Mayor Christopher Taylor, and the rest of the current City Council, is definitely not perfect. In a way, Mayor Taylor is the opposite of Yousef Rabhi; he is pragmatic to a fault. I often wish he would take bolder and more aggressive stances toward addressing the city's core challenges; instead, as my friend Scott wrote, he is often "the epitome of leading from behind". That's not always a bad thing, though - Ann Arbor has a "weak mayor" system, so quietly building consensus can be one of the more-effective ways to get things done. Still, I have been openly critical of the city's failure to achieve its Vision Zero goal, and disappointed at actions Taylor and (a majority of) Council took to water down the Comprehensive Land Use Plan.

However, we are seeing progress. Rents have declined from their peak, with real estate analysts pointing to new supply as the cause of this market "softness". The city is undertaking a new round of ambitious planning to curb serious and fatal crashes - indeed, while early 2025 was a very bad time for serious crashes in the city, preliminary data suggests we may finally be "bending the curve" there too. Ann Arbor's groundbreaking Sustainable Energy Utility is starting operations. And of course, innovative and transformative projects like Veridian and Broadway Park West are getting built!

In this election, I choose progress. Even when frustratingly slow, forward progress is far better than the alternative. So please join me in voting to re-elect Mayor Christopher Taylor on or before August 4.

Ann Arbor City Council Preview: July 6, 2026

RETVRN!

Gentle readers, it's #a2Council night in Ann Arbor. Here's the agenda. 

The evening kicks off with a respectable, 21-item consent agenda. Of note, the purchase of 9 vehicles ranging from wood chippers to a bobcat to tow trucks. 

There are no public hearings on the docket or second readings of ordinances. There are, however 5 ordinance first readings. 

• C-1 is an update to the ordinance governing bicycle parking in new construction. 
• C-2 is a routine township island rezoning of 0.3 acres at 615 Riverview Drive. Disappointing to see these lots coming in at R1-B. 
• C-3 is another township island rezoning. This time of 0.26 acres at 2700 Fuller to Public Land. Nice to see more public land coming into the city. 
• C-4 is tonight's spicy chili. A PUD for 315 W Huron. This would involve rezoning the parcels  from D2 (Downtown Interface) to allow for a 10 story building. Overall, I think this is great, but I think the city needs to implement the CLUP so that obviously good projects like this don't need a bespoke PUD rezoning. 
• C-5 is an ordinance to enact protection to protect the city's oak trees from oak wilt. 

Rendering of the proposed building at 315 W Huron. 

There are three resolutions on the agenda this evening. 

• DC-1 is for the transfer of a liquor license from Anna's House at 445 E Eisenhower. 
• DC-2 is a resolution to approve temporary outdoor sales during art fair.
• DC-3 is a resolution to strengthen police training and planning and to develop amendments to the city code to protect places of worship. 

And that's it. Make sure you follow along on BlueSky.