GROSSE POINTE — When Dan Roeske was running for the Grosse Pointe Public Schools board in 2011, he found himself addressing a PTO group at Poupard Elementary, one of the district’s 13 schools. A woman asked bluntly about one of the district’s perennial issues. “Where do you stand on open enrollment?” she asked. Roeske took […]
Nancy Derringer
Nancy Nall Derringer is a former reporter at Bridge
Posted inMichigan Government
An ordinary bar on an ordinary night, but poker supplies the drama
Temporarily minus the long hair and beard that gave him his nickname, Scott “Caveman” Miller is a frequent visitor to “charity” poker rooms in Southeast Michigan. (Bridge photo/Lon Horwedel) Thursday night at the Electric Slick, and the poker tournament does not really have 100 percent of the Caveman’s interest. The NFL draft is playing on […]
Posted inSuccess
MSU prof preps state's spirits to follow craft beer's success
IT’S A REALLY HARD CLASS: MSU professor Kris Berglund stands amid some of the work product of the Artisan Distilling Program at the university. Berglund predicts that Michigan-made liquor will soon have similar economic impacts to craft brewing in the state (Bridge photo/Nancy Derringer) Kris Berglund’s business cards identify him as a distinguished professor of […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Mammoth Belle Isle Park poses huge challenge for citizen-saviors (with video)
Michele Hodges, 45, became the first full-time president of the Belle Isle Conservancy in January 2013. A Grosse Pointe Park resident, she will guide the year-old organization, with a budget of approximately $1.3 million, as it seeks to improve Detroit’s singular, but neglected, park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead in the late 19th century. PARK ADVOCATE: […]
Posted inMichigan Government
Group aims to make voting cool in Detroit
At 27, Allison Kriger knows why many people her age choose to live in Detroit, but not necessarily vote there. As a Bridge story pointed out last month, expensive auto-insurance rates drive many residents to conceal their true addresses from their insurers, and fail to register to vote at their Detroit addresses. But Kriger, an attorney […]
Posted inMichigan Government
Auto rates drive Detroit voters into hiding
Alok Sharma analyzes data for a living. In 2010, he had a client, a politician, who was running for office and wanted to know if it was worth his time to campaign door-to-door in Detroit’s high-rise apartment buildings. Sharma thought the answer might be found by running a high-rise address through the Qualified Voter File, […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Detroiters pay more for auto insurance, but how much more?
To start to understand why auto insurance costs so much more in Detroit than it does outside the city, it helps to start with some statistics. First: Two-thirds of all cars stolen in the state of Michigan are stolen in Wayne County, which has not quite 20 percent of the state’s population. “It’s astounding, those […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Legislators favor bear petting, despite zookeepers’ warnings
Despite resistance from the state’s traditional zookeepers, a bill written to keep visitors to an Upper Peninsula tourist attraction petting its bears appears bound for the governor’s desk. Senate Bill 48, written specifically for Oswald’s Bear Ranch near Newberry, passed the House last week on a 56-52 vote. It heads back to the Senate, where […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
From the ashes of Hudson’s, finally a phoenix for Detroit?
NEW LIFE FOR SITE?: The J.L. Hudson store’s enormous flag was unfurled on its Woodward Avenue facade on Flag Day 1976. The banner, called the world’s largest at the time, now rests in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. At a policy conference in Detroit last week, Matt Cullen of Rock Ventures announced a proposal […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Nonprofits battle shortage of time, talent
DETROIT — At 31, four years after completing the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Detroit program, Mark Ostach sits on the board of the Neighborhood Service Organization, a sizable nonprofit that offers a wide variety of programs ranging from suicide prevention to early-childhood education to homeless relief. Daniel Robin, also 31, serves on the […]
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