Did Dr. Reimer Cross the Line?

[XLFD]

When you take a look at the picture below, taken from the NE corner of the Rath-Loomis intersection in Ludington looking north, what problem do you notice?

Those familiar with recent controversies involving the streetside columns of the recently finished building for AndyS Restaurant might guess that the problem lies in the nearness of the columns to the street.  Others might key in to my own prejudices towards safety revealed recently in this article, and say the issue was with the parked car being too close to the Ludington Avenue intersection, and it isn't even parked in the northernmost space.  These observations have merit, but there is even a bigger problem; look again, then keep reading.

Downtown Ludington, like many downtown areas, have businesses that want to be as close to the street as possible in order to encourage folks to drop in and spend their money.  They cannot put their business out in the street, and blocking the area off-street that is still in the right-of-way would make it difficult for folks to walk in, and generally against some local and state laws.  Thus, to maximize their potential, they build their buildings right up to the edge of the right of way, and so all around the downtown of Ludington and most other towns, the structures line up against the right of way, normally abutting the sidewalk, you can see this from most downtown streets.

South James Street, above shows this feature down its length, where construction is uniformly against the right-of-way.  Businesses still have a tendency to clutter up the right-of-way, as you see with the sidewalk sign, table, and flower containers, but it's always been a given that you cannot construct your building past the right-of-way border.  If you take the time to do the measurements, from the front of a building on one side of the street to the building across the street, you'll find this is true throughout the downtown.  That is true even on some other downtown side streets, such as when you look werst from the SW corner of the James-Loomis intersection and see Loomis conforming to the same rule.

When you look west down Ludington Avenue in the block where AndyS is, you see this happening for all buildings, even AndyS (see picture below).  The 'front' of AndyS is in conformance.

The problem arises when you look on the Rath Street side and it's really more obvious than column problems.  The first picture we showed was looking north, let's look south from across the street:

Notice the crosswalk line on Ludington Avenue.  The restaurant in the foreground is built to the east of that north-south crosswalk line.  We can see that AndyS across the avenue is built partially beyond and to the west of that line, with promontories that extend even further.  Riemer's team took out the sidewalk on Rath and poured the new sidewalk about a couple feet to the west and knowingly extended the building footprint a couple feet into the right-of-way.  This appears to be a very diabolical intentional move on the Riemer's team part, but other than a mention of it by Councilor John Terzano at the 9-8-2025 meeting, it has not been acknowledged by the city, even at their special 8-6-2025 meeting that focused on the AndyS legal issues.  

Terzano was absent from the 9-22-2025 meeting, but City Manager Aldrich would discuss the ongoing controversy and proposing a solution to get AndyS up and running, and it involved Dr. Riemer spending more money on a street improvement (this will be looked at in depth in a future article).   Meanwhile, the picture above shows a closer look, where one can see the north-south sidewalk line much closer, approximately two feet closer, to the AndyS building than it is to the building in the foreground, ironically an attorney's office.

This seems to be a premeditated land grab by "Riemer's team", an entity that was granted a special permit by the city to build an overhang over the right of way, and who then abused that privilege by not only building those columns further out than they should have, but also by extending their building footprint out feet more than they should.  This should not be resolved by a mere quid pro quo such as that proposed by the city manager, as that would not be fair to the other business owners who have built in the downtown and followed the rules.