Apr 27, 2009 | News |
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...
Read MoreApr 17, 2009 | News |
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...
Read MoreApr 8, 2009 | News |
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...
Read MoreApr 4, 2009 | News |
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...
Read MoreApr 1, 2009 | News |
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...
Read MoreMar 29, 2009 | News |
“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...
Read MoreMar 22, 2009 | News |
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...
Read MoreMar 9, 2009 | News |
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,...
Read MoreMar 6, 2009 | News |
“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,...
Read MoreMar 5, 2009 | News |
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...
Read MoreMar 1, 2009 | News |
“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...
Read MoreFeb 26, 2009 | News |
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...
Read MoreFeb 25, 2009 | News |
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...
Read MoreFeb 17, 2009 | News |
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...
Read MoreFeb 12, 2009 | News |
Tom Partridge describes himself as “a disabled senior citizen.” He’s also a self-appointed community conscience who often scolds public officials for not doing enough to support progressive causes. “Tom...
Read MoreFeb 8, 2009 | News |
With Borders reeling from old debts and falling sales, the bookseller’s board fired CEO George Jones in January. Yet new CEO Ron Marshall not only left his investment firm to take the job, he also promised to buy 200,000...
Read MoreFeb 7, 2009 | News |
Ann Arbor crimes were slightly up in December, 2008 over the previous year, with 63 burglaries (54 in 2007), 7 sexual assaults (5 in 2007), and 19 vehicle thefts (13 in 2007). One number fell slightly: there were 7 robberies in...
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