Did someone just mention money?For fifteen minutes, DDA executive director Susan Pollay has led the Mutually Beneficial Committee through the first draft of an agreement between the city of Ann Arbor and its Downtown Development...
Read MoreJohn Updike wrote about the “peculiar bliss” of golf, of how players can be so caught up in the game that they neglect even their most basic needs. He attributes golf’s power to its “immensities of space,...
Read MoreTimes are tough in the classical music world. The musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra went on strike over management’s proposed 33 percent pay cut before the current season started—and remain on strike two months...
Read MoreWhether you hate it as a boondoggle or hail it as a blessing, there’s no question that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was good to Ann Arbor. Between February 2009 and May 2010, the financial stimulus gave local...
Read MoreIt’s official: a sheriff’s deputy costs Washtenaw County $176,108 per year. That includes $74,000 in salary and $45,000 in fringes, plus indirect costs like $20,000 for central dispatch—but not the average $10,000 in...
Read More
That’s what AAPD chief Barnett Jones calls the recent rash of armed robberies at local businesses. Between the stickups at Schlanderer’s jewelry store, a second-floor marijuana clinic downtown, the Bank of America on...
Read MoreEven before a Main Street store was robbed at gunpoint in September, people were describing the medical marijuana business as the Wild West.The new frontier opened when voters passed the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act in 2008...
Read MoreAt his first press conference of the 2010-2011 basketball season, Michigan head coach John Beilein was asked about the “ancillary advantages” of the his team’s quick summer jaunt to Belgium. “The biggest...
Read MoreBarclay’s clerk Liz Igbawua remembers being a little perplexed when the teenage girl gleefully piling tops and dresses over her arm didn’t bother to try any of them on. But the girl’s indulgent dad murmured...
Read More“It’s a bad year for Democrats,” says Bill Ballenger of Lansing, publisher of Inside Michigan Politics and onetime Republican state senator. Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum, a Democrat, agrees:...
Read MoreWhen Rick Snyder announced he was running for governor in July 2009, he was almost unknown outside Ann Arbor. Though he holds three U-M degrees and was well respected in business and technology circles, even here he could pass...
Read MoreCity officials say the ninth annual Punk Week was the worst ever.”It was bad last year, and it was worse this year,” says city administrator Roger Fraser. “We’ve got a problem with a group of unruly...
Read MoreWhen Melissa Lyon, twenty, left 14th District Court on September 1 she literally let down her hair–she took off a blond, pony-tailed extension to reveal that half of her scalp was shaved. Her attorney, Michele Kelly, had...
Read MoreThis past summer, the New York Times ran fifteen stories about bedbugs. The tiny parasites, which feed on human blood, have launched a panic by turning up everywhere from a Manhattan Victoria’s Secret store to the Brooklyn...
Read MoreAnn Arbor’s newest newspaper may not have the budget or coverage of AnnArbor.com, but it does have at least one motivated vendor and a lot of heart.The first issue of Groundcover News came out in mid-July. It has news,...
Read MoreElectric vehicles are becoming a reality, and Michigan is in the thick of it, with the Chevy Volt in production in Detroit and a factory going up in Holland to produce the Volt’s lithium ion battery.Ann Arbor has an...
Read MoreA thin, worn-out-looking woman weeps as she embraces her eighteen-year-old son in the security line at Detroit Metro airport. “My baby going! My baby going!” Exasperated but patient, Ryan Richmond hugs his mother...
Read MoreCounty treasurer Catherine McClary is trying to interest investors in a 218-condo site in Pittsfield Township, off Michigan Avenue near US-23. The second phase of Wellesley Gardens would be a turnkey project, she says: the...
Read MoreThey’ve been sighted coming out of the woods at dusk and dawn looking to chow down on rabbits, rodents, and other small mammals–like, say, cats.This spring, a neighbor spotted one “coming out of or going into...
Read More
