Sewer City

Wondering what that smell is in downtown Ann Arbor? Or what those crews are doing running big white tubes into the manholes along Liberty Street? It's part of a $1.2 million project to reline crackling city sewer and stormwater pipes. Crews from Belleville-based Utility Services Authority were hard at work at the corner of Liberty and Fifth Avenue today. Read the story.

Magical Marigolds

In a last-ditch effort to draw attention to their crumbling street, residents on Ann Arbor's northwest side have erected signs to commemorate the "Spring Street Beautification Project," with a sarcastic thank you message to the city of Ann Arbor.
Marian Horowitz and her partner Richard Douglass put up the signs on Friday after trying for several months to get the city to fix their heavily deteriorated street with no luck. Someone else planted African marigolds in between the heaving chunks of pavement in the middle of the street, just north of Summit. "It's really a community effort," said Douglass, a professor at Eastern Michigan University. "Lots of cars have come by giving us the thumbs up. It's really been quite a ridiculous affair." Read the story here.

Snow My God

City Administrator Roger Fraser acknowledged the city's shortcomings as he briefed the Ann Arbor City Council Tuesday night on the city's latest snow removal efforts. "We were not anticipating the event that we got," Fraser said of the winter storm that started Sunday and left more than 9 inches of snow on area roadways by Monday. Lack of an accurate forecast is part of the reason why the city wasn't fully prepared, Fraser said. He also acknowledged the city purposefully has avoided investing in more heavy duty plow equipment that could help the city respond more quickly to such a severe weather event. "They would allow faster progress on our majors if we had access to vehicles like that, but we don't. And we think it's an appropriate budgetary strategy to not gear up for this rather untypical event," Fraser said. Another 4 to 6 inches of snow is forecasted to hit the area by Friday. Read the story here.

The Constant Gardner

Tony Keene, owner of the Hydro Med medical marijuana co-op on South Industrial Highway in Ann Arbor, tends to his hydroponically grown crops on Saturday afternoon. Keene is asking a judge to force the Ann Arbor City Council to clearly define the terms "cultivation facility" and "dispensary" before proceeding with a new medical marijuana licensing ordinance. Keene, a California native, grows several different strains of marijuana, including L.A. Woman, L.A. Confidential, Vanilla Kush, and Himalayan Gold. He remains hopeful his business will take off. He has big plans for a multifaceted operation that is part indoor farm, part research facility, and part chromatography lab — with quality-control testing for THC and cannabinoids. His hope is to offer "certified pot." "I'm just not interested in selling pot — I'm interested in seeing this become a legitimate business," he said. "We're talking pharmaceutical development, pharmaceutical research. There's a huge, legitimate industry to be built out of this. And the dispensary model, it's turned into a group of people who want to have Amsterdam here. I'm sorry, this is the Midwest." Read the story here.