Huron Valley News

Greenbelt Ripple Effect Continues:

Remodelers Defect from Home Builders Association

By Ted Sylvester
August/September Issue, 2004

Unhappy over years of political tensions and in need of more control over their marketing and public image, local remodeling contractors have defected from the Home Builders Association. Citing the HBA’s highly public battle to defeat Ann Arbor’s greenbelt proposal as the proverbial last straw, the contractors formed a local chapter of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry.

Last November voters in Ann Arbor overwhelmingly approved a parks and greenbelt initiative. Simultaneously, voters in adjacent Ann Arbor Township approved a farmland preservation program. The Home Builder’s Association fiercely opposed both ballot initiatives, contributing $100,000 to a campaign staged by the Washtenaw Citizens for Responsible Growth, the same group that spent over $300,000 in 1998 to defeat a countywide land preservation ballot proposal.

The successful 2003 greenbelt campaign waged by Friends of Ann Arbor Open Space, co-directed by Ecology Center Director Mike Garfield, marked the first defeat of big-money opposition to land preservation in the country (see “Grassroots Victory Sets National Precedent,” From the Ground Up, Jan./Feb. 2004).

For Bruce Curtis, president of Washtenaw Woodwrights, a remodeling firm in Ann Arbor, the HBA’s fervent campaign against the popular land preservation measures pushed him over the edge.

“Off and on over the years there has been a lot of tension around political issues,” explains Curtis, who joined the HBA almost 20 years ago. “I was constantly being asked to give money to political action committees that were fighting things like wetland regulations, fighting what I considered to be progressive issues, things I cared about and things my customers cared about.”

Curtis cites the HBA’s successful campaign in 1998 to defeat a countywide land preservation ballot proposal as a sore spot and also points to a “pretty reactionary” decision by the HBA last year to squelch a budding local green building movement. As Curtis explains, the green building committee of the HBA was shot down by the board when they proposed the Built Green Initiative, a countywide green building certification program. “Even conservative Grand Rapids has a green building program,” Curtis thought. “What’s the matter with us?”

When the greenbelt proposal surfaced last summer, Curtis explains, he was alienated by the HBA’s immediate and forceful condemnation of the plan, calling statements by HBA spokesperson Jeff Fisher “knee-jerk.”

“By and large a lot of people were upset with the way it was handled,” says Curtis. “There was an undercurrent among the membership that the HBA wasn’t really recognizing – a feeling that we should be out there in more of a coalition position, talking to people not picking fights.”

“I can’t speak for everybody,” he says, “but there was just a feeling that things were going in the wrong direction. I sent a letter to the HBA Board in September saying I couldn’t deal with this anymore: ‘I’m out!’ and that I was going to organize a chapter of the NARI. They didn’t understand.”

Curtis describes NARI as having a strong national base. “I know a lot of people around the country who are active in NARI – it’s a very dynamic group and it’s actually very democratically run.”

Curtis is vice-president of the local NARI chapter, with 40 members from a nine-county area. “We’re growing,” says Curtis. “We’re trying not to burn bridges with the HBA, but we did in a way draw a line in the sand and say this is the last straw, and we have gotten a lot of positive support for what we’re doing.”

Curtis acknowledges that not every remodeler who joins NARI drops out of the HBA. And, he points out, while environmental issues are significant, they are not the sole reason for defections from the HBA.

For more information about NARI, including the location of the meeting on September 14 at 4:30 pm, call Bruce Curtis at (734) 994-8797.

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