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ASHTENAW AVE. -When Abdulah Salim

walked into Haifa Falafel
and asked if they needed workers, he was hired on the spot.
He hadnt known his boss before, Salim
said, but were from the same country,
so we kinda know each other.
Salim is Palestinian, although his maternal grandparents moved to Kuwait
in 1948. His father came to the U.S. at
age 15, his mother just after she married.
Heritage was what drove Salim to apply
for the job to begin with. And the location of the restaurant, he noted, is significant.
Theres a lot of Muslims and Arabs
around this part of town, a lot of Palestinians, Salim said. We have a big community full of our people. It makes me
feel like Im still at home.
Salims is not the only cultural pocket on the road. Just down the road is
Yee Siang Dumplings, which serves the
food of Liaoning Province in China.
16 t he c o m m u n i c a t o r

Naisi Chow, who uses the English name

Aaron, constructed the restaurant with
his father-in-law and opened it in 2015.
The area has a concentrated Asian population, and Chow estimated that about
half of the customer base is Chinese.
They come to our restaurant to have
a taste of our dumplings, he said.
Theyre really authentic.
Washtenaw Ave., which connects Ann
Arbor and Ypsilanti, represents its county in more than just its name. The seven-mile stretch is lined with a hospital,
three college campuses, a juvenile detention center, a Lululemon, a Whole Foods
and an Asian market. Look into the variety of communities that exist along the
road, and you will see the countys diversity. Look into their varied resources,
and you will see its disparity.
As of a 2013 census, Ypsilantis black
population per capita triples Ann Arbors. It has double the unemployment
rate and half the median family income
of Ann Arbor.
And there are many angles at which to
view disparity as Washtenaw Ave. runs
east. The U.S. Environmental Protection
agency identifies areas that are in the 5095 national percentile of proximity to
hazardous waste treatment, storage and
disposal facilities. The entire four-mile

stretch of Washtenaw east of the Ann

Arbor city limits is in that range. Of the
three-mile stretch in Ann Arbor, about a
half mile is in that range. Ypsilanti has in
the past also faced allegations of being a
food desertan urban area where fresh
food is inaccessible.
Bussing between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti has stirred up conflict within the
past decade. Route 4 is the main bus
route that runs between the cities. It is
also the Ann Arbor Area Transit Authoritys (AAATA) most-used route,
which has introduced a big question:
when two cities ride, who pays? Bus services are funded by federal dollars, state
dollars, and bus ticket revenue, but this
does not cover the costs. So enters the
millage, in this case a local tax funding a
public service. Ann Arbors citizens have
historically been able to shoulder a millage. With Ypsilantis fiscal situation on
the decline, however, the city couldnt
afford to support the buses, so the options were either to charge people traveling from Ypsilanti more for bus service,
or to subsidize service for Ypsilanti.
If bus fees for people traveling west
on Washtenaw were to go up, Ypsilanti
residents would pay the price, primarily
transit-dependent people working at the
University of Michigan and in Ann Arbor businesses. Of the 100,000 jobs in
Ann Arbor, roughly 80,000 of them are
filled by people who come into the city
each day. These workers are integral to
Ann Arbors economy: Ann Arbor businesses, especially restaurants, are strug-

washtenaw ave. serves as a corridor

between ann arbor and ypsilanti,
and is a place of both opportunity
and disparity.

gling with lack of workers. Washtenaw

County economists predict hundreds
of jobs to be created in the next year
in food and drink services -- jobs that
will need to be filled. Eventually, AAATA decided to subsidize service from
Ypsilanti. There were also issues specific to late night dishwashers, mostly Mexican-Americans, working late hours in
Ann Arbor and then not having bus service back to Ypsilanti. Instead there was
an alternative, subsidized taxi service.
The AAATA millage has also mostly resolved these issues.
[In Ypsilanti], a lot of people are first
generation college students, surrounded by other people who are making their
way into the world, unlike Ann Arbor
students who are often growing up into
the knowledge economy from privileged
homes, said David Nacht, AAATAs
former Board Chair, who was a strident
supporter of Ann Arbor subsidizing Ypsilanti bus service. Ypsilanti is a place
of opportunity.
However, Ypsilanti is arguably not the
place of opportunity it was several decades ago. In the 1940s, Henry Ford
built the Willow Run Plant to build
B-24 airplanes. He recruited workers
from the South, largely white coal miners from Kentucky and black field workers from Alabama. This was intentional Ford was known to hire black and white
workers so that they would clash and fail
to unionize. But they did. By the 1970s
the plant had been bought by General Motors to become an auto plant.
fourteen-thousand workers were making good livings. These communities of
auto workers, descendants of coal min-

ers and cotton pickers, largely uneducated, were making incomes above the national median.
Meanwhile, Ann Arbor grew up around
the University of Michigan.
At Willow Run, increasingly-advanced
machinery and outsourced production led to the decline of the plant, and
in 2009 it filed for bankruptcy. Over
the past decade, Ypsilanti has lost over
12,000 jobs, while Ann Arbor has gained
similar a similar number.
Ann Arbor and Ypsi are so culturally different because the family stories are
so different, Nacht said. Ideas of the
American dream are different.
An organization called ReImagine
Washtenaw began work in 2014 to revitalize the road and its surrounding communities. A June 2015 press release announced the initiatives immediate goals
to be filling in sidewalk gaps for pedestrians and transit riders and putting in
transit super stops as AAATA works
to expand service along the corridor.
I think what ReImagine Washtenaw,
if its successful, will do, is actually create
a much better connection between the
two disparate markets, between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, said Nathan Vought,
the organizations Project Manager. So
as you increase access and as you make
it a multi-modal corridor its going to
make it easier to get to services that they
need, get to the schools, the universities,
healthcare. Its such a connector for the
entire county and certainly for the urbanized areas. I think it will increase access; youre going to lower barriers between those two markets over time.
Zach Harris is an Ypsilanti resident
who has worked at Whole Foods on
Washtenaw Ave. for a little over four
years. His co-workers come from both

Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, but he believes a large group of employees reside
in Ypsilanti because of the cheaper cost
of living. Even workers making $11 an
hour, he commented, cannot afford to
live in Ann Arbor.
The customer base as hes observed,
however, hails from Ann Arbor significantly more than Ypsilanti.
Its prices are pretty high and most
Ypsilanti residents cant afford it, Harris
said. A lot of our customer base seems
to be wealthier Ann Arbor families and
U of M students. I do see some Ypsilanti customers... who are seeking natural
or organic product on a larger scale than
Kroger or the co-op in Ypsi may offer.
In 2013, Arbor Hills Shopping Center moved in across the street from
Whole Foods. The complex comprises 20 stores, including a North Face, an
Anthropologie and a Brooks Brothers.
They intentionally used local restaurants
and worked to provide pedestrian and
cyclist accessibility.
Personally, being from Ann Arbor, it
seemed like a nice opportunity to clean
up an eyesore on Washtenaw Avenue,
Tom Stegeman, a cofounder of the
shopping center, told MLive.
Brett Lenart, the interim Director of
Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development, said
that the presence of these businesses
demonstrates a level of demand in our
community where these businesses can
thrive and contribute to a vibrant, desirable place. But, he added, therein lies
one of the challenges.
As a community thrives, with an
eclectic mix of businesses, it drives up
demand and real estate prices, he said.
This has the effect of making the community less accessible to more members
of the workforce. This is something the
county has focused on by adopting the
january

17

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18 tt he
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university of michigan
palmer field

Housing Affordability and Equity Analysis, which attempts

to provide a snapshot of housing market conditions and address them in order to
improve affordability across Washtenaw
County.
Harris sees the center
having mixed effect on its surrounding communities.
I know a lot of Ypsilanti residents
who work in these businesses because
they can afford to pay a higher wage then
somewhere in Ypsilanti, he said, and
people tip better, because they can.
Harris commutes across Washtenaw
via bicycle, and noted that the Pittsfield
Township section of the road seems neglected, particularly in the wintertime in
terms of plowing and weather hazards.
So Washtenaw Ave. becomes a corridor but almost a little portal between
the two cities and economic inequality,
Harris said. You do have [Washtenaw
Community College] in between the two
cities, [which] itself claims an Ann Arbor address, which I think speaks volumes there despite its relative location to
Ypsilanti.
Washtenaw has a huge population density because of the apartment complexes that run along it, in addition to its direct proximity to a number of schools,
including Eastern Michigan University,
Washtenaw Community College, Ypsilanti Community High School, Carpenter Elementary School and Tappan Middle School.
Washtenaw Avenue is a connector
within our county, Lenart said. The size
of communities, the character of neighborhoods is different. The way EMU
and U of M interact with the surrounding community from a practical sense is
different. Theyre both wonderful communities, for unique reasons, and everyone across the County benefits when all
of our communities thrive.

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january 19
january 19