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

[Caliga]

Like the district spokesman, I am certain this will work every bit as well as the government efforts in New Orleans after Katrina.   

Will Barack Obama: not care about black people? 

[Valmy]

Will Barack Obama: not care about black people? 

Being from Chicago, though, he hates Detroit.

[Savonarola]

More travels with Charlie:

Charlie LeDuff: Off Woodward, life hits a dead end
Detroit -- If you are feeling confused or overwhelmed by the circumstances of our times, if you need a place to consider where we've been and where we are, make a drive to West Robinwood Street.

It is a haunted, damnable portrait of what we've become. The neighborhood is a burned-down ghost town of 56 raped and looted houses east of Woodward and north of McNichols. It is empty save for five elderly families and a middle-age couple who live near Woodward and refuse to open their doors.

Ironically, the neighborhood is just a chip shot from the elegant Palmer Park Golf Course and a one-stop bus ride to the grave of Rosa Parks. Robinwood is located along the stretch of Woodward that in 1909 became the first mile of concrete roadway in America. That was exactly 100 years ago.
The people of the Detroit Metropolitan region got a glimpse of the ruined block a few months ago when the police convened a press conference from the blood-stained porch of 654 Robinwood claiming they had rounded up 61 outlaws including the killer who assassinated the dope man at that address in broad daylight.

And then like quicksilver, the police and the press slipped away.

The six families remain. Trapped.

"Do I live in Hell? Yes I do and no I don't," said Jerry Williams, who lives at 666 Robinwood and spoke through a steel gate dressed in a bathrobe and dirty socks. "It would be Hell if I was dead, but I ain't. So that just makes the place ugly. The most ugly thing that human beings can create."

As you might guess, Williams used to work in an auto factory. And Williams got laid off. The rest of the neighborhood had little luck either. The neighbors to Williams' left were evicted and, three days later, somebody firebombed the house. The flames ruined Williams' car -- a Chrysler.

The dead dope man used to live to the right of Williams. To the right of the dope man's house lives Fatimah Muhammad, the only other house occupied on the north side of that block of Robinwood Street.

She bought the place for $60,000 eight years ago and can't get out unless she walked away from the mortgage. She figures she couldn't get $5,000 for the place. That doesn't stop the criminals from getting in. Last week, in broad daylight, three men forced their way into her house. One held her at gunpoint in her bathtub, while the other two managed to steal some sneakers. The police never took fingerprints, she said.

"I'm tired, I'm spent, I'm scared," Muhammad said. "And I'm stuck. Who would want to buy this house?"

Robinwood was an integrated and well-kept block just five years ago, the remnant people say. And then it was gone in the blink of an eye. It started at the east end of the block when a house was rented to 5 adults and 20 children. More families moved out. More renters moved in. The radios started. The brown bags. The gangs of young men. The gunshots. The dope houses. The fires. The insurance checks.

Durene L. Brown is the ombudsman for the city of Detroit. She has the endless and unenviable job of fielding complaints from city residents and the occasional question from reporters. She asked to see Robinwood Street, wondering if it was truly the worst in Detroit.

"Insanity," she said as she drove through and stopped to talk to Muhammad. The problems here are deep, Brown said. The last audit of the city's Demolition Division was conducted 15 years ago. Moreover, the city was granted $23 million in federal funds last year to tear down neighborhoods like this, but the City Council voted to give $9 million of that money to local ministers for neighborhood block programs. "Blight like this is caused by greed and ineptitude," Brown said. "If something doesn't change, this is coming to a neighborhood near you, and that includes the suburbs."

Places like Robinwood are the epitome of Dave Bing's problem. The newly elected mayor says he wants to knock down shoals of squalor and relocate the remaining people to clean and coherent neighborhoods. But where would this money come from? Detroit is a city with tens of thousands of rotting houses and factories. Nobody knows exactly how many because nobody has ever bothered to count. And Robinwood is located on the city's main thoroughfare.

Lilacs and hibiscus still grow in this ghetto. But so does the malignancy. There were gunshots in the alley two Mondays ago. Three Mondays ago, someone packed the side yard of 598 Robinwood with old tires as high as the window sills. This past Monday, two teenagers found a dead fighting dog stuffed in a box. On Tuesday, Brad Edwards of Detroit's Fox 2 News reported that an 81-year-old shut-in -- Marabel, of 461 Robinwood -- died the morning after Christmas and went undiscovered for days. Her body remains unclaimed at the county morgue.

On Monday, a police cruiser rolled through.

"I've never seen a place like this," said the white cop.

"Vietnam," said the black cop.

"Hard to believe this is America, but it is," said the white cop.

And with that, they were off.

Like the article states this is right by one of the few nice neighborhoods in Detroit; Palmer Park, and just south of Chaldean Village – where the recent Chaldean immigrants live.  In Detroit the neighborhoods go from pleasant to war zones quickly.

[Savonarola]

Burned out homes, broken windows, and trash litter Robinwood Street, east of Woodward and north of McNichols in Detroit. It is empty save for five elderly families and a middle-age couple who live near Woodward and refuse to open their doors. The block started to go downhill five years ago when a house was rented to five adults and 20 children. More families moved out. More renters moved in. The radios started. The brown bags. The gangs of young men. The gunshots. The dope houses. The fires. The insurance checks.
Detroit's Robinwood Street descends into decay



A scrapper smiles as he carries aluminum from homes on Robinwood Street away to the local scrap yard.



Two houses sit vacant on the block, which once had 56 intact houses and was integrated and well-kept just five years ago. A suspected dope seller was recently killed on the block in daylight.


Hundreds of tires pile up in the backyard at 598 Robinwood Street. They were dumped there within the last few weeks.

[Berkut]

Normally, when someone says we should nuke the site from orbit, it is a joke.

[Malthus]

There seems to be an almost gleefully perverse joy in self-destruction. 

[Savonarola]

Who will we find now to hate white people, take kickbacks and sing at council meetings?   

Councilwoman Barbara-Rose Collins won't seek re-election
Darren A. Nichols and Charlie LeDuff / The Detroit News
Detroit -- Barbara-Rose Collins, one of the city's longtime and most controversial leaders, is calling it a career, deciding today to end her re-election bid for the City Council.

Collins, the first African-American woman elected to U.S. Congress from Michigan and a longtime member of the council, submitted papers at the city clerk's office today withdrawing her candidacy in the Aug. 4 primary.

"I'm 70 years old, and I'm not sure how much longer I have. I want to accomplish some other things," Collins told The Detroit News. "Almost my whole adult life has been in government, since I was 30 years old. It's frightening to step away from the power, the ability to negotiate from the inside. I love government, the legislative end of government."

Collins becomes the second councilwoman on the nine-member panel to opt against re-election, following Sheila Cockrel. Today is the deadline for the 207 candidates for council to withdraw.

Collins last year acknowledged she's been contacted by the FBI in its corruption and kickback probe into City Hall. Cockrel, who has testified before the grand jury but isn't believed to be a target, also said the investigation contributed to her decision not to seek re-election.

"She's living under a cloud of constant nonsense, a City Council investigation, Cobo (and) ridicule for her singing voice," said political consultant Adolph Mongo, who used to run Collins' district office when she was in U.S. Congress. "It's enough stress for a 40-year-old much less a 70-year-old. There's nothing wrong with saying good-bye."

Collins, who came out of the influential Shrine of the Black Madonna Church, was elected to the Detroit School Board in 1971, according to her City Council biography. In 1982, she joined the council for eight years, initiating city ordinances on South African divestiture, toxic-waste cleanup and single-room occupancy for the homeless.

From 1992-96, Collins served in the U.S. House of Representatives, first serving the 13th District and later the 15th District after redistricting. During her time, she was appointed the majority whip-at-large. She's proud of legislation on sexual harassment laws, equal pensions for women and helping to bring the Neighborhood Enterprise Zones to Detroit.

But those two terms in Congress also brought the most controversy of her career.

In 1995, she was sued by her former spokesman, Bruce Taylor, who claimed he was fired when his lover died of AIDS and Collins feared he might have the virus. Collins contended he was laid off with five others to reduce the staff after Republicans took control of the House.

"They said all kinds of nasty things," said Collins, who has championed gay rights. "I fired him because he wouldn't work. He was gay when I hired him. He didn't all of a sudden become gay. The papers ran with that."

A year later, the Detroit Free Press quoted Collins as saying she hates the white race. She claimed the quotes were taken out of context and sued the newspaper.

The U.S. Justice Department and House Ethics Committee was investigating her on claims of misuse of office, campaign and scholarship funds when she lost her re-election bid to Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick in the Democratic primary.

"Every day for two years they had me on the front page with horrible things," Collins said. "I hate to say it, but in my lifetime some of my best friends were white. It sounds like a cliché, but that's how I grew up."

Collins, who described herself as intelligent, talented and experienced, returned to the Detroit City Council in 2001. She has won kudos for championing the downtrodden, but scrutiny for behavior some consider goofy. She wears tiaras on her birthday, sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" in council chambers in March and likened the transfer of city-owned Cobo Center to imperialism.

She said she's knows she's leaving a city with massive problems, describing it as a place like a doughnut with a hole in the middle. Stepping away from the Detroit City Council will allow her to fix those problems without conflicts of interest.

"It's not about getting re-elected or losing an election. It's about the rest of my life," Collins said. "My life isn't over, but it's winding down, and I want to put all of my effort into rebuilding the community. Detroit isn't going to grow and prosper until we fill that hole in the doughnut.

"If I want to sit on the banks of the Detroit River and fish while I contemplate my next step, I can do that next year."

[Darth Wagtaros]

Its almost like Detroit wants to die.  Can cities commit suicide?

[Savonarola]

Set a course for love!

Detroit could cash in on cruise industry
BY ELLEN CREAGER • FREE PRESS TRAVEL WRITER • May 18, 2009

Its bare steel girders are just going up this week.

But by spring 2010, downtown Detroit's new $15-million public docking terminal is to be ready to accept Great Lakes cruise ships that could bring hundreds of tourists to town.


"We don't like to label it a cruise terminal because from a realistic point of view, it's not going to be like Miami," said John Kerr, director of economic development for the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority.


"But even if we had half a dozen vessels stopping a dozen trips a year each, it would be beneficial. We estimated back in 1998 that cruise ships contribute $150,000 per stop to the economy."


The terminal is at the foot of Bates and Atwater near the Renaissance Center. It will make Detroit a player in a small but steady tourism sector of the state. Great Lakes cruises draw American and European tourists who pay $4,000 to $11,000 to sail on 100-passenger luxury ships, stopping at ports such as Houghton, Mackinac Island and Holland.

Port cities look for ways to get in on the action
This summer, three cruise ships will glide through Michigan waters and stop at ports in Wyandotte, Mackinac Island, Manistee, Holland and Houghton.

But within two years, downtown Detroit hopes to get in on the Michigan cruising action.

A $15-million docking facility under development will accept ships as large as 420-passenger vessels and unload tourists right into the heart of downtown, said John Kerr, director of economic development for the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority.

"We think Great Lakes cruising is about at the same place as Alaskan cruising was in the 1960s," he said. "There's a lot of room to grow."

'It's exciting to think about'
The new Detroit port is just one piece of the puzzle. A Michigan consortium called the Port Cities Collaborative is a group of 23 port towns in the state working to market themselves to cruise ships.

The city of East Tawas already has planned shore excursions for cruise ship passengers, banking that by 2011, ships will stop there on their way from Detroit to Mackinac Island. They're planning agritours, beekeeping tours, dairy tours, lighthouse tours and golf and fly-fishing tours.


European tourists traditionally have been a main market for Great Lakes cruising, but the new ships also are geared to Americans and Canadians through the Ann Arbor-based Great Lakes Cruise Co. (www.greatlakescruising.com).



"Europeans are very much into nature," says Helen Pasakarnis, director of the East Tawas Tax Increment Finance Authority, which has been working on East Tawas' port-of-call project.

"Something like 50 to 60% of cruise ship passengers do shore excursions. It's exciting to think about. The town is abuzz. It's got everyone invigorated."

What Detroit has to offer
The new Detroit docking terminal is in a prime spot on the Detroit River. At the foot of Bates Street between the Renaissance Center and Ford Auditorium, it should be completed by spring 2010.

Besides cruise ships, the dock will be used for tour boats, water taxis, tall ships and possibly for recreational boaters stopping to get customs documents for day trips to Canada.

Inside, the two-story terminal will have a waiting area for 100 to 200 passengers.

The terminal also will have a ticketing area, lobby and offices for customs agents, cruise line staff, crew and port authority officials.

The space, with great water views, may be available for event rental, Kerr said.

How the project came to be
Federal and state money for the project was scraped together in the last decade by U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the Michigan Department of Transportation and the port authority. The 1.3-acre parcel of land was obtained from General Motors Corp.

The pie-shaped property had massive construction hurdles because of underground obstructions, including the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which runs under a corner of the property.

The architect is Hamilton Anderson Associates. White Construction and Braun Construction are the builders.

Looking toward the future
Although big cruise ships that sailed the Great Lakes a few years ago -- such as the MV Columbus and Orion -- aren't sailing this year, Kerr says a better port product will attract ships in the years to come.

In fact, 2010 will see a new cruise ship, the Pearl Mist, stopping in Michigan. But because ships plan their itineraries up to two years in advance, said Sarah Caruana, marketing director of the Great Lakes Cruise Co., Detroit isn't on the itinerary yet.

But cruising Motown has a future, Kerr is certain: "We believe this project will be a model for the Great Lakes."

This idea has potential.  You can see ruins here; just like Ephesus.   

[derspiess]

"I'm 70 years old, and I'm not sure how much longer I have. I want to accomplish some other things," Collins told The Detroit News. "Almost my whole adult life has been in government, since I was 30 years old. It's frightening to step away from the power, the ability to negotiate from the inside. I love government, the legislative end of government."

Politicians like this make me want to re-think my stance on term limits 

[Darth Wagtaros]

Will Detroit's new theme song be the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?

[Savonarola]

Will Detroit's new theme song be the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?

That would be a step up from Black Day in July.

[MadImmortalMan]

I'm loving all these Jeff Daniels ads I'm seeing everywhere trying to get businesses to move to Michigan. I forget, was he Dumb or Dumber? 

[garbon]

Yeah...who is going want to stop at a cruise stop in Detroit?

[Caliga]

I'm loving all these Jeff Daniels ads I'm seeing everywhere trying to get businesses to move to Michigan. I forget, was he Dumb or Dumber? 

What reason(s) does he give in those ads for businesses to want to do that?