Genesee Towers: Dead Building Walking

Okay, this is totally irrational and based on no real evidence. I’m sure the implosion crew knows what its doing. So why do I have this nagging, crazy worry that somehow Genesee Towers will manage to take the Mott Foundation Building down with it? GT is arguably Flint’s ugliest building, and it can’t be easy residing across an alley from what many consider the Vehicle City’s loveliest structure. How would you like to be a poorly maintained, watered-down example of the International Style hulking next to the soaring, Art Deco splendor of the most important building in Flint? There has to be some pent up resentment there.

I don’t want to get into a discussion of class warfare, but GT has always had money problems.  And let’s be blunt, the Mott Foundation building is loaded! We like to pretend money can’t buy you happiness, but come on. The years of constantly being reminded of how the 1% lives can’t be easy. It’s a little like driving a Chevy Aveo when your neighbor cruises around in a Park Avenue. (Sorry, for the dated reference, but I’m unaware of what passes for a luxury car in the Buick line these days.)

Then there’s the whole plural name thing. It’s Genesee Towers, with an “s”. See, it’s supposed to be two buildings stacked on top of each other. Yes, the lower-level parking deck counts as a separate building. Constantly correcting people has to get old after a while. And trying to laugh it off with “The building so nice they named it twice!” doesn’t help. Just not funny. The Mott Foundation Building doesn’t have to deal with that sort of thing. It’s above it all. It’s just one building and that’s more than enough. When you’re old money, you just don’t have to prove yourself.

Desperate buildings do desperate things. Is it so far fetched to think that the spirits animating Genesee Towers might be staring at their next-door neighbor and whispering, “If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me”?

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Writer Jan Worth-Nelson has the uncanny ability to capture the contradictions of life in Flint. I was reminded of this when I read two of her recent columns in East Village Magazine. In one column she reflects on a theme that all Flint residents have wrestled with at one point or another: what would my life be like if I lived somewhere else?

Most of us veteran Flintoids, especially those of us who came from somewhere else and thus can only regard our lives here as a matter of "choice," go through phases of exasperation and regret.

We all have our Flint sweet spots, griefs and vindications. We make them, we find them and we cherish them with recurring dollops of hope.

In another, she muses on the implications of drummers in downtown Flint:

The other afternoon a couple of friends and I were on our way to 501 Grille when we spied two drummers at the corner of Saginaw and First streets under the terra cotta American eagles of what used to be First National Bank.

From a distance it sounded like amateur auditions for a Fourth of July parade but it was only late April.  Still I admit there was something pleasantly odd and rousing about it.

Hmm ... drumming on street corners. My friends and I considered. Is this a good thing? Or is this something worrisomely earnest, like awkwardly hopeful murals sprouting up on abandoned walls?

Since we were in an optimistic mood anticipating our first glass of wine of the day, we decided it was a good sign. Buskers, we've got buskers, just like Washington Square Park in New York, Dupont Circle in D.C., and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco.

Flint is a complicated place, and it's good to know there are writers working to capture the nuance of a city that is often dismissed as nothing more than an economic catastrophe.