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The First Year of Grosse Pointe Patch
The hyperlocal news site turns one this month and none of it would be possible without you Grosse Pointers!
It was just about this time last year Grosse Pointe Patch went live.
In the last year, hundreds of stories have been published all about Grosse Pointe. There have been written stories, video stories, photo stories and more.
The adventure began even before the site went live with Grosse Pointe South football team's bid at the state semi-finals and the Grosse Pointe Parade the day after Thanksgiving.
Unlike the weather this week, it was bitterly cold and the area was blanketed repeatedly in snow, making for hazardous driving conditions and Grosse Pointe Public School District's first cancelled day of classes in years, some say maybe ever.
The new calendar year started off with the hotly debated neon sign issue in Grosse Pointe Woods, where ultimately business owners who began a signature campaign to overturn an ordinance won their battle to keep their neon signs.
As the school year wound to a close, two teachers showed off a year's worth of hard work with the first ever cardboard regatta, a physics project at Grosse Pointe North, and a cross-country student production of Romeo and Juliet, a Grosse Pointe South freshman English project.
Then the search firm was hired to help find viable candidates for the superintendent of the Grosse Pointe Public School System for which an internal candidate was eventually selected.
Then May came during which Grosse Pointers saw the exit of two South administrators following an investigation related to inappropriate images on their school-issued phones or computers. Hundreds of homes in Grosse Pointe Farms flooded. A Patch freelancer witnessed and wrote about the true spirit of Grosse Pointers cheering on the last runner at a track meet.
With summer came wide-spread, repeated power outages throughout the Grosse Pointes. For residents the first outages appeared to be routine but then as the summer continued, the demand for answers from DTE grew, ultimately leading to many repairs and upgrades to the aging infrastructure through the Pointes.
Then there was the fatal semi-truck crash at Kroger that closed down I-94 for hours in early July.
Then there was the passage of the new state house district map, which divides the Grosse Pointes and the installation of a large tower near Lake St. Clair by the Department of Homeland Security.
Grosse Pointers were brimming with pride when three Grosse Pointe Park Little League teams advanced to the states, won and then one team advanced to a regional semi-final competition in Indianapolis.
The opposition to Schools of Choice was threaded in there too.
Later in the year, Patch reported on the death of Grosse Pointe Farms councilman Terry Davis, the first 911 dispatch consolidation among two of the Pointes and yet more flooding of the same Farms residents as in May and for some in July too.
As elections grew closer, local politics heated up in nearly all of the Pointes. Among the most significant changes made by voters was in Grosse Pointe Shores, where nearly the entire council including the mayor were voted out and new members voted in. Along with debates and political chatter, the revelation of a water billing issue between Grosse Pointe Shores and Grosse Pointe Yacht Club surfaced.
Meanwhile, Chrysler released two commercials in which Grosse Pointe Park and residents were featured. Earlier this week, Patch reported on a study about whether the City of Grosse Pointe and Grosse Pointe Park's public safety departments should consolidate into one unit.
Now as the year is coming to a close, Patch aims to look ahead and bring more news to Grosse Pointers. Thank you for reading, sending in news tips and, even more simply, caring about your community.
Although opinions of Grosse Pointers sometimes vary far and wide, the fact that residents are so vocal and engaged in the community is good. Without engagement, Grosse Pointe would not be the community it is today, you even said so in WDET's community forum.
Thanks. We'll email you the next time we update this story.
Harry Kurtz
11:36 pm on Thursday, December 15, 2011
GP Patch has added a new dimension to the timely reporting of relevant news stories, combined with a unique open forum for the free expression of ideas and individual opinions on topics of interest to residents of all the Pointes. I also believe this format and service may ultimately help bring us closer together as one community, with many common objectives and aspirations for the future. Keep up the great work Sara. Congrats on your first anniversary!