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This week, our biggest stories highlight the ongoing tension between the city’s goal to eliminate traffic accidents that result on serious injury or death and ways in which methods of getting there create new challenges for motorists. Redesigns of prominent roads, including State, Pauline, and Main, discourage speeding which, in turn, should make crashes less lethal. But skinnier, slower streets also flummox, stymie, and frustrate drivers, and flummoxed, stymied, and frustrated operators of 5,000-pound machines might not be optimal.
For my money, though, I have a specific concern. S. State St. from South University Ave. to E. William St., the heart of campus, reopened last week with bike lanes and without street parking. But surviving a multimillion-dollar reconstruction and redesign without any evident change: The miserable South U–State intersection.
Tuesday night, heading south at that intersection, I wondered how or if I’d ever get home. Dozens of pedestrians cross there at all times; the blinking caution light and stop signs grant them supreme right-of-way. Drivers and cyclists, legally, cannot go when anyone is in or, really, even approaching the crosswalks; they’d be liable for just about any crash scenario.
I sat there for more than ten minutes as crowd after crowd appeared and crossed in one or more directions. I suffered the honks of cars as, I can only assume, standstill traffic continued to build behind me. Even when there was finally a slowing of foot traffic – there was never a cessation of it – the decision to go felt dangerous and transgressive.
Why does this persist? What are vehicles supposed to do? Why isn’t there a light or some other means of giving both pedestrians and vehicles intervals for safe passage? Doesn’t this just cause bigger snarls throughout the area? I’m baffled.
Your news is here. As noted, there’s a lot about road redesign and its impact on danger. The football team was a disappointment, but winter sports offer exciting possibilities. The sheriff is being accused of fostering a difficult work environment. And a local writer thought it was important to suggest data centers may not have much of a future because of, uh, outer space.
This is last week’s most-clicked link. (It’s an Observer survey that is still open if you haven’t responded.)
–Steve Friess, editor
Correction: Ellen Arruda says she did not write the cranberry sauce recipe I highlighted and included in the Google Doc as being gluten- and dairy-free. It came from a November issue of Bon Appétit magazine.
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Sledding in Montibeller Park on Sunday after the first snow. Credit: Steve Friess
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1. More Vision Zero meeting rubbernecking…: Last week, a2view reported on the frustration that members of the city’s Transportation Commission felt when staff, in a year-end presentation, failed to offer any new design solutions to crashes that result in serious injury or death. Instead, city engineer Cynthia Redinger asked for a budget for a public information campaign on safer driving and support for an effort to get Lansing to reverse a ban on automatic enforcement methods such as red-light cameras. Committee members and other safety advocates even followed up over the holiday weekend issuing a demand that council commit to reducing speed limits in several areas, examine other road design elements, and retract several of Redinger’s statements about the limits of engineering in altering motorists’ behavior.
2. …as well as consternation over new calming efforts: The reopening of State St. between South University and E. William last week after a reconstruction and redesign became a social media flashpoint for locals. Former city councilmember Elizabeth Nelson posted her alarm about the idea of forcing people with mobility problems to park in garages far from Central Campus, and others brought up fears for women’s safety going to and from vehicles. But State St. also became a jumping-off point for concerns about a new city initiative called Ann Arbor Roadway Rightsizing that zeroes in on narrowing and slowing down the following busy streets in ways that traffic safety activists want. These are the focal areas:
● Stadium (Washtenaw Ave. split to just west of Seventh)
● Stadium/Maple (just southeast of Pauline to Dexter Rd.)
● E. Packard (Eisenhower split to US-23)
● Eisenhower (Ann Arbor–Saline Rd. to Packard split)
● S. Main/Ann Arbor–Saline Rd. (Stadium to I-94)
● S. State (just north of Oakbrook to Ellsworth)
● Plymouth Rd./Broadway (US-23 to Division)
● Huron Pkwy. (Platt split to Nixon)
● Green (Plymouth Rd. to Burbank)
● Fuller/Glen (Catherine to Glazier Way)
“We’re already dealing with gridlock downtown from the changes made in recent years. Now it looks like we may be facing gridlock across the entire city,” one Facebook poster wrote. City staff will host a December 10 open house from 5 to 7 p.m. at the downtown library to answer questions and receive public feedback.
3. Sheriff loses control of HR: The county commission last night gave the county administration oversight of the law enforcement agency’s human resources, an extraordinary step prompted by complaints that from Alyshia Dyer is fostering “a hostile work environment,” WEMU reports. It’s the first-year sheriff’s second run-in with the commission of late; last month, Dyer bristled at the idea of closing a $2.7 million budget gap by locking down the jail in order to reduce staff. Dyer called that “cruel and unusual punishment.” In response to this week’s commission vote, Dyer issued a fiery statement calling the move “factually incorrect, inflammatory, strategically short-sighted, disrespectful to my employees, and violative of the Michigan constitution.” She didn’t indicate, however, whether she planned to sue over the situation.
4. Moving on from football: Bummed, though not surprised, by what a dud The Game turned out to be? I checked in on U-M men’s basketball to find, to my absolute astonishment, they had crushed Gonzaga by forty points to win in the Players Era Festival tournament in Vegas. Just a couple weeks earlier, the Wolverines squeezed by TCU and Wake Forest, two unranked teams. Michigan was ranked No. 7 and Gonzaga No. 12 before that; this week, Dusty May’s Wolverines are the No. 3 team on the Associated Press’s list and No. 2 in USA Today’s Sports Coaches poll. Evidently, they’ve really fixed the turnover woes reported by Craig Ross in this month’s Observer. And as impressive as that is, the men’s hockey team is even better – they’re No. 1. And the women’s basketball squad is no slouch, either, ranked No. 6 by AP having held their own in a three-point loss to No. 1-ranked University of Connecticut on November 21. Having those three (big-money, televised) teams in the top 10 at once feels rare, right?
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Michigan men’s hockey star Will Horcoff is one reason why the team is ranked No. 1 in the nation. Courtesy: MGoBlue
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Vision Zero in hindsight: What’s behind the Sturm und Drang that took place at that mid-November meeting of the Transportation Commission? As I report in this month’s Observer, the city is ending 2025 with more car crashes involving serious injury and death than in any year since 2014 – at the very moment we were supposed to have none at all. Read more
Holiday Guide: Experience all Ann Arbor has to offer throughout December – from local performances to holiday concerts, dining, religious services, and of course, shopping – with this seventeen-page special advertising section. It’s loaded with ideas for activities for families and includes listings for stores, nonprofits, and places of worship of interest for the season.
Federal cuts hit international education: The Department of Education’s abrupt cancellation of funding for International Education and Foreign Language Studies programs across the country, including the U-M Center for Southeast Asian Studies, shocked and saddened many on campus, Michelle Yang reports for this month’s Observer. Read more
The Observer remembers one of our own, Jim Manheim. Read more
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Courtesy: MGoBlue
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If you really must dig into The Game fallout, there’s plenty to read and watch, mainly about Sherrone Moore’s immediate future and the dismissal of one coach already. So what went wrong? Choose your news.
Maybe some clues will emerge in an eight-part docuseries on Paramount Plus that followed four top recruits, including freshman QB Bryce Underwood, through their seasons.
After The Game, an Ohio man was stabbed in the Pioneer High parking lot, police said. Another man from Ohio was arrested. The victim is going to be okay. Read more
Starbucks baristas at the Washtenaw location in Glencoe Crossing as well as at the Carpenter store walked off their jobs on Wednesday, forcing the Washtenaw site to close and the Carpenter one to only handle mobile and drive-thru orders. It’s unclear how long the strike will last; it’s part of a nationwide effort engineered by Starbucks Workers United. Read about their complaints.
A fourth – yes, fourth – potential data center could be in the works in Washtenaw County. This time it involves 400 acres in York Twp. for sale by Toyota, according to this MLive scoop.
U-M added more than $2 billion to its endowment this year thanks to some shrewd investments in AI and cryptocurrency. Guess what two sectors many economists are watching for signs of popping bubbles?
On the topic of AI, the Michigan Advance makes the case that all these data centers that are causing so much fury, sooner than later, signify nothing. Why? The moon. No, really. Read more
Ypsilanti Twp. is asking the state to take back a $100 million grant for the data center planned as a U-M partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory on grounds the university misled the state on the nature of the project. That doesn’t seem likely to happen.
Council voted 8-1 to let residents grow their grass taller than a foot. The lone dissenter was mayor pro-tem Travis Radina, who worries about blight and fire danger. Read more
AAPS fall enrollment fell 1.17 percent, extending a losing streak that started in 2019 and accelerated through the pandemic. Administrators tried to offer a good spin. Read more
The Law School community is mourning the loss of two of the oldest trees on the quad. Read more
Ira Glass is coming.
Wolverine Tower is going.
Check out this cool video of the Wallenberg house being moved.
Ann Arbor native and director-choreographer Maija Garcia – daughter of AAO co-owner and publisher Patricia Garcia – was profiled by the New York Times about Jazz Island, her first show at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. It opens tonight. Read more
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Sonca Luu wants Block & Brew Cafe to serve as a meeting place for the crypto-curious – it even accepts cryptocurrency as payment. Luu also owns Saigon Social House, located next door in the Michigan Theater building. Credit: J. Adrian Wylie
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Two new Vietnamese spots open on E. Liberty: Saigon Social House and Block & Brew Cafe are owned by entrepreneur Sonca Luu, Dave Algase writes in this month’s Observer. Luu arrived in town twelve years ago as a single mother and immigrant with $18,000 on hand and landed a SBA-backed loan to start BeeQ Salon & Spa. The cafe accepts cryptocurrency, hence its name.
Papa Johns to open at Colonnade: The national pizza chain has more than 3,500 stores in the U.S., but this will be its only one in Ann Arbor, What Now Detroit reports. On Facebook, the chain promoted its planned December 27 grand opening with the offer of free pizza, company swag, and a chance to win “free pizza for a year.” Two previous A2 stores closed in 2017 and 2019, leaving only one on Washtenaw Ave. in Ypsi.
A Briarwood shuffle: Foot Locker tripled its space by relocating into the berth previously occupied by the Indigenous clothing and gift store NTVES and its adjacent INTY.M Gallery, Algase writes in this month’s Observer. The Muenala family, which owns NTVES and INTY.M Gallery, told Algase they expected to reopen elsewhere in the mall by late November but the mall’s directory as of this week says it is still “coming soon.”
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C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital welcomed the holiday season with a treelighting ceremony and many beautiful desserts. The hospital also is selling the 2026 of its Little Victors calendar as a fundraiser, and many of those in the calendar were on hand Monday to autograph their pictures. Check out this video report from the event via the Observer’s TikTok and Facebook pages. Credit: Steve Friess
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Ypsi Meals on Wheels aims to deliver 22,000 meals this month: That would be 10,000 more than the monthly average for the nonprofit this year, but president and CEO Barbara Niess-May tells WEMU she’s seeing more people struggling to afford food because of government cutbacks and inflation.
Dzanc House hosts fundraiser Sunday: The Ypsi-based arts and cultural center, having just fended off the threat of closure by the city over its permits, is asking for donations of up to $50 from attendees of the event. It’ll run from 4 to 7 p.m. and feature appetizers, readings, a silent auction, and henna tattoos. To register, click here.
Tickets on sale for JFS’s Broadway event: Students from U-M’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance will perform show tunes at 7 p.m. on Jan. 10 to raise money for Jewish Family Services, the nonprofit with a range of services including immigrant resettlement and a food bank. In-person attendance costs $75 and watching via livestream costs $50. For more information, click here.
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By Jennifer Taylor and Steve Friess
Friday: Wander Ann Arbor’s holiday festivals, with stores open late, sales, food trucks, and, of course, Santa. “Midnight Madness,” in the Main and State Street areas, offers a silent disco, carolers, and free hot cocoa stations. “KindleFest” in the Kerrytown District boasts live music, crafts, and mulled wine. 5 and 10 p.m. Free.
Saturday: Watch top collegiate wheelchair tennis players from across the country compete in the annual Wolverine Open. Michigan and national champs Alabama are the top two teams in the country now. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (Fri. and Sat.) and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. (Sun). U-M Varsity Tennis Center, 2250 S. State St. Free.
Sunday: Hear four children’s book authors read from their books in Saline. The authors are Deb Willnau (Sheena’s Shake-Up), Maura Dalian (I’m Alright, Goodnight), Emily Aitzman (Rishi & the Banana Leaf Ball), and Jenna Dawson (What is Kindness?). Also, kids can enter a coloring contest and decorate ornaments. 2 to 4 p.m. Brewed Awakenings, 7025 E. Michigan Ave., Saline. Free.
See the Observer’s online calendar for many more local events.
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