Chevrolet offers to refurbish Tiger Stadium site.

[animatedmartian]

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/in...rolet_off.html

The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation has rejected an offer by Chevorlet to pay for rehabilitation of the baseball field at site of old Tiger Stadium, which the city has largely ignored as it attempts to lure would-be developers.

In an August 9 letter sent to Mayor Dave Bing and DEGC President George Jackson, Chevy promotional manager Phil Caruso explained how the auto brand could help makeover the field for youth baseball this year:
Chevrolet is offering to provide financing and labor [[in the form of employee volunteers) to put the field at the site of Tiger Stadium back into playable shape as part of our commitment to revitalizing Detroit and to help support the Tiger Stadium Conservancy's efforts to more fully develop the location. We have had informal discussions with both the Conservancy and the Detroit Tigers and both support our efforts to refurbish the field.

Once the field has been refurbished we'd anticipate the city and/or Conservancy would be responsible for on-going maintenance and any additional element on-site. What we'd provide, frankly, is a new ballpark for Detroit's youth on the site of the city's most hallowed baseball stadium.
...

I wonder if DEGC is expecting a mall or something. There can't be many developments that would be more favored by the community than keeping the baseball diamond usable. It's not like there's plenty of vacant land in the area or anything.

[Detroitnerd]

Fuck the DEGC. They want to ink massive deals, but don't understand that places developing best in the city are conglomerations of small businesses in small- to medium-sized existing buildings. Midtown. Southwest. Corktown. They don't even understand or communicate with the neighborhood residents or understand their needs or desires. Fuck the DEGC.

[Detroitnerd]

No, can't have a ballpark there! But when they knock down a downtown building without a plan, they'll pay almost a half-million dollars to build a "community garden" where there's no community.

[drjeff]

The one thing Detroit is not lacking is space for new projects. Leave the TS site the fuck alone. Only in Detroit do they turn down proposals that improve things and are free.

[Novine]

""The site you refer to is a valuable piece of property for redevelopment because of its size and location," he wrote. "It is being reserved for a comprehensive development that will bring a substantial investment and new economic activity to the city.""

It's only valuable if there are parties interested in redeveloping the site and are willing to put money behind those plans. Otherwise, from a market perspective, it's just another vacant piece of property in Detroit with limited value. But with George Jackson, it's all about the "Grand Plan". That guy will wait 100 years for some massive development plan to come forward instead of working with interested parties who don't have such ambitious plans.

One of Bing's mistakes is keeping this guy around with his attitude about redevelopment. Most successful urban redevelopments didn't happen because of some massive redevelopment project. They came about through a succession of smaller projects building upon the success of the previous project. But Jackson and the DEGC don't appear to have any understanding of that concept. The name of the outfit is the "Detroit Economic Growth Corporation". By all measures, it's failed to grow Detroit's economy. At what point do you call it a failure and start over?

[Detroitnerd]

Behind all this I see the grim visage of Ilitch, urging George to "salt the earth so that nothing may grow."

[Scottathew]

Or we could just let the community group continue to maintain the site for free, only asking to play a game of ball every couple of weeks in return.

Oh wait, we shoed them away and built fences to keep them out...

[rjlj]

It is the same DEGC that tore down the Lafayette Building and put a park on its grave site because the owners of the Book Cadillac were complaining, What else do you expect?
Either nothing will happen with the Tiger Stadium site or you will get an bland ticky tacky development 20 years from now. Detroit's investment into the DEGC is a Ponzi Scheme. Wake up!!

[JBMcB]

If it's such a valuable piece of property, they must be paying gobs of property taxes on it, right?

New proposal: property taxes on undeveloped fields should be increased 500%. If you put in and maintain a park, that counts as development.

[Detroitnerd]

Who do we complain to in order to get this eyesore called the DEGC demolished?

[DetroitPole]

Of course there is a lot of ill-will for George Jackson around these parts because many here are preservationists, but I can't really see anyone besides George Jackson supporting his decision on this one.

I was at the groundbreaking for the Auburn yesterday, which admittingly is a quality project, if not aesthetically beautiful. Needless to say George Jackson was there. It is pretty incredible how someone that inept and frankly inarticulate can maintain that position, but that is how things work around here. Basically he takes credit for virtually every piece of development in Detroit, whether he helped, hindered, or at one point opposed [[read: he wanted to demo the Book-Cadillac). When ground breaks he just stands up there, fat, simpering, and sweaty, shaking hands and grabbing ass.

Needless to say, I had no applause to offer him as he stood up there bumbling over multi-sylabic words or schmoozing some investment banker.

To be generous, Bing has been extremely slow to root out the bad seeds in his government. In fact, he's left it to fester. Jackson may not be corrupt, per say, but is nothing short of detrimental to economic development in Detroit. However, unlike the Human Services Director, or whatever, he can point to successful developments and claim credit for them. I can only imagine what the investors and developers say behind his back - probably worse than what we have to say. But he's coasting.

There is really nothing we can do. It could not be more undemocratic of a position. Someone who holds our economic and community fate in our hands is a defacto president-for-life. If we had an administration with any desire whatsoever to clean house you might see something.
All we can do is write to the mayor. It won't do any good, but this is a David and Goliath type of battle.

[401don]

This would be unbelievable if it wasn't Detroit. I'm guessing that employees approached GM with this idea based on the national Chevy program for renewing ballparks seen every week on "This Week in Baseball." But no we can't have this in our own backyard. I'd like to hear from ex-athlete Bing that he is personally opposed to this project.
There would be plenty of room for smaller mixed use projects on the site along with the ballpark. They could set aside some land and it would really add to Corktown.

[rb336]

Will the stupidity never end with these bureaucrats?

[Detroitnerd]

Best thing to do would be to preserve the field and -- dare I say this? -- replat 19th century streets where possible into a human scale street grid with small lots. Then open it up for residential and mixed-use in-fill. But then no "big deal" would be possible, and without those "big deals" how is George supposed to have lunch at the Rattlesnake Club every day?

[Hypestyles]

bizarre.. there need to be more youth baseball/recreation fields in the city..

[1953]

George, quit being ignorant.

[SWMAP]

Its hard to find an email address for the mayor[[and have any confidence that the correspondance is ever read). I just faxed over a complaint about this to: 224-4128, which appears to be in his office. Does he have a twitter account? Does Jackson?

[detroitsgwenivere]

#$%^&*rrrrrrr The community has spoken numerous times as to what they want and expect in regards to that site. We've had endless meetings with residents, businesses, non-profits, community groups, and politicians so that there was no mistaking what was expected from the city. The problem of course: The DEGC was invited to the majority of these meetings and they never bother to show up. They don't care what the community's needs or wants are, and they don't care that it's not their money, time, and effort that's been spent maintaining the field thus far.

There's a ton of support for a preserved ballfield outside of Detroit. Even Senator Levin managed to get the TS Conservancy federal dollars for it. I think that's one of several reasons why the DEGC and the Mayor's Office won't support the community. Because "Non-Detroiters" want the preservation too.

If the plan is to build something that looks like that soviet-prison style project called "The Auburn" you can bet the majority of Corktown is going to have a "field" meltdown.

[Jingles in Boofland]

In all of the cities I've worked or resided in, Detroit is the only municipality I've seen that doesn't give a Tinker's Dam about historical buildings, or it's own historical past - They've been tearing down beautiful, old buildings for as long as I can remember and it continues unabated, to this day.

[animatedmartian]

In all of the cities I've worked or resided in, Detroit is the only municipality I've seen that doesn't give a Tinker's Dam about historical buildings, or it's own historical past - They've been tearing down beautiful, old buildings for as long as I can remember and it continues unabated, to this day.

I've seen historical buildings torn down in other cities, but at least there they replace them...sometimes with better buildings, sometimes with useful buildings, but most of the time someone isn't holding on to some empty land hoping that some developer from out of town or something is going to come in and dump a bunch money building something that people won't like.

I thought it was economic growth for Detroit, not economic growth for people in high places.

[CLAUDE G]

I saw a letter George Jackson wrote blasting this project and pretty much told Chevrolet and GM to Fuck off.

All I can say is that this is ready to Blow up in George Jacksons face, because there is alot more stuff going on behind the scenes that the public is not aware of.

[Joseph C. Krause]

Fire George Jackson
Demolish the DEGC

[CLAUDE G]

┌П┐[[◉_◉)┌П┐ George Jackson

[MSUguy]

The Planning and Economic Development Committee which is chaired by Saunteel Jenkins meets at 10 am tomorrow . I don't live in the neighborhood and this pisses me off. Maybe we could organize something on the forum with residents from Corktown and others for one of their meetings? Bitching on this board while cathartic won't change DEGC practices.

[[313) 224-4248 [[office)
[[313) 224-1787 [[fax)
E-mail:
councilmemberjenkins@detroitmi.gov

[Gistok]

I was just reading the article... and this the part of what he said that has me baffled......

"Ceding management of the site under even an interim arrangement is not acceptbable to us."

OK........ so for the Tiger Stadium site... an interim arrangement is NOT acceptable.... but for the Lafayette Building site [[location of the Compuware Urban Farm)... it IS acceptable....

Can someone clue me in as to why he appears to be making himself look like a hypocrite AND a fool?

.... also looks like someone at that website has a sense of humor... "acceptbable"?