Northville — A battle over control of Northville’s Main Street has resulted in a controversial ruling and invited a massive resident backlash.
From the outside looking in, the saga between the city and “Let’s Open Northville”—a nonprofit formed in October 2023—appears to be just one more populist power struggle between a city and its residents during an era of government distrust.
When this saga got on my radar, I dismissed it. The story seemed simple enough:
The municipal government of affluent Northville, which straddles Wayne and Oakland Counties, implemented a street closure on Main and Center Streets in August 2020 to increase outdoor dining and help local restaurants survive the overbearing state-wide emergency regulations set in place by Gov. Whitmer during the pandemic.
Five years post-pandemic, a group of city residents and businesses want the streets reopened. But the Wayne County Circuit Court ruling by Judge Charlene M. Elder that effectively opened the closures on June 9 seemed fraught with errors, all of which helped the plaintiffs.
Judge Elder reached back 185 years to when the plat for Northville was first laid by William Dunlap and Daniel Cady.
Dunlap and Cady were early pioneers and two of the first landowners in what eventually became Northville. After receiving land grants, they laid the first plat—a legal survey document registered with Wayne County—for Northville in 1840 with Main Street and Center Street part of that original survey.
As part of that survey, the two streets in question were designated for transportation—”point to point” as it’s referred to in the opinion.
But transportation in 1840 looks nothing like it does in 2025. Most transportation in 1840 was by foot, horse, or horse and buggy. The first experimental automobile was 45 years away and the notion of an automobile seemed like traveling to Mars does today.
This was Judge Elder’s first odd move. She steel-manned “vehicular-transportation” into the opinion stating the roads were created specifically for such use 185 years ago, though she admitted it was for horse and buggy, not automobiles.
The problems in the opinion only get worse, and again, all the errors helped the plaintiffs.
Judge Elder, seemingly trying to build a permission structure to open the streets, again reaches for the 1840 plat and says, “It is uncertain if the county transferred those rights for both streets to the city.”
This single sentence in Elder’s ruling has—according to sources I spoke with at city, county, and state levels—pulled all eyes to the appeal that was filed by Northville.
The hilarity of such an incompetent finding is made even more ridiculous by the fact Judge Elder could have easily searched the Wayne County jurisdictional map, which clearly designates Main Street and Center Street as city roads belonging to Northville. Took me two minutes to find that on Google.
In the wake of Judge Elder’s novel opinion, Northville had to open up downtown Northville to vehicles again, with certain roadside areas left barricaded to allow for limited outdoor dining.
“Let’s Open Northville” immediately filed a motion in Wayne County Circuit Court demanding the remaining barriers be dismantled, the city be fined, legal fees paid, and, in a remarkably hyperbolic move, the imprisonment of city officials.
This motion, along with the absurdity of the ruling, marked a paradigm shift in Northville, and the reaction to it might have been more than the Let’s Open Northville group was prepared to handle.
Sources I’ve spoken with in the community of Northville are, for lack of a better phrase, “Pretty pissed off now.”
In the wake of this last motion and the wider legal drama, Northville residents I spoke with were disgusted by the aggressiveness of Let’s Open Northville’s legal tactics, and individuals mostly ambivalent on the issue seemed dismayed by the deeper issues underlying conflict.
“Northville is changing, and the long-time residents of this city, the older residents to be specific, don’t like that. They don’t like us,” said a local business owner who was dragged into this battle. “They might be finally realizing there’s more of us than them. They are in the minority on this issue, and time is on our side.”
“Our business has endured a decline in business since the roads opened and we are seeing far less families in the downtown area,” said Brian Scherle and Paul Gabriel, owners of the BROWNDOG Creamery, located on Main Street.
What Scherle, Gabriel, and other business owners and residents described to me was a generational shift in Northville. Gen X and Millennials like the walkability that the closures created in the downtown social district, and the Boomers aren’t happy about this idea.
A source inside Northville government asking not to be named due to the pending appeal believes the conflict over the control of the streets is emblematic of what many adjacent suburban cities are dealing with.
“Older residents have grown upset that their city is changing. They don’t care about the specific political items at play locally anymore. They just don’t want the city aesthetically altered in any way that even casually annoys them. This is the NOT IN MY BACKYARD motif on steroids, and the older they get, the worse they behave.”
Also at issue is the who is exactly behind the Let’s Open Northville. While several prominent Northville residents support the group, nobody can conclusively identify who’s in charge. Registered as a 501 (c)(4), the group’s resident agents and funding are not disclosed. This shadowy veil invites speculation.
To be fair, the road closures are not popular with residents of Northville Township, according to sources in the neighboring municipality. One township resident explained, “I hate the closures. I have to route all the way around downtown to get to Novi where I work.”
Economic competition from neighboring communities might also play into this dynamic. My sources speculated that businesses in nearby downtown Plymouth have an obvious stake in the closure of Northville’s social district. “Why wouldn’t people who normally enjoy the walkable downtown of Northville travel only a few miles to Plymouth now?”
During the course of my reporting on this story, the seriousness of the drama was made clear as I learned a death threat was made to one of the business owners who supported the seasonal road closures. The threat was so ham-fisted and poorly constructed that the individual who made it inadvertently self-identified themselves.
Without the details being revealed, I pondered aloud, “Let me guess, it was somebody over the age of 65?” The business owner howled with laughter before replying, “Exactly.”
I reached out to Richard Corriveau, the attorney on record for the most recent motion filed in Wayne County Circuit Court by Let’s Open Northville, but he didn’t respond as of this writing.
For now, a Cold War is settling in the city. A tension now hangs over downtown, a quiet place with no families or young people walking around.
Jay Murray is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
