'There are bad economies. And then there is Michigan'
ESPN Radio's Colin Cowherd said he was trying to lift up the spirits of his national audience "in a weird way" by recounting the economic horrors of Metro Detroit on Thursday -- specifically the sale of the Pontiac Silverdome for almost $600,000. Find the Nov. 19 "Thundering Herd" podcast in the archive here.
"This could be the ... second most unbelievable thing I've ever heard...: They sold the Pontiac Silverdome yesterday for $583,000. ... This is an NFL stadium. ... They sold it for what a four-bedroom house in Connecticut costs (ESPN broadcasts from Bristol, Conn.).
"I could have bought the Silverdome yesterday," he declared. I didn't know radio hosts like Cowherd made this much money -- or would he be cashing in his 401(k) retirement savings a little early?
This led to a rant that was half Detroit-bashing and half Michigan-loving.
"I literally have to stop reading stories about Detroit's economy," Cowherd said. "It's so depressing."
"There are bad economies. And then there is Michigan."
Cowherd then stipulated that Detroit is one of the best sports cities in the country (can't get the Michigan listening audience too teed off -- especially with automaker advertisers like GM and Ford still lurking around). The fans like bowling and hockey, something you don't find in markets like New York, he said.
"I find myself rooting for Michigan sports teams so they have good news."
Then Cowherd dropped the hammer blow: What does depressing economic and sports news like this do to kids in Michigan. "I don't think I could keep my kids in that state," he said, despite his love of Michigan's nature and Ann Arbor.
In fairness, Cowherd sounds about as conflicted as some Michiganians I know. A lot of people say they would like to join the wagon train headed out of state -- except they can't sell their value-ravaged homes.
Michigan gets hailed for Top 10 university president
Michigan likes to boast about its higher education system, and Time magazine has given it a boost by naming University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman one of the top 10 university leaders in the country. See here.
Coleman gets special kudos for fund-raising, generating $3.2 billion from 2000 to 2008, $700 million more than her $2.5 billion goal.
Time doesn't even note what makes this more impressive -- Coleman raised the money in a state that has been in recession for nearly eight years. Of course, U-M has plenty of out-of-state students and alumni, which helps with raising money.
Amazingly, Time doesn't make a huge deal about the lack of state aid to U-M -- it gets less than 10 percent of its budget from state funds. Michigan usually ranks in the bottom 5 for state support of universities in recent years.
Reports Gilbert Cruz: "On the academic front, she has helped increase Michigan's already robust profile as one of the nation's premier research institutions; this past year, the university passed the $1 billion mark for research expenditures. Coleman also wants to help prop up nearby Detroit, where the school has just launched a 'semester abroad' for students.
New York Times discovers farming in Detroit
The New York Times editors catch up with urban consultant Aaron Renn's piece about turning Detroit into farmland. They're behind the curve on the idea, but at least they are taking notice (see here).
"Renn says the sheer size of Detroit -- a largely vacant urban prairie bigger than Manhattan, Boston and San Francisco combined -- makes it a prime test case for the 'shrinking cities' movement. And so an American Institute of Architects study imagines Detroit reduced into a metro core surrounded by green belts, 'urban villages' and banked land."
According to the "Idea of the Day" blog: In what many see as a nightmare town, where a house can cost less than the TV you put inside, loftier dreams can also be dreamt -- especially, Renn says, when government doesn't get in the way: "In Detroit, the incapacity of the government is actually an advantage in many cases. There's not much chance a strong city government could really turn the place around, but it could stop the grass roots revival in its tracks."
What Renn is talking about is the weakness of Detroit's government in enforcing its own cumbersome regulations -- an irony in itself.
'Somehow Detroit wound up in Ohio for a minute'
Leave it to Rolling Stone magazine to give us the behind-the-scenes look at Bruce Springsteen's geography fiasco at the Palace concert last Friday night. To hear E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt tell it, Springsteen knew he was in the Detroit area, but somehow confused it with being in the state of Ohio.
In the process, Van Zandt leaves the impression that the crowd -- those Detroit rowdies! -- was going to tear The Boss apart for his road-weary cluelessness.
"I'm like, 'Please, God, don't give him a chance to do it again before I get a chance to talk to him.' Sure enough, he did it a third time and I'm like, 'That's it. This crowd is about to rebel. They're going to attack us!'"
Detroit radio talk show host Jay Towers this morning claimed the crowd was actually pretty mellow about the Ohio shoutouts because they were enjoying the concert so much.
This isn't exactly a monumental blunder. When musicians play so many concerts, there seems to be a certain inevitability about losing track of which concert venue you're in. After all, The Boss knows Motown well, having played a special strike benefit concert in Detroit in the mid-1990s.
But Van Zandt's attempt at damage control still sounds a little odd: "I guess the last gig was Cleveland. Maybe it was that. He didn't have the city wrong. In his mind, he knew he was in Detroit, but somehow Detroit wound up in Ohio for a minute."
Or maybe he thought he was in Toledo, but forgot that Michigan ceded ownership of that city to Ohio in exchange for the Upper Peninsula when it applied for statehood? Hey, whatever works.
Michigan is forgettable
It's hard to say who is getting the worse rap for forgetfulness -- Michigan or rocker Bruce Springsteen. This in the wake of The Boss' Friday night concert at the Palace of Auburn Hills, where he repeatedly said "Ohio" to the crowd -- a week before the heralded University of Michigan-Ohio State football game.
An Anaheim Examiner celebrities blogger puts it this way: "The flawless performances on his most recent tour with the E Street Band earned amazing write-ups with fans and music critics alike, all offering nothing but praise. But that was before Bruce made it to Michigan."
Yep, leave it to Michigan to put a black mark on an otherwise uplifting tour. Sigh.
GM gets a nod for killing two brands
A Wall Street Journal article wonders why more brands haven't been eliminated. It quotes an auto analyst who argues that "government intervention to save auto-related jobs has forestalled the inevitable -- broad and deep restructuring that would shut down unneeded plants and close loss-making enterprises. 'Not as much capacity has come out that should have,' (John Casea) said."
Interestingly enough, Detroit's auto industry gets a positive mention because GM is one of the few automakers that has killed a couple of brands -- Pontiac and Saturn.
Otherwise, government interventions are keeping a bunch of auto brands on temporary life support -- including Volvo, Saab and Hummer.
Pontiac Silverdome 'latest symbol of futility' for region
The Wall Street Journal jumps in a day early to report that bids are due today for buying the abandoned Pontiac Silverdome, the 80,000-seat domed stadium that has been mostly empty since the Lions moved to Detroit in 2002.
Instead of waiting a day to see whether any bids are offered, the Journal has experts saying "possible bidders might be scared off by the credit crunch in real estate..."
This leads the Journal to say the Silverdome "has become the latest local symbol of futility for an economically hurting region."
The Journal could have waited a day to see if the lack of bids will come true. The emergency financial manager who is running the dysfunctional city on Pontiac says he has received about 50 inquiries.
Despite this rush to judgement, there is certainly plenty to criticize about Pontiac's handling of the Silverdome. The deficit-riddled city has muffed the bidding process over the years, dragging its feet about committing to a plan for unloading a stadium that costs $1.5 million to maintain every year. Then the economy tanked, and development plans fell through.
What makes the Silverdome even more embarrassing is that other mothballed stadiums have been converted to productive uses, according to the story.
Of course, as is true with many negative stories about the region, the killer quote is from a local. Since Pontiac has 30 percent unemployment, an investor needs to have "deep pockets and a tolerance for risk," says Robin Boyle, an urban planning professor at Wayne State University. That's code for: The investor needs to be a wildly rich eccentric speculator.
To succeed, Boyle says the stadium site will need more subsidies on top of the commercial zoning status and eligibility for state, local and federal tax breaks.
Unions control Detroit's future
While the future of Detroit would seem to lie in the hands of re-elected Mayor Dave Bing, the Reason Foundation's Shikha Dalmia sees it being held hostage by the city's employee unions.
"Bing needs to confront the hard reality that the city needs to pare back its liabilities, identify infrastructure it can no longer afford to maintain and (though this is anathema to Detroit's political class) perhaps auction off portions of its 140 square miles to neighboring counties, shrinking to a size that its diminished population base can support," Dalmia boldly suggests in a Wall Street Journal commentary.
Of course, Bing has talked a good game, suggesting he will contract out services, end the entitlement mentality and not worry about re-election so he can get things done the right way.
But Dalmia, a former Detroit News editorial writer who lives in Metro Detroit, correctly points out that Bing has blinked three times about laying off city workers after unions have balked about making concessions on salaries, benefits and perks that many Metro Detroit private business employees don't receive.
This leads to the conclusion that: "Short term, Detroit's best hope may be to go bankrupt. However, given Michigan law, which has never been tested because no city has ever filed for bankruptcy, it's unclear if even bankruptcy will fully release Detroit from the clutches of its unions and allow it to start over. The only thing certain is that fate is not kind to a city that allows unions to run amok."
Urbanophile: 'Detroit, New Frontier'
Aaron Renn, a so-called "urban success strategist" based in Chicago, writes on his Shareable blog that Detroit can be right-sized and revitalized as long as the region addresses stopping suburban growth.
For Renn, Detroit is a new frontier where population decline is slowing, and the need to revitalize the city's core is beginning to emerge -- with the artist and agriculture movements in the city.
"Believe it or not, though Detroit suffers from both real and image problems, it also has a great opportunity to stake out a unique claim to be America's next great frontier and leverage that to fuel its renewal," Renn writes.The reason why is because so many people have left and so much land has been abandoned that Detroit is a blank canvass without the restrictions to rebuild that face a similar community such as the south side of Chicago, he says.
"A program of right-sizing the infrastructure and service levels of city government clearly must be undertaken in order to match today's lower populations," Renn writes.
Then he switches to what he considers the unexplored problem facing Detroit: Reining in the suburbs.
"In a region that cannot support the infrastructure it currently has, building even more (which it will have to maintain in the future) only adds to the significant fiscal burden the region has to bear," he writes.
This animates Renn's discussion more than figuring out how to revitalize the urban core. He assumes that because there are nascent movements in the urban core, it will grow organically. Then it will be up to somebody to create "urban village satellites" around the core to build on this growth.
How is this supposed happen? Don't ask.
It is much more fun to talk about ways to stymie suburban expansion. The problem with this focus is that it treats community building as a wealth redistribution exercise.
One way Detroit can stop the resource-wasting construction of new suburban infrastructure is to out-compete the suburbs. It is difficult to do that because there has been a constant "Manifest Destiny" impulse to get out of the cities and explore farther out in America.
If Detroit becomes less costly, provides higher-quality education and provides the amenities of a big city, it will attract people.
Renn touches upon the frontier spirit when he talks about Detroit's attracting creative and entrepreneurial types to its desolation -- but he doesn't seem to grasp that such a niche of individuals isn't as great as the flood of individuals voting with their feet for the suburbs.
'Ford wins election'
One of Detroit's automakers gets a pat on the back while another gets paddled for going back to the federal trough one too many times by the Wall Street Journal editorial board. The Journal opines that Ford is winning the election among consumers in the showroom.
Bailed-out Chrysler is losing market share and money, while the formerly bankrupt GM is gaining some sales at heavily discounted prices -- which means no profit.
Meanwhile, the Journal opposes a request for more bailout money for GMAC, the financial unit for both Chrysler and GM. The Journal counts at least seven different federal bailouts for GMAC compared with the one financial assist Ford Motor Co. has received.
Its bottom line on the battle between taxpayer-financed GM and Chrysler vs. Ford: "The people have voted. Treasury should now let consumers and investors decide which cars to purchase, and how to finance them."
