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 MoreForeclosures 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 More“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 MoreThe 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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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 More“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 MoreQ. 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 More“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 MoreLast 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 MoreThe 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 MoreAre 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 MoreTom 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 MoreWith 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 MoreAnn 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...
Read MoreEvery time it snows, Ann Arbor community standards supervisor Mike Rankin fields dozens of complaints about unshoveled sidewalks. His small staff then warns the property’s owners that they’re legally required to...
Read More“I was the resident Cassandra,” Marina Whitman recalls. “But I have to say that even in my most Cassandra-like moments, I never conjured up what’s actually happened.”Whitman was a vice-president of...
Read MoreLast month we asked six local architects to evaluate downtown’s newest buildings. This month they turn their eyes to the U-M campus. Campus buildings earned some of our panel’s harshest criticism—and their highest...
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