Detroit thread. Post Kwame, Monica, and $1 houses here.

[Caliga]

What, no post about this weekend's marathon?  Detroit can't even conduct a simple marathon without multiple deaths. 

[Savonarola]

Former Cobo director gets year in prison
BY BEN SCHMITT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The former director of Cobo Center under then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced today to a year in prison after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in a wide-ranging FBI investigation of corruption in Detroit city government.

Glenn Blanton, 47, of West Bloomfield admitted in October 2008 that he accepted a $15,000 bribe from Karl Kado, a Cobo contractor who also pleaded guilty. Under a plea agreement, Blanton was required cooperate in the ongoing FBI bribery investigation.

U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani sentenced Blanton today.

In 2005, FBI agents contacted Blanton about $15,000 he had received from Kado. Blanton denied accepting a bribe, but shortly thereafter wrote Kado, the owner of Metro Services Organization LLC, three $5,000 checks in an attempt to make it look like the money was a loan.

In reality, Blanton admitted in federal court earlier this year, "there was no repayment intended."

Blanton, who headed Cobo from November 2004 until February 2007, was charged in an ongoing investigation, which involves the Synagro sludge hauling contract, the Asian Village restaurant venture and other city deals.

One down, many to go. 

[Neil]

You're supposed to pay off groups that endorse you after the election, not before.  Detroit can't even get that right.   

Given the enormous amounts of cash availible to Detroit politicians, it's best to think of it as an investment.

[Josquius]

Rather than throwing aid money at them they should use the money to relocate people elsewhere.

[Neil]

Rather than throwing aid money at them they should use the money to relocate people elsewhere.

That's racist.

[Barrister]

Rather than throwing aid money at them they should use the money to relocate people elsewhere.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just build a wall around Detroit and not relocate them?

You could even earn some money towards the cost by selling the movie rights.

[jimmy olsen]

What, no post about this weekend's marathon?  Detroit can't even conduct a simple marathon without multiple deaths. 

I also expected something on this.

[Josquius]

My first job out of college involved driving around the city of Detroit and monitoring our cellular network.  We had some engineers in from Columbus, Ohio helping us at one point.  One time one of the bumpkin engineers from Columbus was out riding with one of the Detroit engineers, Don, who was raised on Detroit's southwest side.  They were down on Cass Corridor when they saw a scantily clad woman shivering in a cold Detroit February morning.  Their conversation went as follows:

Bumpkin:  What's that?

Don:  That's a hooker.

Bumpkin:  A hooker?  It's ten in the morning.

Don:  This is Detroit, that's a 24/7 business here.

So? Amsterdam hookers are up in their windows before 10.

Its peak time (you can tell because the hotter ones are in the windows).
Lots of middle aged men wanting a pre-work quicky.

[derspiess]

Its peak time (you can tell because the hotter ones are in the windows).
Lots of middle aged men wanting a pre-work quicky.

Always wondered what the red light district was like earlier in the day. 

[garbon]

Its peak time (you can tell because the hotter ones are in the windows).
Lots of middle aged men wanting a pre-work quicky.

Yeah, that's what I assumed.

[Savonarola]

He should have gotten his Obama money:

Detroit council hopeful Charles Pugh faces loss of condo
Christine MacDonald and David Josar / The Detroit News
Detroit--City Council front-runner Charles Pugh is set to lose his downtown condo at a foreclosure auction just days before the Nov. 3 election after defaulting on a $331,000 bank loan, records show.

The Oct. 29 sale will follow a handful of financial problems for Pugh, a former broadcaster and political newcomer who finished first in the Aug. 4 primary.

Last month, his condo association filed suit, claiming he owed more than $4,900 in unpaid dues and lawyer fees. This spring, Wayne County began foreclosure proceedings on the condo on Adelaide Street after he didn't pay $2,631.89 in property taxes. The proceedings stopped when Pugh paid the taxes, and campaign staffers say he has paid some of the money owed to the condo association.

Pugh didn't return phone calls, but campaign manager Jillian Semaan said his "sacrifice" to quit lucrative broadcast jobs to run for council is "commendable." Pugh has blamed his money problems on leaving Fox 2 and a job at WJLB-97.9 FM.

"He is able to represent the people of the city of Detroit because he knows what they are going through," Semaan said. "He is experiencing it."

Records show Pugh paid $385,000 for the condominium in 2005 and took two loans from Countrywide Mortgage the day he assumed ownership.

One was for $77,000 and another for $308,000, which has jumped to $331,370 with interest and fees.

According to documents, Pugh was charged 8.25 percent interest, making his monthly payment on his 30-year mortgage payment $2,892. That does not include any insurance and property tax.

According to the notice that ran in Tuesday's Detroit Legal News, Pugh will have six months after sale to reclaim the condo by paying off the debt.

Council candidate John Bennett said while he understands many are going through similar problems, "voters should look at this and the other council members who have had issues. It could possibly be an indication of what the future may bring."

Candidate Gary Brown was sympathetic, saying "these are trying times."

"He is in the same situation as other sitting council members as well as a great number of Michiganders," Brown said.

Councilman Kwame Kenyatta, who is running for re-election, walked away from his Rosedale Park home this year, before his monthly payment jumped $1,000 to about $3,600.

Eviction notices were filed against Pugh 11 times while he was in Trolley Plaza on Washington Boulevard from December 2001 through April 2005, records show.

In each case, he eventually paid his rent after he was sued in 36th District Court

[Savonarola]

Meanwhile in Highland Park:

Just like dad, Blackwell lives with controversy
Charlie LeDuff / The Detroit News
Highland Park -- Arthur Blackwell II, the former emergency financial manager of Highland Park, stood accused of embezzlement this month in a courtroom in a building that bears his father's name: the Robert B. Blackwell Municipal Building.

It was a symbolic moment -- the nadir, perhaps, of Blackwell's power; a political name synonymous with the smoke-filled backrooms of Highland Park and Detroit.

His late father -- known as "Big Bob" -- was Michigan's first elected black mayor and an icon in Highland Park, a postage-stamp-size city of 14,000 wholly contained within the borders of Detroit. His portrait still hangs prominently in the drab foyer above that of the city's current mayor, Hubert Yopp.

Perpetually penniless and abandoned by both Ford and Chrysler, the city was on the brink of bankruptcy four years ago when Blackwell's son, Arthur, was handpicked by Gov. Jennifer Granholm to clean it up.

The results have been mixed. The police force has been reconstituted, but the city is so rough, even the Nation of Islam closed its mosque. The books are balanced, but it took a $30 million bond sale to do it. The street lights are half-off or half-on, depending on how one views it. But there was no toilet paper in the courthouse the morning he was accused of writing $264,000 in checks to himself out of the city's meager bank account.

Arthur stood ramrod straight that morning in a blue-striped suit, a blue-striped tie and polished shoes, as the judge read the litany of felony charges.

"How do you plead?" asked Chief Judge Brigette Officer, an old friend.

"Not guilty," his lawyer answered.

The chief of police, another friend of Blackwell's, stood to the side of the courtroom near the jury box, his eyes welling with tears.

"This is not a humiliating moment," Blackwell said later under the portrait of his father.

"It's kind of like a dream. Surreal. It was kind of warm for me to come into a place named after my dad rather than a place that was cold and I didn't know."

Highland Park was once known as "the city of trees." And in the case of the Blackwells, one should remember that the apple never falls far.

Robert Blackwell was a man of large appetites. Weighing nearly 300 pounds, Big Bob served four terms as mayor between the '60s and '80s. He preferred sharp ties and sharkskin suits and famously hosted poker parties in the old City Hall while conducting city business in a strip bar called the Tender Trap next door.

A man with a complexion as light as Walt Disney's, Blackwell moved blacks into prominent positions in a city that until he took over in 1968 had all but locked them out.

Predictably, Blackwell made enemies, and he twice survived a recall vote. His travel expenses were the stuff of legend. Even U.S. Rep. John Conyers accused him of embezzling millions of dollars in federal housing money.

Nothing ever stuck.

Son is controversial
His son Art, 56, is also a large and engaging man. He, too, appreciates lavish cars, dresses in a lambskin overcoat and is a political powerbroker wholly separate from his father and yet inextricably linked to him.

Arthur Blackwell was tacitly endorsed by Coleman A. Young for mayor of Detroit in 1993, but lost to Dennis Archer in a rout. He has served on the Wayne County Board of Commissioners, the Port Authority and insinuated himself as a shareholder and dealmaker in the Greektown Casino.

Most famously, he was the chief strategist and political rabbi to disgraced former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Like his father, Blackwell's career has been streaked in controversy. In the early '90s, he ran up more than $27,000 in travel expenses during his time at the Port Authority. He was accused of using leftover campaign funds to put a deck on his home. He collected a $42,000 salary as an appointee to the Fire Department, but rarely showed for the job.

Like his father, however, those accusations failed to topple him from the power set.

But this time, Blackwell finds himself fighting not only for his career, but also for his freedom.

"There is no gray area; Art Blackwell is a crook," said Robert Davis, the 29-year-old Highland Park school board member who brought the checks to the attention of Kym Worthy, the Wayne County prosecutor. "He took what he wasn't entitled to. Things won't get better until people like Blackwell go to prison."

$1 salary disputed
In April, the state fired Blackwell on claims he wrongly paid himself $264,000 from the Highland Park treasury. Blackwell had publicly agreed in 2005 to a salary of $1 a year to be paid by the state in his role as the city's emergency financial manager. But there is a dispute over whether it was supposed to be for the first year only, as he maintains, or for the length of his term.

Eventually, a state financial board did increase his salary in 2008 to $11,000 a month. Blackwell believes he was entitled to back pay dating to 2006, and so the city began to cut him checks that also carried his signature.

"The dollar was supposed to be for the first year only," said Blackwell, while giving a driving tour of Highland Park. He did not drive his restored '55 Cadillac, but rather a cream-colored van, the inside of which was so badly stained one wondered whether he was moonlighting as a body collector for the county morgue. "The governor agreed to that. I have it on tape. I mean, who in their right mind is going to work for $1 a year for five years?"

He went on: "I don't want to put this on my relationship with Kwame Kilpatrick because that's too easy. But yes, yes, there is a lot of political intrigue here. I am an old-school politician who believes there should be black people at the table. Some people don't like that."

There have been improvements in Highland Park, the state's poorest city, under Blackwell. Granholm glowingly acknowledged as much last year in a city brochure. Highland Park is running a $3 million surplus, she wrote. New townhouses are being built. The police, once housed in a trailer, have a new station on Woodward Avenue. The pension system is funded for the first time in 50 years. The community center got a $1 million face-lift and the library is scheduled to reopen.

But as Blackwell has learned, felony charges tend to lose you friends.

"Mr. Blackwell signed a contract for which he agreed to work for $1 a year indefinitely," said Liz Boyd, the governor's spokeswoman. "The governor after a year said she believed Mr. Blackwell should receive a salary; however, that's up to the loan board consistent with state law. It's now a matter before the courts."

Blackwell's lawyer, Ben Gonek, said that Granholm will have to say it herself in court at a preliminary hearing scheduled for Nov. 17. "I would expect the prosecutor to subpoena the governor," said Gonek. "If necessary, we will."

'People love you'
Gonek does not come cheap, and by all accounts Blackwell needs money. Despite cashing out the majority of his shares in the Greektown Casino five years ago for $10 million, Blackwell has been hit with state tax liens in excess of $100,000. He was also sued by Ford Motor Co. for the return of four luxury cars and lost a Detroit property two years ago to foreclosure.

Blackwell stood before the Detroit City Council earlier this week, asking it to scuttle the Greektown bankruptcy reorganization that would bring the cash-starved city $15 million because it would render worthless his remaining $5 million in options.

"This is just about equity and fairness," he said.

Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson agreed, calling it "unacceptable and disrespectful."

Blackwell is like that. He has friends everywhere.

Back in Highland Park, in the halls of his father's building, a well-wisher put it best. "You'll be all right. You're like a saint here. People love you."

Highland Park was once the edge of the city of Detroit; today it's completely surrounded by the city.  Henry Ford first built his first Model Ts there.  The factory is still there; but now it's abandoned and decrepit.

[Savonarola]

Thieves pilfer from Pontiac Silverdome
Mike Martindale / The Detroit News
Pontiac -- Somebody has been gutting the inside of the Pontiac Silverdome.

Pontiac's Emergency Financial Manager Fred Leeb told The News today he has requested a police investigation into the unauthorized taking of property from inside the former home of the Detroit Lions and the Pistons, currently up for auction next week.

"There have been items removed without permission," said Leeb, who declined to elaborate on the specifics of what was taken other than their value was "not in the thousands of dollars."

"The structure, integrity and operation of the facility are not affected, but it is disturbing," said Leeb, who stressed the probe is being conducted in a business-like manner and should not affect the pending auction.

Leeb said the city-owned Silverdome is currently under 24-hour security and that both Pontiac police and the Michigan State Police have been asked to investigate. Those responsible will be prosecuted, he said.

The huge white-domed, 80,000-seat venue, which cost $55.7 million to build, became a white elephant when the Pistons moved up Interstate 75 to The Palace of Auburn Hills in 1988 and the Lions left for Ford Field in Detroit in 2002. It has cost $1.5-million a year for its upkeep

Those wishing to be considered serious bidders must submit sealed bids along with a $250,000 cashier's check to Williams & Williams, the Tulsa, Okla.-based auctioneer, through 4 p.m. Nov. 12., when the city -- at its discretion -- can declare the high bidder the winner and end the auction. All $250,000 cashier checks will be refunded.

I heard the thieves got away with all Detroit's superbowl trophies.   

[Savonarola]

From the Detroit News Blogs:

Pugh unlikely to lead chorus of "Onward Christian Soliders"
Council President-Elect Charles Pugh made the media rounds today and broke news that may break hearts of smug suburbanites: The City Council will no longer be a source for Grade A, unintentionally hilarious comedy.

Speaking to WCSX FM-94.7 after barely an hour's sleep, Pugh said he's elated to be part of a "revolution" of change on the council. But he cautioned that fans of "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "Shrek" might want to look elsewhere.

"We had our fill," of entertainment, Pugh said. "There were folks on that council who gave us enough entertainment to last a lifetime. We can always go watch it on YouTube."

Pugh also addressed his foreclosure, plans to rehabilitate the city's image and pleasure at not having to work with former Councilwoman Monica Conyers.

It's the end of an era.   

[MadImmortalMan]

No!