The Issues

Dicken Woods is located adjacent to Dicken Elementary School, on the southwest fringe of Ann Arbor. Across I-94, just west of Dicken Elementary, the open space of Scio Township has been under intense development pressure for a number of years, with significant area population growth. More development in the area seems virtually assured, and with it ever increasing stresses on the local infrastructure, including roads and schools. Saving Dicken Woods provides many benefits, and avoids the worsening of other serious problems.

Traffic

Traffic is getting worse all over Ann Arbor, but the southwest side of town is under particular stress. The new residential and commercial developments west of I-94, in addition to other in-fill developments on Ann Arbor's west side, have added much more traffic to our streets. The evening rush hour at the intersection of Scio Church and South Maple now hosts long lines of cars. And trying to turn south onto Maple Road, from the stop at west-bound Pauline, can be a harrowing experience now.

Residents of the Dicken area are concerned about increased traffic on neighborhood streets, efforts by drivers to by-pass the busy intersection at Scio Church and South Maple, taking short cuts through the neighborhood.

All this is bad enough already, but the addition of 58 new townhouse units, as proposed by Crosswinds Communities, squeezed in between or built on top of the existing natural features of Dicken Woods, would surely worsen the neighborhood traffic problems. Throw in the fact that many young children walk to and from Dicken Elementary School and play in our front yards and neighborhood parks, and the increased traffic burden adds even bigger safety concerns. And what's even worse yet, the curving roads of the Dicken neighborhood seem to encourage adventurous driving by many younger, less experienced, drivers. Look at the map. Any parent of young children would be concerned about adding even more traffic to this mix.

School Crowding

Parents of Dicken Elementary School students are worried about the possible impact that the proposed higher-density townhouse development would have on school crowding. At a time when our public schools have been stretched to their limit by increased social responsibilities, unfunded government mandates, aging infrastructure, and now severe budget crises, the possibility of packing even more children into an already crowded school building is a significant concern.

In addition, the Ann Arbor Public Schools themselves expressed concern to the City about this Crosswinds proposal. An October 18, 2002 memo from the Ann Arbor Planning Department to Crosswinds' engineering sub-contractor says:

• "An official from Ann Arbor Public Schools has contacted [city] staff regarding their concerns about significant student enrollment increases due to the proposed development. According to AAPS, even 10 new students in a building is a significant increase, and predicts that 50 three-bedroom units could bring in 25 new students or more."

The concerns of Dicken Elementary families were further confirmed in April 2003 when the Ann Arbor Schools announced the new options for schools of choice. This program allows students to transfer to another school within the district when space is available. Sixteen of Ann Arbor's 21 elementary schools have space available for such transfers. Dicken is not one of them.

Homogenizing Ann Arbor

There is nothing inherently wrong with townhouses. Of course they have their place in Ann Arbor, an important option in housing choice. But their place isn't everywhere and anywhere that they can be squeezed into. And while some developments make sense, others don't. This one doesn't. A large-mass, multi-building, attached townhouse development on Dicken Woods just doesn't make sense. In the first place, it doesn't make sense because Dicken Woods, one of the last sites of its kind on Ann Arbor's west side, is so much better used as a special natural area - for all the reasons enumerated on this web site - rather than as the host of a major construction site; and in the second place, it doesn't make sense because the proposed style of development simply doesn't fit in the Dicken neighborhood, which is dominated by single family, single story ranch houses.

The West Area Plan identifies the problems:

• "Lack of Protection for Neighborhood Character - Individual neighborhoods possess unique characteristics which can be lost if infill development occurs that is out of character with the existing fabric of a neighborhood. Infill development with neighborhoods is not always complementary or compatible with the existing prevailing style of architecture." [p. 23]
  
  "Conflicing Land Uses: Multiple-Family Impacts on Lower Density Residential Uses - Multiple-family uses can impact upon single-family neighborhoods in the following ways: 1) when conlicting land use buffers are absent; 2) where parking lots, with their inherent light and increased traffic, abut a residential use; 3) when the multiple-family use is significantly larger and out-of-scale in terms of height and mass of buildings with the abutting neighborhood properties. Generally, multiple-family uses are designed to separate them from the neighborhoods rather than to integrate them into the existing neighborhood." [p. 18]

The Crosswinds vision for Dicken Woods is the homogenization of Ann Arbor. It would force a large generic development into a special place it doesn't belong, out of character with the existing, well-established neighborhood.

We can do better. And we should do better.