New feature: Link Drop

Every week, at least two-thirds of the material I plan to comment on slips past me. In recognition of the fact that I just can't keep up, I'll be posting a quick list of links every day to the most interesting articles and blogs I've come across in the last 24 hours. The first Link Drop will be up today at 3 o'clock. Regular posts with more commentary will keep coming once or twice a week, too.

Bobb promises deep changes to Detroit schools

Detroit Public Schools won't be the same when Robert Bobb's one-year tenure as fiscal manager is up. That much is clear from his forceful, honest interview with the Metro Times and TV appearance this morning. He has an ambitious, five-part plan, and he says, "I'm going to get it done in a year. This plan will be done come hell or high water." Not everyone will be happy when he does it. Here are three passages that are bound to provoke:

1. On security:

We want our public safety personnel to be able to press a button to a camera and see everything that is happening in and around the schools. There are cameras around schools but we want to be able to have cameras so we can see up and down corridors into dark spots — we want to be able to see where our kids are. We’ll have a crime camera that will look up and down the streets onto our playgrounds that will be able to capture people with sensors who come into our buildings at night when they shouldn’t be there.

2. On charter schools:

Bobb also said he has entered discussions with Doug Ross, founder of University Preparatory Academy charter school, to possibly turn over management of Mumford High to Ross’s charter school management company. Other charter school companies met with district officials Wednesday, just weeks after Bobb announced that some of the 40 schools that will be reformed next year may become charter schools or may be managed by companies.

3. On the elected school board:

They're over there, I'm over here.

Accountability returns to DPS

The results of a district-wide audit are in and they're as bad as anyone feared. Just five DPS schools out of 194 had a "clean" audit. The rest had accounting errors or outright theft, including "misappropriation of cash, loans made to officials using school funds, funds diverted to personal accounts, and missing money from dances and sports activities."

And no surprise: the district eliminated its internal audit department four years ago. Of course, that didn't stop widespread petty theft a decade ago, when according to the Detroit News, "auditors found nearly $2 million in missing or misspent money during a review of the 270 schools, including a principal accused of buying booze and sending a son on a trip to Italy with school funds, another accused of taking school money as loans, while others used the money for cell phones, staff luncheons and fraternity dues."

This time, the wrongdoers need to be fired and/or prosecuted, and protocols must be put in place to prevent abuse at this scale from repeating itself yet again. Let's hope Emergency Financial Manager Robert C. Bobb is up to the job. He can't just expose past problems; he has to fix them for the future, too.

Consolation prize

So, yes, GM is bankrupt, but the feds are still looking out for us. The city of Detroit will get 100 new police officers courtesy of the federal government to combat "a possible rise in crime brought on by the economic fallout from the auto industry crisis."

Tiger Stadium going, going, gone

Time to pay your last respects. The board of the city's Economic Development Corporation voted today to demolish what remains of Tiger Stadium within the next few weeks.

Why the sudden urgency? A spokesman cited "safety and security concerns" and the desire to make the site "more attractive to potential developers without the leftover structure." This rational would hold more water if a) the city were paying for security or b) there were potential developers. In fact, there are no developers lined up, and the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy has been covering the security costs for the past eight months. The city just prefers an empty lot. And with Michigan Central Depot scheduled to be torn down too by summer's end, there'll be no shortage of empty lots on Michigan Avenue.

Update: Crain's reports that the conservancy is surprisingly close to financing the renovation of the stadium, making the urgency of the demo vote all the more baffling. Why rush to kill the only serious proposal for the site when nothing else will likely emerge for years?

Detroit: City on the Move

Here's a video promoting Detroit's bid for the 1968 Olympics. Mayor Cavanaugh sounds so optimistic about urban renewal. If he only knew ...

Light rail plans (not) reconciled

Light rail is a go. That was the word on Thursday, when Matt Cullen told reporters that Detroit's two proposed rail plans -- one public, one private -- had reached an accord, freeing the private group to begin construction on the first leg, from downtown to New Center.

Now the city's saying not so fast. If construction begins on the private M1 rail before DTOGS (the public plan) finishes its environmental review, then the federal government can't accept the $125 million behind the private effort as part of the local matching funds that the city will need to qualify for federal funding. In other words, DTOGS would be dead, because neither the city nor the state is likely to come up with that kind of money later on.

As it is, the two plans don't exactly mesh. They use different vehicles, run at different speeds, and have different alignments (curbside vs. center of the street). Naturally, they also have different operators. So even if both are built, the ride up Woodward won't be seamless. Riders will presumably have to get off at New Center and switch trains. Still, I'd gladly take two systems over none. I just fear that soon we'll be settling for just the one -- and waiting half a decade or more to see any progress on its expansion.

Cause for cautious optimism

Detroit's economy may be moribund, but thanks to some new initiatives, it may not remain that way forever. To start with, the New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan, a consortium of ten foundations formed last year, is putting $5 million behind a new training program for entrepreneurs that will lead to 400 new start-ups a year. The sessions will be hosted at Wayne State's TechTown and run by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the nation's leading foundation on entrepreneurship.

Three smaller initiatives are also getting great press. TechTown itself has been exceptionally successful, attracting eighty businesses and a long waiting list to its New Center location. Open City, a monthly meeting of Detroit business owners, was recently profiled by CNN for the remarkable collaboration and community it has sparked. Quicken CEO Dan Gilbert's Bizdom U has also gotten recognition for its free, two-year training program for select entrepreneurs. None of these are quick fixes for the ailing economy, but by focusing on the fundamentals, they should spark more job growth in the long run than ineffective tax incentives or the usual splashy projects, like stadiums and casinos, ever could.

Restructuring DPS

Big changes are coming to Detroit Public Schools -- and just in time. The News reports the district has now lost a shocking 44% of its enrollment since 2000 to charters, the suburbs, and other areas of the country.

On Tuesday, the state-appointed emergency financial manager, Robert Bobb, announced the closing of 29 schools and the restructuring of 40 others deemed "miserably failing." On Wednesday, he took the unprecedented step of asking President Obama to issue a special emergency declaration to allow the district to receive emergency funding. (If granted, it would be the first emergency declaration not tied to a natural disaster.)

Obama's Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, has promised to send millions of dollars to the district if it pursues fundamental change. Speaking in the city on Wednesday, he called Detroit "ground zero" for education in the United States. "Detroit is New Orleans two years ago without Hurricane Katrina," he said, "and I feel a tremendous sense of both urgency and outrage." He supports copying the model used in Chicago and letting Mayor Dave Bing take control of the district.

Both can be heard on Wednesday's edition of Detroit Today. Also worth watching: Geoffrey Canada at the New Yorker Summit. Liberals and conservatives alike (see David Brooks, for example) have championed his Harlem Children's Zone as the single best model for fixing urban education -- something Bobb and Duncan are surely looking at.

Thoughts on Bing

So Bing is the new mayor. Now that Cockrel's trial-run is up, Bing gets his own six-month shot at the job. I greet this news with cautious optimism. Bing is confident and competent, and he seems to get that revitalizing Detroit requires both a big vision and a business-like focus on all the basics. Almost better yet, Cockrel is back at the helm of City Council, meaning Monica Conyers loses her soapbox and both sides of government are run by competent, serious people.

Yet I have my doubts. He's a member of the business elite and plans to govern like it. With any luck, that will translate into streamlined government and new investment. But it might also mean yet more emphasis on big downtown projects -- like stadiums and casinos -- at the expense of neighborhood revitalization. I'm also unconvinced he gets what urban life is all about. He lived his adult life in the suburbs (gated ones at that!), has little to say on preservation, and has called for suburban-style "cities within the city".

Does he get what Detroit is all about? Is he in touch with community groups and the concerns of ordinary residents? I sure hope so.

Taking a cue from Braddock, PA

If Braddock can do it, so can we. That's the message out of Metro Mode this week, which profiles a dying industrial town just downriver from Pittsburgh that's trying to reinvent itself as a dirt-cheap refuge for artists, urbanists, and environmentalists. The mayor, John Fetterman, who looks like he just stepped out of the Old Miami, has set up a website, www.15104.cc, that sells the ruined city as "an unparalleled opportunity for the urban pioneer, artist, or misfit" to "create amidst destruction." He seems to be getting some traction, too, at least in the press and academy. He's been interviewed by the New York Times, the Colbert Report, the Daily Show, PBS, and NPR, and he recently spoke at U of M's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

I haven't read/heard it all yet, but I'd definitely like to learn more. What do the current residents really think of this all? Do they buy it? Are outsiders actually moving in? And, as Metro Mode asks, what can Detroit take away from this?

The photo, by the way, is taken from the gallery of "Ruins" on the city's website --- probably the only municipal website in the United States that not only openly acknowledges its urban decay (and its Crips affiliation!) but embraces it, too, as "malignant beauty."

Urban gardening continues to grow

The News has a great review of urban agriculture in Detroit. In the past decade, dozens of community gardens have been planted across the city, like the inspirational Georgia Street Garden on the city's east side. And now, Model D reports, the movement has state backing. The new Garden for Growth program lets neighbors lease state-owned vacant land for one year tax-free if they create a park or garden on the lot. More than 6,000 parcels are eligible in Detroit alone!

Right-sizing the Rust Belt

The New York Times reports on proposals to "right-size" the city of Flint. Since the 1960s, the city has lost nearly half its population, and a third of those remaining are in poverty. To restore density and make city services more efficient, the County Treasurer would like to shrink the city's footprint by shutting down the city's least populated blocks and neighborhoods. “Decline in Flint is like gravity, a fact of life,” he says. “We need to control it instead of letting it control us.”

As I've written before, Youngstown, Ohio, has already adopted a plan to right-size the city as its population drops. Many believe Detroit should do the same, though it's a matter of considerable debate. Also sure to spark debate are mayoral candidate Dave Bing's recent remarks to the Detroit News's editorial board on rebuilding Detroit's vacated land:

Estimating there are about 70,000 parcels of vacant land citywide, Bing said his first priorities are to clear land near and around schools, churches and senior citizen complexes. He would eventually create areas similar to what people have come to expect in some suburban communities. "A lot of people who moved out of the city are middle-class people, and I don't think a lot of them feel we've got the communities they like to live in," Bing told The Detroit News editorial board. "Wouldn't it be great if we could look at some of this vacant land to build a city within a city?

"It would be great to have a city like Birmingham in the city or to have a (place) like somewhere in Grosse Pointe so that those middle class people have an option to come back."

Something tells me Bing will have some explaining to do.

Jobs, please

Rochelle Riley has a telling column on a Renaissance High and Harvard grad who chose to move back to Detroit but can't find a job in his field of choice, urban planning and development. The point here is pretty obvious. In a state rapidly losing population and half of its own college grads, shouldn't local businesses and agencies do everything they can to recruit and retain the local talent that actually wants to stick around? Yes, Detroit has a small, thriving do it yourself culture, and young entrepreneurs regularly kick off cool new businesses and non-profit projects, but let's be honest, that path is for the courageous few. Something needs to be done to keep the other 95% in town, starting with a clear path to whatever good, steady employment remains in our post-auto economy.

City going full circle

I'm still not sure what I think of the Hantz Group's plans to bring full-scale commercial farming to Detroit. There just aren't enough details yet, though this web chat with Matt Allen answers a lot of questions.

On the plus side, a large farm will put vacant land back to use, generate tax revenue for the city, and draw positive publicity from around the world. Best yet, it could help break the stigma that mars Detroit's abandoned lots. Most of this vacant land would be fairly easy to build on (red tape and taxes aside), but developers don't even consider it because of its fallen history. Vacant land in Detroit is just presumed worthless. A successful reuse project could change the perception of Detroit's vacant lots from an albatross to an opportunity.

Now for the caveats, mostly based on speculation:

• A third of the city's land is vacant, but most of it isn't contiguous. Will a farm displace people? By what process and for what compensation? In the web chat, someone asked if "people [would] be asked to move or relocated, or would the farm just go up around them? " Matt Allen responded, "... both. Our intention is to have the area inside the farm site empty."

• How much tax revenue will it really generate? When asked, Allen wrote, "well that is to be determined but we cant pay 81 mils, we are at the point where that is being discussed along with other issues." That is to say, Allen wants a special lower tax rate for the farm -- "an ag rate." Will other businesses get to pay this new lower rate or just them?

• What about pesticides and other runoff? Allen says MSU Extension is partnering with the farm to monitor the environmental impact, but it's worth worrying about. This won't be an organic farm. Allen says they'll be using "conventional ag methods" -- and conventional agriculture methods are toxic.

• How will the farm be secured? Are we talking cornstalks surrounded by barbed wire? This could look great or look terrible depending on the measures they take.

• And what about Matt Allen? I don't advocate guilt by association, but he is Kwame Kilpatrick's former Press Secretary after all (and he's been publicly arrested for domestic abuse). That does invite a certain level of scrutiny.
  

In short, I eagerly await their business plan.

Save Michigan Central Station

As most know by now, City Council has voted to demolish Detroit's most iconic landmark, Michigan Central Station, and if the mayor's request is approved, federal stimulus funds will pay for it.

We need to save this structure. Yes, it's in bad repair. Thanks to the neglect of its owner, billionaire Matty Moroun, the building is a shell of its former self, torn apart by scrappers and the elements. No, no one knows what to do with it. The size of the structure, its distance from downtown, and the prohibitive cost of rehabbing it have so far killed all the proposals to save it. Yet it should be left to stand.

MCS is a national landmark, a Beaux Arts marvel, and an icon of Detroit -- broken down, abandoned, but still beautiful. It embodies the history of the past century and should remain as a testament to those times. Ideally, MCS would be rehabbed, but even as a ruin, it will draw interest and attention for decades, like the ruins of old Europe. Perhaps, as a Detroit Yes poster suggests, just the facade could be saved and serve as the centerpiece of a renovated Roosevelt Park. Regardless, preserving some or all of this historic structure will be better for Detroit than the certain alternative -- another rubble-strewn, vacant lot.

Remember, nothing will replace MCS, not for many years. Many say the station stands in the way of new development, but there are no viable plans to reuse the space. Once destroyed, the lot will join the network of urban prairie spreading across the city. And at what expense? The city will not only lose its history and sense of self, it will waste its federal stimulus dollars, not on creating jobs, as they're meant to do, but on permanently destroying the urban fabric. This money should go toward creating the next economy, not destroying the remnants of the industrial past. Knocking down MCS is a mistake we'll long regret.

7/17 Update: Read about the volunteer effort to clean up and save Michigan Central Station.

Unexpected good news

To my surprise, the News is reporting that plans to build an $80-million outdoor mall at 8 Mile and Woodward are proceeding. Yes, the project has already been delayed for two years, and today is April Fools' Day, but if the developers are to be believed, construction could actually begin as soon as next month. If constructed, the Shoppes at Gateway Park would be the largest commercial development built in Detroit in fifty years.

The mall would also mark a major transformation of the corridor. While the neighborhoods to the west (Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest) are among Detroit's most affluent, the area just south and east of the proposed mall is as desolate as any in the city, with vacant lots and burned out homes outnumbering occupied dwellings. What's more, the major anchor of the area, the State Fairgrounds, is being shut down by the state. So the new mall will truly be a turn of events.

The change we're stuck with

What a day to stop the presses. As the New York Times rubs in, Detroit's dailies ended home delivery on one of the heaviest news days of the year. General Motors and Chrysler will be forcibly restructured by the White House, L. Brooks Patterson wants to steal the Auto Show, Michigan State made the Final Four, and the fact that both papers stopped home delivery is itself national news.

As the headlines make so evident, Detroit has never needed its journalists more, but the recession is putting one paper after another out of print or out of business altogether. The casualties so far include Flint, Saginaw, Bay City, and Detroit, whose papers have all cut daily delivery, and the Ann Arbor News, which closed outright. If the economic downturn lasts much longer (and it's likely to last quite awhile), there may be no newspapers left standing to tell us about it.