Jane Ford serves up a hot dog in the parking lot of ACO Hardware in Dearborn. The family had to pack up its second hot dog stand down the road at Westborn Mall at the request of the mall's owner.

After nearly two and a half years of selling hot dogs from her cart outside the Dearborn post office in the Westborn Mall, Anna Ford has been told by the mall’s owner to push on out.

Most Dearborn residents know Anna Ford from her more than 25 years of selling hot dogs from her cart outside of ACO on Michigan Avenue, just west of Military Street. Her Binky’s Hot Dog and Sausage stand has been selling Dearborn Sausage brand hot dogs and Detroit’s Better Made chips in the parking lot of the hardware store for seven days a week without incident.

But that apparently wasn’t the case in Westborn Mall. Anna Ford tells DeepsaidWhat.com that the owners of the recently opened Red Olive restaurant in the mall, who offer coney dogs on their menu, apparently viewed the hot dog stand as competition. Although Binky’s does not sell coney toppings for its hot dogs, the owner of Westborn Mall told them they had to leave, she said.

“I do wish the Red Olive well,” Anna Ford said. “It is tough to starting a new business. I have no animosity toward Westborn Mall or the Red Olive. I just think that some of the workers in the mall don’t have time to go out to a sit-down restaurant. Running to my stand is just easier for some of those people with limited time. I just wish it could have worked out for all of us. I don’t think our businesses compete.”

While Binky’s Hot Dog stand didn’t pay rent for sitting in Westborn Mall’s parking lot, it is hard to view the hot dog cart as competition for the restaurant, which offers a full menu that goes beyond hot dogs and chips.

The former Brothers Tuxedo in downtown west Dearborn is now razed.

A dilapidated building in downtown west Dearborn that once was home to Brothers Tuxedo has finally been razed.

Crews began demolishing the building on Friday and by Saturday afternoon all that remained of the two-story brick building was a pile of rubble.

While it has taken years to remove this Dearborn eyesore, the good news is that it is now finally down. And with a clean plot of land on a prime corner of downtown Dearborn there comes hope that it will become something more than just another grassy space.

The building is the second of three dilapidated buildings that Dearborn developer Hakim Fakhoury agreed with city officials would come down. The third building, Bally’s Vic Tanny, is still being prepared for demolition.

The former Brothers Tuxedo building at Michigan and Howard before demolition.

As part of the agreement with the city and a way to save demolition costs, the foundation of the Brothers Tuxedo building, just like the former Giuliano’s, will remain until the property is ready to be developed.

The three buildings, all located between Mason and Military on Michigan Avenue, were being removed as part of a large-scale redevelopment proposed in 2005 by Fakhoury.

That particular development never occurred but clearing the area of these rotting buildings is a step in the right direction.

Springwells Park, the historic early-American subdivision, designed by Edsel and Henry Ford at Rotunda Drive and Greenfield, is the location for the Saturday, May 19 Dearborn Symphony Home Tour.

The Headquarters for this 31st edition of the Tour is the neighboring Tournament Players Club (TPC) where tickets at $15 pre-sale and $20 on Tour day will be available.

Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free parking is available at Dearborn Congregational Church on Rotunda Drive adjacent to the TPC. Lunches at $13 will be available at the TPC Clubhouse and nine vendors will display their artworks, plus a Symphony jewelry booth.

Plan to take the tour of the five unique homes. enjoy the plentiful tree-lined streets and get some new decorating ideas.

All proceeds go directly to the Dearborn Symphony for next season’s concerts at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center.

To obtain tickets or for information, phone 313-565-2424.

After years of study and debate, Dearborn schools will launch a trial this fall allowing 10th-, 11th-, and 12th-graders to start the school day an hour later if they choose, at 8:25 a.m. rather than 7:20. It’s one of the first school districts in Metro Detroit to take such an approach.

The change for upperclassmen could improve attendance and boost grades. Classes now get out at 2:15 p.m.; under the new trial, students would get out at 3:20.

The new flexible start time was approved by the school board in late February. It was proposed by a group of parents who said research shows teens are biologically programmed to go to bed later and wake up later.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out.  Proponents of the trial plan still say it doesn’t go far enough because it’s optional. Not all parents in the district wanted the change.

In an article today in The Detroit News, Dearborn parent Ernest Oz, who was on a committee that studied start times, told the paper that children need sleep for safety, health and academic reasons. He said the flexible start trial “is not what it should be, but it’s a start.”

The new start time will be tested for one year before it is assessed. Freshmen aren’t eligible, nor are students behind on credits. Students will have to provide their own transportation.

Another parent, Helena Thornton, told The News that the trial is “a poor excuse of a plan.” She said the committee proposed several more ambitious options the district could have pursued, such as flip-flopping the middle school start time with the high schools, meaning younger students would start earlier.

“The trouble in Dearborn is politics,”  said Thornton, an industrial engineer who has a son, 17, who graduates this spring, and a daughter, 13. “Nobody wants to rock the boat.”

About 10 teachers at each high school have volunteered to start later and work later, though scheduling will need to be ironed out.