Churchill Downs

The homes

One builder, four years, 110 houses. Whittier Construction laid out Churchill Downs between 1970 and 1974 in the forms that sold on the west side then: two-story colonials as the reference house, ranches for buyers who wanted one level, and a few tri-levels on the lots that suited them. Floor plans run from about 1,350 to 2,626 square feet with three or four bedrooms and one and a half to three baths, on lots with fifty years of tree growth behind them.

A single builder and a tight build window are a real advantage in pricing. The same plan appears on several streets, so a comparable sale here can match on plan as well as on era and lot, which is the tightest form of comparable there is. What separates two otherwise identical houses is what has been renewed: roofs, furnaces, air conditioning, windows and kitchens from the early 1970s have all been through at least one replacement cycle, and how well that was done is the variable.

The era sets the inspection agenda. Houses of 1970 to 1974 fall inside the years when aluminum branch-circuit wiring was used, before the 1978 lead-paint cutoff, and at the tail of the period when Orangeburg fiber sewer laterals were installed; asbestos can turn up in floor tile, insulation and pipe wrap.

Racetrack names, and the neighbors

The subdivision borrows its name from the Louisville track, and the streets keep the theme: Steeplechase Drive, Churchill Drive, Dundee Drive. Across Scio Church Road the same conceit continues in Vernon Downs, another 1960s plat named for a harness track, with Sunnyside beside it and the Dicken plats beyond.

Lansdowne is the neighbor to the east, sharing Churchill Drive as its western border, with ranches, bi- and tri-level contemporaries and colonials built between 1963 and 1987. The two are different products a few years apart and are often lumped together, including in the city's own record of the 2012 storm, which names the Lansdowne and Churchill neighborhoods in one breath. Price them separately: builder, year and plan differ.

Churchill Downs Park

Churchill Downs Park is city-owned, which is the most durable tier of protected open space there is — not a business that can close and be sold, and not dependent on an association continuing to fund it.

The basin does not change that. Engineered flood storage of this kind is generally designed as usable open ground that holds water only during and after a storm; the rest of the time it is a park. But a buyer looking at a house facing the park should understand what it does, because a green area that is designed to hold three and a half million gallons occasionally will occasionally hold it.

The park position itself is worth pricing separately within the neighborhood. An outlook onto public open space is a durable feature in a way an outlook onto a neighboring roof is not, and it is exactly the sort of difference a square-footage comparison ignores.

The park is 1.18 acres off Steeplechase Drive, sitting between the houses and I-94, with a playground and a basketball court, and it doubles as the flood-storage basin described below.

Schools

Churchill Downs is served by Ann Arbor Public Schools: Lawton Elementary, Slauson Middle School and Pioneer High School, and Lawton and Pioneer are within walking distance. Assignments are set by address.

Getting around

Scio Church Road is the neighborhood's front door, east to Seventh Street, South Main and the stadium district, west to Maple and the I-94 interchange at Ann Arbor-Saline Road. Downtown is about two miles northeast; Michigan Stadium, Crisler Center and the athletic campus are a walk of about a mile, which makes football Saturdays a fact of life here rather than an event.

The 2012 flood, and what was done about it

In 2012 a severe rain event caused flooding and overland water flow in the Lansdowne and Churchill neighborhoods. The City of Ann Arbor responded with a study of stormwater management opportunities across the Upper Malletts Creek drainage area.

Several of the study's recommendations went into the city's capital improvement plan, among them a large stormwater detention basin at Churchill Downs Park. The city began planning and design in 2016, design work proceeded in 2017, and what was built is an eleven-foot-deep flood storage area holding 10.8 acre-feet.

An acre-foot is the volume that covers one acre to a depth of one foot — roughly 326,000 gallons. So 10.8 acre-feet is something above three and a half million gallons of storage held back from the downstream system during a storm. That is a substantial piece of infrastructure rather than a gesture.

The park was chosen in part because the city already owned it, so no land had to be acquired — which is why the basin sits where it does rather than somewhere else in the watershed.

Both halves belong in any honest account. A neighborhood that flooded is a real fact a buyer should know. A neighborhood where the responsible public authority studied the cause and built a specific, engineered, several-million-gallon remedy is a materially different proposition from one where nothing was done, and the second half is the part that rarely reaches a buyer, because bad news travels and public works do not.

The Malletts Creek watershed

Malletts Creek is a tributary of the Huron River and the main outlet for stormwater runoff from the City of Ann Arbor. Its watershed is almost entirely urban and suburban, and much of the creek itself runs in underground piping beneath the built-up parts of the city rather than in an open channel.

The number that explains its behavior is impervious cover. Close to thirty-seven percent of the land surface draining to Malletts Creek is impervious — roofs, roads, driveways and parking lots — which is a high proportion, and it means rain that would once have soaked into ground now arrives at the creek quickly and all at once. A watershed like that responds sharply to heavy rain rather than gradually.

This is public, documented ground rather than speculation. The Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner — the office formerly called the drain commissioner — is the authority for stormwater management, flood control and drainage across the county, and Malletts Creek has its own drainage district. Substantial public money has gone into the creek: a restoration project along roughly a mile and a half, most visible along Washtenaw Avenue, created a constructed wet meadow to hold and slow stormwater, and further conveyance and storage work has followed.

For anyone buying in this part of the city, the practical consequence is that drainage is a specific question rather than a general one. The Water Resources Commissioner's office holds the drainage district records; and the city's stormwater staff can say what work has been done nearby and what is planned.

None of that is a reason to avoid the area — it is some of the most established residential ground in the city, and the public investment in the creek is a reason for confidence rather than concern. It is a reason to ask the question at the parcel level instead of assuming.

Impervious cover, and why it is the number that matters

The reason an urban watershed floods is rarely more rain. It is that less of the rain soaks in.

Ground absorbs water, releases it slowly and buffers a storm. Roofs, roads, driveways and parking lots do none of that: water arrives at the drain within minutes and reaches the creek all at once. A watershed at close to thirty-seven percent impervious cover behaves like a funnel rather than a sponge, which is why an urban creek can rise and fall within hours where a rural one would take days.

This is why the remedies take the shape they do. A detention basin does not remove water; it holds a volume back and releases it slowly, so that the peak of the storm passes through the downstream system flattened rather than sharp. The constructed wet meadow on the Malletts Creek restoration does the same thing by a different means. Both are attempts to give the water somewhere to wait.

It is also why the individual property matters. A driveway replaced with permeable surface, a downspout directed to a rain garden rather than to the street, a well-graded lot — these are small contributions, and in a watershed this impervious they are the kind of thing the city actively encourages.

Ann Arbor bills stormwater through utility charges related to impervious area, and credits or programs are periodically available for property-level measures. That is worth asking about, because it is one of the rare cases where a maintenance improvement also reduces a bill.

What a buyer should actually do about drainage

Drainage history is a reason for specific inquiry, not for a general impression. Four steps settle it for a particular house.

First, the flood plain maps for the specific parcel. Flood status is parcel-specific; the mapped area follows the water and the terrain, not the neighborhood boundary.

Second, the city's stormwater staff and the Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner's office. Between them they hold the drainage district records, the study that followed 2012 and the record of what has been built. They can say what work has been done near a particular address and what remains planned. This information is public and free.

Third, the house itself. Overland flow and basement water are distinct from mapped flood risk and are frequently the more common experience. Look for grade falling away from the building on all sides, gutters and downspouts discharging well clear of the foundation, and no staining at the base of finished basement walls. Ask the seller directly, in writing, whether there has ever been water, and ask about a sump pump and whether it has a battery backup — a pump without one is useless in the storm that causes the power cut.

Fourth, the neighbors. In an established neighborhood, people remember 2012, and they will tell you what their own street did and whether anything has changed since the basin went in. No document produces that.

Buying or selling in Churchill Downs

Lead with the neighborhood: one builder, one era, walkable to two schools and the stadium, with same-plan comparables to price against. Then document what has been renewed, because that is what separates two 1972 colonials on the same street.

The drainage history is the thing everybody has half-heard about, and precision serves both sides better than silence does. For a seller, a documented dry basement history and a plain account of the basin the city built are worth more than hoping the subject does not arise. It will arise, and the full version is considerably better than the rumor.

Not to be confused with

• Lansdowne · Ann Arbor
• Vernon Downs · Ann Arbor
• Sunnyside · Ann Arbor
• Lawton · Ann Arbor
• Dicken · Ann Arbor