Capitol Park is a small patch of land surrounded by a triangle of buildings. It’s hard to see any other buildings or streets. It feels like Manhattan… self-contained. But it’s just 1 block from Woodward and one block from the Book-Cadilac Hotel. Here’s Richard Karp.

“It’s a little lost forgotten little triangular park right in the middle of everything and the way the buildings surround it create their own little independent micro-community. The size of the buildings and the situation of the park create an interesting pedestrian scale. It will be a great epicenter of housing and retail activity. It’s just perfect.”

Richard Karp’s biggest project to date is the Durant Hotel in Flint. For Capitol Park he beat out Dan Gilbert, John Ferchill and the Ilitchs.

“I feel pretty good about it. I think the DEGC (Detroit Economic Growth Authority run by George Jackson) made the right decision.”

Karp lives in Lansing and grew up in Southfield.

For a long description of the Farwell and other iconic Detroit buildings click below.

http://historicdetroit.org/building/farwell-building/

Click on www.MiForeclosureResponse.org.

The new website was announced Monday in Lansing at a conference of 1,500 affordable housing builders, financiers and advocates.

It’s called the Community Foreclosure Response Tool Kit.

The tool kit is meant to help people increase savings and decrease debt. Charter One Bank paid for it.

Sandra Pierce is the CEO of Charter One Bank in Michigan and Indiana. Pierce predicts the state’s unemployment rate will drop below the national average. Pierce grew up in Detroit and graduated from Wayne State University. She speaks with passion about keeping neighborhoods intact.

She wants Michiganders to have accessible information and not give up hope.

“It’s up to all of us to stabilize neighborhoods and then make them vital again and have them thrive again. Every single one of us needs to get involved. That’s how our state is going to survive and thrive,” Pierce said.

The Royal Bank of Scotland owns Citizens Financial Group out of Providence, Rhode Island. That entity then owns Charter One Financial in Cleveland. They then own Charter One Banks across the Midwest.

Pierce said her bank had only 200 new foreclosures in Michigan in 2011. So she believes the trend is being reversed.

In 2008, journalists kept returning to the number $700 billion. That’s what the Bush Administration provided in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP. But on December 5, 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank gave Wall Street banks $1.2 trillion dollars. Bloomberg News reported this in November last year. They tallied the total cost to taxpayers to be $7.7 trillion.  Some estimates since then have risen to $12 trillion.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

“The media and foundations and elected officials often times in the last couple years have been asleep because they’ve been numbed by the crisis,” said Neeta Delaney, the co-director of the Michigan Foreclosure task force. The task force is supported by the Community Economic Development association of Michigan (CEDAM) and The Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA).

“There are some real opportunities that we’re being presented with,” Delaney said, “to think about redeveloping our communities in different ways as a result of all of a sudden having vacant properties.”

CEDAM and the Community Research Institute from the Johnson Center at Grand Valley State University published a study called the Michigan Historical Residential Foreclosure Data Project. That was in February 2012. The study says that between 2005 and 2010 “foreclosures began on over 416,000 loans, which is 9% of the housing stock.”

Aubrey McClendon owns 330 acres on the north side of the Kalamazoo River. He bought them 6 years ago. He wants to put up 100 houses, a marina, a hotel, a nine-hole golf course and horse riding stables. He has sued the community to change the zoning. The community has spent $420,000 to protect itself. Then last year, the township told McClendon, OK. But in November, a federal judge refused to let the township give away their authority. So the resort complex is blocked for the moment. Marcia Perry is with the Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance.

“This isn’t a little bit. This is basically erasing the current zoning and taking it from the least developed to some of the most intensely developed property in the entire area. When it has been for years and years singled out as the area most important to preserving our community’s identity which is essential to our livelihoods.”

As far back as the 1950′s, locals have passed zoning to keep out big stores, fast food and subdivisions. The area has rare plant and animal life and steep dunes that lead down to a quaint village with shops and restaurants. The McClendon property would have been exempt from zoning forever. The judge’s ruling was rare, like the species on the property that Marcia Perry loves:

“Bird watchers can come here and see endangered prairie warblers when they won’t be able to see them other places. I see that in the future it will continue to grow and attract the tourists that have been feeding all of us for a century now.”

Aubrey McClendon is part owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA. He’s married to a cousin of Congressman Fred Upton. They’re hiers to the Whirlpool Appliance fortune. McClendon rarely comes to Saugatuck. Same for his top lawyer and fellow investor Stephen Neumer. Their lawsuit complains of “spot zoning” and “wrongful taking….of private property.” Neumer says the community is mistaken.

“The ecology is going to be completely respected in the process. We’ve identified all of the wetlands, the emerging wetlands. The endangered species, the emerging endangered species, the flood plains.”

Neumer and McClendon’s complex would stand 90 feet tall, higher than anything ever built between Chicago and Mackinaw.

“It’s a piece of ground that can in fact have human beings living there very carefully placed, very respectful to the ground and at the same time preserve the beautiful nature that the people of Saugatuck care about and so does Saugatuck LLC.”

Saugatuck LLC is one of the companies created by Neumer and McClendon to represent their Michigan real estate. McClendon made his money speculating on oil and gas in the south. He owns 70,000 acres in his native Oklahoma. Forbes Magazine calls him the 1,075 richest person in the world.

Photo Courtesy of Erin Wilkinson

In the last 30 years, the air has gotten a degree and a half
warmer. In the next 40 years, precipitation will increase by 6 inches. This is
according to Dr. David Lusch from Michigan State University’s Department of
Geography and the Institute of Water Research.

“You’re gonna see that it’s the timing of the precipitation and
whether the result of the precipitation is being stored for longer term use by infiltrating
and building our ground water or whether it’s being lost for immediate use by
run off.”

Dr. Lusch is part of the chorus of experts who’re charting
climate change. More fertilizer from farms and  suburban lawns will drain faster and harder
into rivers and out into the Great Lakes. They’ll choke the lakes with algae. Evaporation
will lower lake levels. Says Lusch:

“We’re anticipating a decline in the duration and thickness
of winter ice. Duh. Did anybody get out ice fishing this year? It was hazardous
at best.”

And climate change is affecting agriculture, Michigan’s
second largest industry.

“Warmer temperatures, if you’re in the livestock industry,
warmer temperatures are likely going to suppress your livestock’s appetites,
decrease their weight gain and if you’re in the dairy industry, extreme heat
also diminishes productivity of dairy cattle. We’re thinking that this part of
Michigan will feel like southern Ohio by mid-century.”

So if you’re raising, chickens, hogs or cows they might need
air-conditioning. That means, the price of food will go up. The speakers today
are sounding alarm bells. But they don’t say the situation is hopeless. Every
citizen can help fight climate change. You can start by reducing your use of
fossil fuels.

Craig Fahle ended his show on WDET saying:

“This question came from Dan in Ferndale who wants to know how Oakland County can position itself as a leader in ending sprawl and encouraging reconstruction of areas that have already been built up, reinvestment in existing areas…”

“Well. We’re doing that through our main street program,” said Patterson. And the Oakland County Executive touted reinvestment in the bricks and mortar of places like Ferndale and Holly. Then Patterson said:

“But contained in his question was a pejorative. He calls it sprawl.  I don‘t want to end sprawl. One man’s sprawl is another man’s economic development. He sees it as sprawl. I see it as the people exercising their free choice to move any place they want in my county or Livingston County and Lapeer and open up a business. And that’s their right as citizens. If they want to live outside the perimeter of the City of Detroit or the surrounding suburbs. They got a right to do that.”

But not everyone has that right, says Thomas Sugrue, author of the 1996 awarding winning history book ‘Origins of the Urban Crisis.’

“Beginning in the 1920’s, in Detroit, realtors and housing developers began to put into place racially restricted covenants. They were attached to the deed of the house. It said this property may not be used by someone of the non-Caucasian race.”

Sugrue was 5 years old when he watched the 1967 riots from his yard near Fenkell Street on Detroit’s west side. He ended up at Brother Rice High School in Birmingham.

“Racial restrictions still remain in deeds in many places up to today even if they’re not enforceable any more in a court of law.  So they were an important device not just for keeping blacks out but for sending a signal that these neighborhoods would be inhospitable to African-Americans. They shouldn’t even try to move in.”

As the county prosecutor in the 1970’s, L. Brooks Patterson led the fight against busing for racial integration.  Back on WDET Thursday, Patterson said,

“They call it sprawl. No no you stay here! We’re gonna force you to do your development in the city of Detroit. That’s undemocratic and it’s not gonna happen. I think their sprawl… I love it. Because I call it economic development.”

“One thing I want to do is see more urban development in terms of rebuilding our cities and stop some of the urban sprawl, have less of that.”

That was Governor Rick Snyder a year ago at an agriculture conference.

“and have more opportunities to put land into use. I think there’s opportunity for agriculture to grow in our state.”

Last fall at a conference on high speed rail, Snyder said Oakland County supports his bus rapid transit plan for linking the city and suburbs.

“Brooks Patterson is being a good member of that.”

Patterson is supporting buses but not trains. He believes places like Walled Lake and Oxford can thrive when surrounded by strip malls and subdivisions. Governor Snyder, by contrast, created an office of urban initiatives.

“No one benefits by the continuing sprawl. The real goal is how do we rebuild our central cities and at the same time encourage good rural development.”

During his campaign, Rick Snyder spoke to the Urban Land Institute. And to the Michigan Municipal League where Rick Cole also spoke. Cole was born in Royal Oak. He’s been manager and mayor of 3 California cities, including Pasadena.

“We build our cities around 6,000 pound behemoths. That’s great if you’re a car. Not so good if you’re a human being.”

Cole says sprawl has forced urban planners like himself to follow a form based code so cities are good for walking not driving.

“And the result is you have to have a code for the kind of city you want to be. Otherwise you become the kind of city that is placeless that has no value.”

Rick Snyder is assessing the crises in banking and real estate. L. Brooks Patterson must be too. But this week, Oakland County has got 185 tax foreclosures in Bloomfield Township, some with Bloomfied Hills addresses. They’re on streets like Charing Cross, Ardmoor and Country Club Drive.

If you go camping at a Michigan State Park, nearly everyone is white. African-Americans are rare, so are other non-whites. But at least one set of Chinese-Americans are venturing out and breaking those stereotypes. About 30 people from seven families live in Rochester Hills. They’re engineers in the auto industry, including Jiang Dei.

“We just arrived today. At the beach we enjoyed the sunset. Took a lot of pictures and walked around the lakeshore.”

This year the group chose Orchard Beach State Park. It’s just north of Manistee. Legal Yi was smiling.

“It’s such a beautiful state. Michigan. Right? We work for Michigan and we have got to enjoy the other resources in Michigan also. Life is so beautiful. Michigan is so beautiful.”

Yi and some others also went to Traverse City and on to Sleeping Bear Dunes. On Manistee Lake they rented a boat. They went fishing.

“We caught one. We caught one and released it.  We have our fish story. We caught one 3 feet long and we let it go, like unvoluntarily, because it escaped.”

Manistee is salmon country. Other campers are cleaning dozens of fish every night. Park officials haul away 3 garbage cans of salmon heads and tails. Signs of abundance that Asians would be more inclined to keep. Jiang Dei is thrilled with the opportunities.

“You know we all love Michigan. So we try to go camping different places each year. Like this is our third try. We tried Silver Lake. Very comfortable, very beautiful. We tried Rifle River Park, very beautiful. We love Michigan. We want to go everywhere.”

China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. But the average Chinese uses far less  energy than an American. While coal provides about two-thirds of their energy, China is the largest maker of wind turbines and solar panels.

“China is very crowded everywhere. Michigan is more quiet, clean and with fresh air. To me that’s the biggest difference.”

Beijing has set high standards for biofuels, green design and public transit. American authors Lester Brown and Thomas Friedman have been warning that energy policy will make or break most countries in the 21st century. Engineer Jiang Dei agrees.

“Solar devices are popular and affordable in China. That’s the state policy. Because China’s natural resources are getting exhausted. There’s no way. We have to do it. In the U.S. it’s all about cost.”

Americans don’t calculate the cost of cleaning up pollution. $3.85 cents a gallon and 10 cents a kilowatt hour keep us content to burn fossil fuels. Chinese understand we still have to pay.  Ron Een, works for Blackberry in Toronto. He came from China when he was seven.

“You never get quiet like this at night. In camping, in China you probably won’t get something like this quiet. It will be loud 24 hours a day. There will be people all over the place.”

What can Chinese teach Michiganders about preserving natural resources?  Dai Zhewei is a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Alma College. She left China when she was 22.

“I mean it doesn’t look pretty. When we were at Chian on the old city wall we could see the tops of apartment buildings. On a single apartment building there were 20-30 or even more solar hot water heaters.”

Zhewei says low tech on a large scale helps the environment.

“I don’t know why we can’t at least start with that.”

And start even simpler. She says. Hang your laundry out to dry.

“If we on the one hand are saying we should conserve energy, we should save the environment but then on the other hand we’re just consuming, consuming, consuming that doesn’t make any sense. And in China, families don’t have driers in their homes even in winter.”

What happens if Michigan’s renewable energy policy is lax or residents don’t cut down on their everyday use by themselves? Dai Zhewei’s husband Michael Hamlin is a physics professor, software developer and son of a philosophy professor. Hamlin says Michigan should learn both lessons from China: don’t let a lack of regulation wreck the environment and instead, embrace conservation and renewables.

“We can’t compete by racing to the bottom in terms of regulation. We’d be giving up the only assets that we have that are really an advantage.”

And after Michiganders realize that, Hamlin says don’t worry. Whether it’s wood, water or air, China can’t exploit our natural resources.

“You can’t put a pleasant afternoon on a lake in Michigan in a box and ship it to China.”

Alpena and Thunder Bay might not compete with Traverse City and Petoskey for tourism. But this part of Lake Huron has been holding treasure that no one else in the country has. Captain Paul Labrecque is an Alpena native.

“Back in the day back in the 1800′s, it would be nothing to look out in the bay right now where we’re at and see hundreds of ships right here. Waiting to get into port. Leaving port, hauling grain, corn, gravel.”

Labrecque’s boat busts through waves. It’s traveled 12 miles. Then it slows down, a couple hundred yards off of Thunder Bay Island. The waves make it hard to see the bottom. Labrecque maneouvres in circles around a buoy. He’s trying to flatten the water. Passengers are looking for a shipwreck.

“Oh my goodness there it is.”

This second grader has spotted wood and steel just 20 feet down.

“I see the shipwreck. Yaya Come see it.”

He’s not sure how the boat turned into a wreck.

“How do these ships fall? From storms?”

Captain Paul outfits the boy and his sister in wet suits. Lake Huron is 60 degrees. The kids and I jump in. We wear snorkels and masks. Fins allow us to swim fast enough to see the whole wreck. Then get out. It’s so cold.

“What’s the name of the wreck I saw? The wreck you saw was the Monahansett. What year did that go down? It went down in 1907. It has a big propeller that’s about 6 feet in diameter. Yep it was a single steam engine. Quite a bit of material down there. It’s almost one hundred feet long? It’s 160 feet long. So it’s pretty good size. It was a cargo ship. I saw a couple of big squares. They looked like tanks that held something. Not too far from the propeller. What would that have been? Them are the boilers.”

Captain Paul explains how the boat sunk into the lake a hundred years ago.

“They come over here during a storm to anchor up. And during the middle of the night they got a fire going on. It was hauling coal. They got the fire out. And then throughout the middle of the night it rekindled and burned to the water line and all those people went to Thunder Bay Island. So on this shipwreck no one died? No one died. Nope.”

Thunder Bay has about 200 known shipwrecks. A lot of people DID die.  Paul has been leading charters of scuba divers and diving himself for the last decade.

“The wildest one out here, the nicest one is the Monrovia. It was a victory ship from World War 2. ……windows inside of a ship that are valuable.”

NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the year 2000, it created The Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Its goal is to protect the ships and the artifacts on them. Paul Labrecque says sometimes divers try to take things off the boats and stick them in their pockets.

“You know and as dive captains we really gotta watch. It’s a five year and $50,000 fine to remove anything from the shipwrecks here.”

The federal government has put millions of dollars into documenting the wrecks. Marine archeologist Kathy Green explains why.

“Anything metal is gonna corrode in the salt water. But then also out in warm salt water there’s a lot of organisms that eat wood. And so there’s very little left out in the ocean for the most part. But here we really don’t have that problem and it’s almost as if the wrecks are kept in a freezer or a time capsule. Virtually like the day they sank.”

In June, NOAA revamped its museum in Alpena. Guide Karen Seerless says they want visitors to feel the danger.

“When that storm is going and you’re walking in the ship on that slant and the lamps are swinging you feel like you’re right in a storm and it gives you an idea of how the sailors felt when they were facing those wicked storms on the great lakes.”

“To me as a captain…….Something out there with some heavy duty cargo.”

In the 1800′s, Michigan lumber built the cities of the Midwest, including the rebuild of Chicago after their great fire of 1871. By 1910, nearly all the white pine had been cut down.

“Now choppers grind your axes and sawyers file your saws. And teamsters mend your harnesses for these are lumbering laws…”

This voice belongs to lumberjack Bill McBride. He was recorded in Mt. Pleasant in the ‘30′s. By that time, lumberjacks had started cutting the oak and maple. The virgin white pine has never recovered. But most other species have and now…

“Drive along the highway and look at what’s going on in our forests right now. I travel from the upper peninsula down to Lansing every week. The timber’s falling in. It’s growing faster than we’re harvesting. It’s literally maturing and dying. And that’s not good for anybody.”

Tom Casperson drove timber trucks for years. Then the Escanaba republican became a state representative and now he’s a senator.

“I think it’s Sweden that has had an 80% harvest level with their growth rate. We’re at 30%. So I think there’s room for movement in there. Sweden has been a good example of healthy forests and actually building an entire economy.”

Even university professors of sustainability agree: there IS a lot of money rotting in the woods.

Casperson met up with sawmill operators from Michigan and Wisconsin. They’re trying to learn from one another and promote their industry. Michigan has about 60 sawmills working with 20 million acres of timberland. The group drove north of Lansing to the town of Pewamo. Their host was Todd Smith, General Manager of Devereaux Saw Mill. He’s standing near a log pile.

“We’ll take anything that could potentially be a veneer log, lay it out, gets looked at again, go over it again with a fine tooth comb, sliced and diced, try to make veneer out of anything we can because that’s the highest value.”

That’s how to make the most money from each tree. But not enough trees are getting into the production chain. The banking crisis and housing crisis had ripple effects says MSU Forestry professor Karen Potter-Whitter:

“And when the economy tanked consumers are buying less or lower quality furniture and cabinets. The price of paper has gone down too.”

The sawmills aren’t earning as much when they sell their finished product–lumber. So in turn they can’t pay as much for their raw material– trees. Todd Smith doesn’t blame landowners.

“Well if you’re a landowner and let’s say 3-4 years ago somebody came and offered you this price for your timber. And for whatever reason you held out. Well here it is 3-4 years later and another timber buyer knocks on your door and offers you half of that what are you gonna do? You’re gonna tell him to get out of here. If you don’t need the money. There’s no way you’re gonna sell your timber in a depressed market.”

One of Devereux’s competitor’s is Will Borden from Quality Hardwoods in Sunfield, Michigan.
Borden is calculating the value of a pile here at Devereaux.

“It’s hard maple. Hard maple logs. They’re waiting to be put up there to be debarked. This thing is 16 feet long right now. How much would the company have invested in this form where half the bark is on and half the bark’s been removed but it’s still a log?

“Between paying the landowner, logging it, trucking it and hauling it here just before they’ve even sawed it that’s probably about a $75 to $100 log right there.”

How much will it pay?  McCarus asks.

“Depends on how well it saws off. Let’s go see.”

Successful sawmills have to handle high volume to turn a profit. They’ve got millions of tons to debark, cut with a laser saw, then stack and dry.

Some 60 employees here earn between $9 and $22 dollars an hour. Stacker Greg Dalton says:

“It’s like going to the gym and getting a work out all day. It toughens you up.”

It’s tough but not as tough as what lumberjacks did in the 1800′s. Nor is the industry trying to chop down all the trees like it did then. Devereaux’s Todd Smith says.

“We’re not out here trying to demolish your woods or cut it off never to have it come back. Our idea is to come back in 10 years and do the same thing.”

Modern day lumberjacks have learned the lessons of the clear cut era. Another advantage is that the labor in land-based industries has to be on that land in Michigan. Especially as Asia’s middle classes grow they’ll want more high quality lumber. Michigan will be able to export furniture and building supplies to them, not jobs. Few industries can boast of that.

Among the republican candidates for governor last year, Rick Snyder spoke most about reinventing the state. This was a Snyder campaign television ad.

“Please join the re-invent Michigan team. With your help I know we can make Michigan great again.”

Michigan’s greatest high school is arguably Detroit Cass Tech. It produced the best and the brightest, including Lily Tomlin, Jack White and Diana Ross. #5 on Snyder’s 10 Point Reinvention plan was Reinvigorate Cities. On Thursday, Snyder held a news conference on other Detroit issues. I asked him why he’s letting Cass Tech get torn down.

“The Detroit Public schools makes the decisions on that. And I’ll be supportive of their effort. Because in many respects it’s how do we continually improve. The key thing is not necessarily the building. It’s the students in the building and getting our kids a great education. And that’s what really matters. It’s student growth. It’s not just facilities. It’s not just the surroundings. It’s getting those kids to succeed.”

Dozens of landmark buildings have been torn down in Detroit.  Former Mayor Dennis Archer  pushed the plunger that imploded Hudsons in 1998. Other mayors took down The Tuller Hotel. The Statler Hotel. The Lafayette. Tiger Stadium and now Cass Tech. Empty lots have replaced them. Mayor Dave Bing joined Governor Snyder at the news conference. Bing said:

“I guess we would be open to your suggestion. How do we do something different. They built another Cass Tech directly next door to the original Cass Tech. The building that they were tearing down was in really bad condition. So it would have cost us much more money to refurbish the building than it is to tear it down. And once again it is about the kids. It’s not about the facilities.”

The new Cass Tech was built next door in 2005. It cost $93 million. 2 years before that, alumni asked if they could buy the old one. Administrators refused to sell it. And they refused to spend the money on fences and alarms. Alumni and teachers also asked if they could save about 20 pianos, hundreds of machines and desks, thousands of books plus ornamental wood and stone work. Eventually, vandals and looters wrecked every single room. But even they couldn’t do structural damage. The place was a fortress. Steve Wasko is the spokesman for Detroit Public Schools.

“While there have been many discussions of offers and allusions to offers and insinuations to offers, none of which have came. The most recent offer that those who were behind it made a lot attention to, ultimately came with a $20,000 check. I don’t think $20,000 is gonna pay for enough plywood to cover half the windows on that building.”

The security deposit was $20,000. The offer was $200,000, made by Dennis Kefallinos. He has Nikki’s Pizza, the Russell Industrial Center and plenty of code violations. But he saved Russell and other buildings from the wrecking ball.

The alumni association has an office in the new building. This is the message on their answering machine. Cass graduated 60,000 people. Many are pleased with the demolition. Many are crying. Many vow never to help Detroit again. They say the building made them great.

“Always remember. There are two types of people in this world: those who went to Cass Tech and those who wanted to.”

On Thursday, a dozen students argued about the demolition. Here’s a young man arguing against the old building. It’s just 200 feet away.  Then a young woman arguing against the new building where they stood.

“If your grandmother was in the hospital and she was doing horrible. She was suffering. And she wasn’t getting better. Would you pull the plug or let her suffer?  Detroit just came up with an excuse to build a new building in the first place. This whole school was unnecessary. It was unnecessary.”

How will Michigan get re-invented? Who’s going to do it and what will they do it with?
Jacob Wright is an unemployed Detroiter. At the site, he said he wanted to help restore Old Cass Tech’s 8 stories and its 2,000 seat acoustically perfect, 3-tiered auditorium.

“The powers that be do what they please. I wish there would be a type of voting on it from the public. And probably the majority of the public would vote for not tearing it down.”

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson spoke at a news conference. The backdrop was The Grand River. Further back in the picture was the old power station building. $182 million was spent rehabbing it this year. It’s now headquarters for an insurance company. Jackson said:

“Recycling land is just as important as any other kind of recycling we do. If we want to preserve our open space, if we want to have a green community, one of the ways we can do that is redevelop land rather than go out to greenfields. And that has a huge impact on water quality and it obviously has a great economic impact as well.”

Michigan is known as the brownfield state, mainly because so many factories were built, used and then shut down. Last year, the state gave $500 million in tax credits to companies doing brownfield reuse projects. Last month, the legislature approved Governor Rick Snyder’s plan. Brownfields will now get just $20 million.

The Environmental Protection Agency is sending $1 million to Lansing. The six other Michigan communities receiving brownfields grants or funds today are:  Albion ($200,000); Charter Township of Northville ($200,000); City of Inkster ($400,000); Lenawee County ($200,000); Montcalm County ($400,000), and the Downriver Community Conference in Southgate ($500,000).