ICE in A2
“We understand there is a lot of fear and anxiety in our community regarding immigration-related enforcement,” AAPD chief Andre Anderson said in a statement on Monday. If anything, that underestimated the emotion that swept...
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Power Couple
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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Is it Snowing?
No need to look out the window—just sign up for A2 Fix It, the app and website where residents report problems online. After a mid-January snowfall, most of the complaints were about people who hadn’t cleared their sidewalks.
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Dyslexia Help
Good news for the one in five people who have difficulty processing written words: Michigan now has two strong laws governing how schools screen for dyslexia and train teachers to respond to it. And it has them largely because of Ann Arbor school board member and former special ed teacher Susan Ward Schmidt.
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Eggflation
“I just happened to look back at an invoice from January of 2022, and we were selling eggs for $23 a case,” says Washtenaw Dairy owner Mary Jean Raab. “Yesterday I paid $83 a case.” Another supplier was asking $147.
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New Hotels
It’s been a long haul for the Miami-based developer: Finvarb and several Michigan partners first proposed building a hotel on Glen Ave. between Ann and Catherine streets in 2017. After a Covid delay, construction on the 188-room Vanguard Hotel finally started at the end of 2022.
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Selling Concordia
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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Paper Cut
Advance Publications, owners of the Ann Arbor News and seven sister MLive papers, announced in October that it will shut down the Jersey Journal at the end of January, while also eliminating print editions of its flagship Star-Ledger and two other papers in New Jersey. Following the digital transition of four Advance-owned papers in Alabama and Mississippi in 2023, this move raises the possibility that print editions of the News and the rest of the MLive group could be next.
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Life Lessons from Being a Line Cook
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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Plowing the Neighborhoods
In recent years, public works has cleared only “major” streets. But in December, city council approved a contract with Saline’s KBK Landscaping for up to $500,000 worth of “supplemental plowing” whenever four or more inches of snow are predicted.
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The $12 Million Quarterback
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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Parting Gift
“Law enforcement tows” by the sheriff’s office and AAPD generated $436,500 in fees in 2023, not including extras like storage. “They make so much freaking money off towing,” says Clayton. “And we regulated how much they could charge for this and that. Enough for ’em to make money—they’re all making a ton of money—but they’re not gouging the people” whose cars are towed.
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Gifts of Life
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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Magic Mushrooms
In 2020, Ann Arbor became one of the first cities in the country to decriminalize the sale of “magic mushrooms.” Now Hosanagar is coinvestigator on a study of psilocybin, the fungus’s psychoactive ingredient, for treatment-resistant depression.
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A Better School Board?
“I feel pretty good,” says AAPS board president Torchio Feaster of the November election results. “We elected a lot of good people in this community.”
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Jim Toy Center Is Back
This month, the Rainbow Readers Book Club will hold its first meeting at the center’s new home at 560 S. Main St. The blue house across from the Union Rec restaurant is owned by Greyfort Development, Wickfield’s real estate holding company.
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Revolution Rejected
Prop C, which would have eliminated partisan labels and primary elections, earned just 28 percent of the vote. Prop D, to create public funding for council and mayoral candidates, went down 30–70 percent.
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Beavers Are Back
The first signs were subtle but undeniable: last November, Matthaei Botanical Garden staff began noticing trees stripped of bark or cut down entirely, leaving only a pointed stump behind, and a pile of leaves and sticks along the edge of the creek slowly growing into an unmistakable dam. Those efforts soon raised the level of the creek by more than a foot for several hundred yards upstream.
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Burns Park Buzz
When the postcards arrived at homes in North Burns Park this summer, residents were understandably curious. The owner of 1015 Olivia Ave., one of the largest homes in the neighborhood, had applied to the city to divide the parcel into two lots.
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Mind Your Step
More than ten years after the first complaint on A2 Fix It, a sidewalk on Third St. will finally be fixed next year.
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