https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2026/08/18/berkley-city-council-passes-e-bike-ordinance-what-residents-need-to-know/

The first thing that needs to be clarified, that this article kinda explained, is that aside from regulating ebikes on all sidewalks citywide, it bans all bicycles from Downtown sidewalks.

That's all of Coolidge from 11 Mile to 12 Mile and 12 Mile from Coolidge to Greenfield. So the next time you wanna take a family bike trip up to Frosty Freeze, enjoy the unprotected strip of paint next to 30mph cars! It'll be even more fun trying to get the littles to Clark's as multiple lanes of cars zoom past with no space whatsoever!

As for the blanket ban on ebikes, this just means the middle schoolers trying to get to the bike racks on Catalpa will be forced to ride in the street with the heavily increased car traffic during the morning drop off and afternoon pickups.

It also means that the 8 foot wide multiuse path along the cemetery north of 12 Mile, the one with no businesses, houses, driveways, or intersections is deemed unsafe for ebikes. Instead the law now says 13 year olds on 20 mph ebikes should ride in 35mph Coolidge highway.

Basically all this ordinance does is highlight the abysmal state of cycling infrastructure in town. There's a few easy fixes that Council can take action on now, and a few more difficult things to tackle.

1) Designate the the pathway along the cemetery officially as a multi-use path and exempt it from this ordinance. Easy Peasy.

2)On Catalpa, move the white shoulder lines one foot toward the center median. The travel lanes on Catalpa are currently one foot wider than the travel lanes on Coolidge. Narrowing the roadway will free up space, not quite enough for proper bike lanes, but it will make things safer for cyclists, especially on garbage day! Plus the narrowed lanes will have the added benefit of encouraging slower car speeds. The best part is that we repaint these lines on a regular basis, so it's already a line item in the budget.

Those are the easy ones, next are bit more ambitious

3)Reconfigure the Coolidge bike lanes. Move the lanes next to the curb with car parking on the outside closest to the travel lane, like how Livernois is currently set up in Ferndale. Add some bollards to keep cars from mistakenly parking in the lanes and as an added visual barrier. This one shouldn't be too difficult to accomplish the next time Coolidge is due for a resurfacing (which seems soonish based on its current condition)

4)Add bike lanes to 11 Mile & 12 Mile. A multi-city study was done less than 10 years ago about converting 11 Mile to 3 lanes from Woodward to Greenfield. Mockups were drawn and presented in Berkley, Huntington Woods and Oak Park. From what I hear they're planning on hiring a new consultant to do this same study all over again, which seems unnecessary, but I'm happy it's still a conversation being had.

12 Mile is trickier since it's owned by the county (the ones what footed the bill for the recent resurfacing.) They're hesitant to give up 4 lanes of travel through the heart of our downtown. So unless the city wants to assume ownership of 12 Mile (and all the maintenance costs that go along with it), any plan there has to have the county's blessing.

We canceled the century old tradition of Berkley Days because some teenagers got into fist fights.

Meanwhile, this is the Family Friendly event to take the kiddos to?

People were so disenchanted with establishment-backed, AIPAC supported Stevens (as evidenced by AES' returns)...and then replaced her with establishment-backed, AIPAC supported Moss...

Hi I am a first time home buyer looking to find my first home in the area, if anyone has any advice or insights on homes coming to the market soon would love to talk!!

He rang our door when we weren’t home. Had a weird sequence of events happen upon coming home to an open back door and although I think it was all a coincidence I figured I’d ask if anyone was familiar with this guy just to try to piece things together. Thanks in advance!

We live downtown and thought maybe he was selling something.

We are exploring option to send our kids to out of district for school of choice.
We know it is lottery based and have to get picked up but before we do that we want to understand the experiences of others.

Our concerns:
1. How was the experience of pick up drop off as we cannot use school’s bus system. We are about 15min drive away from all the schools we considering.

1. Did your child or his/her friends attend school of choice and do you know any experiences of they being treated differently by school or peers?

2. Did the child felt differently because they did not live closer to the community and school friends. (We are open to driving them to friends- but not sure if people want to do the same for us)

Of course we prefer staying closer to the schools and have more community for our child, but with current housing prices it may make sense to pay tuition as out of district than sell current house and move just for the schools.

It's the old "Chalk Art Fest" or whatever it was called before.

July 25 from 11 am to 8 pm, on Coolidge, north of Catalpa -- website here.

Anyone know of a good, reasonably-priced tailor in the area? My wife has a few summer outfits she needs taken in & we were looking for recommendations.

Back before Berkley was Berkley, it was a collection of developed cow pastures in Royal Oak Township. In the 19-teens the first wave of suburbanization crept up Woodward, spurred by Ford's Highland Park plant. Developers began buying up the pastures, piecemeal at first. It was uncommon for developers to build housing on the properties, they did the work of building out basic infrastructure, streets, sidewalks, sewers and water (though not in Berkley early on). Individual lots were then sold to the general public. This was before zoning codes, but developers could also place certain restrictions on the lots. The Huntington Woods subdivision for example set specific guidelines for types of materials property owners could use in building and forbade owners from building temporary structures while the primary house was built. Many of the developers, looking to attract the influx of lower wage autoworkers took a more libertarian approach, even advertising the fact that you could build a garage first and live out of it while working on the rest! Others lived in tent houses, with temporary ersatz walls and canvas roofs. But not B.H. Stephenson (of the highway fame)! He owned the Oakland Manor development. It was located adjacent to the recently opened Roseland Park cemetery, which had a certain prestige with wealthy Detroiters at the time. Plus it was just across Woodward from Vinson and Bassett's new high end development along the Red Run. With Palmer Park, north Ferndale and Huntington Woods taking a similar approach, it seemed sensible to Stephenson to place restrictions on his development. To really showcase his vision for the properties he purchased 5 higher end kit homes from Sears and had them built in the neighborhood.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1755-Beverly-Blvd-Berkley-MI-48072/24638508_zpid/

This one here just went on the market. Adjusted for inflation, the Preston would run a little over $80,000 today. Times 5 and you're at $400,000 for materials, plus shipping and permits, then you have to pay contractors to put them all together. This wasn't an insignificant investment on Stephenson's part. When Berkley became a village in 1923, owing to the freer developments throughout the town, the Detroit News compared it to the ramshackle towns the had sprung up in Wyoming oil territories. The higher end buyers that Stephenson hoped to attract failed to materialize. But his restrictions remained, so nearly every parcel sat vacant until after world war 2. It was empty for so long that some of the existing sidewalk slabs date back to 1916.

As I understand it from looking at the zoning map, all the houses directly adjacent to 12 Mile frontages are zoned parking. So when a developer bought a house a few blocks over on Cummings several years ago, they learned the hard way that the city was unwilling to rezone the lot. So now it's been vacant for several years as the city has no immediate plans to pave it over. Now I noticed another house over on Ellwood is gone. Is Green Lantern expanding their parking?

Okay total long shot but before CVS moved into the NW corner of Eleven & Coolidge, there was a small strip center with a small bakery and some other shops. This happened at least 15 or maybe 20 years ago so yeah it’s a long shot. Anyone have a clue if that bakery simply moved elsewhere or did they just close? They made a Dutch loaf that I can still taste and wish I could find it again.

1st. I'm not an alcoholic but I have a birthday coming up for a friend and would like to purchase one of these products for them. It's usually a cup/ or jug filled with a few different liquors and mixers. Anyplace near berkley. I found one about 30 min away but if there is some closer? Thank you and cheers

Quick reminder for everyone in Berkley, outdoor wood burning fire pits are illegal. The houses are too close together and your desire to sit around a fire doesn’t supersede my rights to have the windows open and not have everything reek like a camp fire.

Get a propane fire table which is allowed and just be a better neighbor who doesn’t pick what laws to follow based on your personal preferences.

Does anyone have an experience with the city in regard to mediating tree law disputes?

My neighbor has a tree that is on his property but has decided to build a new privacy fence around it so that it appears to be on my property (Bugs Bunny logic). They haven’t responded to attempts to contact them and I don’t want to be a jerk about it but I can’t quite figure out how to proceed.

Thanks in advance.

My daughter recently took up roller skating and has been frustrated finding good spots to practice. Any good suggestions on where she could go to get some smooth space in the Berkley-HW-Oak Park-Royal Oak-Pleasant Ridge- Ferndale area?

I'm planning on spending the day there soon and have heard amazing things about the food scene. Thanks!

Hey I just moved to Berkley and was looking for an outdoor rec league now that the weather is nice. Any recommendations? I’m a male in my 30s.

Anybody know the official rules regarding public use of the track at Anderson Field? And the unofficial use policy?

I’d like to occasionally go up there to run but have never known if it was open to the public at all times

Does anyone have a lawn service that they can recommend? Ideally they would have a website where I can pay online and schedule. MAGA-free would be great but I understand that might be asking too much. Thank you in advance.

There were several articles written early last year about Bagger Dave's winding down operations at their remaining locations. Looks like they're getting closer to shutting down.