On Fri, 27 Mar 1998, STALS R US wrote:
> Yeah, I don't know about everybody else, but we've been doing an awful
> lot of work since the weather broke a little--
>
> and when there's no work, there're new wildflowers up, and fresh spearmint
> to cut, and a garden to get in....and on and on and on. ;)
As for me, I have a political campaign to do. The primary is in early
August, but things have gotten very serious already. My main opponent
seems to be stumbling a little (the editor of a statewide political
newsletter called her "self-destructive" in a conversation the other day),
and lots of energetic new people are coming into my campaign.
Also, even without me in the Legislature (yet?), a bill to create
Michigan's first historic preservation tax incentive has passed the House
and just this week was reported out by the Senate finance committee.
Passage by the Senate seems likely.
Meanwhile, I'm still chair of the Ann Arbor Historic District Commission,
which recently received an application for permission to demolish the
much-loved landmark 1940 Greyhound bus depot for an unspecified new
development. It's not often that an HDC issue makes the front page of the
Ann Arbor News. The developer backed off a bit and postponed his
application to our May meeting.
At that same meeting, we will be dealing with another demolition request,
one that my fellow HDC member Ilene Tyler has discussed on preservation-l.
That one involves a Spanish Colonial style fraternity house that suffered
a fire in 1994 and has been sitting vacant, with a hole in the roof, ever
since.
Oh, and in the meantime, Disney/Miramax (?) has been in touch with the Ann
Arbor police to arrange on-location filming of some new movie this summer.
They want to use that same bus depot I mentioned above.
(Possible topic for discussion: the historic preservation implications of
filmmaking. I have heard that irreversible changes were made to the
historic Toronto train terminal as part of the making of "Silver Streak".
True or false?)
Larry Kestenbaum
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