Main On The Park to sell $1M townhouses near downtown Ann Arbor

A couple of longtime rental houses just north of downtown Ann Arbor are set to be knocked down in order to make room for a small batch of townhomes. The pricetags for the units in this Main On The Park development could reach $1 million each. Coming down are 542 and 548 N Main St. Going up will be four townhomes measuring about 2,500 square feet each. All of this is pending approval from the Ann Arbor City Council, which will take up the development plans on Aug. 17th. "We will start construction as soon as possible," says Tom Fitzsimmons, builder & developer of Main on the Park. "Our goal is to move people in by the fall of 2016." The two houses proposed for demolition are nearly a century old each. They overlook North Main Park and have been rental properties for decades. Fitzsimmons company, Huron Contracting, plans to salvage some of the materials from them as part of the Main On The Park development. "We will do as much salvage of the building as we can," Fitzsimmons says. The units will also have a number of green features, such as insulations, high-efficiency furnaces. Fitzsimmons adds the new buildings will be done in a "residential style" that comes with clapboard-like siding, pitched roofs, and double-hung windows. The development is aiming to blend in with the existing housing stock in the neighborhood. "We don't want to be too overpowering," Fitzsimmons says. Source: Tom Fitzsimmons, builder & developer of Main on the Park Writer: Jon Zemke