Detroit Sold For Scrap

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Detroit Sold For Scrap




April 5, 2006 | Issue 42???14
DETROIT???Detroit, a former industrial metropolis in southeastern Michigan with a population of just under 1 million, was sold at auction Tuesday to bulk scrap dealers and smelting foundries across the United States.
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Site of the former Detroit Museum of African-American History, which took in over $135.





"This is what's best for Detroit," Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick said. "We must act now, while we can still get a little something for it."
Once dismantled and processed, Detroit is expected to yield nearly 14 million tons of steel, 2.85 million tons of aluminum, and approximately 837,000 tons of copper.
The decision to demolish and cull Detroit for scrap was approved last month by a 6-3 City Council vote after a cost-benefit analysis revealed that, as a functioning urban area, it held a negative cash value.
According to scrap dealers, Detroit is an aging city in fair-to-poor condition, with "substantial wear and tear." It also bears the marks of extensive fire and rust damage, and it may not comply with current U.S. safety and emissions standards.
"There's little interest in the Detroit collectibles market right now, because virtually none of it is in mint condition," independent actuary and appraiser Arnold Cortier said. "The library, for example, is almost a hundred years old. If they're lucky, they'll cull some lead or pig iron."
Even structures in reasonably good condition will be scrapped, including the landmark Guardian Building. A last-minute attempt to spare it fell through late Monday when historical preservationists failed to put together the funds to tow the skyscraper out of town.
Other cities, such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, did not bid, explaining that they already had too many historic Art Deco buildings of their own.
Scrap processors and brokers called the auction a "win-win" situation.
"Detroiters can finally say goodbye to an eyesore that's blighted them for generations," said Al Ranneke, an Allegheny, PA scrap peddler who offered cash for hundreds of tons of the city's many metal parts. "No more getting nickel-and-dimed to death on little repairs, no more kids cutting themselves on jagged, rusted corners, and it all gets hauled off at no charge."
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Scrap dealer Vernon Mills pledged he would not "miss out on a good deal" as he hauled away what's left of Detroit's East Side.


Ranneke acquired several Detroit commercial districts and the steel-and-glass 1970s-era Renaissance Center for $4,000.
"I did them a favor," Ranneke said. "Believe me, Detroit's been around the block. I was willing to take it off their hands for six grand, but I caught a glimpse of that Ambassador Bridge and I said 'no way.' I am not Santa Claus."
Another company, Bayonne, NJ's A-1 Salvage, purchased the recently vacated Tiger Stadium for approximately $.17 a ton. A spokesman for the firm said that the People's Republic of China had expressed interest in purchasing the dismantled sports venue. China is the world's largest buyer of scrap metal, and could receive up to 80 percent of the city.
The city's pending shutdown will make thousands of items with no scrap value, and several train-cars full of law enforcement equipment such as handguns, battering rams, and police clubs and riot suits, available to other buyers.
Residents whose homes and businesses are scheduled to be razed will be offered jobs in demolition and debris clearance to compensate for lost income. It is expected that the approximately 7.6 percent of the population that is currently unemployed will be able to start immediately.
The official demolition of Detroit's remaining structures will begin April 17.

 

[BulkMeUp]

Foreman beat you to it, Mino

http://www.ironmagazineforums.com/showthread.php?t=63143&highlight=Detroit+Sold+Scrap

 

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[Trouble]

A good town to be "from". The Detroit automakers are stupid sons of bitches, who couldn't see the handwriting on the wall - global shortfalls of fuel as China demand comes on-line - preferring instead to fuel American greed for large, dangerous SUVs and Truks.

Unions played their role in the kiss of Death for Detroit. I worked in assembly plants and for parts manufacturers (TRW) as well when I lived there. I saw the fuckchop mentality on the part of big management and among the fatass Union leaders.

Well, when they burned Motown back in the 60s, it spelled the end, in a long, plainful, slow slide to the scrap heap. Much of that downriver area never recovered. You drove out to the eastside, and as you leave the ghetto, passing into the modestly well to do and progressively more wealthy Grosse Point burbs, where Alter Rd crosses Jefferson Ave, it was like night and day. The wealthy folk, they made themselves a little DMZ, streets of rental units in Grosse Pointe Park next to the ghetto, to keep their border controlled, yes they did.

In apathy, they ignored the slow spiral of decay that plagued the inner city, hoping the downward slide of whole neighborhoods wouldn't spread into their backyards. In the northside and west, white flight moved the suburbs out, in larger and larger concentric rings from the inner city. In marched the immigrant classes and the more affluent blacks seeking safer homes and schools for their children. And still, the decay moved in, like an urban cancer.

Finally, manufacturing and high tech said 'fuck it', and were lured with tax breaks and promises of bright new facilities by states, counties, and cities anxious to please and find jobs in the pockets of these corporate refugees, who followed on the heels of the midwest flight of workers to the South, and the West.

You look at Cleveland - they knew how to suck it up and cleanup, shit, even Toledo looks better now, and its been called the asshole of Motown for decades.

The Canookies over in Windsor would roll of the tunnel, if they could, to keep the cesspool in the US. Detroit had lots of promise, and squandered it, in poor business practice, atrocious urban planning, corruption and largely useless politicians, and by whole-sale white flight. Everywhere, apathy reigned and folks just watched the decay descend, and whole ranks of blocks fall into the sewer that became city- and then metro-wide.

Ain't gonna be no 400 billion to bail out bad ole Motor City, like is being poured into the flood battered Crescent City, in the deep South.

"She be done singing the blues, gone past singing the sorrows, now she be moaning her death chant."

 

[Detroit_4_Life]

Nooo this is not funny.. My city is here!

 

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[Tier]

The shame is way back when detroit was THE place to be, before all the "low class" element came there and started rioting and shit.

 

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So sue me.

 

[GFR]

So sue me.

I'm working on it, we could settle out of court

 

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I'm working on it, we could settle out of court

 

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[Trouble]

Yeah, Motown used to *the* place for good music. Blues, jazz, kick ass rock, later heavy metal...Detroit had its share of great musicians. It used to be place where you went downtown for festivals, to eat in Greektown, a multicultural town where you could find great classic gourmet foods, fine ethnic Arab cuisines, fantastic Asian cooking. Come Friday night, you might grab some friends and drive down Woodward to the intimate clubs to hear first rate names play, up close and personal.

But always, you were wary. You looked over your shoulder and you didn't meet peoples eyes when you walked down the street, because it signalled challenge, or made you out to be chump change, ripe for the pickings. You looked for well lit place to park your car, and you always checked out the street before walking to your destination, and you made it a short walk. Never alone.

You didn't stop at stop signs and red lights, driving on some secondary roads, in the early hours of the morning. When cruising the freeways, you never stopped on the shoulder, a sure way to be mugged or even killed if the wrong folk wandered by. If you worked the afternoon shift like me, you never took the short cut through the downtown area to get home. Too damn dangerous at 1am, in some parts of town. I had a handgun, and a blackjack, because car jackings happened. In my neighborhood, in the DMZ, handguns went off nightly. This was one of the more affluent areas, at the edge of the ghetto.

This was *before* the last, steep slide, before the jumpoff into the oblivion of urban hell that is inner Detroit, in the late 80s and 90s.

Like I said, its a good town to be from.

Just to show you how much it can affect daily action and automatic body language: when I moved to the deep South, to a little down in middle Tennessee, I had no idea that it was rude, in the more friendly parts of the country, *not* to meet the eye of smiling passerby. That folk who said 'howdy', nodded, and asked after your health, were being sociable, and not checking you out as catch and bait. That there were still communities, even back in the mid-80s, that weren't overly concerned about locking their doors at night.

I learned that you can have friends who live out in the country, who thought nothing about it if you were to stop by, make youself at home and wait, or leave a note and let them know that you'd come looking for them, to visit, when they happened to be out on errands, or more likely, fishing or looking for that untaxed liquor.

It was like living on a strange planet, coming from the dank dark neighborhoods of Detroit, where there's little green but the weeds growing tall on the vacant lots.

Into a land of lush green open rolling lands, of folk who might not be wealthy, but were rich in heritage, full of warmth, good cookin, and an easy vitality and humor, bearing the sang froid that comes with rolling through the easy times and hard times that make a community pull together when needed.

Sometimes you have to see what life can be, in order to know what it ain't.

 

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Sometimes you have to see what life can be, in order to know what it ain't.

That was nice and so true.

 

[DOMS]

Yeah, Motown used to *the* place...

You write the most eloquent, thought out posts on IM. It's nice to have you here.

 

[Trouble]

A little more explanation of why this happened...a story of apples and oranges.

About a decade ago, I had several summer-long work assignments in Cleveland.

During many long drives on I-75 to visit family in Detroit, I passed through many urban centers, including Cincinnati, regularly throughout the 80s and the early 90s. I saw the process of decay that gave the inner city, even in the midst of verdant summer, a dank and grimey appearance. The city in winter was forbidding and many building seemed abandoned - just as they did in Detroit.

Part of this decay was the flight of business and residents from the inner city. Part of it was a lack of infrastructure management and poor urban planning. As in Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and other midwestern manufacturing centers had their share of "brownfields". Contaminated industrial sites unsafe for rehabilitation and development.

The US EPA emabarked on an ambitous plan for remediation and revival of brownfields, and some cities - NYC, Cleveland, St Louis, Toledo, Detroit, Erie, Pittsburgh, many other cities in the South, and East and West coast, put together competing proposals for recovery of long stretches of these abandoned tracts. Money was limited and demand long. Some cities were able to pull together the matching funds and to present compelling presentations. They received the funds, and the process of reclaiming long abandoned inner city industrial sites began in earnest - in the early 90s.

Some cities, looking ahead, and favored with an influx of people and a favorable shift in industrial sectors (high tech centers) were able to pull off a city wide recovery. Cleveland is one such city. Manufacturing interests were lured back, rehabilitated areas carefully planned and neighborhoods strengthened against crime and drug dealing that caused fear, flight, and urban decay (abandonment). Cleveland was also blessed with an excellent green belt of parks and recreational areas. It had a healthy cultural investment from previous decades. It also have a historical endowment that encouraged citizen responsibility and pride of ownership in many neighborhoods. This too, had its effect on forestalling urban decay and economic depression, even when employment became tight, and cities resorted to unpopular tax increases to pay for necessary infrastructure renewal.

The Federal urban block grant programs (Federal tax revenues returned to regions to help fund costly municipal development projects to improve public health by upgrading public water supply and sanitation facilities) of the 1950s-to the late 80s were cutt off in the early '90s to cover a large Federal deficit.

The lack of these external municipal support revenues left many urban centers in proverbial hot water - unable to maintain and patch an aged and expensive municipal services system that dated in some cases to the late 1880s. States in every region were faced with difficult funding problems, and some were unable to muster sufficient funds to bridge this funding shortfall.

Many urban centers suffering as Cleveland did, in the late 60s and 70s, failed to see the signs of the domino effect of cumulative social and physical infrastructure problems, that would lay low many industrial centers - Detroit, Newark, Cincinnati, Toledo, Pittsburgh, many others. These metropolitan centers became unpopular economic drains, sucking stretched state dollars, and still...funding and rehabilitation interest was insufficient to stop the snowballed mass effect of flight and the disintegration processes.

There are other Clevelands, exemplarary urban centers that have weathered periods of economic and infrastructure debilitation, and found or developed innovative support resources to recover and even thrive after metamorphic transformation into tourist meccas, service and advanced tech and regional trade centers.

These urban success stories stand in stark contrast to the failed Detroits, the withered remains of former industrial might in the US.