The tour bus arrived at The D-Town farm. Its two acres were carved out of River Rouge Park. Kadiri Sennefer digs, plants and prunes. He says that should be natural for African-Americans.  But it’s not.

“Slavery has dealt us a deadly blow in the psychology of our minds and how we view the land. The reason that we’re detached from the land is that younger generations associate working the land with slavery and not realizing that we have roots in agriculture. That’s one of our great legacies coming out of Africa.”

Slavery and the civil war ended in 1865. But share cropping continued for 70 years after that.   Farming meant poverty. Kadiri Sennefer says:

“I think people (African-Americans) were tired of the treatment that we got in the south.”

In 2009, according to the Pew Research Center, the median net wealth of white households was $113,000. Black households had just $6,000.

Detroit’s farms are meant to make people richer, more fulfilled and healthy by rejecting…

“The pesticides that major corporations use like Monsanto with the GMO’s (genetically modified organisms)… the scientific lab food that we have that’s highly processed. It is killing us. It’s hazardous.”

Chemicals have helped kill bugs and disease and increase the amount of food produced. But organic farmers say they’re not worth it.

“Composting was a way of fertilizing our crops. So that’s one of the models that we’re trying to get back to at D-Town: land stewardship, taking care of the land properly, creating healthy soil. If you don’t have good soil you won’t have good plants.”

Sennefer uses the language of the decolonization movement after World War 2…when Africans began the struggle to govern their own countries.

“It’s a self-determination project. We’re not looking for anyone to do it for us. We come out here and do the work for ourselves. We dig for ourselves and we do for ourselves.”

Detroit’s got 40 square miles of vacant land. D-Town is the largest farm in Detroit. Still just 2 acres. Brightmoor is another neighborhood where people are farming. Gwen Shivers is holding a garden hose. 5 little tots have watering cans.

“I live about 6 houses down. I run a day care. I’ve been over here about 30 years. I’ve been doing this garden for about 3 years. I decided to turn it into an edible plays scape so my kids can have something that they could learn and work on and watch things grow all summer long.”

“More. More,” say the children and Shivers repeats what they say.

“Once you get them started,” she says, “they don’t want to stop.”

I ask a boy why he likes gardening.

“Cuz it’s fun. It’s so much fun.”

Gwen Shivers asks the boy why he’s watering?

The boy says he wants the lettuce and blueberries to grow.

Shivers asks what the kids will do when the crops grow.

“Eat them,” the boy shouts.

“Eat them. That’s right,” says Shivers.

Frank Rochowiak farms in Washtenaw County. He’s been bringing his produce to sell at the Eastern Market for 50 years. So he knows Detroit. But he says:

“These are great projects. But they’re not feeding enough people.”

That’s true. But urban farms serve other purposes. Kathryn Underwood works for the Detroit City Council. She’s writing agriculture policy: setting the rules. Underwood says the people that have been mowing and hoeing empty lots for years should get the first chance to buy them.

“We need to find ways to honor the work that has been done already by these small scale growers and not let the work that they’ve been doing get lost as we look at bigger and sexier projects.”

State Senators Joe Hune and Virgil Smith organized the tour. They’ve asked Michigan’s Attorney General if it’s acceptable for cities bigger than 100,000 to make their own agriculture ordinances. Senator Hune has crops and animals on his farm in rural Livingston County. He says cities should encourage agriculture too.

“The ingenuity, the creativity that these folks had particularly in the Brightmoor neighborhood was exciting to see. Folks are so interested in community development, so interested in seeing some blighted areas turn back into useful areas.”

Senator Smith says urban farmers are good role models for at risk youth:

“There’s an old saying that we have. The streets take you under. The hood takes you under. And so you’re lost for good.  So they end up being recruited into a lifestyle that has no positive outcome. So it’s my goal for folks to go in the opposite direction.”

Senator Smith says urban farmers could influence tiny tots and teenagers to get off the streets and onto the farms. Both senators plan to introduce legislation later this year.

Click here for more on the philosophy driving some of Detroit’s farmers.

http://detroitblackfoodsecurity.org/

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.”

Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus reports.

The Brookings Institution studied two Michigan cities: Grand Rapids and Detroit. They determined that a person has access if a bus route is close to their home. Half of folks in metro Grand Rapids can catch a bus. Yet only 22% of Detroiters have access to DDOT or SMART. Adie Tomer wrote the study for Brookings.

“Detroit is a pretty big place but also has intense amounts of job sprawl. Out of a 100 metropolitan areas, Detroit has the 98^th worst amount.”

Workers inside the city of Detroit are dependent on buses to get to jobs in the suburbs. The combination of far away spread out jobs plus poor bus service is hurting the economy.

Adie Tomer says transit can allow people to get and keep jobs and then create new ones….not just for bus drivers.

“Density equals dollars. Density can also mean convenience. So when it comes to a place like let’s say Detroit that has lost a lot of population but also has a lot of land opportunities maybe building a denser community can let transit be the facilitator of that kind of development.”

Density equals dollars, Tomer says. In other words densify or die. Historians and urban planners say Detroit has been dying since the 1950’s. So how do you reverse the trend? Do you try to fill in the empty spaces first or build a permanent transit system to connect the emptiness? I asked Adie Tomer, will mass transit in Detroit trigger a real estate boom?

“I wouldn’t stretch it that far but it can work. It’s really about how the planning works together as puzzle pieces. It could be that building transportation projects first drives certain development projects that bring more people and a denser community and that starts building on itself. For other communities they may actually need to have denser buildings and then folks are more willing to get rid of their cars or keep them parked in the garage and try taking transit maybe for the first time in their life.”

The Brookings study found that in Los Angeles, 90% of the wealthy have access to transit. Access doesn’t mean rich people are riding the bus. But they can see it in their daily lives. And they can accept tax money spent on it. In metro Detroit, only 30% of the wealthy have access to transit. Michigan transit advocates want to increase that percentage. They are targeting Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills for 3 reasons. They are the wealthiest. They speak loudly in the republican-led state and local governments. And they could save the Woodward Avenue light rail line from being a train to nowhere like the People Mover.

Brian Larkin is representing Governor Snyder’s office of Urban Initiatives. He was born and raised in Flint.

“The most important thing is constructing a transportation system that gets people to where they need to be. That was a key point in there earlier: getting individuals to jobs, destinations and points of activity.”

Detroit is the motor city and Flint is the birthplace of General Motors. But 90% of Flint’s GM jobs are gone.  Brian Larkin says the new way to invest in your community is through mass transit, not buying a new car.

“At one point everyone grew up thinking that if I buy this certain car, I know who makes it, I know where the money is going.”

“You mean the buy local movement for cars?”

“And so thinking beyond cars. Thinking beyond that as the way to drive our economy. And I think as a result of time and the current economic conditions people are coming to that conclusion on their own. They’re looking for new opportunities. They’re not looking for the next manufacturing plant. We’re looking for redefining ourselves as a city, a system and a region.”

For decades, urban planning has been done in silos. Transportation’s purpose was to move vehicles. Thousands each hour. Adie Tomer from the Brookings Institution says this should change.

“It can be desiloed and not thought of as its own entity. How can we start planning for housing, economic development centers so the multiple different silos, if you will, can kind of merge up, and really public policy can work for holistic economic development.”

This year, the three counties of the Lansing area are beginning a three year plan to integrate housing, trailways, health care, education and mass transit. They plan to tear down the silos.

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation funded the Brookings Institution study and invited them to town.

“We have in this community a large school system that has lost so many students. And what ends up happening is that students today are going to the charter or private schools. So they need a transit piece. They’ve come to us to create public routes that will support that activity. In order to provide that service we’ve developed routes that are paid by the users. That is one where receive the amount back that we actually put into that service. ”

“So this is service on top of the regular public fixed routes?” asked Ruth Johnson of Transportation Riders United, TRU, in Detroit.

“That’s right,” Benning said. He is executive director of The Flint Mass Transportation Authority.

McCarus said, “today we are in a workshop organized by the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. funded by the C.S. Mott Foundation here in Flint. What was it about?”

Ruth Johnson answered, “they had released a report some time ago Missed Opportunities, to talk about transit and not just mobility but access to jobs. They did a really nice study across 25 metropolitan areas including metro Detroit and metro Grand Rapids. Looking where the jobs were, the skill level of those jobs, the availability of public transit and the connection job access performance indicator.”

“What did the Brookings Institution tell us?” asked McCarus. “What was their conclusion?”

“My takeaway,” said Johnson, “is that we have some powerful data to talk about transit in a way that is more than transportation but it’s actually a tool for economic vitality through job access.”

“Ed can you add to that?” asked McCarus.

“I think that was a great summary,” Benning said.  “I think the tool is very helpful. It talks about how important public transit is in the future of Michigan and how transit could be the one piece that pulls it all together. The study could be across not only metropolitan areas.  It applies right here in Flint, Michigan. Even though we’re not metropolitan we are in fact a feeder service. We take some 1,500 workers a day to jobs outside our county. It’s very important. Not just those at the lowest end of the spectrum. We have salaried employees opting to use mass transit as their transportation of choice.”

Flint residents are becoming more dependent on jobs in Oakland County.

“The fifty or so people in the room today, many of them from non-profits who are already working on the mass transit issue, they would say that if you build and invest in mass transit in all of our cities of Michigan that will improve our economy more than any other investment.”

“I think that’s true,” Benning said. “For every dollar spent on public transit there’s a return of $6.”

“Who says that?”

“That comes from the American Public Transit Association,” Benning said.  “They’ve conducted studies to back up those numbers. Many people think this is an opportunity to spend more money. That’s not true. There are public private partnerships that can grow communities. We just need to take away some of the barriers that don’t allow us to do some of those things. We need to grow the opportunities. I think the opportunity is there. A friend of mine and a consultant, Doug Edy, who deals with governance, talks about operating within the resources you have to do more.”

“But Ed and Ruth if a county or the state says let’s have a millage in November so that each property owner is gonna pay an extra $80 so that a public transit system can be built in metro Detroit, Grand Rapids or Flint, how is that not extra money that your regular guy is going to have to pay?”

“I think that we have to look at that multiplier as this is both direct and indirect economic activity as a result of the investment in transit,” Johnson said.  “We need to reframe it. We are investing in lots of things. The question is having smart investments where we have an even greater and better rate of return that will provide the infrastructure and transportation options that will encourage the growth we need. So the report entitled “Missed Opportunity” is I think a telling one because we are missing out on the opportunities to make money.”

“Absolutely,” said Benning.  “I think millages are not the only way to fund transit.”

“So how else do you do it?” McCarus asked.

“There are many opportunities to look at, sales tax could be one. Today that’s not possible,” Benning said.

“Aren’t there several constraints in the state of Michigan because of the 1963 constitution and some other things that prevent mass transit money from being raised publicly?” McCarus asked.

“Yes, said Benning. “We’re a donor state. We send money to Washington and we only get back about 90% of what we send. And that needs to be looked at. We need to look at other ways than millages. Obviously people don’t want new taxes.”

“Sales tax?”

Benning said, “sales tax or could be where businesses flourish they have an interest in making sure public transit is viable.  That’s been proven around the country.”

McCarus asked, “so can five counties around Detroit and Wayne County propose to their residents to raise a sales tax or have a sales tax part of which is just going to go to transit?”

“Not currently,” Benning said. “There would have to be some changes in state law. However, there would be an opportunity to increase the motor vehicle registration fee as a funding source.  We need to think creatively about what we can do. Public-private partnerships is one. Millages may be still a viable way. We need a revenue mix. We can’t look at a single solution. We also need to look at our policies to make sure they are not impediments to smart growth and smart investment.”

“I’m still coming away with the impression that Michigan is limited in its ability to raise money for mass transit.”

“Yes. We need to be creative,” Benning said. “We need to look at every opportunity to grow transit not only for transit’s sake. It does create so many jobs. People say oh those are jobs in transit. But they’re indirect too. In this community in Flint, public transportation is extremely important. But for those who want to live here and may be under water with their homes and may just want to live in this community having transit as an option is huge and they recognize it.

“Currently we’re limited from our ability to bring new equipment in and the amount of resources we have to fund it. It’s gonna take a creative approach. We need to think differently and we need to remove these impediments.”

McCarus wondered if cars are still an impediment.

“We’re in the city of Flint and we have the city of Detroit, the birthplaces of the auto industry. Why is it that the birthplace of transportation that seemed to liberate us then are emptied out and destroyed by that transportation solution that was the automobile.”

Ed Benning answered:

“Let’s remember for a moment that fuel prices are all over the map. And we’re all concerned about that. But we’re also concerned about the carbon footprint. I think transit is leading the way along with the car manufacturers to reduce our carbon footprint. We will become one of the greenest industries around. I can tell at the MTA here in Genesee County, May 21 we will open up our new alternative fuel facility.

“We’ll introduce a new hydrogen fuel cell vehicle with hydrogen we generate with natural gas that we compress and propane for our small vehicles so where I’ve watched my fuel prices go from 3.5 million a year three years ago to 5.2 million today. We’re looking to become much more sustainable, reduce our costs and also help our environment.”

I am Na Ree. And I am Hyun Woo.

(Na Ree)We went to the Walker Building on the corner of Grand River and North Washington. Workers were drilling holes and sawing boards.

Gene Townsend is in charge of the project.

(Hyun Woo)We asked why is it so important to revitalize this building?

“This building sets on one of the main corners of old town, for many years it’s been derelict but it’s essentially a strong building and so we thought it was important to bring this building back to a useful life.”

(Hyun Woo) Townsend wants to keep all the architecture in old town.

“This building has stood on this corner for over a century. And a lot of people that lived in Old Town and some of the people that have worked on this building remember when there was a grocery store here and that it was a popular place for people to come to buy groceries. And then after a grocery store it was a union hall here on the second floor and people would come to the union hall for parties.”

(Na Ree) The City of Lansing gave $190,000 to restore windows and bricks and to remove hazards like lead based paint and asbestos. The building owner is investing $540,000 himself.

(Hyun Woo) There will be two different businesses and five one-bedroom apartments. MSHDA or The Michigan State Housing Development Authority added $300,000. It wants a mix of low and high income people in Old Town.

(Hyun Woo) Not all Americans like old buildings. And not all Koreans like old buildings either.

(Na Ree)This was a radio news report in 2009 from Seoul. The government wanted to tear down an old neighborhood of two story buildings. They wanted to replace it with  skyscrapers. Five people died in the struggle. Gene Townsend was not surprised by the events in our country.

“One problem with vertical buildings is that there is very little interaction from one floor plate to another. Wide floor plates create more innovation than small floor plates in a vertical format because people run into each other more they’ve got hall ways and people when they meet at hallways have longer conversations than when they meet in elevators.”

(Hyun Woo) Korea has tried to copy the U.S. with tall buildings. But we don’t have a choice. We are running out of space. Michigan has only 10 million people. But we have 50 million living on the same sized territory.  New apartments in Korea are 30 floors or higher.

“There is a community life at the side walk level. Where People run into each other and learn something new almost every time they walk out of the door. In a city of skyscrapers that happens less often. And so I think for that reason urban revitalization that’s taken place in America that’s included high rise has not proven very successful.”

(Hyun Woo) The Walker Building left footprints that become blueprints for buildings in the future. Old ideas are still good for building communities.

I would like to live in a village filled with American style houses so I can see the sky sometimes…

(Na Ree) I want to live in an apartment for many years in the future.   But at the end of my life I would like to have my feet back on the ground.

For Michigan Now, I’m Na Ree Lee.

And I’m Hyun Woo Park.

A German guy born and raised in Detroit was the country’s biggest star when he produced this hit song. His name was Rudy Wiedoeft.  It was 1926, the same year the German community built St. Anthony High School. It was near Gratiot and East Grand Blvd.

In 1969, the school was renamed East Catholic.

In September 2011, this guy, who calls himself I.M. Broke, made a video of the destruction inside.

“You know that’s one thing I always say too. They don’t make buildings or structures like this anymore. They just don’t.”

East Catholic was four stories of red brick and limestone. The windows in the auditorium were 25 feet high.

“There’s the stage,” says I.M. Broke in the narration of his Youtube video.

Arches above dozens of doors and windows were designed to invite students in and bless them.

“You look at the different designs on the ceiling like that one there.”

Plaster of Paris was made on the ceilings and walls. Artisans knew how to mix lime, gypsum, cattle and hog hair.

But now, the Catholic archdiocese has paid the Adamo Demolition Company to bring its bulldozers and backhoes to the school. A retired GM worker named Mr. Anderson lives across street.

“Well they got the thieves and metal scrappers, they are the ones that knocked the windows out of it and took all that metal out of it. It sat there for a long time before they tore it down. That school been closed. Both my daughters graduated from there.

“The thieves are going in there late at night. And we was all woke over here trying to find out what was going on. We call the police they never even show up. Sometimes when they would show they (the scrappers) would be gone.”

Mr. Anderson provides an explanation of why people are dismantling old buildings in Detroit.

“ Jobs. People need jobs. If they had a job or somewhere to go to work everyday they wouldn’t have time to be stealing and killing. They wouldn’t have time. They’d be working and when they get off work they would be tired and go home and go to bed or go wherever they go. But they wouldn’t have time. We need jobs here. That’s the key. Jobs.”

“Kind of strange looking at the corner over here. We’re trying to see if we can find that one cornerstone. Big difference from yesterday what it is today. It looks like everything got reburied. They’re separating all the metal and stuff from the school.”

Lew Iler left the neighborhood 40 years ago for suburban St. Clair Shores. But he’s been back lately to watch the demolition. One cornerstone had these words inscribed. Unless The Lord Build the House, They Labour in Vain That Build It.  Psalms, 126, 1.

“I was born and raised here,” Iler said.

“I went to the elementary school that used to be in the far corner over there. Saint Anthony’s grade school. Then they had the convent over here in the corner on the side of the church. And of course the church and the rectory. And the high school there.”

30 nuns taught and fed students and cleaned the school.

“It was a huge community in the 1960’s and 70’s and prior to that.  I was an alter boy here. I was in the choir.”

In 2010, a break away catholic group bought the church but not the school. Joe Kohn is a spokesman for the archdiocese. He said it is willing to sell its real estate.

“Charter schools or head start programs-there is generally a use for them. The East Catholic property was an exception and it may have been, in recent years, because of the condition of the building.”

Scrappers, photographers and alumni have been stopping by the site off Gratiot lately to look at the bricks, stone and twisted metal bars on the ground. This man wanted the archdiocese to save the building.

“You leave your car unlocked and somebody steals it then you’re at fault. You left your car unlocked. You leave your car unlocked and somebody steals your car and wrecks it and kills somebody you’re responsible. Do you know that? Somebody walked away, left it unoccupied, whoever that was, they are the ones responsible for walking away in the first place.”

The man says skilled tradesmen and homeless guys alike, will break the law to destroy buildings. You can’t stop them. So the man says it’s the archdiocese, Detroit public schools or whoever owns a place who should occupy or at least secure it.

SEE THIS MOVING PHOTO GALLERY

http://detroiturbex.com/content/schools/eastcath/index.html

Arab-American Stories was shown at a premiere party over the weekend in Dearborn. Alicia Sams directed the documentary series. Arab-Americans have been profiled as terrorists. So Sams looked for people using humor to ease the pressure.

“The kind of light side of being Arab-American. The not having to justify, not having to explain. The one guy, Omar Offendum says you know, we spent so much time after September 11 telling people what we aren’t that we never got a chance to tell people what we are. That was the goal in this was to let people say who we are.”

Alicia Sams shows a physics teacher in California and the owners of Gold Star Chili in Cincinnati. Radio host Diane Rehm tells of her Syrian roots and NPR’s Neda Ulaby is the narrator of the series.

Saturday night, about 200 people, many dressed in black, came to the museum to see the preview.

Every Monday night at 730, for the next 13 weeks, PBS in Detroit will tell stories of restaurant owners, artists, teachers and more. Alicia Sams has roots in Lebanon and Flint. She wanted all Americans to see the hard work and patriotism shown in the Arab community. And yet the premiere in Dearborn was unique because the community is big and sophisticated. Any factual errors or misinterpretation and this crowd could criticize her. Sams said:

“I guess I was nervous that in trying so hard to speak to the American community I would lose the Arab-American community. But I didn’t. So I was happy to see that.”

Dima Suki flew in from Houston to attend the event. This is what Dima says she wants viewers in Texas to have:

“I guess more acceptance of us Arabs as part of the fabric of the society. We’re like everyone else that makes American and we’re proud of it.”

Dima’s husband Rabih Suki added:

“I guess more acceptance of us Arabs as part of the fabric of the society. We’re like everyone else that makes American and we’re proud of it. You know we don’t want to be different. We want to be a part of that fabric. It doesn’t have to stick out.”

Several of the 39 stories are about Michigan people. There is tile designer and business owner Nawal Motawi, artist Adnan Charara, DJ Ace Montaser, Father Shalhoub, Social entrepreneur Moose Scheib, and Maha Freij, deputy director of Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Dearborn.

First of all, what is placemaking? Sounds fake doesn’t it? Urban planners and some city officials will tell you that Michigan needs placemaking. Car culture damaged the places that grew up organically. So, groups like the Michigan Municipal League try to undo the damage.

“So we’re standing alongside the river in downtown Lansing.”

Sarah Szurpicki is organizing the “It’s About Place,” contest.

“We’re on a lovely trail. There’s people jogging, walking, biking. It’s a beautiful day so there’s a lot of people out.”

Human beings have settled next to water for thousands of years. It’s used to drink, get food, transport goods, generate power and provide recreation.

‘Wow. Was that a fish? It was an enormous splashing sound.”

“That wasn’t some one throwing something out of a building….. I don’t think so no.”

In the last decade, the City of Lansing has begun to reclaim the Grand River. One on side, the convention center, got new patios and cabanas. On the other side, is the old electric power station.  It’s art deco bricks reach 170 feet in the air. They almost got torn down. Now they’re an insurance company headquarters with its own terraces and walkways by the river. The “It’s About Place” contest is asking citizens to try this on a teeny scale.

“It’s about place is our placemaking contest. What we’re trying to do is use just a little bit of money to leverage creativity in a lot of our communities to create more welcoming and inviting spaces like this.”

These are spaces where you won’t get hit by a car. You might have live music or a little league sports event. Sarah Szurpicki says,

“Whatever you can do with a couple thousand dollars. So it could be one little patio area. It could be one vacant lot. It could be one alley.”

There’s an alley on Saginaw’s west side. It’s next to the Old Town Skate shop. Someone recently painted a mural on the alley wall. It’s a man with a vested suit and hat, 1920′s style. He’s painted 10 feet tall in black and white. Skateboarders do manouevres in front of him.

The “It’s About Place” contest is for public spaces. You can try the river that runs through your town. Michigan is filled with them. The Grand River starts south of Jackson, then cuts through Lansing on its way to Lake Michigan.

“The Grand River is one of the landmarks of our city. The city is called Grand Rapids.”

Tim Mroz works at the Right Place. It’s a non-profit group that promotes economic development.

“Having a major river like this running through downtown, having a river that is fishable. You  know we’re looking across the river and we see15 fishermen there right now. And in a couple years from now we’re gonna have the rapids back in the river and you can kayak down the river, that all adds to quality of life.”

There’s that river again. An easy target for placemaking. But dry land, even concrete, can work too. It takes dirty hands. If you’re trying to beautify an abandoned park, you can’t avoid picking up trash and used tires. But the strength of a community is found in different layers of people and groups. Tim Mroz explains the Grand Rapids version.

“The term public/private partnership gets thrown around a lot. And in Grand Rapids it really works. It works at the higher levels with the philanthropists and angel investors. It works at the lower level like the downtown urban market. So it’s really the community working together. And when you come to Grand Rapids you can feel that. You can feel that heartbeat of the city.”

So what place touches your heart that’s neglected right now?  It’s scuffed up or blocked off. Take another cue from Sarah Szurpicki. She grew up in the suburbs. Went to Harvard University and then moved to Lafayette Park, a couple minutes from the Detroit River.

“You need to come up with an idea… a space where you want to build a project and your plan for that. You need to submit a letter of intent to my email which is Sarah at Letssavemichigan.com by April 6.”

That’s Sarah with an h at letssavemichigan.com.

For Michigannow I’m Chris McCarus.

Economic growth is inching up and unemployment is inching down. State republicans say credit their $1.7 billion tax cut last year. Now they want to cut $400 million more. They want to eliminate the tax on new business equipment like a lathe, a saw or a drill press.  State Senator Mike Nofs is a republican from Battle Creek. Nofs and the lieutenant governor spoke together to mayors, managers, and city council members. Nofs says small manufacturers deserve tax cuts now.

“They’re the sustaining groups that we need in our communities that help us provide the jobs and once you have the jobs you know people are working. They can pay for the schools and government and everything else that we cherish every day. So we need to give them relief.”

Mike Nofs and the lieutenant governor are asking for local governments to have faith in small manufacturers. Here’s the chain reaction they describe: a local machine shop can avoid new taxes on a drill press. The shop makes more money. The shop hires new workers. New businesses start up. More money is circulated. Local governments are able to bring in taxes from a larger pie. Then most budget problems will be solved. Senator Nofs says:

“It’s going to keep our businesses on the cutting edge and be competitive. If you stay back and use the old presses maybe it takes a lot longer to make that widget. Well with a new press you could make 5 widgets compared to what it used to take where you could only make one. Now you can sell 5 and you can make more money but we’re going to tax you today because you bought that new press. But under this package of bills we won’t say that. We’ll say thanks for buying that. Thanks for staying competitive. Thanks for staying in Michigan.”

Senator Nofs and the lieutenant governor mentioned replacing the income local governments would lose. But they didn’t explain how. People at the Michigan Municipal League Conference are worried. Rogers City would lose $112,000. The city manager would have to lay of 2 of his 24 city employees.  The Mayor of Dearborn said he would lose about $15 million. Summer Minnick is the MML’s director of state affairs. She disagrees with the senator and lieutenant governor’s proposals.

“This is a problem they’re creating. And right now we have a pot of money that is retained locally and spent locally that they want to take away, shrink and redistribute.”

Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley told the audience that Michigan can’t run fund state and local governments in the same familiar way, hoping things will improve. Calley said it will just mean more budget deficits. The Municipal League’s Summer Minnick says:

“Since 1939 we’ve been giving up local taxing authority for a revenue sharing agreement and we keep getting cut. So that’s our position as well. We can’t keep signing on to that type of agreement.”

State Representative Bob Constan came to the conference. His district is in Allen Park, Inkster, Garden City and Dearborn Heights.

“Changing the current way we tax industrial personal property, it’s my opinion that will not create one job. It will not make any difference to any manufacturer to employ more people here in the state of Michigan.”

Constan argues that government can fall victim to companies who say they’ll invest only if they get tax cuts. They can be manipulative and play governments off against one another other. Such accusations were made against companies like Electrolux and Federal Mogul in the last few years. Constan describes a negative experience with the movie industry.

“I had in my district, Unity Studios. We were always in these meetings with this scam artist who was the head of Unity Studios, Jimmy Lifton, and he was talking about, well we’re gonna go to Shreveport Louisiana.”

Representative Constan says that businesses chose a location based on the quality of the workforce and quality of life in the area.

“I believe a business, if they’re gonna locate in the state, looks at a variety of things and the industrial personal property tax is way down on the list.”

The MML’s Summer Minnick agrees with Constan. Her organization has spent years trying to convince the state legislature that tax cuts don’t create jobs. Instead, vibrant cities attract smart people who then create jobs. She says Michigan should not throw out the tax on equipment for manufacturers.

“The fact still is, 37 states still has some form of PPT. So the vast majority of states still tax that industry. And the other thing is, instead of comparing ourselves to Ohio and Indiana we really need to start talking about how we compete globally. And the only way to compete globally for the best and the brightest ideas and people is if we start making investments in those places where people want to be.”