With the Detroit Institute of Art closed until late November, you can cross the river and find interesting art — and fantastic views of the Detroit skyline — at the Art Gallery of Windsor.

Over the last year, the program’s Operation TIDE (Tactical Intelligence Driven Enforcement) initiative has brought federal, state and local law enforcement agencies together to help reduce homicides by 43% and nonfatal shootings by 26%. The decreases in the northwest district are far bigger than those in the rest of the city. Operation TIDE took dangerous offenders off the street by prosecuting them with stiff federal gun laws.

These officials have set aside turf battles and partisan politics to reduce crime in Detroit. Their future success will depend largely on improving relations between police and the community. Without the support and help of neighborhood residents, efforts to find and arrest violent offenders will fail.

Marathon Petroleum Co. L.L.C. is proposing a $1 billion industrial refinery project on a 17-acre site in southwest Detroit, adjoining its existing refinery, which is the only one in Michigan.

The Findlay, Ohio-based company is asking the city of Detroit and state of Michigan to approve a $10 million tax credit for the project at 1025 Oakwood Blvd., south of Dix Avenue and the Conrail tracks.

Downtown Ann Arbor’s newest retail store will no doubt make a lot of people think twice about concrete.

Surface, which is set to open next week, is an artistic concrete retail shop and design center set in building that’s a former loading dock on South Ashley Street, where Jules Furniture was.

Surface goes way beyond basic cement: Owners Stevi Michner and her brother, Tony DeKroub, make original artwork out of colored concrete and specialize in custom concrete floors, countertops and furniture.

Spirit Airlines is having a Red Light Special fare sale. Book by 11:59pm (ET) tomorrow (Friday, August 10) to qualify for fares starting from as low as $34 each way. Two prices are available, the first for “deluxe leather” seating and the second for a “big front seat”.

Sample fares include Atlanta to Cancun for $144 in deluxe leather seats and $233 for a big front seat, Detroit to Tampa for $89 or $144, and Fort Lauderdale to Orlando for $34 or $55.

The children of Detroit are not simply competing with the kids in Novi and Utica or Ohio and Florida — they need to be ready to compete against the children of the world.
Our children deserve better

This problem is not contained to Detroit. If the dropout problem in this state and nation were considered a public health issue, it would be an epidemic. The dropout crisis is worse in our urban centers and affects far too many African American, Hispanic and Native American kids.

To make matters worse, Michigan has a law that makes it legal for a child to drop out of school at the tender age of 16. Drop out to what? Those good high paying factory jobs? To work on the family farm? To the streets? This law is state-sponsored stupidity at best, and institutional racism at it’s very worse. If we had the same dropout statistics in our white middle class communities as we do in far too many minority communities there would be a rush to solve the problem.

Living Space, an Ann Arbor building and design company, is betting its future on “green” building techniques.

The two-year-old operation is moving ahead on its first two projects this fall and is hoping to grow its business as consumers begin to demand renewable energy as a staple of new houses.

Living Space officials call their concept hybrid energy homes, and they blend a number of eco-friendly techniques used by builders to cut construction time and energy costs.

By the time A3C-Collaborative Architecture completes renovations to its historic East Huron Street building this fall, it will lay claim to three firsts for downtown Ann Arbor: First green roof, first geothermal heating and cooling system and first LEED-certified office building.

The roof will include four distinct botanical zones, including a meadow and ground cover. Rainwater will be caught and recycled to water the roof, Jacobs said, and a small reflecting pond will help cool the air that will flows into the building. There will also be an observation deck. The mechanicals that traditionally clutter a rooftop will be gone because of the geothermal system.

A3C hopes to win approval from the historical commission for wind turbines placed on the front of the building that would capture the gusty gales that can blow down Huron Street. The energy created would be used to help power the office. Also, a film of solar panels will be installed on the roof of the conference room, creating more energy.

The Downtown Women’s Club, a professional network and career website for businesswomen (www.DowntownWomensClub.com) founded in Boston in 1998 is pleased to announce the launch of its Detroit chapter.

DWC-Detroit will be led by Danielle DeLonge, who is the GLIMA Network Manager at Automation Alley (http://www.automationalley.com), and who provides support for GLIMA’s nine chapters throughout the state of Michigan. She is responsible for assisting the chapters create technical, educational and networking events that help the organization provide the necessary resources to keep Michigan’s best and brightest technology professionals at the top of their game.

The Chauncey Hurlbut Gate at Water Works Park in Detroit is undergoing a serious restoration that will bring the magnificent structure back to its early-Nineteenth Century appearance.

Say the words Ann Arbor and one of the first words that normally pop into someone’s head is “parks.” Michigan’s “Tree Town” known for its abundance of parkland and recreation options is expanding on that reputation this summer, purchasing parkland and installing more bike paths.
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The city is also preparing to undertake more bike lane and trail projects within the next year. The City Council approved building a 10-foot wide asphalt path along the north side of Washtenaw Avenue between Glenwood and Toumy roads near County Farm Park for non-motorized traffic.

Ann Arbor-based Edwards Brothers, Inc. has requested a $2 million tax abatement to subsidize the purchase of a new power plant and press for its facility.

Linux employs about 10, a figure that has “almost doubled in the past year,” says Ziph. They recently held a competition for 15 teams of MBA students from University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business Evening that produced growth strategy proposals for a potential future Chicago office. “We get a fresh perspective,” she notes.

Ziph makes it a goal to “to hire young people from Michigan schools,” and says that the region needs to “use the intellectual power that comes out the schools that we have here to fuel knowledge growth in the state.” She says the company is always looking “to discover new people,” particularly those that “want to dig into code, understand how things work under the hood,” she quips.

Everyone is wondering how we can turn our economy toward a more positive direction. The agri-food system in Michigan is our most fruitful sector for economic recovery and improved quality of life.

The size and scope of our $60 billion food and agriculture economy was shared with state leaders through a report from the Michigan State University Product Center in January 2007. In this report, Dr. Chris Peterson states that 24% of Michigan’s workforce is employed in the system that produces farm goods and moves them from field to end user. He also points out that investors have pumped $8.6 billion into the agri-food system over the past five years, and that continuation of existing initiatives could create 12,000 to 23,000 new jobs.