Laura Berman's Blog

Category: City Hall

Jewel of Detroit has wet diapers

Looking back on the history of the Cobo Center un-deal, Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. sounds like a stock advisor gazing backward: If only he'd sold his stocks for cash, and sent pink roses every day to Monica Conyers.

He imagined she'd fall into line, a presumption that instead inspired her to protect Cobo, one of the city's crown "jewels," from outsiders.

In real life, Cobo isn't glittering: It's more blight than bright. During a tour of the heart of Cobo earlier this week, a longtime Cobo tenant walked me through convention halls whose ceiling drips are caught by plastic "diapers" -- tarps stretched across the leaky areas. Two giant doors, garage-style, facing the river, have been patched with wood, in the style of a vandalized, foreclosed home repair. Except for a new patch near the Kwame-built, appealing cafe, The Vu, the carpeting is dingy. In places, walls are crumbling. Remember the South Terminal of Detroit Metropolitan Airport before the new terminal? It's deja vu all over again.

Attracting conventions is becoming more difficult, my guide confided in a pained voice, because "they don't want to come back." Indianapolis? Cleveland? "We can't compete with them."

Head on down there and take a look around. You don't need perfect vision, or even an experienced guide, to see there's no jewel -- just Depends for the ceilings.

Category: City Hall

Casting a new High School Musical

One minute she's a feminist intellectual, touting her law degree and her credentials. Then, Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers undermines her own case, with the exaggerated flair of a sitcom character.

After helping her brother get a job with the city ($30,500 a year), she renounced him this week by denying his existence, at least in the fraternal sense, to News reporter David Josar. Brother? What brother? When it turned out that the man in question, Reggie Esters, 38, was an ex-con who got fired for not showing up and recently got in trouble again, was indisputably her brother, Conyers reluctantly admitted the truth.

That wasn't her only flip-flop of the week.

"I didn't say she needs a man but...does she?" That was Conyers, sounding like Anna Nicole Smith or Mae West, baring her claws as she snarled about her fellow Council member Sheila Cockrel to a Channel 4 (WDIV) reporter. That was after she'd told Cockrel to "shut... up"

But don't the mean girls always get mad at the teacher's pet? Cockrel responded to the character smear and obscenity with a diagnosis, suggesting the president needs work on her anger management skills and impulse control.

In high school, the mean girl with impulse control problems gets sent to the principal's office. But this is Detroit City Council, where Monica Conyers is the principal.

Category: City Hall

Ken Cockrel's revealing portfolio

Any suspicions that Mayor Kenneth Cockrel Jr. is a shrewd real estate speculator, or a reckless gambler, or an astute investor can now be shelved.

His newly released financial statement is instead touching in its humanity: The mayor's portfolio reflects the earnest and well-meaning aspirations of a man even his opponent called "a good guy" in Wednesday night's debate: He and his wife have invested in 529 plans for their children's college educations (totaling over $100,000), in the manufacturing industries that once made Detroit great (Johnson Controls, Ford and General Motors stock) and in the cool technology (Sony Corp.) you'd expect a self-described geek to love.

They've put their money where their hearts and lives are -- a strategy that's been painfully unprofitable. The house, bought in 1992 for $62,000, now carries a $132,973 mortgage: testimony to in-the-bubble thinking that's now gone bust. The stock? Well, we know where those companies are now.

The Cockrel ledger shows the mayor to be a man who heeded conventional wisdom and the dictates of common sense. He is a Detroit Everyman, a good one, who backs his community with dollars, and invests in his children's education. Still only 43, and despite $180,000 in income last year, he's very much the working stiff. With college for five looming, he and his wife are still fighting for current financial security. And maybe this isn't the right time to grade on financial acumen: Bernie Madoff seemed really smart last year.