By Kate Stockrahm
In a departure from its usual programming, Mott Community College’s Ballenger Eminent Persons Lecture Series will host a panel discussion and public forum this Thursday, November 13, 2025, instead of a single, distinguished speaker.
The change comes amid ongoing concern surrounding the development of a megasite in Mundy Township, which spans 1,300 acres and had been slated for possible purchase by SanDisk until this summer, when the California-based computer tech manufacturing company pulled out of its anticipated $63 billion investment in the property citing “economic turmoil.”
As reported by Bridge Michigan, residents have called the years-long development process secretive and lamented the loss of “perfectly good homes and businesses” to prepare the site for an unknown future company, while lawmakers as well as state and local economic development leaders have touted the site as “game-changing,” while noting the potential for thousands of jobs and investing around $261 million in preparing the site for its eventual buyer or buyers.
The panel for Thursday’s event is comprised of Dan Kildee, former U.S. Congressman and current President and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Flint; State Senator John Cherry; James Hohman, Director of Fiscal Policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy; and JoAn Mende, local engineer and Mundy Township resident. Their conversation and the public forum will be moderated by Jim Kiertzner, a television journalist with 40 years of experience in Mid-Michigan, Detroit and throughout the state.
“There’s a lot of controversy in Lansing, in state government, in the legislature, about whether this is the right approach to creating jobs — whether the state should be involved in the subsidizing of location of outside corporations from other states to come in and locate in Michigan rather than Indiana or Illinois or Kentucky or Tennessee,” said Bill Ballenger of the need to host such a forum at this time. “And the legislature has started, just in the past few weeks and months, to back away from this approach and say we don’t think it’s working… And the question is: where is the State of Michigan [to] go from here?”
Ballenger stressed that the point of the forum is to hear both sides of the argument out — those in favor of the megasite development and those opposed to it — in an effort to learn from each other.
When asked whether that’s a difficult ask of residents and panelists in the current political climate, Ballenger added that that’s exactly why the conversation is needed.
“Let’s just have a discussion. Let’s get a lot of questions answered,” Ballenger told EVM. “There’s a lot of mystery surrounding this, still, for a lot of people, but there are going to be people in the audience, I think, that know certainly a hell of a lot more about this project and all the details and complexities of it than I do. And I think the panelists, they’re going to know a lot, but, you know, each one of them is probably not going to know some things, and they may be able to learn themselves, too.”
The Ballenger Eminent Persons Lecture Series’ panel and public forum on the Mundy Township megasite will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday evening in the Ballenger Fieldhouse on Mott Community College’s campus. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is requested ahead through this link.
