Ann Arbor greenbelt will buy a 15-acre Salem Township farm, protect it and sell it to a new farmer

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Ann Arbor plans to buy a 15-acre farm in Salem Township, protect it from development for good and then sell it to a new farmer, paying for the deal with money from the city’s greenbelt millage.

City Council approved spending up to $766,517 on the James R. Gysel property, which is reached from Brookville Road, at its Oct. 5 meeting, according to the city’s legislative record. The resolution needed eight votes to pass. Council members Jon Mallek and Travis Radina sponsored it.

The total covers a purchase price of no more than $697,650, plus an estimated $30,000 for due diligence, $15,000 in closing costs and a $23,867 endowment, the staff memo shows. An appraisal during the due diligence period will set the final price. The city cannot pay more than the appraised value, and staff said it does not expect to spend the full amount.

At the ceiling, the land works out to about $46,500 an acre. The parcel has roughly 10 acres of tillable ground with farm buildings, about 5 acres of woods and an existing house, according to the memo from Remy Long, deputy manager of the city’s parks and recreation services.

Staff wrote that farmers just starting out often look for parcels of about this size, and that a home on the site answers a frequent request from farmers who lack land of their own: they want to live where they farm.

The city will hold the property until staff write and release a request for proposals. After a buyer is picked, Ann Arbor would keep a permanent conservation easement on the land. Money from the sale would return to the Open Space and Parkland Preservation Millage fund and be set aside for future use in the Greenbelt District, the memo says.

It is the greenbelt’s third “buy-protect-sell” purchase under a framework staff outlined in February 2022. The parcel sits beside the 375-acre Hamilton conservation easement the program already holds. The Greenbelt Advisory Commission recommended the deal Oct. 1, pointing to the soil, the site’s fit for farming and its location next to protected land.

Mallek told council the property had been listed for sale publicly, which is why members acted quickly, MLive reported. The greenbelt is paid for by a 30-year millage voters approved in 2003 and has preserved more than 8,000 acres of farms and natural land around the city, according to MLive.

Sources:
City of Ann Arbor, Legistar File No. 26-1636 (Enactment R-26-397), “Resolution to Approve Purchase of Greenbelt District Land and Appropriate $766,517.00 for Purchase of Fee Title to the James R. Gysel Property,” passed Oct. 5, 2026, https://a2gov.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?GUID=6C5C943F-50E9-425B-9234-F7D3A4E3EB1C&ID=8260508
City of Ann Arbor, City Council meeting details, Oct. 5, 2026 (item DC-5), https://a2gov.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?GUID=E08B2FA0-04D4-4BAC-AD5A-83D3E46027A8&ID=1368512
MLive, “Ann Arbor OKs $766,517 to protect 15-acre farm, aiming to flip it to new farmer,” October 2026, https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2026/10/ann-arbor-oks-766517-to-protect-15-acre-farm-aiming-to-flip-it-to-new-farmer.html
Photo: Dwight Burdette, “Bucolic Vista, Brookville Road, Salem Township, Michigan - panoramio.jpg,” July 24, 2013, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bucolic_Vista,_Brookville_Road,_Salem_Township,_Michigan_-_panoramio.jpg

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