BLOG

I’m an administrator for the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute at the
University of Michigan. We support physician scientists—those are people with MD
PhDs who do clinical work and see patients, and they also have laboratories and do
research. I came here from California to go to U of M, and I’ve been with the university
since graduating in 2002. I got a temporary job at the university, then went back to grad
school, but never really left U of M.

I met my husband in 2008—we’ve been married for 11 years, and we have three kids.
We’ve lived in Saline for all of that time, and

I’ve wanted to own my own restaurant ever since I was a kid. I started in the restaurant
business at Bill Knapp’s in Ann Arbor, which was where Zingerman’s Roadhouse is
now. After graduation, I started working for a guy named Kevin Downey.

The year I started working for Kevin, he was the owner of a restaurant called Fox &
Hounds in Bloomfield Hills. I was just out of college, and getting that job was like
winning the lottery: I learned more there than I actually learned in my four years in
school.

Honestly, I was surprised he hired me at all. One of the questions I was asked was,
‘You are brand new out of college. You’re rea

Put your business front row and center at Salty Summer Sounds, Summerfest and Oktoberfest!

We love this building. It was a pilot project for the Match on Main Grant Program by Michigan EDC and was brought up to code for seated dining — new 40 gal water heater, upgraded electric, 2 ADA bathrooms and kitchen. Home to the former beloved Cheese Shop of Saline, the project ended just as the pandemic reared its ugly hea

Grants awarded to Grand Haven, Grosse Pointe, Lansing, Lapeer, Niles, Otsego, Saline and Sault Ste Marie

LANSING, Mich. – Governor Whitmer and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) have announced that eight communities around Michigan have been awarded a total of $160,000 in grants to support downtown enhancement and improvement projects.

Governor Whitmer is committed to supporting small businesses as Michigan continues growing its economy. Michigan has added jobs for 10 straight months, including adding 172,000 jobs year over year, and has a low unemployment rate of 4.7% that has declined 10 months in a row.

“Vibrant downtown areas are critical to creating jobs, attracting new investments, and helping local businesses

Join us at The 109 Cultural Exchange in the heart of Downtown Saline for a live theatre performance presented by Mind the Gap Theatre Productions!

Concord Theatricals summarizes this hilarious full-length play —

Middle-aged and married, overworked and a bit of a sad sack, Barney Cashman (played by Adrian Diffey) wants to join the sexual revolution before it’s too late and arranges three seductions. The first, Elaine Navazio (Margaret Gilkes) proves to be a foul-mouthed bundle of neuroses. Bobbi Michele is next, a young actress who’s t

SALINE, Michigan — The 109 Cultural Exchange will host an exhibition of oil paintings by Sandra Difazio, April 18–May 18. 

Difazio paints en plein air, in locales throughout the state, where she focuses on the effects of shifting light and shadow within the environment. Her exhibition,“Visual Impressions of Michigan,” captures urban scenes, farms, fields, lakes, rivers, and shore lines of the Great Lakes. “Plein air painting gives me the opportunity to feel the environment and attempt to translate what I experience. The complexity tests my ability to think things out.”

Difazio’s work has been included in “Art Aroun

SALINE, Michigan — The 109 Cultural Exchange will host an exhibition of watercolors by Nancy Murray, March 15–April 13. Murray, a resident of Milan, MI, draws inspiration from the natural world and through travel. 

The series of watercolors, exhibited under the title “Everyday Life: Finding the Commonplace in Uncommon Places,” is painted from her travels, depicting a blend of culture, commerce and interesting locales. Subjects include a woman guarding sheep in the higher elevations of Peru, a fish market in the Galapagos, life along a river in Guatemala, as well as moments captured in Japan, Scotland, and several islands in the Caribbean.

Murray’s work has been included in “Art Around Saline,” and in the permanent collections

One afternoon on the day before Christmas Eve 2021, a big semi-truck cut the corner from eastbound Michigan Avenue onto S Ann Arbor Street and plowed over a lamp post onto the sidewalk without stopping. 

So grateful to think that temps are getting warmer and our downtown hanging flower baskets… last year they really did splash a ton of color from our lamp posts! It’s one of those things that we absolutely enjoy when we’re here. Our Design Team works with KBK Garden Center every winter to get our flowers growing on, and it really is a sweet effort.

And so this is how we roll to make those flowers spill over our sidewalks! Be Bloomin’ is a fundraising campaign to help provide these colorful flowers in hanging baskets that breathe beauty, color and life into our downtown each and every spring and summer.  Our petunia pots can be seen all along Michigan Avenue and Ann Arbor Street, from

Come to Downtown Saline and find us at The 109 to view SVA’s collaborative art installation, Sum of the Parts! 

Salt Valley Arts has taken a well-known work of art and divided it onto a grid.  Check it out and learn more here!

Each participating artist purchased a square that matched one part of the grid and reproduced it any way they wished in any media - quilt, paint, bead, weave or knit, pom-poms, wood, colored paper, feathers - anything that could adhere to foam core board was fai

We are really proud to present our last two annual reports on the work we did throughout 2020 and 2021 in the name of local economic recovery! Our efforts to address impacts created by the pandemic are outlined in these graphic reports that are easy to read and compare. Take a look at how Downtown Saline adapted to safety regulations and exciting outdoor innovations to support our brick and mortar shops and restaurants. And learn more about our work and message to make Downtown Saline a welcoming place for all! It’s easy to see why we really are the perfect pinch of home.

Download your copy of the 2020 Saline Main Street IMPACT Report

So. We didn’t do such a hot job promoting this amazing opportunity, but at Saline Main Street we really do want to show your art in our gallery space at the 109 Cultural Exchange! If maybe people could just get to know our artist and arts critic in-residence, John Anderson — they couldn’t help but want to be part of this new downtown artspace? He’s really such a big part of what we want this space to be for downtown visual arts and cultural richness! 

Let us introduce you via this pretty cool Q&A to our amazing friend / artist / arts critic – John Anderson AKA “JA.” 

We all needed a little glitz this year to cheer us up. The burden of the pandemic on our downtown brick and mortar businesses weighed heavily, and at Saline Main Street it all but killed us to see our wonderful community struggle so much. When things are rough, but you have to keep going? It can be hard as hell.

So we wanted to lighten things up a little. Enter local artist and our partner in light crimes, Gary Parker Nola.

Last winter, we were awarded an Art

I recently listened to a podcast because the title compelled me. “Chef James Rigato on future of restaurants | One of Metro Detroit’s top chefs talks about what the transformations of the past few years mean to the restaurant business.”

So it really is happening in other places… Almost daily, I engage in conversations with our brick and mortar business owners and employees about the hidden pain they are dealing with, and as such I’ve decided to use this space to share with you, our beloved and most important public, how much the way we

It’s fall in rural Michigan and the leaves are busting out with color. What a perfect time to hop on a small town shopping / leaf peeping excursion! We live in the most beautiful place with sweet little downtown shops and restaurants — and this is the perfect way to experience it! This Saturday ride with us! Start in Downtown Blissfield and then head to Saline Main Street and on to Milan M

When I first arrived in Saline to take the helm as executive director at Saline Main Street, I thought how great it would be to have a mixed media arts space in the heart of downtown — something similar to Amazing Things Arts Center (ATAC) in my hometown of Framingham, Mass. I saw how instrumental ATAC was in attracting visitors and patrons to its small business neighbors, and believed that an arts and culture community space like that would benefit the small businesses in Downtown Saline.

That arts space vision included a gallery — open to artists

Another letter recently crossed my desk (lol email landed in my inbox). But, the theme lately is the same. I was thinking the other day how a year ago, people were really pulling together. We kinda thought the populus would start to feel burnout last fall. Fall 2020. But, it was a whole lot more hopeful feeling than we figured and people showed up to eat outside with coats on and blankets, and just made it a crazy year to remember.

Well, here we are a whole year later.

People are feeling fried. Folks are on edge. And, painfully, the sad and ugly truth is our service industry is feeling it. Hard. I took a pic of this sign in Brecon Grille’s window yesterday and it just really underscores the reality these guys are dealing w

Invitation to Submit Honorees for this Living Tribute

 SALINE, MI (September 7, 2021) – Saline Main Street brings back our annual banner project to commemorate veterans and active duty military! This Veterans Day, the organization will once again line the streets of Downtown Saline with the faces of locally connected women and men who have served or are currently enlisted in the US Armed Forces. 

We invite residents and stakeholders of Saline to honor your friends, family and loved ones by dedicating a banner in their honor. 

It is loud and it is wicked fast. And, it stirs a feeling within the very core of you, the pedestrian when waiting on the curb for the light to cross. If you have kids, chances are that you experience anxiety and even fear. For me, as much as I cross? I often envision what would happen if I, like my dad who has Parkinson’s Disease, lost my balance or simply faltered a misstep.

Sometimes it is downright infuriating. Double trailers, huge oversized trucks and semi’s crank through this intersection when it turns yellow and even red. The noise is deafening and the speed pulls at you and takes your breath away. This is NOT an exaggeration. The light turns to allow

We recently received an email about Umbrella Square. It was more of a challenge actually, by someone who is a supporter of Downtown Saline, but who had questions about how this park-like space supports our brick and mortar businesses in the way they are currently forced to function. We thought we might share our response, in order to provide an explanation how the Square currently functions and why it is so vital to the safety, enjoyment and recovery of Downtown Saline.

The original email is copied and pasted here —

“I have heard over and over from friends or even nearby family, how THE LIMITED TIME the restaurants are open (No lunch hours and no Sunday or Monday )… and the displeasure of shutting a street for the city without offering

Let’s start at the 4 corners and work with Saline business owners and leaders to establish this model in other parts of Saline for businesses outside the downtown. We have always offered this consultation and modeling and are happy to move this forward. We need partners (we operate with 1 person on staff and nonprofit budget), but we are EAGER to help ALL small businesses. Always and passionately so 

Support our work to help small businesses recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Please donate $10 to our efforts and we will in turn give a Saline Main Street salt shaker mask to a local employee while the stakes are still high to keep our frontline workers safe.

The $10 Mask Challenge is a fun way for people to support the work of Saline Main Street and show your local pride and gratitude for people who take care of us each and every day. It’s a WIN-WIN! Head to