Editorials

Commentary: Forget the boosterism

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By Gary P. Custer

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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If we think something is good for Flint, especially Flint's residential neighborhoods, we say so. But we have always refused to jump on the countless bandwagons that have sped through town promoting quick-fix schemes to "revitalize" Flint.

Some people thought it was uncivil of us to criticize the use of public funds to subsidize the Hyatt, Water Street Pavilion and AutoWorld. After all, the boosters said, these projects would turn Flint's declining economy around.

When we provided you information about businesses trying to worm their way into residential neighborhoods, we were accused of being "anti-business."

Some people took exception to our opposition to a shopping center proposed for what is now the East Street Park because we were "interfering with the city's need for economic development."

And many well-meaning people have been disappointed when we declined to use the magazine's news columns to promote their business, group, project or cause.

Unfortunately, what many people do not understand is that it is our responsibility to use our resources to provide our readers as much information about the things that affect them as we can. We simply do not have any resources to waste on promoting every new scheme touted as the project, business or program that will "turn Flint around."

More importantly, our support would be irrelevant because no such project is likely to succeed.

After watching hundreds of projects to revitalize Flint come and go during the last 18 years, I have become convinced that the only ones who benefit from the "big projects" are the promoters who always leave town with their short-term profits before the long-term bills come due for payment by Flint residents.

It is about time that our self-anointed "community leaders" realized that none of the big development projects have even come close to living up to what the promoters promised or even what the public was led to expect by Flint's economic development cheerleaders.

What is making a difference in the quality of life in Flint are the deeply rooted institutions and groups which perform valuable public functions with only occasional, but well-deserved fanfare.

Every businessman seeking special government subsidies, zoning variances, tax breaks or other special favors as a condition for locating in Flint claims that he will "create" a specific number of jobs if his requests are granted — a promise that is rarely fulfilled.

On the other hand our local colleges and universities not only provide a great number of permanent, high salary jobs, but they also improve the quality of life in our community by providing education and countless cultural and intellectual programs for anyone who wants to take part in them.

Another good example of a group making a difference is the Court Street Village Non-Profit Housing Corporation. Even if you read East Village Magazine regularly you might not realize what the group has done in less than five years to help revitalize Flint's inner city.

In 1990 it built Court Street Village with apartments for 150 families.

In 1993 it built Court Street Village-West containing apartments for 106 families.

Later this year it will complete Avon Park with apartments for 54 families.

And by the end of next year it plans to complete single-family houses for 23 more families.

All 333 of these households are within walking distance of downtown.

By themselves, the faculties, staffs and students of the University of Michigan-Flint, Mott Community College and other educational institutions and the 600 or 700 new residents of the Court Street Village complex cannot revitalize Flint's downtown.

But they have already had more of an effect on it than all of the highly promoted "big projects" carried out in the past two decades.

The lesson is clear.

To revitalize Flint we should stop wasting our public resources on flashy schemes such as turning AutoWorld into a gambling casino or attempts to attract the world's largest widget manufacturer.

Instead, we should invest more in our community's educational, cultural and social service institutions which have demonstrated their ability to improve the quality of life in our city.

It will take time, but they will establish the environment that will attract both the people and the businesses that will revitalize Flint in the next decade.

Those looking for a big project to revitalize Flint should learn from the past. There is no such project. The revitalization of Flint depends on countless small well-run existing projects and programs.

GPC

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