Renaissance on the other side of “The Hill”
The east side of Michigan Street Hill is experiencing a renaissance sure to change the look and feel of the neighborhood. Developers are buying properties and making way for new mixed-use centers that will update the area and drive the trend for a new way of doing business.
According to excerpts from the story:
Standing outside Kent Novelty Co., Nancy Connell’s half-century-old business on Michigan Street NE, you can’t see any cranes.
This is the east side — the “other side” — of Michigan Hill, the Medical Mile, Pill Hill or whatever the new media and PR flacks are calling it these days. It excites Connell, but also weighs on her.
“I’m kind of hoping somebody offers me big money for the property,” she said as she stamped 50-cent price tags on dozens of paddle ball sets.
The well-worn, wood-planked floors of the store, 659 Michigan St. NE, are a stark contrast to the gleaming new medical buildings a few blocks away– creaky reminders of the changing working-class area between a billion-dollar medical boom and a hard place.
Read the complete story here.
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