News

Snooze Election

May 2, 2009 | |

What if they held an election and nobody came? That’s the situation for the school board vote scheduled for Tuesday, May 5. Incumbents Glenn Nelson and Irene Patalan are unopposed for new four-year terms. Board president...

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The Flow Never Stops

Apr 28, 2009 | |

“In my business, we always need three pumps–two pumps and a standby,” says Mike Amicangelo. “And we get very nervous when one of the two pumps goes down and we’re running on...

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Crime Map: February 2009

Apr 27, 2009 | |

Click here to view this month’s Crime Map.Burglaries, sexual assaults, and robberies were all down slightly in February 2009 compared to the same month a year earlier, while vehicle thefts rose. #PAGEBREAK#February 2009...

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Laid Off – Again

Apr 27, 2009 | |

The bar area of Mélange Underground Bistro is dark, crowded, and buzzing. But only a few of the well-dressed people here are sipping drinks. The rest are waiting, nervously or confidently, for the opportunity to pitch their...

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Taxation with Representation

Apr 17, 2009 | |

On April 15–Tax Day–two hundred people gathered on the Diag to protest taxation. We called five county commissioners to ask if they’d been persuaded to cut taxes. With the county facing a projected $26 million...

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Pricey Parking

Apr 8, 2009 | |

The city’s first underground parking garage will be expensive—but also bright and cheery.So promises architect Carl Luckenbach, designer of the structure the Downtown Development Authority will build beneath the current...

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Buy of the Century

Apr 4, 2009 | |

The U-M made out like a bandit on its purchase of the former Pfizer research complex. In 2001, the university sold fifty-five vacant acres near North Campus to the drug giant for $27 million, and the company announced plans to...

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Foreclosures Go Through the Roof

Apr 1, 2009 | |

Foreclosures reached record levels throughout Washtenaw County last year—and the biggest increases were in the Community Observer’s backyard. In 2008, the number of homes sold for delinquent mortgages doubled in the...

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Sandy Rupp’s Challenge

Mar 29, 2009 | |

“My heart just went to my toes,” says Sandy Rupp. The date was January 22, 2007, and she’d gotten word that Pfizer was closing its Ann Arbor labs. The year before, the pharmaceutical giant and its 2,100...

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Buzz Saw

Mar 24, 2009 | |

“Attention please: the Ann Arbor News is closing.” Sales rep Vikki Enos, first with the buzz as usual, announced the news over the Observer intercom at 9:55 Monday morning. I discarded the email message I’d...

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Bottoms Up?

Mar 22, 2009 | |

The Washtenaw County Home Builders Association has lost about 10 percent of its membership since the real estate bubble burst. “Some felt it was a good time for retirement,” says CEOMaureen Sloan. “Some left...

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Microclimates

Mar 9, 2009 | |

If you watch the weather on Detroit TV, you might think the twenty miles between Ann Arbor and Metro Airport really put us in the deep freeze. Reported temperatures in Ann Arbor often come in ten degrees colder, or even more,...

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The Last to Know

Mar 6, 2009 | |

“It was the furthest thing from my mind,” says former Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra development director Guy Barast.While most local arts organizations were singing the blues to the Ann Arbor News late last year,...

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Ashes and Murals

Mar 5, 2009 | |

Q. What percentage of the ash trees in Ann Arbor affected by the emerald ash borer have been removed?A: The city has removed 7,100 ash trees from public property. A few may have been missed, but this amounts to nearly 100...

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Big Stretch

Mar 1, 2009 | |

“We are the Ann Arbor economic region—people who live in the city and the surrounding townships,” Ann Arbor Transportation Authority chair David Nacht told city council in January. Nacht, an attorney by trade, was...

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Crash

Feb 28, 2009 | |

A bit after 3 on a January afternoon, Pauline Lee was driving south on Seventh past Pioneer High School. She had just picked up her grandson, Jackson, at his piano lesson. There was already an inch of snow on the ground and...

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Soft Healing at the Arb

Feb 26, 2009 | |

Last November, several U-M students met to study methods for preventing riverbanks from collapsing. They cut red osier dogwood from one bank of the Huron River into short sections called “live stakes” and pounded...

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Layoffs at the Observer

Feb 25, 2009 | |

The Ann Arbor Observer Company laid off five staff members on Tuesday. “They’re all good people who have contributed tremendously to the Observer’s publications,” says publisher and co-owner Patricia...

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Hot Stock

Feb 21, 2009 | |

“It’s hard to stop once it gets going,” says Ann Arbor State Bank CEO Bill Broucek.The new bank began selling stock last summer just as national banks like IndyMac were hitting the skids. Yet local investors...

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Busy shelter

Feb 17, 2009 | |

Are teen pregnancies on the rise in Washtenaw County? Christina Rivest, director of Father Patrick Jackson House at Main and Pauline, thinks so. Over the last four years she’s seen Father Pat’s, the area’s only...

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