Dan Kildee: Addenda, Extras and Outtakes

There's never enough space to use all the material you gather on a story, and my profile of Dan Kildee in Slate was no different. If you enjoyed reading about the pied piper of the shrinking city movement, here is some additional info about Kildee, Jane Avenue, H.U.D., and unofficial White House tours, along with some of the photos I took along the way.

Addendum: Jane Avenue Memories

"I have a lot of memories of Jane Avenue," Kildee writes in an email. "That street, to me, was my grandmother. She lived there for 60 years, from 1934 until she died in 1994. Even then, many of the families on the street had been there for decades. That neighborhood in my early years seemed like a collection of families more than a typical neighborhood. The family names were familiar across generations — the Kildees, the Wests, the Lotts, the Beauchamps, the Griffins. Jane Avenue and the whole 'old east side' was a neighborhood in the way we don't see anymore. It reached across generations.

"Going to my grandmother's house was like going to the family museum — it actually felt like we were going back in time. Of course, inside her house was this treasure of family pictures and other reminders of our family history — like her furniture which never changed throughout my whole life. But even the neighborhood was a reminder of past decades. The neighbors knew me even though I didn't know them — I guess the grandmothers kept one another informed. When I started running for office and would campaign in that area — even though I moved to the west side at age four — I had to plan for long conversations on the porches of east-siders, and they told me stories of my family. Of course many of those stories were the ones I never heard at home or at Grandma's house. I learned a lot about my grandfather, who died before I was born.

"For me the saddest part of being there now is not so much that the houses have deteriorated or are gone. I miss that connection to my own past."

Addendum: Federal Influence

Kildee has found a receptive audience at the federal level as well. After he helped draft a transition memo for Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Kildee was offered a H.U.D. job shortly after he got Community Progress up and running. He turned it down. As a politician who won a school board seat when he was 18 and had been in public office ever since, he welcomed his new-found freedom.

“It was pretty clear to me that I’d quickly gotten used to being able to speak my own mind and follow my own policy instincts at Community Progress,” he says. “It would have been hard for me to do that in a relatively senior position at H.U.D.”

You don’t have to spend much time with Kildee for him to illustrate this point. He calls a local state senator who opposes his views a “moron” and describes Van Jones’ speech at the Michigan Summit as “sort of interesting but kind of like something you’d hear in eighth grade.” Despite the unenthusiastic review, Kildee still found time to snap a photo of Jones with his smartphone and post it on his Facebook page.

Not that Kildee’s outspokenness is hurting his access. He mentions that Derek Douglas, the special assistant to the president for urban affairs, summoned him to the White House in May to talk shop for a couple hours.

“That’s like going to Carnegie Hall for me,” Kildee says. “I lived my whole life basically doing recitals, and now I have a chance to be in a place where really important policy is being made.”

After the session, Kildee realized he wasn’t going to be escorted out of the building. He had a security badge, so he decided to go on a random 20-minute self-guided tour. “I’m just this kid from Flint but here I am at the White House,” he says. “I just walked around like I knew where I was going.”


Addendum: Working with Other States

Local and state governments are embracing Kildee’s approach. He assisted the Ohio legislature on a land bank bill that recently passed with bi-partisan support. Similar legislation is expected to be approved in New York with Kildee’s help. Pennsylvania State Rep. John Taylor, a Philadelphia Republican, is currently sheparding a land bank bill through the state legislature after working closely with Community Progress.

“You can’t understand land banks without talking to Kildee,” says Christine Goldbeck, executive director of the Pennsylvania House Urban Affairs Committee. “He paved the way for Pennsylvania and other states to implement these laws.”

Addendum: A Certain Irony

There’s a certain irony in the notion that a former high school hockey player from Flint — a factory town that practically invented the concept of planned obsolescence and grew prosperous on General Motors’ rapacious lust for an ever-expanding market share — might successfully export the notion that cities can save themselves by repurposing land and accepting negative growth.


Addendum: Feuding with Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh even took notice, lambasting the shrinking city concept for several minutes of air time last summer. “I'm seeing things happen in this country that I thought I would never, ever see,” Limbaugh declared. “These are the kind of things that happen in totalitarian regimes.” Kildee was delighted.

“Rush went crazy for a few days, but it was the best thing to every happen to me because a couple million people heard it,” says Kildee, who admits he soon grew weary of the mocking calls to his home and office from Limbaugh’s “dittoheads.”

The Infrastructure Solution for Struggling Cities Like Flint, Michigan

Dan Kildee on Jane Avenue in Flint in June 2010. (Photo by Gordon Young)

In the newly released revised and updated edition of Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City, U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee endorses a massive infrastructure project to help troubled cities like Flint. 

The water crisis is the latest egregious symptom of the punishing global economic forces, along with misguided Federal and state policies, that penalize places like Flint. It will take a  monumental national effort to turn things around. That means an investment of federal and state money that gives Flint a chance to prosper but might not pay dividends for years.

 

Dan Kildee, Flint's Democratic congressman, has championed downtrodden cities for decades. He believes he has the solution to achieve this seemingly impossible goal. We both grew up in the Civic Park neighborhood at a time when the city was slipping but still had a lot to offer. Neighborhood kids had to decide which of the dozens of free summer programs to attend. It was a far cry from today’s Flint.

 

Kildee believes a massive program that devotes several trillion dollars to rebuilding the country’s infrastructure has the greatest chance of someday getting support in Washington. And if special emphasis is given to Flint, Youngstown, Gary and cities like them, it could function as a new Marshall Plan to “reset” these troubled areas, much the way the U.S. helped rebuild Europe after World War II.

 

“I don’t think we can chip away at the problem,” he told me. “We need a big, bold, and very significant effort to help areas where you have chronic poverty. Until we fix the fundamental problems, we are really just managing the decline.”

 

Kildee envisions clearing away the thousands of abandoned structures in distressed cities. Extra funding would be used to rehabilitate abandoned factory sites and provide tax credits for developers to build on them. Cities would also get resources to right-size their aging, inefficient water and sewer systems. Because these projects would take years to complete, job programs could train the chronically unemployed to complete some of the work.

 

It’s a clear-eyed plan that doesn’t downplay the problems facing Flint. I want to believe this could all come to pass, but I also know that Flint is a place where optimism gets its ass kicked on a regular basis.

 

Kildee didn't try to reassure me. He simply pointed out that there aren’t very many alternatives, other than tinkering around the edges. “It may well be that this does not happen anytime soon,” he said,” but it will never happen if we don’t define what the real solution is for Flint. And it will never happen if we don’t try.” 

I agree, but I was skeptical Washington would ever approve such an initiative on the scale needed to make a real difference. But Biden's recent proposal — and its positive reception from the public — has left me cautiously optimistic.

White House officials said the proposal’s combination of spending and tax credits would translate into 20,000 miles of rebuilt roads, repairs to the 10 most economically important bridges in the country, the elimination of lead pipes from the nation’s water supplies and a long list of other projects intended to create millions of jobs in the short run and strengthen American competitiveness in the long run.

Flint offers many lessons. One of them is that small, scattered solutions to monumental problems seldom result in real progress. An ambitious infrastructure initiative can change the fortunes of places like Flint across the country. Let's hope it actually happens.

Kildee for Governor?

The news that Lt. Gov. John Cherry is dropping out of the race to be Michigan's next governor has increased speculation about Dan Kildee entering the race.

Chris Christoff and Kathleen Gray of the Detroit Free Press report:

"Meanwhile, former Genesee County Treasurer Dan Kildee said he is thinking about the governor's race.

“'Obviously, this is something I’m interested in and very passionate about,' Kildee said. 'I feel strongly obligated to think about this.' 

"Kildee was contemplating a run for governor last year, but said his decision against the run was contingent upon Cherry’s ultimate decision. Now that Cherry is out of the hunt, Kildee may be back in. He just quit his job as treasurer to form a think tank geared toward land use.

“'I’ve gotten a ton of phone calls over the last couple of days,' Kildee said. 'Some of the people who were harder to get a hold of last year are calling me now.'"

Dan Kildee and the Incredible Shrinking City

Slate covers Flint's latest export:

Dan Kildee is driving with his knees and talking with his hands as his rental car pushes 80 mph on a stretch of Interstate 69 near East Lansing, Mich. But that's not what scares me. What really gets me nervous is how he insists on eye contact as he discusses his plan for saving the rest of America from the sorry fate suffered by our shared hometown of Flint. "It really comes down to getting people to stop assuming that expansion is always desirable," Kildee says. "The important thing is how people feel about their city when they stand on their front porch in the morning, not how many people actually live in the city. It's just irrational to simply pursue growth."

Read the rest of the Slate profile of Dan Kildee here.

A Smaller, Greener Flint

Genesee County Land Bank Chairman Dan Kildee. (Photo courtesy of Jon M. Brouwer/Grand Rapids Press)

When temporary Mayor Michael Brown told a Rotary Club luncheon last month that one solution to Flint's woes might be "shutting down quadrants of the city," it sounded more like wishful thinking than actual policy. In fact, a Brown spokesman claimed it was just an off-the-cuff remark.

But a front-page story in yesterday's New York Times indicates that the concept is gaining momentum. It's even got an environmentally pleasing name; it's a "greening strategy."

As you might have guessed, Genesee County Land Bank Chairman Dan Kildee, who also happens to be the county treasurer, is leading the charge.

“Decline in Flint is like gravity, a fact of life,” Kildee told David Streitfeld of The New York Times. “We need to control it instead of letting it control us.”

(Streitfeld's article builds on a good piece by The Flint Journal's Ron Fonger published a month earlier.)

One thing the Times story inexplicably failed to mention is that Youngstown, Ohio has already put a similar plan into action that would be an obvious model for Flint. I mentioned this in an earlier post about shrinking Flint, and Fonger zeroed in on it in his Journal article:

The Land Bank chairman said he's prepared to promote talk about shrinking Flint by helping to bring in an expert on the subject, like Youngstown, Ohio, Mayor Jay Williams.

In Youngstown, the city is demolishing homes but also monitoring neighborhoods that have largely been abandoned, and is offering up to $50,000 in grants for remaining homeowners to relocate, according to news reports.

Flint is in the process of updating its master plan for the first time since 1965, so now would be the time to map out a "greening strategy" and make it official city policy.

For a racially diverse — some would argue racially polarized — city like Flint, it’s bound to be a controversial process. Namely, which parts of Flint get eliminated? And what happens when the predominantly white power structure selects predominantly African American sections of town to turn into verdant pastures? I don’t think I’m going out on limb in predicting that the north end will go before Mott Park or East Court.

And do you offer out-of-state speculators who own abandoned property the same payment as an actual Flint resident living in a house slated for removal? There's no question this whole process would be very complicated.

Are you wondering what this might resemble if it’s handled badly? Look at the mess Flint has made trying to close schools in its shrinking, cash-poor educational system. Shrinking the entire city could make that fiasco seem like a model of cooperation and efficiency.

Don’t get me wrong. I think this is a good idea. Flint has become a poverty-stricken town trapped in the boundaries of a once-prosperous city. Providing services for 34-square miles just doesn't make sense. But it will take leadership in the mayor's office to pull this off, something that's been in short supply for a long time in Flint. (Given his temporary status, I'm not including Mike Brown in this negative assessment. His short stint as mayor has reminded us what a competent, rational leader looks like after the Don Williamson years.)

At least Kildee seems to know what he's up against:

"I am pretty well sold on this, but the challenge is to do this openly, with participation of the citizens," Kildee told the Journal. "Really, the question is whether the city is going to let this happen in the most destructive manner or the most constructive."

UPDATE: Kildee appears to be on the porch of a house on Sanford Place, a dead-end street off W. Third Ave. in Carriage Town. It's not on Google Street View, but here's a shot of the street from Third Ave.


View Larger Map

Vikings on Ice

Let's set aside Flint's future and talk about Flint's past for a minute. 1976, to be exact. We know Dan Kildee as the country treasurer and head of the Land Bank, but it's time Dan Kildee the Northern High School hockey player got a little recognition.

(Photo courtesy of Dan Kildee via Facebook)

Dan Kildee Pushes for New Ways to Fight Blight

Flint homes, like this one in Carriage Town, are often neglected by out-of-state owners.

The Genesee County Land Bank uses the tax foreclosure process to seize abandoned and derelict Flint properties. Now Dan Kildee is looking for new ways to deal with blighted and vacant houses.

Kristen Longley of The Flint Journal reports:

Real estate speculators beware — if you don’t take care of your property, a move is on to come after your wallet.

Inspired by the city of Flint’s blighted and vacant housing crisis, former county Treasurer Daniel T. Kildee is pushing for reform that would allow government agencies to sue property owners who don’t take care of their homes.

Kildee said a money judgment through the court system would allow agencies, such as the Genesee County Land Bank, to recoup the cost of fixing up and maintaining the properties it takes on through the foreclosure process. He plans to take the matter up with local lawmakers over the next several months as part of his “Michigan agenda” in his new position as head of the Center for Community Progress, a national land use nonprofit supported by the Ford and Charles Stewart Mott foundations.

Exclusive Interview with Rep. Dan Kildee on the Flint Water Crisis, how to save America's cities, and the 2018 Governor's race

I recently interviewed Rep. Dan Kildee to discuss the Flint Water Crisis, long-term solutions to Flint's problems, and the 2018 governor's race. The full Q & A is now available at Next City.

Young: The water crisis is just the latest catastrophe in Flint. In the last 30 years, the city has struggled with joblessness, crime, poverty, and blight. Why do these bad things happen to Flint?

Kildee: It’s a manifestation of a philosophy of government that puts the people in places like Flint at the very bottom of the list of priorities. It's an overarching approach that is just dismissive of their interests, as if they have nothing to offer. The Snyder administration and other political leaders who share this approach absolutely view policy questions the same way corporations view their profit margins — short-term, dollars and cents first. Everything else is just noise to them. They treat Flint like a problem to deal with, or an annoyance, but certainly not a community of people that have hope, that have aspirations for their kids.

Read the full interview here.

Flint Photos: Dale and Dan Kildee

Congressional candidate Dan Kildee (left) presents a lifetime achievement award to his uncle, Rep. Dale Kildee, who has represented the Flint area for decades, at the recent Michigan Democratic Convention.

Tax Foreclosures Translate Into More Land Bank Holdings in Flint

An abandoned house on Humboldt Street in Flint's Civic Park neighborhood.

After the latest round of tax foreclosures, 14 percent of all parcels in Flint are now owned by the Genesee County Land Bank.

The land bank concept was made a reality in Michigan by Dan Kildee, now the Democratic U.S. congressman representing Flint. It was partly a response to Kildee's frustration with speculators treating Flint houses like disposable property and his desire to demolish derelict, abandoned housing, discussed in my profile of Kildee for Slate:

For many years, Kildee had no real way of making this vision—Utopian or not—a reality. As the treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint, he oversaw a tax foreclosure process that often took seven years to complete, and private speculators always had first dibs at public auctions. Kildee simply couldn't get his hands on very many abandoned houses. So he helped craft legislation in Michigan in the '90s that enabled public "land banks" to quickly gain control of delinquent property—and the revenue it often generates. Once it acquires a property, the land bank can sell it, rent it, or demolish it. It also collects interest penalties and principal from property owners behind on their taxes, rather than selling off the debt at a reduced rate to private investors, as many municipalities do. 

The flow of property to the land bank isn't likely to dry up anytime soon. Ron Fonger of The Flint Journal reports:

The number of properties in foreclosure is almost exactly the same as 2012, when the county took on another 2,772 parcels for failure to pay 2009 property taxes.

[County Treasurer Deb] Cherry said the large number of vacant properties in Flint will likely keep the number of foreclosures consistent for several more years.

"The good thing is, it at least has stabilized. At least the number did not go up, (but) we see the same pattern — it's maintaining," Cherry said.

Kildee Seeks Funds for Demolitions

 

U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, who was instrumental in creating land banks in Michigan, has introduced legislation that would free up $1 billion in federal funds to demolish abandoned property in Michigan and several other states. Todd Spangler of The Detroit Free Press reports:

Kildee's legislation, which he plans to introduce today, would give the 18 states and Washington, D.C., that were promised funding under a foreclosure mitigation program the ability to spend up to 25% of that money on demolitions. Under the original interpretation of the program, which dates to 2010, the $7.6 billion in funding could not be used for razing buildings.

The legislation, which Kildee is sponsoring along with Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Dayton, Ohio, wouldn't change any of the existing allocations or spend more, it would only give states the flexibility to move up to 25% of their total awards into demolitions if they chose. The original program was intended to target programs that helped homeowners pay back taxes, make mortgage payments, or otherwise avoid foreclosures.

Kildee and his approach to "shrinking cities" like Flint and Detroit is profiled extensively in Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young. The book is forthcoming from the University of California Press in June.

Flint's Rep. Dan Kildee on the Colbert Report

It takes more than a knife-wielding comedian to scare a congressman from Flint. Go here to see Dan Kildee on the Colbert Report.

Kildee for Governor? Not So Fast

Dave Barber's thoughts — via Facebook — on a possible run for governor by Dan Kildee? Not a chance.

"I love the quote, "I feel strongly obligated to think about this." Obligated to "think" about it? I'm obligated to think about breathing. Dan must be laughing his ass off. He's milking this for all it's worth. His stock continues to go UP. He is NOT going to run for gov. That's wayyyyy too much work. Off to DC for Mr. Kildee. Lunch at the Palm, Larry King Live and five star hotels. I hope he's started his book about shrinking cities. Then he can go back to obligatory THINKING."

Dan Kildee's New Gig

Ron Fonger of The Flint Journal reports:

The Ford Foundation said today it is committing more than $1 million to a new national land use group being headed by county Treasurer Daniel T. Kildee.

Kildee has told The Flint Journal he will leave his county job at the end of this year to lead the yet-to-be-named organization, which is also being funded by a Mott Foundation grant.

"The Ford Foundation has been investing in new approaches to metropolitan development for several years, both in Michigan and across the county," said George McCarthy, director of Metropolitan Opportunity at the Ford Foundation. "That experience shows us that city leaders are eager for fresh solutions to today's challenges, including foreclosures and abandonment, metropolitan sustainability and shifts in population.

Dan Kildee Wins

A Kildee will still be representing the Flint area in Congress. This time it's Dan instead of Dale.

An Interveiw with Urban Planner Terry Schwarz about Shrinking Cites, House Flippers and the Future of Flint

Urban planning has traditionally been all about growth. As cities grew ever larger, planners figured out ways to manage increasingly complicated streetscapes, infrastructures and housing grids. But the shrinking city phenomena has changed everything. What happens when a place like Flint or Detroit or Cleveland has too many houses and not enough people or jobs? How do you gracefully and humanely downsize a city? Terry Schwarz, interim Director of the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative at Kent State University and creator of the Shrinking Cities Institute, has been grappling with those questions for most of her career. In a wide ranging interview with Flint Expatriates, she discusses the death of cities, house flippers, the Genesee County Land Bank and more.

Why does Europe seem to have a head start in dealing with shrinking cities?

In Eastern Europe, they experienced a dramatic population exodus and shift in demographic and economic strength, but they experienced it in about ten years whereas throughout the post-industrial midwest and northeast in the U.S. these trends have been in place since the 1960s. The speed with which the population shift took hold in Germany after reunification [in 1990] made the trend rise to the forefront as an urgent priority. If the population is dwindling away over a long period of time you don’t notice it in such an acute way.

Are other regions looking at the problem?

Right now in Japan there’s actually this whole growing field of study around shrinking cities as well. It’s for population loss that hasn’t exactly happened yet. Demographically they’re looking at trends that show a very low birthrate combined with strict immigration policies. They see their population sliding off the edge of a cliff in the next 30 years.

How is the shrinking city situation in the U.S. unique?

In Europe and Japan, you’ve got shrinking cities and shrinking countries. While here in the United States you’ve got shrinking cities and a growing country. The U.S. population is expected to grow at a really rapid clip. So the dynamic we’re working with is fundamentally different. And it’s spatially different because a lot of American cities — especially Cleveland and Detroit — were lower density to begin with. You really notice the physical ramifications of population loss very immediately here. The cities just feel very different.

Do smaller cities like Flint and Youngstown face longer odds as they try to reinvent themselves compared to bigger cities?

Here in Cleveland, we still have one operating steel mill, but compared to what it was a hundred years ago there’s virtually no steel production. On the other hand, from a biomedical standpoint, the Cleveland Clinic is ascendant. So even though sometimes it feels like the downs outweigh the ups, the city has multiple things moving up and down at the same time. I don’t want to say it but in a city like Youngstown or Flint, where you’ve got less to work with from the get go, it may not be possible to begin to put a more restorative process in place. And there are examples of cities nationally and globally that just sort of stopped and ceased to exist. I think it’s rare though.

What role does eliminating or repurposing vacant properties play in the overall recovery of a city?

This is one tiny little element of helping cities recover. Locally and nationally when people look at the shrinking cities concept it seems logical. A smaller city. Smaller infrastructure. Reduce the city’s footprint. Green this place up. But if you push on any of those things very much, you realize it’s just very complicated.

Let me guess. It all starts with the economy.

Job loss is what’s hurting these cities. People are not going to move to a city just because it has a good green space system. It’s an amenity and it will affect the decision, but you go to a place where you can work in a way that generates enough income that you can support yourself and your family. That’s why people choose a city. So we can make Cleveland heaven on earth with urban design strategies, but if there’s not something for people to do here, if there’s not a functioning economy, it’s all for nothing.

How do you differentiate between a city that is having temporary economic problems and one that is fundamentally shrinking?

There are cities that experience dramatic ups and downs in response to the micro economies that impact them. Then there are cities that have had this long, slow meltdown. I met Robert Beauregard — one of the pioneers in the ways cities decline and respond to population loss — a few years ago. He used this phrase that years later still smarts. He called a few cities the perennial losers. He didn’t mean to be insulting. He was just pointing out that sometimes even as the economy of the nation grows, certain cities shrink. No matter what’s happening at the national and international level, there are cities that have persistently lost population and lost economic activity and become increasingly distressed. St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia…the cities of pain.

How do real estate investors and speculators play into this equation?

They buy the property thinking they can’t lose when it only costs $500. Then they discover that they’re going to have to spend $10,000 to demolish it or $20,0000 to rehab it, so they walk away and then it gets foreclosed again. So there are all these properties across cities that are in total limbo and every time a property changes hands somebody makes money. And it’s not the right somebody. I’m not against the private sector making a profit, but flippers are predators. They’re trying to bleed whatever value is there and take it away from a place like Flint rather than investing in it.

Dan Kildee has attempted to break this pattern with the Genesee County Land Bank by using the tax foreclosure process to acquire property. What role do land banks play in helping shrinking cities?

Dan’s model is nothing short of a regional land use strategy, even though they never call it that. Dan’s found a way to get this chaotic real estate turmoil under control and in the process managed to develop a revenue stream that would slowly and incrementally and progressively begin shifting resources to where they are most needed. With Dan’s model, whatever value is left in the properties stays in Genesee county, instead of letting those properties waste away into private hands. So Dan has inserted the public good into this equation and the value that comes from properties changing hands gets put back into the property.

In a lot of discussions about shrinking cities, the idea of relocating residents to a more viable central core is the ultimate goal. How feasible is this concept?

There’s a huge amount of uncertainty. The American Institute of Architects did a study in Detroit, and they made these diagrams that made it all look so clean and neat. You push these people over here, and then you push those people over there and then decommission all the infrastructure. Well, it’s not so easy. We don’t know for sure which neighborhoods are going to stabilize and which ones may tip one way or the other. The complexity of it is stunning.

Along with relocation is the idea that cities will save money by removing unnecessary infrastructure. It seems like a logical idea.

But you have to spend capital dollars now to remove infrastructure with the hope of an aspriational savings sometime down the line, maybe 20 years later. I defy you to find the public service director who would be willing to make that bet. If you weren’t 100 percent sure, or pretty close, that the neighborhood is not going to need that power line, water main, sewer line anytime, ever, you wouldn’t take it away because then if market demand starts to bubble up around that spot again you have to put it back in. And that’s really expensive. And with powerlines, my gosh, there are easements and once you give up the easement you don’t get it back. So you have to be sure, and I’ll tell you that very few people are sure about anything in terms of the changing urban morphology of declining cities. That’s my soap box about infrastructure.

One of the appealing aspects of the shrinking city plan for may people is that it seems to provide a bold, easy-to-grasp master plan for dealing with decay. But once you get past the obvious need to eliminate vacant properties, the process gets very complicated.

It comes back to city planning traditions. Not to blame my people, but we feel like we have to make these big moves. But the work I’ve been advocating for here in Cleveland is more parcel based. You develop a citywide or regional strategy for the repurposing of vacant lots and then you implement it as those properties become available and we have this great luxury in Cleveland of the city land bank and the county land bank. These are tools we can use to get some control. We’re never going to — at least in the near term — have these giant, several hundred acre parcels of land to work with where we can put a big thing in place. Instead of erasing parts of the city and moving people around, what we’re really trying to do is implement a vacant land strategy that integrates and sort of insinuates itself around anything viable that remains.

Body Language

Love this photo. Jake May of MLive captures the "warm rapport" Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, left, and U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Twp. must share with each other with this photo taken at the grand opening of the Ferris Wheel building on Saginaw Street in downtown Flint. You don't have to be a body language expert to figure this one out.

On a side note, I'm with Kildee on the clothing choice. If you're going to wear a suit, wear a tie. Otherwise, why bother?

Changes at the Land Bank?

Is Dan Kildee leaving the Genesee County Land Bank? The Flint Journal repeats the rumors here, complete with an intriguing quote from Kildee: "I'm not ready to announce anything yet," he said.

UPDATE: Go here for the Blogging for Michigan post that runs down how this story broke. This is a great example of the state of journalism...stories breaking on blogs and Facebook, with the understaffed Flint Journal getting involved very late in the game. And as far as I can tell, none of this is confirmed.

Will the Durant be saved?

Plans seem to be in place to redevelop the historic Durant Hotel. The Genesee County Land Bank has purchased the building and is working with developers to complete an interior demolition. The goal is to create housing for students and young professionals. This sounds a little risky, but it makes more sense than AutoWorld. After all, the place has been vacant since 1973, a decaying reminder of everything Flint used to be.

U.S. Congressman Dale Kildee — an Eastsider who graduated from St. Mary's — is even pushing for $150,000 of federal money for the project.

But although preliminary engineering reports indicate the building can be saved, the negotiations could still fall apart with Lansing-based real estate developer Karp & Associates. If that happens, Land Bank Chairman and county Treasurer Dan Kildee has made it clear demolition is still an option.

If you're wondering how the hotel named after GM founder William "Billy" Durant is holding up, check out this YouTube video. Warning: The camerman does NOT have a steady hand, and I got a little car sick watching this, but it gives you an idea why this is expected to be a $23 million job.

Land Bank Job Up for Grabs

Eight candidates are now vying to replace Dan Kildee as county treasurer and chair of the Land Bank. The job pays $82,749.

Ron Fonger of The Flint Journal reports:

A committee of county Chief Probate Judge Jennie E. Barkey, Clerk Michael J. Carr and Prosecutor David Leyton is scheduled to meet Wednesday to decide weather to immediately select a replacement for Kildee or whether to conduct interviews before making their decision.