It was a bright autumn morning for the more than 100,000 people driving to the Big House for the University of Michigan’s October 4 homecoming game against Wisconsin. Some sixteen miles west, about 250 others gathered at Chelsea Community Fairgrounds for a very different athletic contest: the annual Rode To Hell gravel bike race.
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With the recent snowfall and cold weather, it should come as no surprise that A2 Fix It, Ann Arbor’s online system for reporting community issues—from potholes to broken streetlights to missed trash collections—has been inundated with complaints about ice-clad sidewalks. What is surprising is that some of these uncleared sidewalks are maintained by the city.
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Barbara Gamm watched, worried, as nine trees fell in Scheffler Park near the construction site for Fire Station 4, touted as the city’s first net-zero facility.
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The Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation 2025 Washtenaw County Housing Study revealed what Ann Arbor’s working class has long known: if you make less than $50,000, you can’t afford to live here.
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“I’m so glad you asked about HERD,” Ann Arbor’s Home Energy Rating Disclosure Ordinance, says Julie Roth, energy manager for the city’s Office of Sustainability and Innovations. “It’s safe to say that Ann Arbor has one of the most robust residential consumer protection programs in the country.”
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The Downtown Development Authority’s new development plan includes up to $21 million for improvements to the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. This may come as a surprise, since in 2017, a $1.5 million plan to build a year-round pavilion on a vacant lot facing Fourth Ave. was shelved because of cost.
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On November 4, Ann Arbor voters approved the Washtenaw Intermediate School District’s (WISD) proposed millage, levying 1 mill annually for student career-technical education (CTE). The measure passed at just over 54 percent—about 36,000 ballots cast in favor.
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In 2023, Michigan men’s basketball set an unenviable record: most losses in program history. In the spring of 2024, athletic director Warde Manuel gave coach Juwan Howard his walking papers, and found himself mired in a different sort of athletic contest: national post-NCAA grabathon for the hottest available coach. Michigan won when Dusty May—who had turned a moribund Florida Atlantic University program into a national powerhouse—inked a five-year deal with the Wolverines.
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On March 16, 2020, Eunice Choi, Realtor and owner of the Broadway Party Store, confirmed a permanent closure of her business with a handwritten sign stating “We are closed … Covid 19.” Beyond the sign, sun-bleached bags of chips sat on shelves, and stocked display refrigerators stood dark.
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In June 2021, city council adopted its Moving Together Toward Vision Zero comprehensive transportation plan, which called for the elimination of traffic fatalities and serious injuries by the end of 2025. Three months earlier, city staff announced a slightly less ambitious target: the number of fatalities and serious injuries caused by car crashes would fall below five per year. The two goals share one important commonality: failure.
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It’s been in the works for more than two years, and controversial since the first draft was released last spring.
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On September 10, the U.S. Department of Education abruptly canceled all federal funding for International Education and Foreign Language Studies programs across the country, including the U-M Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS).
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But there’s an imminent threat to promising mRNA research: massive cuts to the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) proposed by President Trump, which researcher Nils Walter says “would really devastate the progress that can be made.”
Read MoreLamp Post Plaza owner Ron Marten has heard the rumors too. Although the sixty-three-year-old shopping center on E. Stadium is being sold, “it is not getting bulldozed,” he tells the Observer.
Read MorePinball Pete’s will close its South U. arcade in late November, as construction remains ongoing at its next home in the Carver-Gunn Building at 500 E. Liberty.
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In December, U-M announced its plans to partner with the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to create a $1.25 billion “state-of-the-art” computing and AI research facility. Construction is expected to begin in 2027 and wrap up in 2031. The facility is tentatively sited on nearly 150 acres of land on Textile Rd. in Ypsilanti Twp.
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After a landmark July court decision, the NCAA enabled schools to pay their athletes and removed limits on scholarships. Michigan Athletic Director Warde Manuel decided that every competing athlete would receive a full scholarship, and revenue sharing too, although the bulk of that money goes to men’s football, basketball and hockey.
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When I lived in Ann Arbor back in the 1980s, Barton Dam was barely on my radar. The Huron River was scenic enough from the road: a heron or hawk here and there, maybe a deer ambling just off the shoulder. The dam itself, tucked out of sight from Huron River Dr., might as well have been invisible.
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Ann Arbor businessman Nagabhushanam “Bobbi” Peddi has purchased the Sun Times News, a weekly paper covering Dexter, Chelsea, Milan, and Saline.
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Editor in chief John Hilton and publisher Patricia Garcia, who have owned the Ann Arbor Observer since 1986, were just beginning to think about a succession plan when the pandemic hit. They realized retirement would have to wait.
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