{"id":3433,"date":"2025-11-01T05:49:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T05:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/01\/new-ann-arbor-economic-development-director-joe-giant-talks-affordability-development-goals\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T05:49:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T05:49:06","slug":"new-ann-arbor-economic-development-director-joe-giant-talks-affordability-development-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/01\/new-ann-arbor-economic-development-director-joe-giant-talks-affordability-development-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"New Ann Arbor Economic Development Director Joe Giant talks affordability development goals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>The Michigan Daily sat down with Joe Giant, Ann Arbor\u2019s new<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.a2gov.org\/economic-development\/\"><em> <\/em><em>director of economic development<\/em><\/a><em> to discuss housing affordability, the city\u2019s development priorities and economic relationship with the University of Michigan. Giant<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.a2gov.org\/news\/posts\/ann-arbor-introduces-new-economic-development-director\/\"><em> <\/em><em>began the position<\/em><\/a><em> March 17 after previously working as the community development administrator for the<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cityoffortwayne.in.gov\/387\/Redevelopment\"><em> <\/em><em>Redevelopment Department<\/em><\/a><em> of Fort Wayne, Ind. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Michigan Daily:<\/strong> What drew you to Ann Arbor?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Joe Giant:<\/strong><em> <\/em>When you\u2019re studying city planning, you\u2019re learning about all these cities that are doing it right with progressive, best practices, and Ann Arbor is always on those lists: number one quality of life, best place to raise family, most educated. So we just drove up. It was the middle of March, the longest, most disappointing month. But there were so many people out: people running, walking, eating outside, drinking coffee outside, just being active, being so vibrant. And it just had this energy that I had just never experienced anywhere that I had been, especially in making the most of an otherwise disappointing season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So it just felt serendipitous. I felt like I had to apply for it. I\u2019m really excited and happy about the stuff that I get to do on a day-to-day basis, but to be able to live in a city that I had for a long time really admired and grown to love was a dream come true.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><strong>TMD:<\/strong><em> <\/em>What does the role of Ann Arbor\u2019s economic development director entail, and what does a typical week look like for you?<\/p>\n<p><strong>JG: <\/strong>Over the last few years, we\u2019ve experienced some city challenges: It\u2019s an expensive place to live. We are kind of struggling to provide some basic city services, like maintaining our parks and getting our roads paved and everything. So city staff created this office and charged me with trying to facilitate housing development, helping to build our tax base and place-making. So, making sure that the development that we have helps to continue forward our wonderful, exciting, vibrant quality of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A lot of it is being the first point of contact for a lot of developers that are coming to town, the first point of contact for businesses that are thinking about opening up here. When projects start to become a little bit more real, it might be negotiating with them to figure out if the city is going to be involved in the project, whether it\u2019s infrastructure or it\u2019s tax increment financing, trying to put together deals, working with other city agencies \u2014 like utilities and like transportation \u2014 to make sure that our infrastructure is keeping up with the growth that we want to see.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TMD:<\/strong><em> <\/em>What are your top priorities for Ann Arbor\u2019s economic development?<\/p>\n<p><strong>JG: <\/strong>It\u2019s not \u201cJoe Giant\u2019s plan for Ann Arbor,\u201d it\u2019s the residents\u2019 and community\u2019s plan for their community. The city is commendable in a lot of ways, but one of them is definitely that the people that live here really, really care about it, and they care actively about it. Right now the city is undergoing an amendment to our<a href=\"https:\/\/www.a2gov.org\/planning\/comprehensive-plan\/\"> Comprehensive Plan<\/a>, where we\u2019re looking at areas that we want to grow. And so what I would do is look at the policies that are in that plan and say, \u201cHow do we take those just from a sentence that\u2019s pretty open-ended to actual activity on the ground?\u201d It\u2019s making that connection between what our policies and goals are to how that affects the built environment, how that affects the economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>If you look at our<a href=\"https:\/\/engage.a2gov.org\/comprehensive-land-use-plan\"> Comprehensive Plan draft<\/a>, it is very focused on making sure that there is housing for people that want to be here. Right now, there are wonderful communities here.\u00a0 There\u2019s places to live, but it\u2019s challenging when the people that make a city a city can\u2019t afford to live there; teachers and police officers, firefighters and nurses have to commute in. So, that shows up in the plan a lot. That\u2019s something that definitely is important to people that work at Larcom City Hall, making sure that we have housing options for not just for professors, doctors and lawyers, but also the people that on a day-to-day basis make this a wonderful place to live.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TMD:<\/strong><em> <\/em>Are there any early wins or projects from your first six months you\u2019d like to highlight?<\/p>\n<p><strong>JG:<\/strong><em> <\/em>We have a couple of city-owned properties. One of them is called the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wemu.org\/wemu-news\/2025-09-16\/ann-arbor-city-council-approves-next-steps-for-klines-lot-and-415-west-washington-sites\">Kline\u2019s Lot.<\/a> It\u2019s right behind Main Street on Ashley Street, a real high-profile site. I\u2019d say it\u2019s probably one of the best development sites in Michigan, if not the Midwest. And then another site around the corner across from our YMCA. We talked to City Council, tried to get their priorities, tried to figure out what our policy said about how those lots can be developed and we selected developers for those sites. And we\u2019re negotiating with those now, which doesn\u2019t sound like a huge win, but knowing that we have at least some preliminary buy-in from a couple world-class developers for these sites, I\u2019m gonna take the W \u2026 The vision that these two companies put forward for these respective sites is really exciting and ambitious, and I am thrilled to see where it goes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TMD:<\/strong><em> <\/em>What development projects are you currently prioritizing?<\/p>\n<p><strong>JG: <\/strong>In our Comprehensive Plan draft that I mentioned, we identified some areas of the city where we think we could thicken it up, grow a little bit, add some higher density housing. One of those is South State Street just north of I-94, there\u2019s this tall building, 17 acres of surface parking, an old parking structure, and there\u2019s a gas station. We have proposals to redevelop 17 acres into 1,000 units of housing, including 200 affordable units, 100,000 square feet of commercial units, streets, blocks, open space \u2014 essentially just about six blocks of a downtown feel. I think it\u2019s something like a $600 million development. It would be one of the largest projects in Ann Arbor\u2019s history, probably the largest public-private partnership where the city is taking an active role in the development of it. It\u2019s called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arbor-south.com\/\">Arbor South.<\/a> It\u2019s on the agenda for the Nov. 6 City Council meeting, and we\u2019re really excited to present it to the community.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><strong>TMD:<\/strong><em> <\/em>What emerging trends in Ann Arbor\u2019s economy present the biggest opportunities \u2014 or concerns \u2014 for the city?<\/p>\n<p><strong>JG: <\/strong>Our downtown is a regional destination. It\u2019s an amazing place. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I think that we\u2019ve heard that a lot of businesses have seen a change in what their day-to-day experience is like: not as many people around during the day, more people around nights and weekends. So if we\u2019re going to have a smaller daytime workforce population, we\u2019re going to have second, third floors of businesses that are not really great spots for offices anymore. What are we going to do with those? We\u2019re thinking about how to maybe repurpose those for housing or some other uses that might work great in downtown but are a little bit different than we previously contemplated. Another part of that is trying to increase our downtown-resident population. One way to support Main Street businesses is to have more people there, just on a day-to-day basis.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TMD: <\/strong>How do you approach economic development in a city that\u2019s both a traditional municipality and a college town? Do you collaborate directly with the University on projects?<\/p>\n<p><strong>JG:<\/strong><em> <\/em>It\u2019s \u200b\u200ban interesting push and pull: Ann Arbor would not be the wonderful place that it is without the University, and I would argue that the University would not be the wonderful place that it is without Ann Arbor. I think one of the coolest things about this community is the way that the University just bleeds into the city. We have regular meetings with University leadership where we\u2019re learning about what they\u2019re doing, we\u2019re telling them about what we\u2019re doing. We collaborate on big infrastructure projects. For instance, the University of Michigan is building these beautiful <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/news-briefs\/new-central-campus-residence-hall-to-be-built-on-elbel-field\/\">residence halls<\/a> north of the Big House, and when you add that many units there\u2019s an impact on the infrastructure, and they\u2019re helping us fund huge sewer expansion.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TMD:<\/strong><em> <\/em>Housing affordability is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlive.com\/news\/ann-arbor\/2025\/06\/some-of-the-highest-rent-ann-arbors-lack-of-affordability-under-scrutiny.html\">major issue<\/a> in Ann Arbor. What role does economic development play in addressing this, and what should the future of housing look like here?<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-4    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><strong>JG:<\/strong><em> <\/em>We have an affordable <a href=\"https:\/\/www.a2gov.org\/housing-commission\/\">Housing Commission<\/a> here. We partner with them on projects. It just depends on the project as to how we\u2019re going to get involved, but just figuring out ways to, one, close that financial gap, and two, trying to move projects a little bit more efficiently through the permitting process. It\u2019s more expensive to develop here than it is in a lot of other communities. Some of that is because land is expensive, but some of it is because we require a lot more information in the application phase than a lot of other communities do, and that introduces a whole lot of risk to developers. Over time, that can make it more of a challenging development environment.\u00a0 So from a financial feasibility standpoint and a permitting standpoint, we try to get projects moving.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TMD:<\/strong><em> <\/em>How does sustainability factor into your economic development strategy for Ann Arbor?<\/p>\n<p><strong>JG: <\/strong>One of the cool things about Ann Arbor is that I think we have a brand, and sustainability is obviously a big part of that brand. So in the first contact, the first few sentences that I would ever even say to somebody that wants to do a project here, is that, \u201cLook, you\u2019re going to develop Ann Arbor? It\u2019s going to need to be a fairly sustainable project.\u201d There\u2019s an expectation \u2014 it\u2019s not a law, but it\u2019s kind of an understanding. There is a kind of a dissonance between economic development and sustainability, but I don\u2019t ever want us to think that sustainability has to equate with longer processes and more difficult approvals. I want something that we\u2019re communicating just early enough that developers can incorporate these things into their project in a way that meets our values, but doesn\u2019t necessarily need to slow down an approval process.<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Staff Reporter Grace Schuur can be reached at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/business\/new-ann-arbor-economic-development-director-joe-giant-talks-affordability-development-goals\/gschuur@umich.edu\">gschuur@umich.edu.<\/a><\/em> <\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Michigan Daily sat down with Joe Giant, Ann Arbor\u2019s new director of economic development to discuss housing affordability, the city\u2019s development priorities and economic relationship with the University of Michigan. Giant began the position March 17 after previously working as the community development administrator for the Redevelopment Department of Fort Wayne, Ind. This interview [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[3487,242,243,295,3092,3484,3486,3488,3485,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-3433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-affordability","9":"tag-ann","10":"tag-arbor","11":"tag-development","12":"tag-director","13":"tag-economic","14":"tag-giant","15":"tag-goals","16":"tag-joe","17":"tag-talks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3435,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3433\/revisions\/3435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}