Northville : In the News

This is the best it's been in years for job seekers in Oakland County, economists say. And the jobs pay well above the minimum wage.

Excerpt:

"On the heels of its strongest two-year job growth in almost 20 years, Oakland County's economy will add nearly 42,000 jobs through 2015, say University of Michigan economists...

In their annual forecast of the Oakland County economy, Fulton and colleague Don Grimes of the U-M Institute for Research on Labor, Employment, and the Economy say that high-wage industries—with average pay of more than $62,000—accounted for more than half of the new private-sector jobs created during the recovery, a trend that will continue throughout the forecast horizon...

Overall, Fulton and Grimes say that Oakland remains among the better local economies in the nation, ranking 10th among 36 comparable U.S. counties on a series of measures that indicate future economic prosperity."

More here.

In Oakland County's downtowns these days, businesses that want to put a blank face to the street have to keep walking.

Excerpt:

"Last fall, a developer approached West Bloomfield trustees asking for a zoning change in order to place a storage unit business at Orchard Lake and 14 Mile. Then, a business owner approached asking for approval to open a fitness club in a former dealership on Orchard Lake Road.

"The new businesses didn’t conform to our (zoning)," said Supervisor Michele Economou Ureste.

The requests were for properties in the township’s "town center" — defined back in 2007 as Orchard Lake Road between 14 Mile and Maple roads. In the area, zoning rules require active first floors, not blank walls, which was intended to make that area more appealing to people walking...That desire is enthusiastically echoed in communities across Oakland County."

More here.

In a good comeback story, Metro Detroit is no. 14 in the country in terms of percentage job growth from 2011 to 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

More here.

Detroit's economy is facing forward. Now it just needs some new verbiage.

Excerpt:

"Former heavy manufacturing hubs around the Great Lakes like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee often get roped together under the heading of "post-industrial" (when, that is, we're not otherwise identifying them by their prevalence of rust). The term poses at least two problems, though: Industry still exists in many of these places, and the very notion of defining them by their relationship to the past can hamstring us from planning more thoughtfully for their future.

"You've got the 'post-war,' you've got 'post-modern,' you've got 'post-9/11,'" says Paul Kapp, an associate professor in the school of architecture at the University of Illinois and an editor of the book SynergiCity: Reinventing the Postindustrial City. He was speaking Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Planning Association (hosted in what's often considered the post-industrial city of Chicago). "You get to a point," Kapp says, "where you've got to say, 'When does post-something end and you do something new?' I think with 'post-industrial,' we're at that opportunity now. I think it's now time to come up with a new term."

More here.

A great, comprehensive article on how the 7.2-square-mile greater downtown Detroit is growing posher by the minute, it seems, and how and why its deindustrialized metros (and certain Detroit neighborhoods) are landing the creative class.

Excerpt:

"Two of the top 10 creative class tracts are in Birmingham; two are in Bloomfield Township, and another is in Bloomfield Hills, home to some of the priciest real estate in the U.S. and the Cranbrook educational community. Designed by Finnish architect  Eliel Saarinen, the architecture critic  Paul Goldberger  called Cranbrook "one of the greatest campuses ever created anywhere in the world." University of Michigan's  Little  points out in an email to me: "Cranbrook graduates have added to the cutting edge design and creative communities of Detroit and the nation for decades."

Another top creative class tract is in nearby Troy, a sprawling middle-class suburb with excellent public schools, and the site of a high-end mall, the Somerset Collection. Two are in Huntington Woods, a leafy neighborhood that boasts such notable amenities as the public golf course  Rackham and the Detroit Zoo. Two more are in the "Grosse Pointes" — Grosse Pointe Farms and Grosse Pointe Park — the communities of choice for many of Detroit's old industrial magnates, whose lakeshores are lined with sprawling Gilded Age mansions."

More here.

When the going gets tough, the tough get... creative. Local theaters, like pretty much everything else, are feeling the pinch. So, to help weather the storm local houses are tweaking their productions a bit and getting a little innovative.

Excerpt:

Corporate sponsorship is down, and season subscriptions are getting harder to sell. For Detroit's professional theater community, that means innovation, extra effort and even creative scheduling are required to keep audiences coming to live shows.

"It seems like now, more than ever, artists are working their butts off to bring audiences something truly amazing," says Joe Plambeck, whose tiny Ringwald Theatre in Ferndale opened in 2007. The Ringwald's third season got off to an early start this weekend with a scaled-down version of the demanding '90s Broadway hit Rent.

Northville's Tipping Point Theatre, which is doing only comedies this season, is getting a jump on fall, too, with A Sleeping Country. The play opened Thursday -- more than two weeks before Labor Day -- partly to attract actors like Sarab Kamoo and Aaron T. Moore before they made commitments to other theater companies.

Read the entire article here.

Something is cooking at the Red Pepper Deli, Northville's newest cafe, it's just not in the kitchen. Opened up in September, this cafe serves only raw food. No, not like raw, bloody meats, but food that doesn't feel temperatures above 120 degrees. It's said that a raw food diet is healthy and more nutritious.

Excerpt:

Carolyn Simon's new restaurant in downtown Northville is a raw foodist's paradise -- a place where the "pasta" is cut from raw zucchini, the sandwich bread is made of sprouted seeds, and the rich, creamy coconut pie has never felt the heat of an oven.

The cheerful, airy spot opened in September, and business has grown steadily as news about it spread through the mainstream media and metro Detroit's vegetarian, vegan and raw foods communities.

Raw foodists believe that heating food above 120 degrees Fahrenheit destroys nutrients and living enzymes that are necessary for the body to absorb nutrition. Raw food is "living," they say, while cooked food is "dead." Most adherents are vegan, meaning they eat no meat or animal products such as eggs and milk.

The diet, which dates to the early 1900s, has long been considered a fringe movement. But in the past decade, interest in it has grown dramatically as celebrities and other prominent people have tried it. Many praise it for helping them lose weight while improving their energy, stamina, mental clarity and mood.

Read the entire article here.

More than 500 students from 10 Southeast Michigan schools will participate in this year's Rouge Education Project and will survey the Rouge River as part of their studies.

Excerpt:

"The Rouge Education Project is a hands on learning program for students in K-12 schools to experience real-world science in the field while learning about their local ecosystem and gaining respect for the community in which they live," said Emily Johnson, Rouge Education Project Assistant Program Manager.

Read the entire article here.

As they wont to do each year, the Metro Times has released its annual "Best of Detroit" awards.

Check them out here.

The Metrotimes annual restaurant guide runs the gamut: from coneys to caviar, from haute to simply hot.

Categories include eggs, buffets, steaks and vegetarian-friendly. Check it out here.

Grapes and Grooves, a wine tasting event, will be held in Novi on September 28.

Excerpt:

"It's a networking event," McClellan Stone said. "We like to invite the entire community."

The second annual fundraising event will feature four different wine tasting stations including Novi Fine Wine and The Grapevine; strolling appetizers from local restaurants Hooters, The Grapevine and Fleming's; and live jazz music performed by the Jim Holden Quartet.

Read the entire article here.

Northville will soon gain six bike racks scattered around downtown, funded by the Downtown Development Authority.

Excerpt:

"I think this is going to have a significant impact on our parking," [DDA volunteer Doug] Bingham said.

"We want everyone to know that Northville is bike-friendly," said Lori Ward, DDA director.

Read the entire article here.

Thursday, June 21 is the second annual "Dump the Pump" day that calls for the parking of cars and the riding of public transit as a way of calling attention to the environmental and economic benefits of using public transit.

A transit fact:

From 1995 through 2006, public transportation ridership increased by 30 percent, a growth rate higher than the 12 percent increase in US population and higher than the 24 percent growth in use of the nation's highways over the same period.

Find out more here.