Heather Hills

The mid-1990s line, and why the exact year matters

Polybutylene supply piping was used in residential construction into the mid-1990s and then stopped. It has a known failure history, it can affect insurability, and identifying it is a matter of looking at the pipe rather than guessing from the era.

A subdivision built across the mid-to-late 1990s therefore straddles the transition. Houses at the earlier end may have it; houses at the later end are unlikely to. That makes the build year of the specific house a first-order question rather than a detail, and it makes 'the 1990s' too coarse an answer.

Ask an inspector to identify the supply piping by material explicitly, and where polybutylene is present, establish whether it has been replaced and by whom. Where it has, that is a genuine selling point worth documenting.

The rest of the 1990s agenda applies as usual: original roofs on a second covering at best, original mechanicals past service life, original double-glazing failing at the seal, and hardboard or composite siding that needs inspecting close up at the bottom courses rather than from the curb.

A name with topography in it

Where a subdivision's name references terrain, it is usually describing something real, and grade change has practical consequences worth checking on a specific lot.

Sloping ground produces walkout and daylight lower levels, which add usable, naturally lit space that a standard basement does not, and which are worth a meaningful difference in a comparable-sales analysis rather than being folded into a square footage figure. Where a house has one, it is worth naming explicitly in a listing.

Grade change also means water moves. How the ground drains around a lower level in a wet spring is the question, along with the condition of any below-grade waterproofing and whether a finished lower level shows evidence of past intrusion. On a thirty-year-old house those are ordinary questions with ordinary answers — until they are not.

And on a sloping site, the driveway is worth a thought: a steep approach is a different proposition in a Michigan February than it looks in a July photograph.

A related point about 85-house subdivisions generally. At that size the neighbors know the place properly — which lots hold water, where the drainage is awkward, how the streets behave in a Michigan February, and what the association actually does. That is information no inspection produces and no listing contains, and on a small street people will generally tell you. It is worth an hour before an offer.

City or township

Plymouth is two municipalities sharing one name. The City of Plymouth is roughly two square miles containing the downtown; Plymouth Charter Township wraps around it and is considerably larger. They are separate governments with separate taxes, separate services and separate elected officials.

A Plymouth address does not distinguish between them, and the difference is real: a different millage, township rather than city services, and the downtown as a drive rather than a walk. Neither is better — they are different products at different prices, and comparable sales drawn across the line without adjusting will produce a wrong number.

The town itself was settled in 1825, when Keziah and William Starkweather, farmers from Preston, Connecticut, bought 240 acres from the federal government on March 11 at a dollar and a quarter an acre. It was incorporated as a village in 1867 and became a city in 1932, which is why the two governments exist today rather than one.

Three high schools on one campus

Plymouth-Canton Community Schools runs an arrangement with no real parallel nearby. The Plymouth-Canton Educational Park puts three separate high schools on a single campus of about 305 acres: Salem, which opened in 1970, Canton, which opened in 1972, and Plymouth, which opened in 2002.

Each has its own building, name, colors and mascot — Salem's Rocks, Canton's Cobras and Plymouth's Wildcats — and each serves grades nine through twelve. But students can take classes across all three academic buildings, and facilities are shared rather than triplicated: one auto shop, one culinary facility, one robotics shop and one varsity football field, alongside three swimming pools and three soccer fields.

It is a structural fact about the district rather than a matter of opinion, and it regularly surprises people arriving from somewhere with a conventional single high school. Elementary and middle school assignment follows the home address, but the high school does not: students are assigned randomly among Canton, Plymouth and Salem. The district also reaches into Canton Township, Salem, Superior and Northville Township.

Windmills, then BB guns

Plymouth's industrial identity came from an unlikely pivot. The Plymouth Iron Windmill Company was formed in 1882 to make windmills, a business that did not prosper. What did prosper was a premium the company gave away with them, and in 1895 the firm renamed itself for it: the Daisy Manufacturing Company.

Daisy made millions of air rifles at its factory on Union Street, southeast of Main, and it was not alone — the Markham Air Rifle Company had been established in Plymouth in July 1886, and the Markham Chicago is generally credited as the first commercially successful BB gun. The Red Ryder, introduced in 1940 and familiar to a great many people from A Christmas Story, was originally made here.

Daisy left for Rogers, Arkansas in 1958. The Union Street factory was used as office space afterward and was occupied until it was demolished in 2005. The Plymouth Historical Museum holds the company's archives.

None of it is visible from a subdivision street today. It is worth knowing because it explains why a farming township on the Middle Rouge grew into a town with a downtown of its own rather than a crossroads, and why the street names and the museum are what they are.

The park is named for the man who invented the center line

Hines Park runs through Plymouth as part of a seventeen-mile chain of Wayne County parkland following the Middle Rouge from Dearborn out to Northville — one of the more substantial pieces of continuous public riverside anywhere in suburban Michigan.

Edward N. Hines sat on the Wayne County Road Commission from 1906 until his death in 1938, having come to it from a Detroit printing business. In 1909 he was responsible for the first full mile of concrete road pavement in the world, on Woodward Avenue between Six Mile and Seven Mile. Two years later he had the idea of painting a line down the middle of a road to separate opposing traffic — the account has him watching a horse-drawn milk wagon leak a line down the street — and the first painted center line was laid in 1911 on River Road in Trenton, in this same county.

Around 1925 he set about building a parkway along the Middle Rouge. Acquiring the land and the money took years. In 1937, the year before he died, the Middle Rouge Parkway was renamed in his honor. Hilltop Golf Course is nearby too — eighteen public holes built in 1927, redesigned by Jerry Matthews in 1982, and run by Plymouth Township's parks department.

Outdoor recreation around Powell Road

The western township's public recreation includes Hilltop Golf Course at 47000 Powell Road and Plymouth Township Park on Ann Arbor Trail. Golf, walking paths, a fishing pond and play areas offer different ways to spend time outdoors. Farther afield, Maybury State Park in the Northville area provides a larger trail destination. Trips toward downtown Plymouth lead to the shops and dining around Kellogg Park, including Compari's on South Main and the Penn Theatre on Penniman.

Buying or selling here

Eighty-five houses of consistent form and a short build window produce good comparables and few of them, which means widening the set deliberately and adjusting rather than relying on whatever sold most recently.

For a seller, the two things worth documenting are the supply piping — particularly if it has been replaced — and the lower level, if the lot gave the house a walkout. Both are specific, both are checkable, and both get asked about.