Lawmaker wants ‘bird-friendly building standards’ in Detroit

As I have noted in this space before, birds colliding with buildings is a major problem. It’s been estimated that millions are killed each day — perhaps a billion a year.

Now one Detroit City Council member is hoping to address that with new rules that developers may squawk about.

Angela Whit eld Calloway has asked the Legislative Policy Division to come up with a new ordinance “requiring bird-friendly building standards for all new construction and major renovation projects.”

Whit eld Calloway’s request says “a thoughtful approach to design can mitigate bird deaths without signicant cost.” Among the suggestions: Patterned glass requirements.

Detroit would not be the rst city to adopt rules along these lines, according to the American Bird Conservancy, based in Virginia. Several cities in California have rules aimed at reducing bird collisions with buildings, as does New York City, the conservancy says. Chicago has passed such rules, as well.

Christine Sheppard, director of the Glass Collisions Program for the American Bird Conservancy, said San Francisco was the rst to enact such rules in 2011 and others started following suit, including some states and counties.

Whit eld Calloway said the process is in the early stages and she has not spoken with other city council members yet. She says it’s not just the patterned glass that could be helpful. Turning o building lights during peak migration times could help alleviate some of the problem too.

“Buildings do not have to be bird killers,” she said.

Members of Whit eld Calloway’s sta said this wouldn’t necessarily apply to all windows; just ones determined to be in high-impact areas on high-rise buildings.

However, privately (and sometimes publicly), developers contend that Detroit’s rules and regulations are already onerous and drive up the cost of construction in a city where rents haven’t kept up with the cost to build, crimping pro t margins and threatening project viability.

Richard Hosey, a Detroit developer who has worked on projects in Capitol Park and is in the development process for a massive overhaul of the Fisher Body No. 21 plant, said he was open to hearing more details.

“ e idea of being friendly to the environment doesn’t sound like a bad idea, but it’s working through the logistics and nding out what the costs are,” he said, noting that particularly with historic rehabilitation projects, windows are “a huge deal” of glass and architects have started building these solid glass curtain walls and these are absolutely deadly” to birds, Sheppard said.

Building lights disorient birds because they use the stars and moon for navigation during their migrations. In turn, the Detroit Audubon Society says, they end up circling buildings repeatedly, dying of exhaustion or a collision.

Patterned glass has patterns visible to birds built in, breaking up re ections so, as a University of Michigan bird expert told me two years ago, “the window doesn’t look just like the cloudy sky or vegetation around it.”

“It gives them a moment of pause and they will slow down or change direction,” Ben Winger, associate professor and assistant curator in the Museum of Zoology at UM in Ann Arbor, told me in March 2021.

Whit eld Calloway’s request says: “Bird-friendly design and building practices also go hand-in-hand with energy e ciency, as façades with more than 30% glass usually increase costs and CO2 emissions from heating and cooling. By requiring these designs, Detroit can become a leader in promoting environmentally friendly building practices, demonstrating the city’s commitment to the conservation of migratory birds and the natural world and honor its designation as the 29th Urban Bird Treaty City in the USA.” for both state and federal o cials signing o .

“ ere may be logistics to work through to gure out what’s the best process,” he said. “I’m not against investigating it. If there is a solution that works, let’s investigate that solution.”

Sheppard said there are inexpensive ways to stave o bird-building collisions, including external insect screens.

“It’s only in the last 50 years that glass manufacturers have been able to manufacture these gigantic panes

It’s di cult to determine precisely how many birds are killed in collisions with Detroit buildings every year, but a researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology told me two years ago that a study he did ranks us 13th in the spring and 15th in the fall out of 125 cities “for exposing nocturnally migrating birds to light pollution, one of the primary factors involved in collisions at night and also in attracting birds to urban areas where they collide the following morning.”

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB