Thanksgiving locations:
* Wednesday: Ypsilanti -> Chelsea
* Thursday: Chelsea -> Ypsilanti -> Royal Oak -> Romeo
* Friday: Romeo
* Saturday: Romeo -> Ypsilanti
* Sunday: Mendelssohn Theater, doing light hang for UMGASS' HMS Pinafore (shows all next week!)

On Thursday morning, took a wander into downtown Chelsea for a look at the latest developments, and ran into some other Ypsi types. ("Me? I grew up here! What are *you* doing here?") They'd biked out to get a cup of coffee at Zou Zou's, but found it closed, so were eating their clif bars on the benches in front of the police station. Anyways. It having been probably 18 months or so since I last took a wander down Main Street, I decided to have a look as long as I didn't have anybody with me to be annoyed by my poking around.

Chelsea's got a spankin' new library that just opened last week. The old library, where I worked in high school (nerd) is in an old mansion, McKune House on Main St downtown, but the library had long since outgrown it. For the past several years, the library had relocated to the old high school library, at the edge of town - while some (like my dad) preferred this fringe location, with its plentiful parking and drive-up book drop, I'm glad to see the library back downtown, in rather nice new construction grafted onto the back of the old library. Chelsea's losing (lost?) the downtown post office - having both library and post office leave downtown would truly relegate Chelsea to scented-candle irrelevancy. My pleasure is tempered slightly by the fact that the old McKune is just offices and meeting rooms now, while the more public functions of the library are all in the new addition, accessed through the rear entrance - from the parking lot. Ah, well - truly human-oriented development is so hard to come by these days.

The Main Street business facades seem to be notably more well-kept up than I remember, if unfortunately many of them in a kitschy, faux-historic sort of way. There are at least two "art galleries" that I don't remember having seen before, as well as a new chocolate shop/cafe that I gather is quite nice, but that I should not try to discuss politics in. There also seem to be at least a few upper-story loft conversions going on along Main Street, which is nice to see, and I'm glad that, contrary to my snarking about boutiqueification, downtown Chelsea still retains its locally-owned hardware store, appliance & electronics store, bookstore, furniture store, florist, jeweler, clothier, and corner market, most of which have been around for as long as I can remember. (The locally-owned drugstore moved out to strip mall land about as long ago as I can remember.) Despite (or, admittedly, more likely "because of") Chelsea's yupscaling, it's managed to retain a fairly full-service small town downtown.

Continuing east past Jiffy Mix, I checked out McKinley's rehab/redevelopment of the clock tower complex. (Note: that link is from the City Manager's blog. And Ypsi thinks we're doing well with a blogging Councilmember...) I'm quite happy to see that I was mistaken last year when the Gymnasium Building collapsed. (And more pics...) The building I'd been thinking of from the newspaper's description was the Welfare Building - it appears to be safe and sound. Overall, I'm fairly happy with the rehab project. Aside from that little subsidence mishap, it looks like all the buildings have benefited from a good application of adaptive reuse (or are in the process of); the late-20th century parking requirements have been fit in around the early-20th century buildings, and the finished space seems to be pretty well leased up. If SEMCOG goes with the commuter rail option for the Detroit to Ann Arbor transit line, it would likely involve a rail yard near Chelsea, and therefore rail service to Chelsea as a bonus. This rehab job is of some original TOD (transit-oriented development) - the employees of the stove works commuted out from Detroit (weekly) by rail - and would complement restored commuter rail service well.

I would be happier if they'd taken this oppotunity to fill out the street grid on that side of town a bit; it's always been a bit spare, and this seems like it would have been a chance to, say, extend Buchanan Street along the north edge of the development to McKinley. I didn't take the chance to check out the new subdivision just to the northeast, but I noticed that the trailer park just across Main from the north end of the development seems to have disappeared. I wonder if somebody's got plans for that patch of land...?

On the way out of town, I cruised through the "private road - keep out" large-lot sub behind the new high school - seems that they school, my favorite piece of poor urban planning in town (so bad it has literally killed somebody) has gained company. Little annoys me more than this kind of elitist, destructive, "estate" lifestyle. Honestly, if you want enough yard to maintain some kind of claim on rural living, you better be buying enough to *farm*. (p.s. Ask me sometime about being an urban planning activist in 5th grade. In retrospect, I don't know where that whole undergrad engineering degree came from - Chelsea made me into a preachy ("New", if you insist) Urbanist at a very young age, and I shouldn't have been surprised when it appealed to me after graduation.)

Anyways, that was my brief tour of Chelsea. Fun.