“Does Ann Arbor’s downtown belong to the people of Ann Arbor, or to the City’s most influential and vocal business owners?” It’s a question that’s been asked quite a bit this past week, in the wake of news surfacing about an Ann Arbor DDA plan to further the “mallification” of downtown by hiring a small […]
A few days ago, in a post about the increasing number of economic refugees making their way from Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti, I noted a new program being considered by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority (DDA) that would put a small army of paid “ambassadors” on the streets of tree town, opening doors for […]
Cities are living things. They grow older, like all of us, and they change. They evolve, or they die. I get that. I’ve grudgingly come to accept that the best things in life are transient. That realization doesn’t make it any easier, however, to accept it when good things, that genuinely make me happy, go […]
Today, in response to an interview that I’d posted recently with the founders of the Ypsi/Arbor small business support group Small & Mighty, a reader by the name of KJC posted a link to an article titled “Small is not Beautiful,” implying, I think it’s pretty clear, that many of us are misguided in our […]
We didn’t announce it until this evening, but the October recipient of the Ann Arbor Awesome Foundation’s monthly $1,000 cash grant was Small & Mighty, the scrappy, little entrepreneurial support network created in the fall of 2012 by brilliant local shit-stirrers Jean Henry, Helen Harding and the cheese-loving Lisa Waud. What follows is a transcript […]
