Faster, Higher, Stranger
High-rises and luxury student apartments are transforming Ann Arbor’s skyline, and the streets and neighborhoods below.
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Government
Encouraging Health Trends
In its 2025 annual report, released in late April, the Washtenaw County Health Department announced a promising decline in deaths from opioid overdoses, firearms, and suicides in 2024. Firearm deaths continued to drop in 2025, and preliminary data show a similar trend for opioid overdoses and suicides. With all three issues nationally recognized as public health crises, why has Washtenaw County been so successful?
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A Special Election Turns Weird
In an exceedingly rare political maneuver, resigned Ann Arbor school board treasurer Don Wilkerson filed in June to run in the November special election called to fill the seat he vacated.
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Seeking a Check on U-M’s Expansion
In late June, three Democratic state reps—Jason Morgan and Morgan Foreman of Ann Arbor and Jimmie Wilson of Ypsilanti—introduced legislation that would require university officials to follow local zoning requirements and ordinances. This followed U-M’s announcement in May that it would purchase the 140-acre Concordia University campus for $60 million. Because the university has legal autonomy on land purchases, the move did not require local input.
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Running Into Trouble
“[A] 140-home enclave set on rolling hills between the Huron River and Whitmore Lake Road” and “a masterpiece of the landscaper’s art.” That’s how a June 2005 Observer piece, “The Buried History of Barton Hills,” described Barton Hills Village (BHV). Two decades later, there’s trouble in paradise.
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The Concordia Curveball
There were at least two reasons why U-M’s $60 million deal to buy Concordia University’s Geddes Rd. campus rankled city hall.
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Political Ambitions, Made in Ann Arbor
Ann Arborites Eli Savit and Abdul El-Sayed say their campaigns are steeped in what they have experienced here, whether as a schoolchild, like Savit, or in formative college years, as in El-Sayed’s case.
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Does This Landfill Project Pass the Sniff Test?
Jenna and Jim Tenzillo moved to Northville Township from Ann Arbor to shorten their commutes, but the move came with a trade-off: the smell of the Arbor Hills landfill, located just across the county line in Salem Township.
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Beyond Roommates
Sarah Russman’s daughter will leave their home in Ann Arbor this fall to embark on her freshman year of college and the new experience of shared living in a dorm room. Meanwhile, Russman is themself getting ready for a new shared-living experience, under a program that aims to address housing affordability and the challenges for older adults living alone.
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Who’s in the Running to Run Ann Arbor?
On the August primary ballot: Three mayoral candidates and many more seeking council seats
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Kratom Invasion
Kratom is a natural pain remedy and pick-me-up with a wide following. But a dangerous lab-made version is hitting the health care and recovery communities hard.
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Sheriff’s Battles Stretch Into Second Year
In late February, when I started researching Alyshia Dyer (Washtenaw County’s first female sheriff) and her first year-plus on the job, there was already much to unpack and discuss.
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Sirens’ Song
As the sky spasmed with lightning in the early hours of April 15, smartphones throughout Washtenaw County shrieked: TORNADO WARNING. Mournful wails could be heard outside, even above the thunder and bullet-hail of rain. Ann Arbor’s twenty-two outdoor warning sirens were sounding an emergency for the first time since the bow echo thunderstorm in July 2023.
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Roundabout Rejuvenation
After over a dozen years of crashes and complaints, the State and Ellsworth roundabout will be revamped in 2027.
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Comprehensive Plan: What Happens Now?
In mid-April, Ann Arbor’s planning commission held its first working session aimed at figuring out zoning and other legal language changes based on the city’s new Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP). Planning staff arrived with three proposed outlines of implementation steps the commission could take, including a set of seven priorities the planners recommended.
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The Road Less Travelable
Those tire-swallowing holes are created during the weather’s freeze and thaw cycle where subfreezing temperatures are quickly followed by fifty-degree days. Moisture like snow and ice melt seeps into the pavement, freezes and expands, and then thaws to create gaps.
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Mamady Camara Petitions for Release
On April 1, 2026, Mamady Camara, an asylum seeker from Guinea living in Ypsilanti, “celebrated” his twenty-first birthday in a cell at North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan.
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Tax Imbalance
A new U-M study highlights inequity in metropolitan tax bases. How does Ann Arbor stack up?
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A2Zero, Six Years In
“The system is the problem,” says Missy Stults, director of the Office of Sustainability and Innovations (OSI), which is why A2Zero focuses on institutionalizing change. Unwinding entrenched policies that have shaped development patterns and limited community choices for decades takes time—so why did A2Zero set a ten-year timeline? Stults insists that the plan’s ambitious pacing was necessary to maintain a sense of urgency about climate impacts.
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When Home Isn’t There
A recent report by the Washtenaw County Continuum of Care (CoC), a major player working to coordinate local efforts to end homelessness, paints an urgent picture: as of December 2025, at least 842 people in the county are experiencing homelessness—a 42 percent increase since 2024.
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