The biggest issue here is not saving old buildings. You can't save old builldings if you do not have the jobs needed to fill them as offices, apartments, or industrial buildings. You also can't have a good transit system unless you have a job for people to get to.

The brain drain is a serious issue. We spend literally tens of thousands of dollars to educate each student only to have the best leave our state or region. This leaves us with more folks on the dole and less dollars to support them with. In this scenario, historic preservation will never be a priority.

The state needs to think about radical approaches to funding colleges. We have too many leaving. There should be a serious penalty for this. We can no longer afford to have our schools draw people here from around the world, educate them at our universities, then allow them to leave the State. It makes no sense economically and puts us in a far worse position. It would be far better for the State to close down U of M, MSU and WSU and ship all of its university students to Ohio!