This Post is Valuable Even if No One is Reading It
“Huron Hills site is valuable even if no one is golfing there,” an “Other Voices” column in the News argues. For one thing, it’s been adjacent to the writer’s property for 37 years. And now the city goes and hires an “out-of-state consultant” to decide what should be done with the parcel — a consultant who didn’t even display a photo of the site or “make any mention of the significance of the golf course name. After all, it is the Huron Hills Golf Course which would indicate proximity to the river.”
so … where are the hills?
posted by peter honeyman on September 28th, 2007 at 12:05 pm eWell, it IS valuable for sledding.
posted by Nitro on September 28th, 2007 at 12:12 pm e“The rapid entrophication of the impoundments is alarming”
WOW.
posted by Nitro on September 28th, 2007 at 12:17 pm eI suppose a simple water test could confirm or deny this, but I have had it in my head for many years that the increasing “funkiness” of the river in that area was likely attributable to the chems necessary for proper maintenance of a golfcourse. In which case I say let it revert. Play in heather and gorse and really prove your skills.
posted by stella on September 28th, 2007 at 1:08 pm eentrophication?
I think she means eutrophication.
I love the thinking out loud…”why did we add Co2 to the environment for this meeting?” as if having it on-site would allow people to just walk or bike over…
posted by nymbani yangu on September 28th, 2007 at 1:30 pm eWell, it is pretty hilly there, and it is adjacent to the river, so the name is right on…
That being said, what is the big aversion to selling this off to a private place when there are other public golf courses in the city? Fear of it being turned into a suburb? That’s what zoning is for, and the city should make the commitment to not let the area be zoned for residential, and then let it go.
posted by Sarah on September 28th, 2007 at 3:34 pm eExcept for the good sledding hills, which are a valuable community resource. That still leaves the whole area over next to the river.
posted by Nitro on September 28th, 2007 at 3:53 pm eIt would be great to see it become more parkland, no ugly condos and no more chemical run off. The river could then improve, preserving the pastoral qualities of the landscape. It is an awesome sledding and cross country skiing location too.
posted by maryd on September 28th, 2007 at 10:19 pm emaryd — its hard to read something so bucolic before my coffee
After that imagery I just need to hear the tinkling giggles of little children to make my morning complete. Perhaps I should take a bike ride out to that stree we hear so much about in the OWS
posted by christina on September 29th, 2007 at 9:42 am eOk so the writing in the letter itself is rather over the top…then again it’s a letter to the paper, these tend to be joe schmoe trying to be Hemingway or other writers no matter what paper it’s in.
However I think this letter has some very valuable questions…ones that AAIO typically would jump on. What is the city getting from this consultant? Duh everyone knows that golf courses throughout the state aren’t doing as well as they used to.
The questions about the environmental impacts are very valuable as well. The letter writer might be disappointed to find out the impact of the course on the river…or maybe not…but it is something that should be looked at…probably much more valuable than whatever money council spent on a consultant to discuss if a golf course should be sold, when the vast majority of the current council have already said they won’t sell it.
posted by andy on September 29th, 2007 at 11:15 am e“The questions about the environmental impacts are very valuable as well.”
Funny how other uses along the river have a negative environmental impact, and yet magically, the construction and maintenance of her home has no impact whatsoever.
Anyone care to speculate as to what her reaction would be if the land in question was turned into homes identical to hers?
I’m sure she’s a nice lady, and seeing as how her hubby was an architect, maybe her home is sustainably designed, but I could do without the “do as I say, not as I do” lecture.
Reminds me of that Dennis Miller quip, “a developer wants to build a home, an environmentalist already has one”.
posted by todd on September 29th, 2007 at 4:24 pm eThe author actually doesn’t have a dog in this fight; she lives in a township island, not in the City of Ann Arbor.
posted by JCP2 on September 29th, 2007 at 5:21 pm eIn that case, she should STFU.
posted by Rhümer Maanger on September 29th, 2007 at 9:19 pm eI think you should stop talking smack about Ann Arbor. If you don’t like it here, just leave.
posted by Maya on September 30th, 2007 at 12:54 pm eWow. Who knew Merle Haggard would use ‘Maya’ for a handle on the interwebs?
posted by dcwp on September 30th, 2007 at 5:36 pm eI wouldn’t take it personally, dcwp. Maya’s just a little peevish because last night the bottle let her down. But she’s gonna to be OK if she makes it through December.
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on October 1st, 2007 at 9:16 am eI’ll bet this homeowner is already calculating how much her home value might go down if the AA city taxpayers stopped subsidizing her own private Idaho…..
posted by Just a homeowner on October 1st, 2007 at 10:21 am eNaw, I don’t think she’s a drunk, rather she’s through ever trusting anyone. I think Ann Arbor does that to some….you come all starry eyed, the grey gets to you, even if you never suffered a day of depression before arriving, the convergence of weather and everyone betraying you…. and you can’t decide if you want to sell a golf course, or build a city hall.
posted by christina on October 1st, 2007 at 1:06 pm eChristina’s post (1:06 PM) is one that I think applies to a good number of ann arborites (including myself; this is the first time I decided not to bother capitalizing ann arborites). a2 DOES do that to some. I romanticized my days spent here whilst in college and while making my way elsewhere, and I always assuaged the doubts and fears with my memories of what a great place this is, but the more you grow up and become affected by “real world” situations (quotes supplied only because I consider myself a wet-behind-the-ears babe in the woods as a new homeowner), the more a2 will disappoint. I won’t make this one of my 3-page long posts, I just wanted to say that this christina post, which I assume is somewhat off the cuff, actually strikes at the root of a lot of what’s wrong with ann arbor; the most cliché phrase ever somehow becomes most apropos in a2:
It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
posted by BecomingJaded on October 1st, 2007 at 9:14 pm eIt’s not even really a decent place to visit, with the exception of Leopold Bros.
posted by Milty on October 2nd, 2007 at 3:54 am eThe UM hospital is a good place to visit, I mean, if you’re sick and all…
posted by byproxy on October 2nd, 2007 at 4:03 pm eHuron Hills Golf Course is a good place to visit for sledding. Also, the Arboretum. Good for sledding.
But you know where I’d like to live? Cloud-Cuckoo land. I hear jellybeans grow on bushes there.
posted by Nitro on October 3rd, 2007 at 8:31 am eAfter living a variety of other places, including some other university towns, a short five years in A2 has proven itself a unique experience. I can’t recall anyplace else where the city government is quite so sanctimonious, so enamored of consultants, or quite so pig-headed when faced with common sense. On balance, I still think this is a good place to be, despite an acute shortage of jellybean bushes, but the activism of the mayor, city administrator, and council are baffling. I guess debating what to do with the golf course is better than passing more anti-war resolutions, but a better handle on reality and little common sense would do wonders.
posted by Young Westside on October 3rd, 2007 at 10:18 am eWell, the phrase “25 square miles surrounded by reality” didn’t develop in a vacuum, you know.
posted by Dave on October 3rd, 2007 at 12:34 pm eWhy can’t we have it all?
posted by christina on October 3rd, 2007 at 1:18 pm eOk, so Ann Arbor is a bad place to live. Does anyone have some recommendations for good places to live? What about good places in the Midwest?
posted by blur on October 26th, 2007 at 3:38 pm eMadison… Chicago…
posted by js on October 26th, 2007 at 4:13 pm ei’d tell ya but i don’t want teh word to get out- might get overrrun and destroyed by yuppies and other such muck-
ann arbor used to be a really great place to live, before anyone knew about it. it really was. i miss it terribley and horribley, in all seriousness and no joke. but everything i loved about it’s gone now. . .. for my youth at community hi before it got run over by rich assholes trying to add another tick to their kids’ yale and harvard applications to teh cheep tuition i got to have at umich before they quadrupled it to drakes and steves and costello’s and zingerman’s back when a hotdog was two bucks fifty adn twice as big as anything they got now– kittens in the farmers market, SROs with old guys outside to talk to who could actualy afford to live somewhere in town, teh old Y, the university without guards everywhere, the del rio, the old performance network before it got Lame and the tech center’s myriad artisto crazies, the arboreteum in its magical old state of benign neglect- well, i could go on, but i bet it wouldn’t even mean anything to most folks, its all sucha long time ago now. . . . .
anyhow, yes, blur, ann arbor isn’t so grand. its just a rumor. you’ll have to ask around, travel about, and see. . . .. i’m sure there’s somewhere- well, maybe i’m not. but i hope there is.
hee hee hee hee hee, the ethical disaster of selling a golf course!! good god! call teh opera company!! haw haw haw. . . ..
posted by born here and left on October 31st, 2007 at 8:41 pm eAA isn’t bad if you have kids and it sure was/is cheaper to buy a house the, say, Chicago. The trend that I am starting to see more clearly now is that AA suffers from the same issues as Detroit, namely, the backlash of being saddled with a mono-economy. Instead of cars, our biggest exort is education which isn’t all bad if your over-educated and have connections at the U. But for those that either are too dumb or lazy, life can be pretty silly in AA. Part of me yearns for Chicago for sure, but, hey, my wife has a cush job at the U and so do I. =]
posted by greenmeany on November 1st, 2007 at 10:04 pm e