Tom Nardone’s father was an Elk in Wakefield, Mass., and spent time, as Elks do, in the Elks Hall. His son assumed his dad went to the club mostly to have a place to drink with his buddies. “I didn’t know the money they spent there went to children’s charities,” he said. “It never occurred […]
Quality of Life
Michigan is a great place to live. Bridge will report that fact often — and on potential threats to the assets that make it so.
Posted inQuality of Life
Guest column: Asian carp aren't waiting for us
By Patty Birkholz/Michigan Office of the Great Lakes In my role as director of Michigan’s Office of the Great Lakes, many documents come across my desk in the course of a typical week. On Jan. 31, one of the most important documents of the last year arrived in my in-basket. After a high-profile and intense […]
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Ex-priest loves trees, but not the woods
See that guy digging in the dirt, removing dead trees in the middle of Detroit? How did he end up there? His story starts with a middle-class upbringing in Dearborn. But as a youngster, Todd Mistor aspired to be a priest — a shepherd of flocks, not a steward of trees. And it’s a course […]
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Young professional groups sprout to grow Mich. connections
Traveling around Michigan is one of the pleasures of running the Center for Michigan. You get a sense of the rhythm of communities and what trends are developing. One such positive development made the front page of the Battle Creek Enquirer this week: Young professionals banding together to find ways to build strong communities. In […]
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Guest column: Making good on 'Michigan 3.0'
By Jennifer Goulet/ArtServe Michigan On Feb. 9, important steps affirming the significance of arts and culture to Michigan’s economy, communities and the lives of its citizens were set in motion. For the first time in more than a decade, our state is poised to reinvest in its rich creative resources. Viewed as luxury in tight […]
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Riverwalk rolling for a new Detroit
Faye Nelson’s office on the 17th floor of the GM Renaissance Center provides a panoramic view of the Detroit River and a daily reminder that the Motor City — despite its problems — is still capable of grand achievements. The proof lies in the Detroit Riverwalk, a sprawling walkway and bike path that transformed the […]
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Policy winds blow through Mich. forests
An hour’s drive south of the Mackinac Bridge, a 67,000-acre patch of state forest known as Chandler Hills offers a stunning glimpse of how Michigan appeared in 1800, before a century of logging left much of the state looking like a moonscape. The hiss of wind coursing through towering hardwoods and the gurgle of a […]
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Many services, one patient, one roof
Dianna Thompson often has felt like a piece in a puzzle no one could solve. She saw doctors for physical conditions that include epilepsy, diabetes and chronic pain and others for treatment of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. But one group of professionals seldom talked to the other. “I was just running around from […]
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Private-public pact gets Troy on track
For the entire 10 years Michele Hodges had been president of the Troy Chamber of Commerce, a new rail-and-bus transit center for the Oakland County community had been in the works. Then, on Dec. 19, 2011, the Troy City Council voted 4-3 to turn down $8.5 million in federal funds for the transit center, which […]
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Detroit neighbor losing population, too
Everyone in Michigan is familiar with the population decline in Detroit and population stagnation in state overall. Put negative population trends are not contained to Detroit’s or Michigan’s borders. Right across the river from Detroit, Windsor, Ontario, is seeing its own population drop — a fairly significant one it appears in this mapping tool based […]