Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Auto Czar Takes Hands-On Approach to Buick City

Melanie Trottman of The Wall Street Journal reports:
When worries about environmental cleanup costs stalled plans to redevelop an abandoned auto factory in Flint, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm called Edward Montgomery.

Mr. Montgomery, President Barack Obama's auto-communities recovery czar, cut through the bureaucracy at the Environmental Protection Agency, and brought officials from the EPA's Washington office to meet with Flint officials to get a deal done.

The solution: Carve out the part of the 700-acre site with the worst contamination, and clear the rest for potential sale to investors who have told the city they would create a multipurpose facility that would employ as many as 500 people in hard-hit Michigan. A process that could have taken years wound up taking just a few months.


1 comment:

  1. Govenor Granholm is on the side of Michigan -she knows her stuff.
    vickie

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.