Fountain & Felch

Lower Waterhill? We have all heard of Water Hill and it is on Google maps, though it is not a neighborhood registered with the City of Ann Arbor. Since those of us west of the hip area also needed to have some neighborhood cohesion, I’ve registered the Sunset Hilltop neighborhood association. I was startled to find an area called Upper Water Hill on Google and ArborWiki, with the same borders (Sunset, Brooks, Miller, Newport). It is not registered with the city and no name is associated with it, so I don’t know how this happened or what it means.

Ironically, Water Hill is represented on the North Main Task Force, though it is not a registered association. Apparently the concept of “neighborhood” is very fluid these days. (The map on the city’s website shows many overlays. One can register a neighborhood that overlaps another one.)

@Vivianne,

Per our previous conversation, I tried to map out the Sunset Hilltop Neighborhood (Brooks, Miller, Newport, Sunset) on Google Maps. Unfortunately someone had already labeled the area “Upper Water Hill.” Personally, I like Sunset Hilltop a lot more than Upper Water Hill. We have so few proper neighborhood names in Ann Arbor that I feel we shouldn’t be doubling up on them. And the area in question definitely was built mostly at a different time than Water Hill. Sorry, that was a little ranty.

@Trevor, looks like a silver maple.

Thanks, Ben. I had forgotten (still don’t remember) that we discussed this – maybe on Twitter? I appreciate your looking into that.

There is something very me-too about “Upper Water Hill” and our neighborhood is very different, mostly built around 1950 and later, predominantly ranch houses. Used to be an apple and pear orchard, apparently. Maybe it should be named “Apple Hill”. (There is another Hilltop, so we needed the Sunset to make the location clear.)

I live in what I assume would be “Lower Waterhill” – Hiscock St. We had no power outage.

I think we need some more “neighborhoodlet” names. We in the western half of the southwest quadrant of Waterhill (aka the western half of Lower Waterhill) would like to our area to be known as Mack Mews.

Google Maps has a bunch of “neighborhoodlet” names nowadays, some related to elementary schools, some to parks, some neither. There’s Upper Water Hill, Water Hill, Wildwood Park, Eberwhite, Selma (!), Old West Side, Germantown, Old Fourth Ward, North and Lower Burns Park, Angells (sic), and a few others. It seems pretty arbitrary, and several actual neighborhood names don’t show up (Ann Arbor Hills, Lansdowne, Lower Town). I’m really curious where they came from. For a long time my neighborhood, outside the city limits, was labeled “Haisley” but that has now migrated closer to the actual Haisley School.

Ypsi has Depot Town, College Heights (is that real?), and Gault Village (naking a neighborhood after a derelict shopping center seems like bad public relations–or was the neighborhood called that first?)

(naming, not naking)

And.. sorry to keep blathering on…Bing Maps has a whole different set, including Foster (which is correct), Glendale-Liberty, “West Area,” Vet’s Park Triangle, Dover-Parkside, Mushroom Park, West Liberty, Orkney/Culver, New West Side, Kimberly Hills, Tuomy Hills, Oxbridge, Angells again, Clinton-George, Off Broadway, and many others. Some of these are actual official neighborhood names, I think (Bromley, for example). No trace of Water Hill, Germantown or the Old West Side.

I wondered what the utility of registering neighborhood associations with the city was, and found this useful page on the city website: [link]

Registered groups are notified about proposed developments in their area and invited to meetings regarding these proposals. They are invited to participate in other city-wide processes such as zoning code amendments and parking improvements as well. Recommendations and comments made by registered associations are taken into consideration by City Planning Commission. City Council, by resolution, is committed to protect older or established neighborhoods. There are approximately 111 registered residential or commercial associations in Ann Arbor.

The page links to listings of all the registered associations, and each association has a detailed map. So if somebody wanted to correct the neighborhood names in Google or Bing databases, there is an official source they could use.

Seems like it wou

I meant to end my comment by saying that since Water Hill does seem to have a real neighborhood identity, it seems to me that it would be a good idea for them to register.

Here’s a link to a large map of all the neighborhood associations in the city. It’s a large file (11.1. Mb) in pdf format: [link]

It looks like there are already overlapping associations in the Water Hill area. Friends of West Park covers some, also North Area, Greater Sunset/Brooks, Spring-Brooks-Summit. So I take it back, no need for yet another! Maybe just a name change or re-alignment?

I “made a study” of neighborhood associations some years ago when I was trying to find representatives for a county committee. It turns out that many of these are inactive, but there is no mechanism that I know of to terminate them. At the time, I found that the contact person had moved away, etc. and often associations did not have meetings or any activity.

If there is an active group working on behalf of a neighborhood, they should be registered so that they are accessible, and also so that they receive those notices. Sometimes the city has satisfied a requirement for public notice simply by notifying these associations.

I can tell you that Greater Sunset/Brooks has taken no action since establishing the Sunset Brooks Natural Area (about 8 years ago). This association was formed in response to a specific development proposal, which was derailed with the purchase of the area for the park. I suspect that this is the case for many dormant associations – they were formed at a time that a specific threat or problem surfaced, then no further activity ensued.

George, that’s awesome, thanks. For the curious, here’s Mapquest’s version, which includes a neighborhood called “Plansmart.”

Ha… I was curious about when the various plats were created and what they are–at some level those are the underlying “neighborhoods” in the city–so I went to the city website and tried to use their search box… and no matter what I entered, the result was the current page translated by Google into Spanish. Does that happen for anyone else?

For the curious, the interactive plat map is here: [link]. It’s quite fascinating. You can look at the original platting documents (inlcuding a map) for each plat. Much of Water Hill, for instance, was originally part of Hiscock’s Improved Plat or Hiscock’s Addition, which were platted in the 1850s, back when Miller was (apparently) called Graham Road.

The best thing about living in Waterhill (and specifically, Lower Waterhill), is that we make it what it is. Registering our neighborhood would secure its geography for others to understand, but our neighbors define what it actually is. Want to find out more? Come hang out!

“I went to the city website and tried to use their search box… and no matter what I entered, the result was the current page translated by Google into Spanish. Does that happen for anyone else?”

I’ve had that happen too. On many, but not all, of their pages they have a Google Translate feature down at the bottom. It’s supposed to work by clicking on the flag icons in the bar at the bottom of the page. For some reason, if you put text in the search field and hit the return key, it triggers the translation feature. If instead you type your text in the search field and click the magnifying glass icon next to it, search works normally. It’s been a problem for a long time. I think I might have sent feedback about this in the past, but now that I’ve typed it up here, I’ll send it again.

Here is the history of Upper Water Hill. Three years ago I had a conversation with Paul Tinkerhess about his use of the name “Water Hill.” He said it was for the water treatment plant. I said, “Wait a second, that is my neighborhood!” We agreed that he could call his neighborhood (which does have “Fountain” and “Spring” streets!) Water Hill and we could call ours Upper Water Hill.

Now we’ve started a nextdoor.com neighborhood site–also at Paul’s urging. If you live in the neighborhood, find the next door site here: [link]