Lower Burns Park (LoBuPa) is bounded roughly by Packard, Stadium, Dewey and South State Street. Students go to Burns Park Elementary, but unlike their neighbors across Packard, residents vote Ann Arbor's Fourth Ward at the University of Michigan Coliseum on Hill Street.
This was traditionally the "untenured" side of the Burns Park neighborhood, with more rentals, smaller houses, and more grad students than the neighborhoods to the east.
Probably this claim was true when my wife and I moved here in 1969; many of our neighbors then were young untenured faculty (as were we). But we’re still in the same house, and the academic neighbors we know now are all tenured (as are we).
Local amenities in the neighborhood include groceries, coffee, beer and wine at Argus Farm Stop, chicken wings at Side Biscuit, coffee and wifi at Black Diesel, beer, wine, and deli at Stadium Market, ice cream at the nearby Dairy Queen, an annual yard sale at the Zen Buddhist Temple, pizza from Toarmina's, burritos at the Burrito Joint, and a short walk across the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks to The Produce Station for produce and plants. A CVS drugstore and a Salvation Army store are also right near the tracks. Venue is across Stadium, where Lucky's Market and Kroger used to be.
There is a small park with play structure at Graydon Park (formerly Rose White Park) and a ball field and park across Stadium at Frisinger Park.
Dental offices are exceptionally well represented in the neighborhood, but the giant wooden tooth that marked the entrance to the neighborhood on Golden Avenue is gone.
The neighborhood sometimes has football parking, with rates in the $20-40 range on normal game days. Most of the lots are too small to park large numbers of cars.
Neighborhood and block associations
The Lower Burns Park Neighborhood Association offers a free LBPNA Resident's Guide and is hosting a fall block party; it has a neighborhood mailing list with about 250 members (as of July 2011).
A group on Henry Street organizes an annual block party.
A group on Sycamore Place has held a weekly potluck since 1996 and organizes an annual block party, with former residents of the street joining in.
Brooklyn Avenue has a neighborhood mailing list with about 40 members, and neighbors have hosted block parties and potlucks. There is an active use of the mailing list for sharing tools like extension ladders, since there's really no reason that every single family has to have a 14' aluminum ladder to use once a year, and every reason to know how to find a ladder in a hurry if you need one.
A group on Rose Avenue organizes an annual block party.
