In March, garlands of white and yellow blossoms festooned the hundreds of apple trees that have been carefully planted over the past eighty years at the Lutz family’s orchard, located about five miles southwest of Saline....
Read MoreLike many residents of the Huron Farms subdivision, Scott Kraft was grateful for all the help that arrived after the March 15 tornado. Right behind the police, firefighters, and ambulances, volunteers showed up offering water...
Read MoreThere’s oil under Manchester and Saline townships. How they get it out is the question.Hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, blasts chemical-laced water and sand deep into the earth to splinter rock formations and release...
Read MoreDexter village’s astounding 74 percent population increase in the last census–from 2,338 in 2000 to 4,067 in 2010–made it the fastest-growing community in the state. Yet even as new subdivisions sprouted in...
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The atmosphere at Sylvan Township Board meetings these days is different from what it was a year ago. The audience, which once barely outnumbered the five-member board, has become more numerous and more engaged.”There has...
Read MoreWhile city-dwellers luxuriated in March’s record-high temperatures, fruit growers at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market started to fear the worst for their crops. And unfortunately for many, the worst happened.”We lost...
Read MoreLast summer, negotiations seemed to be moving along between the U-M and the Authors Guild of America, which represents some 8,000 authors. The guild was concerned that books still in copyright might be improperly shared through...
Read More“How can they just tear down these old houses?”The young woman, lips pursed, documented the spectacle with her phone as the last in a row of seven S. Fifth Ave. dowagers toppled into oblivion.”It’s really...
Read MoreHalf 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...
Read MoreThe 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...
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