A worker installs one of the new decorative lamps along Ford Road.

In an effort to add curb appeal as well as light to the area, the City of Dearborn is installing 137 streets lights along Ford Road between Miller Road and Mercury Drive.

The Michigan Department of Transportation agreed to pay to replace the street lights that were removed during the Ford Road street work with standard street lights, but the City stepped in to add funds to allow for more attractive street lights, the city said Monday in a press releases.

The lights to be installed along Ford Road will have decorative polls and luminaries similar to those currently on Michigan Avenue.

The work is scheduled first for the westbound side of Ford Road at Miller and will head in the direction of Mercury. When that side is done, the work will head back on the eastbound side from Mercury.

“By making the area more attractive visually, we continue our constant efforts to keep Dearborn a desirable place to visit, live and do business,” said Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr.

Most people look for a reason to stay out of the kitchen.

Toni Johnson and Fred Pascaris have found a way to get back into the kitchen.

And that is going to make the palates of many people in Dearborn smile with joy.

Toni Johnson and Fred Pascaris are back serving homemade delights at the New Mercury Restaurant, 3765 Telegraph in Dearborn.

Say hello to The New Mercury Restaurant. The location has changed but the great food, good people and, yes, even the free advice is back.

Nearly four years after the original Mercury Coffee Shop at Michigan and Military closed, Dearbornites once again have a place to sit elbow-to-elbow over eggs in the morning or steaks in the evening.

“We are excited to be back here,” said co-owner Fred Pascaris, a cook at the original Mercury for some 13 years who also owned and managed several other area restaurants with his brothers before retiring in 1989. “We talked about opening a new restaurant many times after the Mercury closed and now here we are. We are going to give it our best.”

The New Mercury Restaurant is located at 3765 Telegraph in Dearborn.

Located at 3765 Telegraph, just north of Annapolis on the east side of Telegraph (in the building that once housed the Great Ham Company restaurant), the New Mercury will serve up a host of daily specials and delightful deserts, including Toni Johnson’s homemade pies and cannolis. Patrons will also be treated to homemade split pea and bean soup, roast beef, liver and onion on certain days and, of course, the famous coleslaw.

“I started cooking when I was 7-years-old in Italy,” said Johnson, who has lived in Dearborn since 1952 and worked at the original Mercury for 20 years. “I do everything fresh. I don’t open any cans for anything. I guess that is the Italian in me.”

The New Mercury doesn’t quite have the cramped coziness the original restaurant had with its horseshoe shaped counter but there is at least a counter. This one has 11 stools that patrons can mosey up to and catch the latest Dearborn news or you can slide into one of the restaurants many booths that ring the outer walls of the restaurant. And when you walk inside and see the smiling faces of people like Toni, Fred, cook Steve Selman, waitress Paula Barbas (both Mercury Coffee Shop veterans) and even Fred’s brother Gus (who once owned the Mercury and now “supervises” from his seat at the counter), it all feels good. It all feels very Dearborn.

Word that the New Mercury is now open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday has been spreading. Fred and Toni say about half of their customers since opening about three weeks ago were regulars at the original Mercury. Two of those customers are Mary Ray and her husband Mike, owners of Campbells Paint & Wallpaper in Dearborn.

“I have a list of people who will be as thrilled as I am to know that the Mercury is back,” said Mary Ray. “I am already ‘jonesing’ for the coleslaw and the Friday fish sandwiches, as is Mike for the tuna salad plate. I used to think of the Mercury as the ‘Cheers’ of Dearborn. Never entered the place without saying hello to someone I knew.”

Ray is one of a growing group of regulars from the original Mercury who are slowly rediscovering their favorite foods and catching up on conversations that ended when the original Mercury officially closed its doors May 1, 2006 after more than 46 years of business.

It is hard to explain why so many of us get so attached to little things in life, such as restaurants like the Mercury. Perhaps it’s the comfort food served by the friendly folks or maybe because it’s one of those places where you can escape to and know that someone there will lend you hand or give you an ear.

Whatever the reason, we are just happy to see it back.

Dearborn’s Hyatt Hotel and the West Dearborn Downtown Development Authority’s (WDDDA) marketing committee are scheduled to meet Friday to discuss if there might be a way to offer hotel guests a shuttle service into downtown Dearborn.

Doug Friess, the Hyatt’s director of sales & marketing, approached the WDDDA with the idea back in October. The two are scheduled to meet Friday to determine whether such a connection could be made and how best to implement it in an affordable way.

One idea under consideration is to create a shuttle or trolley service between the hotel and downtown west Dearborn. Perhaps Councilman George Darany might consider putting his trolleys back into service.

A link between the Hyatt and downtown Dearborn is one of those ideas where you scratch your head and say, yes, why didn’t someone think of that sooner? Perhaps at some point a shuttle service could even include guests staying at The Ritz, just down the road from the Hyatt.

We think Mr. Friess might be on to something here and this could be a step in the right direction for our downtown.

A rendering of the new Dearborn train station with walkway over the tracks to The Henry Ford. The eastbound lanes of Michigan Avenue can be seen in the upper left.

Dearborn is set to get an all-new train station adjacent to The Henry Ford as part of a series of grants announced by President Barack Obama. The new station could be a much-needed shot in the arm for downtown West Dearborn.

Michigan is set to receive $40 million to build the new passenger train station in Dearborn and renovate stations in Troy and Battle Creek.

The $40 million for Michigan is part of a larger $244 million award to the Michigan, Indiana and Illinois state transportation departments to fund a high-speed rail initiative that would link Pontiac and Chicago.

The Detroit Free Press reports that the money for Michigan is a fraction of the $800 million the state Department of Transportation had requested to shore up Michigan’s segments of the Pontiac to Chicago rail network, dotted with old, cramped train stations and rails that need improvements.

The $8 billion for high speed rail projects is part of the $787 billion in federal stimulus money approved last year.

A ground level rendering shows what Dearborn's new train station may look like.

It isn’t clear whether the $8 billion is enough to create a truly high speed rail system expansive enough to make a difference in commuter travel among car-conscious Americans but the money earmarked for Dearborn most certainly will be a positive improvement for our city.

Combine the new rail station with a plan to bring student housing to downtown Dearborn, new movie theatre and restaurants and west Dearborn could begin to feel more vibrant.  The stimulus money sure is a nice way for Dearborn to start the year 2010.

Dearborn’s city ordinance allows residents to keep cows, horses, pigs, goats, pigeons, fowl or other harmless domestic pets so long as the homeowner first obtains a permit from the city health officer.

At least that’s what is written into Part II, Section 4-1 in the city’s ordinance books. In reality, the process isn’t as black and white as Dearborn’s code of ordinances would seem to suggest.

Dearborn City Council must now decide whether or not to issue a permit for these hens.

Dearborn resident Syeda Akbari has been waiting since May 2009 for city leaders to make a decision on whether she can get back her 10 pet hens that she kept in her garage so she and her children could enjoy fresh eggs each morning. The city asked her to remove her hens from her garage last summer, apparently after a neighbor complained, one city official earlier told us. 

Since then, she, well, has gotten nothing but the runaround. The city’s health officer has pushed her permit request to the city’s legal department and the city’s legal department has pushed the request to city council, drafting a paper telling our group of elected officials they would need to construct a new ordinance. But the council, at the direction of President Tom Tafelski, has decided to sit on the legal department’s paper, apparently hoping the chicken permit request would just go away. And that is where her request currently sits.

“I am feeling a bit frustrated,” said Akbari, whose hens are with a friend who lives nearly two hours away. “Why are they making this so complicated? I really love gardening and fresh vegetables and being able to have fresh eggs would be wonderful.”

Akbari is not alone in her love of fresh eggs from backyard pet poultry. Hens are popping up in the yards of urban homes in Michigan cities and across our country. Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti allow them. Lansing recently approved the same, allowing up to five hens in the city, and even Royal Oak permits residents to have backyard poultry. 

Having hens has become the ultimate symbol in being “green” these days. Hens produce eggs, take care of kitchen leftovers and add manure to compost piles. Poultry also are great at controlling cockroaches, grubs, tomato horn worms or just about any other pest you don’t want in your yard or garden, according to poultry experts. There also is a website dedicated to urban chicken owners, aptly named www.urbanchickens.org

An article last fall in the Washington Post said this about urban residents and fowl: “raising backyard poultry has suddenly become as chic as growing your own vegetables. It’s all part of the back-to-the-land movement whose proponents want to save on grocery bills, take control of their food supply and reduce the carbon footprint of industrial agriculture.”

Dave Belanger, publisher of the magazine Backyard Poultry, says that chickens have become America’s cool new pet. When he launched his magazine more than three years ago, he told The Washington Post that he thought subscriptions would be between 15,000 to 20,000. The print run for his bimonthly is now more than 100,000.

The New Yorker magazine in its September 28, 2009 edition did a feature story about America’s renewed love affair with poultry using this headline: “The It Bird.”

“Chickens seem to be a perfect convergence of the economic, environmental, gastronomic, and emotional matters of the moment,” Susan Orlean wrote in The New Yorker. “In the past few years they have undergone an image rehabilitation so astounding that it should be studied by marketing consultants.”

Poultry, minus roosters, are hardy birds (quieter than some neighborhood backyard dogs at 5 a.m.) and can be kept year-round in a chicken coop, which is what Akbari says she did. In fact, her hens became a positive family project, with her husband building a coop for them last summer in their garage and her children feeding and gathering fresh eggs from her backyard birds.

“They are crazy about the hens, my boys,” said Akbari, who is willing to reduce the number of hens she had to just five if necessary. “It is a complete positive project. It can be positive for any family. It is the same hobby as someone gardening. My boys love it.”

Well, elected city council members, what’s it going to be? Does our city ordinance allow hens or not?

The Rotary Club of Dearborn is doing its part to help American soldiers in hospitals overseas and in the United States call their loved ones through the donation of more than $8,500 in phone cards.

This is the fourth consecutive year the Rotary Club of Dearborn has raised money to purchase and distribute free phone cards. And despite these tough economic times, the Rotary Club says it has quadrupled the amount of money raised to purchase phone cards since the project began.

“We start asking for donations on Veteran’s Day so that we can deliver them in time for the holidays,” said Dearborn Rotarian Ray Trudeau, who has spearheaded the Club’s fundraising efforts for this project. “This year, we raised more than $8,500 which gave us enough money to purchase more than 400, 700-minute phone cards.”

In addition to the generosity of Dearborn Rotarians, Trudeau also acknowledged donations received from other local Rotary Clubs as well as friends in the community.

Trudeau says 150 phone cards were shipped to the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany while another 150 were sent to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. and the remainder to local Veterans’ hospitals.

In response to the latest delivery of phone cards, Trudeau said he received a warm letter of appreciation from the Wounded Warrior Ministry Center at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. The center strives to provide a free phone card to each of the 700 patients who are evacuated from the different military theaters of operation every month.

“This gives us a better idea of how great the need really is,” Trudeau said.

The American Cancer Society Relay For Life® of Dearborn will officially kick off on Feb. 3 at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center, 15801 Michigan Ave.

Dearborn Relay for Life 2009.

Community members are invited to attend the Kickoff Celebration in Studio A at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center to launch Dearborn’s 2010 Relay season and the organization’s theme of  “celebrating a world with less cancer and more birthdays.”

The Kickoff will feature speakers from our community and will honor cancer survivors and caregivers. Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr., will be the opening speaker.

Registration and dinner, donated by Salsarita’s Fresh Cantina, will begin at 6 p.m. Event chair, Denise Abdullah, and committee member Morris Goodman, both cancer survivors, will host the festivities.

Those interested in registering their team for the overnight Relay For Life event on May 1-2 (10 a.m. – 10 a.m.) at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center will have the opportunity to do that as well as learn additional ways to be involved in the Relay For Life of Dearborn and the American Cancer Society.

To RSVP for the Relay For Life of Dearborn Kickoff Celebration, or for more information on how you can get involved in the Relay, contact Deena Gardner at 248.663.3427 or Deena.Gardner@cancer.org  You can also find information, start or join a team, or make a donation to the Relay For Life of Dearborn by visiting www.relayforlife.org/dearbornmi.

So another Dearborn store is closing.

Adventure Bicycle, 3806 Monroe in Dearborn.

Sadly, it is a story that seems to be playing out all too frequently these days. With every step towards a recovery we seem to make when a new business opens, it feels like two steps back when one closes.

That’s certainly how it feels with Clayton Hatchard having to close his Adventure Bicycle store on Monroe. The bicycle shop was a dream come true for Hatchard, who would have celebrated his third year in business this spring. Instead, he is holding a 50 percent-off sale on every item in his store, preparing to permanently close at month’s end.

“I take most of the blame for my store’s downfall,” said Hatchard, a 12-year bicycle sales veteran. “I really should have closed up last fall when my ‘kind hearted bank’ overnight turned my line of credit into a loan. But like a stubborn mule, I refused to give up and the past six months have been brutal.”

Adventure Bicycle owner Chad Hatchard remains upbeat about Dearborn's future.

Despite his rough ride, Hatchard remains refreshingly optimistic about Dearborn and his own future.

“I would open a business again if the circumstances were right,” he said. “And I would do it in Dearborn if the timing was right. I love Dearborn and I would never leave. I take at least fifty percent of the blame and the other fifty percent is completely out of my control.”

That’s not to say Hatchard hasn’t had his share of sleepless nights in the past year. There have been many, he says, but he was able to get through this tough period in his life because of the support of his wife and their 6-year-old son.

What you won’t hear from Hatchard is blame that his store closing was the result of paid parking in Dearborn. His customers parked for free directly outside his store. But that convenience couldn’t save his business. Interestingly, the same was true for Bikesport, a bicycle shop on Michigan Avenue in the heart of downtown west Dearborn that had free parking yet it, too, closed in November.

You also won’t hear Hatchard blame our city leaders, the location of his business or his landlord for the failure of his bike store (the building owners actually lowered his rent, he says, in his second year to try and help him). Instead,

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Dan Enos

We don’t cover sports much on these pages but when a Dearborn native gets a job as the new head coach of a Division 1 university that deserves an attaboy.

So to Edsel Ford High School graduate Dan Enos, who on Tuesday was named the new head football coach of Central Michigan University, we say well done.

Enos’ five year contract calls for a base annual salary of $250,000, with a $75,000 bonus for radio and television appearances, or $325,000 per year. Enos also could receive performance incentives.

Enos, 41, served as running backs coach at Michigan State University during the past three seasons after coaching the quarterbacks in 2006. Enos also played quarterback at Michigan State from 1987-1990.

While in high school, Enos earned all-state honors as a senior for then Coach Jack Bridges at Edsel Ford High School. He accounted for 5,743 total yards and 46 TDs during his prep career.

The Dearborn man who hoarded more than 100 live and dead Chihuahuas in his home on Orchard last summer will serve five years probation under the supervision of a Wayne County mental health court.

A July photo of some of the nearly 100 dogs removed from Lang's home.

We wrote several stories about Kenneth Lang Jr., 56, last summer after the live and dead Chihuahuas were discovered in his home packed full of debris and animal waste on Orchard Street. On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to an animal cruelty charge but will not serve any jail time.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Lang admitted in court that the animals in his home were in abusive conditions because he was overwhelmed by their sheer numbers.

Under the terms of the plea agreement, Lang will not be permitted to own any animals, and will be under the supervision of Circuit Court Judge Timothy Kenny. He also must make $3,000 restitution to the Animal Legal Defense Fund for the examination of the dead dogs, as well as yet undetermined restitution to the city of Dearborn.

We earlier wrote that cleanup costs alone to the City of Dearborn were nearly $40,000. City officials tell us they plan to tear down the home so costs will increase. The Lang family likely will have the option of giving the property to Dearborn as a way to cover all restitution payment.