Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority (DDA) has approved a $650
million plan that will allow Mike Ilitch to build a new sports and
entertainment district just north of downtown Detroit. Nearly half of
the cost will be covered by public funds.
The announcement comes just two days after Emergency Manager Kevyn
Orr said the public coffers are empty when it comes paying the pensions
and healthcare benefits owed to city workers. Orr has threatened to pay
as little as 10 cents on every dollar owed to pension funds and force
retired workers to get health care through the federal Medicare program
or President Obama’s cut-rate medical exchanges.
A more callous slap in the face could not be imagined for pensioners
and other city residents facing the gutting of essential services and
the selling off of city parks, zoos and art museums. There is supposedly
no money for the needs of the city’s working class population, but
several hundred million can easily be found to subsidize a new arena for
a billionaire sports franchise owner. The project has been sanctioned
by Orr, who has final say over how the city’s finances are managed.
The new arena—for Ilitch’s Red Wings hockey team—will be 650,000
square feet and house 18,000 spectators—few enough, comments the Free Press,
to make the tickets more expensive than average. Other nearby
development will include a hotel and 265,000 square feet of new or
renovated office, retail and residential space.
The city will contribute 44 percent of the funds for the new stadium,
or around $286 million. The rest will be financed by private sources,
including Mike Ilitch.
The stadium will be built in a 45-block “entertainment district” a
few streets away from the Henry Street apartments, where hundreds of
low-income residents are facing eviction by the end of the month.
Although the new owner of the apartment complex has been kept secret,
residents all along speculated that Ilitch was behind their evictions.
Many of those being thrown out have lived in the apartments for decades.
Simultaneously, residents at the Griswold, a nearby apartment tower
housing mostly retirees, also face eviction come next March. This is in
keeping with the stated goal of the city planners: the entire area is to
be gentrified, with low income tenants being pushed out to make way for
rarified lofts and office spaces.
The stadium district is intended to be the centerpiece of the new
upscale “Arena District,” which spans the gap between midtown and
downtown. Currently, the impoverished area is a stark reminder of the
devastation wrought on Detroit by big business. The new development will
encompass “office, retail and residential” space.
In addition to Ilitch, the founder of mortgage lender Quicken Loans,
billionaire Dan Gilbert, has been a primary advocate of the plans to
remake Detroit’s downtown. Gilbert has bought up more than 30 buildings
around the city at low prices. He stands to make a fortune on rising
property values in the downtown. Ilitch has also begun buying properties
in downtown Detroit and is rumored to have been the buyer of the
Griswold building.
The construction of the stadium is a part of a policy by the city
government to “revitalize” Detroit. This means, in practice, clearing
downtown and midtown of poorer residents by raising the land value—and
thus the rents—and making an enclave of wealth at the center of
America’s poorest big city. The office workers who labor in the new
downtown, of course, will have to pay the inflated rents. To this end,
the Detroit Free Press cites the “successful redevelopment” of the David Broderick Tower, which rents penthouse suites for $5,100 a month.
Current rents in the downtown area are around $1.25 per square foot,
and the developers’ goal is to raise this number to at least $2.00.
The gentrification of Detroit is not intended to improve the city as a
whole, nor will it. It is a part of the broader attack on the living
conditions of working people. As “undesirables” are shooed away from the
city center, Orr and other city officials are shutting down whole areas
of the city deemed too poor to invest in and forcing residents to
abandon neighborhoods by cutting off street lights, closing schools and
ending fire protection.
As usual, the arena is being justified to the people of Detroit with
the claim that it will create thousands of jobs. Taking the city’s
generous figure of 8,300 new jobs at face value, this is cold comfort to
Detroit’s residents. The same was said for the city casinos built more
than a decade ago. Low wage service jobs are poor replacement for the
dismembered auto industry, and the incoming white-collar workers at
Quicken Loans and other downtown companies will be highly exploited and
gouged by the city’s new billionaire landlords.
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