Half of the lights on the tenth floor of St. Joseph Mercy Hospital are turned off, and there is an unnatural calm amidst the smell of fresh paint, curved wooden paneling, and newly tiled floors and walls. There is no hum of a...
Read More“I think every teachers’ union in the state wishes they had” a contract like Ann Arbor’s, says Forsythe science teacher Dan Ezekiel. Negotiated two years ago, it called for small, temporary pay cuts and...
Read More“We just want to build a nice school,” says Tarek Nahlawi.Nahlawi is a board member of the Michigan Islamic Academy, located on Plymouth Rd. in Ann Arbor. MIA hopes to build a new school at the corner of Ellsworth...
Read MoreIn January, Ann Arbor teacher Peter Ways, local therapist Joe Breakey, and their daughter, Aliza Breakey-Ways, became a poster family for domestic partner benefits. The ACLU is representing them and three other Michigan couples...
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The orange construction cones and earthmovers on the corner of Washington and First are a very big deal. Construction is finally under way on the $30 million Ann Arbor City Apartments–eleven years after the city first...
Read More“When I was elected, I could see that the city had built up too many employees in the ’90s,” says mayor John Hieftje. “Take safety services. The police had more officers in 2000 than they did in 1991, and...
Read MoreDrive north on Maple Road past M-14, and you can’t miss Skyline High School, a postmodern monument in brick, glass, and steel. After two roundabouts at the freeway ramps, visitors turn in at a third for the main entrance...
Read MoreJust how clever are the new electrical and gas meters that DTE is installing on homes and businesses throughout Ann Arbor? They’ll tell the utility when a customer suffers a power outage. In the future, they’ll...
Read More“When the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund announced their grants last November and the Gallup Park canoe livery project scored number two and the Vets Park skate park was number eleven, it was unprecedented in my...
Read MoreThe ghost of the Ann Arbor News is haunting AnnArbor.com.The latest redesign of the website’s twice-weekly print edition added more state and national news and brought back travel and business sections–all staples in...
Read MoreThe good news is that more people are finding jobs lately. That’s true in the nation, in Michigan, and especially in Washtenaw County.After cresting at a painful 10.1 percent in October 2009, the nation’s...
Read MoreThe city plans to resurface or reconstruct 11.3 miles of road from April through November at a cost of $27 million. That’s almost triple 2011’s total of 5.1 miles for $8.6 million.Thank Uncle Sam, specifically,...
Read MoreArt Brandt’s belly laugh peals through the first-floor hallway of the Michigan Union as he describes a dance that linked hundreds of people at the 2004 Dance for Mother Earth powwow at Crisler Arena: “It started on...
Read More“I am instructed by my dean to have no communication with the press.”That was the response of the usually chatty Steve Ball when the Observer asked about the response to a widely circulated Associated Press...
Read MoreSince the Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority was launched twenty years ago, it’s recycled enough paper, glass, metal, and plastics to fill eighty football fields fifty-six feet high. But general manager Phil Bolyard...
Read More“The housing commission needs to change if we’re going to survive,” says Jennifer Hall.Ann Arbor Housing Commission board chair Marta Manildi says they had a pretty good year last year: “We brought in a...
Read MoreSix local women plan to swim the Channel this summer.The “A2A3 Relay Team” is the brainchild of local attorney Amanda Mercer, a board member of Ann Arbor Active Against ALS. Local residents Kristin McGuire and Dave...
Read MoreAccording to the list of street closings on the city’s website, Fifth Ave. between Liberty and William reopened the day after Halloween. The Downtown Development Authority website has it carrying traffic in December. So...
Read MoreIn the early hours of June 15, 2004, a couch caught fire on the porch of a house on Oakland Avenue. Fed by the sofa’s stuffing, the blaze quickly engulfed the structure, putting two of the U-M football players who lived...
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