A letter in today’s News calls for the formation of an organization to protect “the so-called New West Side, houses mainly built in the late ’40s, ’50s and early ’60s.” They could call it the New West Side Association or something.
Hilarious Arbor Update thread about the latest NIMBY effort to stop development, this time on the site of an abandoned (but no doubt historic) strip mall. The group, Citizens Advocating Responsible Development, is represented in the thread by local activist David Cahill, who comes up short when challenged by Leopold Brothers owner Todd Leopold to provide some numbers in support of his case that taxes on the project won’t meet the city bond payments. He does, however, boast the support of “a meeting of influential Democratic women called the ‘Lunch Bunch.’” That David Cahill, what a CARD.
We can’t do it justice; read the whole thing.
The old-A2/new-A2 debate is revisited on the News’ letters page with a brand-new political spin. Usually the people responsible for ruining the character of Ann Arbor are capitalists in the pockets of greedy developers, but this time they’re “entitlement”-happy liberals influenced by PC academics.
Also at issue: what frivolous priority the U of M places over educating students. The old-A2 crowd is deeply divided on whether the university is obsessed with building expensive skyboxes and shutting local kids out of their athletic facilities, or mainly focused on “boycotting non-politically correct products.” Can’t they just sit down at Drake’s and work out their differences over a sandwich? Oh, wait — they can’t, because it’s GONE, thanks to the [development profiteers/pinko university administrators.]
Ann Arbor’s white knight of the anti-postering movement strikes again, this time with a letter in today’s News. “It is interesting that handbills are included in the city code under the heading of ‘littering,’” he writes. Something to ponder indeed.
We’re a little late to the whole storm and sewer party, but so far no one’s mentioned the best part of the meeting (besides Blaine getting thrown out): the mention of the city’s “innovative” method of painting fire hydrants. That is, getting elementary schoolers to do the work. We hear there’s a fence that needs to be painted too.
There’s a hole with a lot of rocks. People want them, but they can’t have them. Also, Mayor Hieftje’s going to star in an improv comedy show based on events from his life.
There are two equally annoying factions with competing visions of what Ann Arbor should be. First, we have the artsy types (one could call them “yuppies”, but yuppies are supposed to have some style) who tout A2’s sidewalk cafes and galleries and fairy doors and gourmet pet stores. Then there’s the “town not city” folks, who exalt the Ann Arbor of decades ago and its allegedly unpretentious small-town charm, lamenting the demise of otherwise unlamented local businesses.
You might be compelled to root for the second group, since they’re obviously losing (although both groups scorn development) but it gets harder to justify after reading something like this letter in today’s News:
I propose we all move to a small patch of ground somewhere near a river. We will bring Thano and the Lamplighter, The Old German and Metzgers, Mast’s, Dascola’s, Marshall’s Drugs, and Drake’s, too. Ehnis & Sons, Schlenker’s, Stein and Goetz, Quality Bakery, Campus Theatre, Follet’s, Kresge, The Bagel Factory and Campus Bike & Toy will be there, too. We will have no restaurants where you eat on the sidewalk. Coffee shops will offer donuts. We will buy Strohs at Beer Depot.
And Franzia at Bello Vino? Whatever you say about yuppies, at least they appreciate good beer.
We will found a state university that will be eccentrically preoccupied with scholarship.
Scholarship? We like that, although we thought that the University of Michigan was already doing a pretty good job, what with all the research and stuff they produce.
So what will the benefits of this scholarly institution be?
Children will sneak into the gym on Saturdays to play basketball and no one will care. Our football games will start at noon and end at 2:30. At half time you can get in for free. Kids will stay until dark to play on the field.
Okay, so basically it’ll be a free playground for local kids.
We will leave Ann Arbor to our entrée-buying, sidewalk-eating, cappuccino-sipping, cell phone-talking, laptop-tapping, SUV-driving, can’t-find-a-parking-space whining, high rise-developing, Art Fair-wrecking, every-Saturday-in-the-fall flag-waving friends.
The people who sit outside at Main Street Ventures restaurants are not, of course, interested in developing high-rises. But since that’s the worst thing you can accuse anyone of in A2, it has to be thrown in there somewhere.
A2IRV, which promotes instant-runoff-style voting, is having an event at Arbor Brewing Company tonight featuring a talk by Larry Kestenbaum and a five-candidate race for the most popular beer.
“Ann Arbor’s city parks, one of the key reasons the city consistently ranks so highly in national ‘Best Places to Live’ surveys, are starting to look a little shabby,” the News reports, paraphrasing a city administrator arguing for a millage increase.
But isn’t this the very reason why we shouldn’t worry about maintaining our parks? Sure, they may be full of graffiti and weeds. But no “best cities” list has a category for “spray-painted letters per square foot of parkland.” As long as the parks aren’t somehow contributing to an increase in crime (a la “broken windows” theory,) it doesn’t matter how they’re kept up; the sheer square footage will remain the same, keeping us near the top of the city rankings and driving up property values without increasing taxes. In fact, as we’ve seen, a park that people actually might want to go to is sometimes a bane for nearby property owners; A2 residents tend to prefer their parks to act as a sort of negative space, pre-empting other uses of the land.
So the solution is obvious: designate more parkland and don’t maintain it. We’ll pull ahead of Boulder and Charlottesville in no time.
