On December 1, 2021, Recycle Ann Arbor unveiled Ann Arbor’s revamped materials recovery facility (MRF). Their predecessor, ReCommunity, had trashed it back in 2016, and the upgrades came with a hefty price tag. RAA secured two grants but still had to take out $5.9 million in loans.
“Ninety-five plus percent of our student athletes are not going to play professionally when they are done here,” Manuel says. “So, if that’s the case, I’m not going to design a system for only five percent. I want a system that will help one hundred percent of them.”
A small cyclone was predicted to hit Lake Michigan on November 21, 2024. Saint Joseph lay still—no wind, just the occasional whisper of movement—but out in the heart of the lake, the waves roared to life. For the MSurf club at the University of Michigan, it was the perfect storm—an unmissable call to adventure.
This year, the U-M saw a 24.5 percent increase in applications from first-generation students; they currently make up 12 percent of the undergraduate population. But the university’s relationship with first-gens hasn’t always been supportive.
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To this day, the stream of applicants from the recovery community has not abated. They are like our very own LinkedIn and Indeed all rolled into one. Over the ensuing ten-year period, while owning and operating a growing vegan food business that now includes a restaurant, a bakery/cafe, and an events venue, I have hired more than 150 people in recovery. As their employer, I have had the privilege of joining them on their life-changing and lifesaving journeys
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The best thing about Liberty St., one could argue, is the Michigan Theater. Along with hundreds of films every year, it hosts concerts, children’s theater, celebrity artists, and dozens of other major events. Its recreated historic sign is a landmark rivaled only by its sister theater a block away, the State. That streetscape—with the U-M’s Burton Tower rising in the background—inspired the Michigan Theater Foundation’s recent rebranding as Marquee Arts.
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I had thought it strange that the phone number for “BT Wings” was an (810) area code instead of Ann Arbor’s (734). That was the first clue, right there. Then I searched the internet for “BT Wings,” and nothing came up. Like, nothing.
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On October 7, 2023, as Jon Mallek married first-term state representative Jason Morgan in matching navy suits with teal bowties under a trellis draped with eucalyptus leaves, the thought of running for office himself was the furthest thing from his mind.
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In mid-December, when Concordia University Ann Arbor issued a press release announcing the school would consolidate its operations at its North Building on Plymouth Rd. and away from its sprawling, lush campus along Geddes, few were surprised.
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Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw opened Zingerman’s Delicatessen in 1982. It became the cornerstone of a Community of Businesses that today has a staff of 700 and annual sales of more than $80,000,000. Along the way, Weinzweig has published more than two dozen books on food, business, and leadership. This article is excerpted from his latest, a hand-bound chapbook that connects his early life to his work today.
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The 2024 Michigan Football season is likely to be remembered for two things: After a tepid start, the Wolverines upset the Ohio State Buckeyes. And Bryce Underwood upended Michigan athletics.
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The Observer’s call for historical artifacts earlier this year yielded an interesting range of items. Many will be documented by the Ann Arbor District Library as part of its digital archive of the city’s history.
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Dorrie Dils became president and CEO of Gift of Life Michigan in 2016. At the time, she says, the Ann Arbor–based agency was “averaging about 280 organ donors a year.” The number has since more than doubled, to 578 last year.
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Cinema Guild cosponsored the Ann Arbor Film Festival from its start in 1963 and hosted guests like Frank Capra, Harold Lloyd, Andy Warhol, and the Velvet Underground. And it sometimes courted controversy with screenings of banned films like Flaming Creatures, which in 1967 led to the arrests of four Cinema Guild board members.
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The decline in volunteers adds to the challenges facing the Ann Arbor Public Schools, which are reeling in the wake of a budget deficit and staff cuts. “It’s not like there’s a parent at home anymore,” says Gina Maksimchuk, who teaches kindergarten oung fives at Abbot. And that means “fewer people are available to volunteer.”
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At dusk, on fall Fridays across the county, the world of high school football comes back to life, like a prep sports version of Brigadoon. The marching bands. Singsongy cheerleader chants. An announcer’s booming voice. Armored athletes crashing into each other. And the bleacher crowd’s claps and jeers at the action unfolding before them, on 100 yards of astroturf.
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The November 5 election is about the schools’ past, present, and future—the current board’s firing of superintendent Jeanice Swift last summer, the discovery of a $25 million hole the budget in March, the hiring of Jazz Parks as the new superintendent in June, and the need to grow enrollment to keep the schools financially sound in the future.
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Rachel Ufer has looked forward to Halloween on Granger Ave. ever since she moved there in 2017. “You can’t really believe it until you see it,” Ufer says of the spooky decorations that drew roughly 1,400 trick-or-treaters to her block in Burns Park last year. But a few days before Halloween, a large inflatable skeleton was stolen from her house—and the next night, an inflatable spider.
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The historic contest between Democratic vice president Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump at the top of the November 5 ballot is expected to draw huge numbers of voters on Election Day. But with no city council seats contested, the most impactful items locally are proposals near the end of the packed ballot—particularly Ann Arbor proposals A, to create a city-owned “sustainable energy utility,” and C and D, which would make city elections nonpartisan and provide public funding for council and mayoral candidates.
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Just before kick-off at the AFC Ann Arbor women’s May 19 soccer match against Kalamazoo FC at Pioneer High School’s Hollway Field, fifteen-year-old Izzy Sutton and two U-M students received formal recognition as female leaders and role models. Sutton, tall and athletic, was a 2023 Washtenaw County Young Citizen of the Year, and has won state and national service awards for her work, which has included raising money for bird and turtle rescue by selling her own line of notecards. Sutton has long called for eliminating single-use plastic water bottles at the Ann Arbor Public Schools, petitioning the school board and administration since fifth grade. Most end up in landfills and as trash in the environment.
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