Caring CASAs
“Have you ever heard of Michigan Adoption Resource Exchange, www.mare.org?” Joyce Tesoriero asks.She swivels her chair around to her computer. “This is gonna break your heart,” she warns.The screen in her...
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Moving to Detroit
Andy Sokoly is one of the few white faces in a church on Detroit’s east side. As a woman with a cordless microphone leads a thunderous call-and-response–“Praise him!”–a group of visitors is swiftly...
Read MoreCurbing the DDA
For the past year, Steve Kunselman has been using the city’s Downtown Development Authority as a political punching bag.Asked why, the Ward Three councilmember answers with a question of his own: “Why did mayor John...
Read MoreThe Kings of Commercial
When businesses look for space in Ann Arbor, chances are good they’ll end up talking to former beer deliveryman Jim Chaconas and his young sidekick, Brendan Cavender.Gone are the shelves of books and magazines from the old...
Read MoreWhat Price Pensions?
Six years ago, the funds that pay for employee pensions and retiree health care for Washtenaw County employees were nearly balanced: they held $215 million in assets against what staff estimated to be $225 million in...
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Capital Partnership
Thirty years ago, Nub Turner led the long-shot leveraged buyout that saved downtown’s last factory. Now his son Matt is backing bubble tea and tech start-ups.—Matt Turner says his business relationship with his...
Read MoreA star architect’s vision
When I worked at the Chelsea Standard in the 1980s, I often covered events at Chelsea High School. It was not a single building, but a campus of one-story structures that students scurried between in all types of weather. I was...
Read MoreCharter Countdown
Dexter Village voters will soon make their biggest political decision since the town was settled in 1824: to be or not to be a city. And the clock is ticking: as the Community Observer went to press, voters were selecting nine...
Read MoreTen Candidates, One Contest
Even in an election year with no national or state offices at stake, ten candidates are competing November 5 for five seats on city council. It’s the most heavily contested council race in the last ten years.Because only a...
Read MoreThe Sweet Smell of Success
The city’s costliest building project has a fresh-air payoff. If you take the Border-to-Border trail past Geddes Dam, or walk the grounds at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, you might have noticed that the air is pleasanter...
Read MoreHistory on the Move
A small sign saying “Closed for Renovations” is taped to the enormous front door of the U-M’s Clements Library. Kevin Graffagnino unlocks it and leads the way into the Great Room. It’s not looking so...
Read MoreA Tale of Two Buildings
At the fibrillating heart of hard-partying undergrad-ville rises University Towers, a well-worn apartment building that until a few years ago loomed unchallenged over its campus neighborhood.”Did you know Madonna lived...
Read MoreReanimating Michigan Football
In his first two years as head coach, Brady Hoke brought Michigan football back from the land of the undead. He did it by humbly adapting his style to the talent he inherited–something his predecessor, Rich Rodriguez,...
Read MoreSalaam, Shalom
“It was like a movie,” says Ahmed Hamdi. Seven years ago, when he was twenty-one, men with guns burst into his family’s home in Baghdad. They shoved Ahmed and his father to their knees and pushed their heads...
Read MoreThe Schools’ Fiscal Cliff
“We’re all marching toward the cliff,” says Glenn Nelson, treasurer of the Ann Arbor school board, “and we want Ann Arbor to be far back in the line.”The cliff is the seemingly inevitable bankruptcy...
Read MoreAnn Arbor on Ice
What do the painted rock and Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s annual Mud Bowl football game have in common?If you answered that they’re both beloved and messy U-M traditions on Washtenaw Avenue, then you’re right, up to a...
Read MoreThe New Farmers
I don’t eat locally grown food because it makes me feel better, though it does, or because I want to support local farms and the local economy, though I do.I eat locally grown food because it tastes better. Carrots so...
Read MoreIs It Art?
On June 7, in public sessions at City Hall, four artists from around the country presented their plans for the new Stadium Boulevard bridges. As a member of the task force reviewing the designs, David Huntoon was...
Read MoreAnn Arbor at the Crossroads
“We’re at a crossroads of politics in Ann Arbor,” says Steve Kunselman, an incumbent city councilmember from the Third Ward on the southeast side seeking a fourth term.”We are at a turning point,”...
Read MoreReinventing Malletts Creek
To grasp the scale and scope of the changes to the Malletts Creek watershed in recent years, visit the two big parks it flows through.Start at Mary Beth Doyle Park on the city’s southeast side. Enter from Birch Hollow...
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