[DetroitMan]

Ann Arbor wants to reimagine Depot Street train station with housing above

Fuller Road is out and Depot Street is in as Ann Arbor aims to build a new train station.

And it could be a mixed-use development with housing above, according to the latest idea city leaders are kicking around. After many years of pursuing building a train station in part of Fuller Park in front of the University of Michigan medical complex — a debated concept the federal government didn’t support — city leaders now have their sights set on reimagining the current Amtrak station location on Depot Street. “And in our view, that reimagination needs to be more than just a center where you buy tickets and get on a train,” City Administrator Milton Dohoney said. “We believe that we need to explore the possibility of potentially housing on top of a reimagined ticket center, and vertical development at that site is certainly physically possible.”

What that might look like and who might partner with the city remains to be seen, Dohoney said.

“But if you don’t have a vision, you will always be at a minimal level of growth, and we can’t afford to do that,” he said.

Ann Arbor officials started thinking about the need for a new train station in 2005-2006 while developing the city’s Model for Mobility, and in 2009 City Council voted to move forward with pursuing building a station along Fuller Road.

After over a decade of planning and design, with the feds pushing the city to give further consideration to keeping the station on Depot Street, the city was dealt a blow in 2021 when federal officials balked at the city’s plans, which included potentially over 1,300 car parking spaces in a massive deck along Fuller Road and a price tag that ballooned to $171 million.

The Federal Railroad Administration effectively pulled the plug on the Fuller Road project then, saying it wasn’t interested in giving it further consideration for the foreseeable future.

https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor...ousing%20above