Meeting Notes for February 4, 2026: Moving Ann Arbor’s economy into the future

| February 6, 2026 | Meeting Notes
Two men and a woman smiling in front of the Four Way Test banner.
69 members welcomed three new members at Wednesday’s meeting.  Mark Ouimet introduced new member Eric Keller (center), who serves as the Director of Government Relations at Washtenaw Community College.  Carolyn Lepard introduced Nancy Margolis, Executive Director of Embracing Our Differences (left), and Norman Herbert introduced Dale Ulrich, Professor Emeritus from the University of Michigan’s Department of Kinesiology.

Today’s meeting was called to order by President Dawn and Jody Tull led us in singing the National Anthem.  The membership then proceeded to recite the 4-way test.

Emily Olson’s inspirational message centered around our town and community of Ann Arbor, mentioning how fortunate we are to consider Ann Arbor an extraordinary place. The vast diversity of people, thought, experiences are what contribute to that and to the investment of a bright future for our community.

Joanne Pierson led us in song today, accompanied by Jody Tull.  The selection was ‘Downtown’.

President Dawn and the Club welcomed visitors and we wished happy birthday to Nishta Bhatia, Jason Whipple, Chris McMullen, Ademola Osofisan and Collyer Smith. We had one anniversary to celebrate with Mary Steffek Blaske for her Rotary commitment of 31 years!

Thank you to the helpers for today’s meeting: Phil Klintworth, Larry Gray, Jim Egerdal, Rosemarie Rowney, Jody Tull and Pattie Katcher.

Announcements

  • Norma Sarkar reminded us of the annual Robert S. Northrup Award that our club established 9 years ago.  Nominations will be accepted through February 27.  Please consider nominating someone you feel is deserving of this award and check out our newsletter for more information and instructions for nominations.
  • Dave Keren, representing the ARC/Peace Committee announced the next Book Club selection which will be discussed on April 9th via a Zoom meeting, making it easy to attend if you are interested.  More information will be distributed soon.

Moving Ann Arbor’s economy into the future

Man speaking into microphone.
Joe Giant, Ann Arbor’s Director of Economic Development, discussed housing and small businesses in our town.

Our own member, Kristin Giant, introduced today’s speaker, whom she happens to know quite well since he is her husband!  Joe Giant is the City of Ann Arbor’s Director of Economic Development. Today he spoke to us about The  Future of Economic Development in Ann Arbor, which, in some ways begins with the blending of public and private activities.  Some topics that Joe discussed included:

  • Stabilizing housing prices.  We have more visitors to Ann Arbor now than we did in 2019 even though there are fewer employees and business vacancies of about 2.7%.  Rent is very high for downtown businesses as we well know, and living downtown is also quite expensive – general monthly rent is around $2500 per month and student housing is higher at about $4000 per month.
  • Building new housing is potentially one option to provide help for more affordable housing, however the various regulations and permit processes make it challenging and burdensome for builders.  We need to find ways to remedy that.
  • Are we set up to accommodate growth?  We need to look at adding residential density without a heavy impact or character change to existing neighborhoods.  There should be a focus on building ‘communities’ and not just housing.
  • How can we grow our tax base?  He suggests that building high density residential areas is a sound idea because the cost to do so is more efficient.
  • The city could benefit from process improvements, and work to achieve compromise and prioritization for suggested or desired projects.
  • For small businesses downtown – look at the ‘wins’ in our city, the groundbreakings, the ribbon-cuttings.  We often do not give enough attention (media or otherwise) to those.  The city has recently hired a liaison to bridge the gap between business and government with a goal to have 200 contacts with small businesses per year.

Our meeting was adjourned at 1:30pm.