Snow Patrol
Every 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 MoreFeb 3, 2009 | News |
Every 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 MoreJan 31, 2009 | News |
“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 MoreJan 29, 2009 | News |
Last 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...
Read MoreJan 26, 2009 | News |
Sparkling in the sunshine on a perfect fall day, Mill Creek cascades over rocks and meanders through quiet pools as it flows toward the Huron River. Turtles sun themselves on rocks, and minnows dart through the water. But from...
Read MoreJan 19, 2009 | News |
The day after Barack Obama was elected president, Stefanie Thacker made plane and hotel reservations for herself, her husband, and their two daughters to be in Washington, D.C., for the inauguration. As an African American,...
Read MoreJan 17, 2009 | News |
After nearly forty years of independence, Chelsea Community Hospital is giving up its autonomy for the safe harbor of a giant health care empire.The impending sale to Saint Joseph Mercy Health System, part of Novi-based Trinity...
Read MoreJan 14, 2009 | News |
On an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon in October, seventy-three-year-old Bob Miller is in a bold mood. A descendant of Freedom Township’s early German settlers and a volunteer local historian, he’s bent on...
Read MoreJan 9, 2009 | News |
Beginning in the parking lot below the U-M Hospitals, Nichols Drive runs along a steep, curved bank of glacial moraine that rises at a forty-degree angle to a height of eighty-five feet. And it runs right alongside a wicked...
Read MoreJan 5, 2009 | News |
For most of this decade, the Ann Arbor News spent money freelyeven as it lost readers. Ann Arbors daily paper spent $14 million to build new presses in Pittsfield Township. It launched a Livingston County edition, expanded its...
Read MoreJan 5, 2009 | News |
[This article from the September 2008 Ann Arbor Observer is reprinted as background to Borders’ announcement today that both CEO George Jones (shown) and CFO Ed Wilhelm have been replaced.]If Borders Group’s recent...
Read MoreJan 4, 2009 | News |
“As long as we stick together,” says county commissioner Jessica Ping, “we can do this again next year.”Ping lives in Lodi Township, which contracts with the county sheriff’s department to provide...
Read More“Why are so many of the buildings going up around town so ugly?” asks Joan Lowenstein. Standing in City Hall’s cramped main entrance, the not-yet-former city council representative isn’t afraid to name...
Read MoreDec 29, 2008 | News |
Dan Minzey seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, says county commissioner Leah Gunn. The fact is nobody I know has laid eyes on him since the election. That election would be the August Democratic primarythe one...
Read MoreDec 22, 2008 | News |
Charlie Nielsen beat Spaulding Clark in 2004, only to lose to him in this year’s Democratic primary. Nielsen blames an anti-incumbent mood—”Of the five supervisors up for election, all five lost to...
Read MoreDec 17, 2008 | News |
In late October the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority voted to become the authority responsible for WALLY—the “Washtenaw and Livingston Line” that may, someday, deliver commuters from Howell to Ann Arbor. Though...
Read MoreDec 6, 2008 | News |
The future of the aging impoundment off North Main has been debated for years. Rowers want the pond preserved and dredged, while the Huron River Watershed Council advocates removing the dam to restore the river’s natural...
Read MoreDec 1, 2008 | News |
Just a year ago, a forty-seven-year-old homeless man was found dead at a park-and-ride lot on Ann Arbor–Saline Road. While no one tracks the grim statistics, people in the homeless “business” say his fate was...
Read MoreNov 28, 2008 | News |
An expanse of sky and treetops on North Campus spreads out in the windows behind Wei Shyy as he describes his work designing tiny planes that fly and perch like insects and birds. Talking about an insect’s arms, the chair...
Read MoreNov 26, 2008 | News |
The dirt road to Ray and Karen Berg’s Victorian style home in Manchester takes visitors past farms, cornfields, and rolling green pastures to a light blue Queen Anne perched on a hill. The house and its pastoral setting...
Read MoreNov 16, 2008 | News |
Most of the solid waste produced by Ann Arbor households is now recycled-but businesses still landfill 80 percent of their trash.The city doesn’t have much leverage to change businesses’ practices, because its free...
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