I didn't grow up in Detroit/Pontiac, this is a photo taken when we came downstate to visit my Aunt and Uncle who took my sister and I to see the incredible Pontiac Silverdome, I remember the day as there was a terrible storm with gray skies and what we thought were tornados on the horizon. That was my past memory of Pontiac: a scary, gray foreboding place.
Similarly, the current elected Officials of the City of Pontiac live in fear of the past, particularly the Pontiac Silverdome, and it's ill-fated sale for just $583,000 at an auction in 2010. During the rein of the 2nd Emergency Manager who liquidated a gem which once could have fetched $20 million or more. Fear of making another 'Silverdome mistake' is debated now with every new decision which must be faced. "Let's not make any more mistakes like that" is the refrain. Although it is important to learn from past mistakes, we cannot stop taking action for fear of making new mistakes. It is better to act boldly. To quote MacBeth: "Fortune favors the Bold" and Great places are not built on indecision or a lack of crazy new ideas. Congrats to Brad Oleshansky upon his Grand Opening of M1 Concourse today! I'm glad Brad is not afraid of tornados, sharks or silver domes. I have publicly asked and privately wondered - is the containment of crime and poverty an American goal and ideal? We are segregating ourselves by economic class through zoning, and real estate values - I don't believe this is race, this is a race to the bottom. If America regresses into one large walled neighborhood, resembling a South American city, we will have lost the essence of democracy and the unity of our culture that Alexis de Tocgueville admired on his 1830's visit to the village of Pontiac, MI: "America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelioration. Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure . . . . Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him. If I were asked . . . to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people [the Americans] ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: to the superiority of their women. The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness." Containment of America's poorest communities is destroy our social fabric. The 'Have and Have Not' chasm is well depicted by the corner of Basswood & Crestwood Streets in Pontiac (behind St Joseph Hospital's $38 million renovation). On the Pontiac side of the wall homes sell for $25,000, and the children go to inferior schools with a 40%+ high school drop out rate. On the other side of this wall, the home is worth over $500,000 in Bloomfield Hills with children who graduate 98% of the time and more often than not get admitted to the college of their choice. When we can fix this disparity in Pontiac, MI... we will have a template to fix America.
Why are there places like Pontiac? Surrounded by wealthy, prosperous suburbs, this historic downtown appeared abandoned in 2011. The streets and sidewalks had 3 foot weeds growing, trash piled in corners, empty storefronts dominated. There were faded street sides which read 'no loitering'. It occurred to me, this city needed more people loitering, walking shopping and drinking coffee. Another sign read "wrong way" - it was true, the city had gone the wrong way, and took the incorrect path, the wrong choice at every turn.
There is never one mistake which causes collapse and failure, there is typically at least a trifecta - a triple error throws you out of the game. .
With these 3 critical challenges solved, or are in the process of being solved, can 'this time be different' for Pontiac? My realtor said "you should buy a cheap warehouse building in Pontiac", I said, "No, bad things happen there, people lose money and get shot". He tricked me. We toured downtown Pontiac, I thought it was Clarkston. I was surprised. Just 11 minutes from my Birmingham home, and I hadn't been to Pontiac in over 20 years. A perfectly configured downtown, a nice, friendly neighbor Karen Jorgensen gave me a sales pitch of why she had just relocated from a Bloomfield home to 'revitalize a Great American City'. I was inspired, but skeptical. For decades I had read of the bad politics, the horrible crimes and the urban decay. One evening I saw this National NBC Nightly News story "A city for sale" - CLICK HERE
I was buying distressed homes in Ferndale and Hazel Park. Finding plentiful handymen out of work who were helping me renovate these homes. Good Detroit area families seeking a clean safe home on Land Contract because their credit had been destroyed in the down turn. I was making work, making money and a difference. It felt good after a couple years of doing mortgage foreclosure work outs in Miami, Hawaii, Las Vegas -the Detroit suburbs seemed easy and really, really cheap. Pontiac looked like pennies. I met with Louis Ranieri in his NYC offices in 2012. I told him about a 10,000 square foot, historic, Main & Main building I found in downtown Pontiac. I had estimated there were $287,000 worth of reclaimable brick in the walls of this 1870s building. Jaime Dimon's Chase Bank was owed $980,000 on a mortgage, and they agreed to short sell the building for just $105,000 to me. This was triple - and Lou told me "when you can buy something below scrap value, you should buy that thing". Sounded like sage advice. My first day inside the 31 Saginaw building was overwhelming. The mold from the roof leaks made me sick. I didn't come back for a week. Our renovation crew was sourced from Communities Ventures a state program to help the hardest to employ - ex-felons mainly, and they were hard working and willing to swing a hammer guys. Another blog post maybe on that story... The building was amazing, it didn't deserve to be torn down. The community embraced that white guy from Birmingham, and welcomed me. They were thankful to see the "old Whiskey Bar" coming back to life. We were asked "what are plans were". We didn't have any plans. We just thought some fresh paint and bleach would help. We found a cellar, thought it looked like it needed some wine racks. I met an out of work (horror) movie set designer, and he wanted to work. So we poured some concrete over the dirt floor and create wine lockers and a wine club. We found an underground tunnel, a donkey yoke, a meat cleaver, some very old whiskey bottles, an unopened Stroh's can. People started calling me crazy. Reminding me that "Pontiac will never come back" - that's the wrong thing to do to me, its a challenge, a dare. Kyle Westberg was converting the nearby and long vacant Sears store to 46 loft apartments with a grocery market, and a gym. He amazed me at the capital stack he had assembled to fund the $20M project. It was creative and a something I knew nothing about. A devout Christian, he told me once "The devil had his hand around Pontiac, we are driving him out with each good act". Another challenge you can't turn away from. My partner Rick, a CPA, agreed to move his office to 31 Saginaw. Bold move. HIs staff, all women, objected - Rick's a good salesman and leader. My attorney, Bill stepped up and moved his practice from Birmingham to the 'new club house'. I set up a desk and tried to spend a few hours a week hanging out in the new style office environment we had created upstairs from the old bar. Other people asked if they could rent a desk there, $250 a month, no lease, come and go as you please. A month of office space for less than a night at a hotel room. The commercial kitchen sat vacant. My wife and I went to Midtown Detroit one Saturday morning in 2013. Why? Avalon Bakery. So I decided if "Midtown" could come back from being "The Cass Corridor" which was once a horrible unsafe place because of a bakery, then Downtown Ponti-Yuck simply needed a rebranding and a great bakery. I read some history and coined downtown Pontiac "Indian Hill" CLICK HERE Bay Harbor got a zip code for a 'place'. Bill Freeman and Mark Nickita had introduced me to www.cnu.org and the whole idea of place making. It starts with a brand and identity. Indian Hill was simple, it sounded like you already knew it, and it was historically accurate based on my internet searches. I have told this story at least 500 times since: "History is written by the victors, and is not accurate. Pontiac was not a revered Chief, he was a traitor and killed by a lone assassin from his own tribe, with a hatchet to the back of his head, then his body was carved 'lovingly' into 12ths and spread across the land. This is not how you treat a great leader, this is how you disgrace a traitor to his people. But why? We long thought the Ottawa Tribe met on the second highest highest hill in Oakland County, where the Clinton River meets the start of the Saginaw Trail (north) and Woodward Trail (south). Indians knew good real estate. Indigenous people chose the best hill tops, the white man settled by flooding rivers, with mosquitos and no summer breezes. The French came up the Woodward trail to meet and trade with the Indians. 3 tribes met on this hill top - which we call downtown Pontiac today. Odawa, Saginaw and Huron each selected a member to go to the hill each summer to trade. These traders could speak multiple languages, were good negotiators and were trusted by their tribe - the indian word for trader is "Ottawa". So downtown Pontiac was a mecca of sorts - a peaceful place of trade and commerce for a diverse group of people from different tribes. Thinking of the last 40 years of race division and declining commerce - this is a strange historical fact? Why Pontiac? The English bet the French and took over the fort at Detroit. The English had a different, less friendly style of trade. The French would respect the Indians and come to them on the hilltop (Pontiac). The English made the Indians come to the Fort. Pontiac was a young man when he first went to Fort Detroit and he hatched a plan to raid the fort. He convinced some of the other Ottawa tribes to join him for the booty. 3 failed raiding missions later, there was a massacre. The English ruled the world at this time because they were ruthless and pragmatic. They made a peace with Pontiac. They created the story, the legend of Pontiac we know today. The English wrote the story and used it to convince other tribes to give up their lands in trade for Wampum (Indian money). This is why there is a Pontiac, IL, and failed Pontiac car company. The drawings/images of Pontiac are fierce. Not the kind of guy you want to have a beer with. I thought, these images greet visitors to downtown Pontiac and set a tone. So I asked a cartoon artist to give me a different image of the people who once visited and enjoyed this hill as a peaceful place of trade and commerce. Picture a summer's day, the men are trading and smoking the peace pipe. The game is plentiful and the business of trade with the French is good. Money is being made on the hill. The ladies from different tribes are down by the river, the birds over head, the water is warm - life is good. This is the story of this place. So I commissioned the artist to take the Land O'Lakes butter lady, Pocahontas and my daughter and morph them into this image. The more I talked to people, the more I believed "this place needs a brand change" - so I floated the idea of legally creating a new city named Indian Hill. The 3rd emergency manager was still in charge, he could simply 'decide' to carve up the city into smaller fixable parts. Merge a part of the city with wealthy Bloomfield Hills next door. That would make property values instantly pop, raise tax revenue and pay for other missing city services. The schools could be quartered and the children of Pontiac would get superior education of all the surrounding neighboring towns. I did some research and was dismayed to learn that on almost every statistic in 2013, Pontiac was a third world nation. An American City of 58,000 people had a literacy rate equal to Honduras, a poverty and unemployment rate of Panama, and Costa Rica was far superior in corporate engagement. The city that birthed over 300 auto related companies and General Motors - the largest company in the world for decades - was now in just 30 years a third world place... with wealth neighbors surrounding it. I postulated that this kind of rapid decay doesn't just happen by mistake, it must have cause for such a dramatic effect. That if Government knew that this chaos was occurring they must want to inject solutions? I went to Washington on 4 lobbying trips with the County. I was greeted by every possible elected official and their staffs. I learned this problem was on everyone's radar, but that no one had a solution. Matt Gibb of Oakland County invited me to go to China for a week, we thought, maybe attracting FDI - foreign direct investment - building a 'chinatown' for immigration and investment - would be one possible solution. It worked in Toronto, Vancouver and many other great cities. The Chinese were engaging in the auto business. The rapid evolution of Chinese cities taught me a lot about the power of central planning, and red capitalism. In just one week, my world view was altered. But Chinese move slow, and Pontiac needs a fix. People asked me if downtown Pontiac (The Indian Hill district) was 'safe', I quoted the Oakland County Sheriff's statistics that crime was down 70% in downtown. The Oakland Press still had weekly articles about shootings in Pontiac - but these were in the outlying neighborhood's. But Americans only have time for the headlines. Bad things happen in Pontiac - and this was the narrative. So as my daughter was graduating from the private high school at Sacred Heart, I suggested to my wife that we put our family where my mouth was, and move to a cool urban loft in downtown Pontiac. My wife and daughter followed me to prove downtown Pontiac's safety and playing Jenga in the Alley Cat Coffee house was fun on Tuesday nights. The next chapter of downtown Pontiac is being written today. I will add blog posts as I remember the adventures of the last 4+ years of daily focus I have had on 'why is Pontiac?' and 'what can Pontiac become?' and 'how can we do great things here?' and 'does any of this really matter?' |
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