Flint Postcards: Saginaw Street at Night

Pointless Photos

Who's interested in some totally random photos capturing Flint, places other than Flint, abandoned couches, curling iron techniques and self indulgent self portraits?

And isn't it amazing the things you can dream up to do when you're on deadline and looking for something — anything! — to do besides write?

Flint Fantasy: Genesee Towers Reborn

The unofficial rallying cry for Genesee Towers is probably "Tear It Down!" In a city that seems to love leveling old buildings, no structure has generated more wrecking ball lust than the two stacked boxes marring the view of the Mott Foundation Building. But instead of eliminating Flint's tallest building, what if we tried to improve it?

An architecture competition to repurpose the tallest building in Flint, Michigan yielded original concepts and raised questions about downtown development for the restructuring industrial town.

The building is a 19-story former bank tower with eight parking levels, an open-air service deck, and ten floors of offices. It fell into disrepair in the 90s: the previous mayor, a car dealer, ordered it condemned and, he hoped, demolished. After years in court, Flint homeowners were soaked last year with an additional average tax of $130 for acquisition of the building and legal fees. Previously Genesee Towers was disliked and considered an eyesore. Afterward it was bitterly hated.

This past September, the 40-member-strong AIA-Flint launched a competition to save the structurally sound 1968 high-rise and program it for future development. The results, announced April 8th, generated lots of local interest. “It showed people in Flint that maybe there is something that can be done with this building rather than just tearing it down,” said John Gazall of Gazall, Lewis Architects, who organized the competition and displayed the boards in his glass-walled office next door.

Flint Photos: Buick Specials Roll Down the Line in 1949

Reflecting on Flint

Flint resident T.I. Jordan reflects on the past, present and future of the city:

To know Flint is to love and hate it at the same time. I live on the East Side with my family, and my husband grew up on the North End. The thoughts of shrinking the city yes is sad and heartbreaking but at the same time can be a helpful in keeping Flint alive and not just on life support.

Many of the homes in my husband's old neighborhood are in varying stages of ruin and are now over run by crime.

With the low tax base and now new millages going into effect for those of us that still live and work in Flint, the hope to keep the basic needs of the City ( fire departments, police) are still stretched thin. A smaller city takes some of the burden off of civic departments. Can I say that this will fix all of Flint's problems? No. Do I think that it is a good start into getting us back on tract? Yes.

People who are not from Flint or its surrounding areas only see what our crime rates are,run down homes and now closed factories that had at one point been jobs to thousands of people. What they do not see are the many good things that Flint has to offer, as in the Cultural Center, Stepping Stone Falls, the Flint Farmers Market, and a city that is full of a rich history.

So again to live in Flint you love it for what it was, you hate it for what it is now, and you can have hope that it will overcome all of the challenges that come down the path, and have the faith that Flint will become stronger no matter the outcome.

From Ruins to Grand Boulevards and Striking Vistas

GaryG gets visionary about Flint's possible future:

On a visit to Flint a few years back, I was struck by the vistas that had materialized as an unintended consequence of the vast areas of land that had been cleared over the years. The hilltop prominence of the Hurley Medical Center was never more visually apparent than it has become since so many of the surrounding blocks have evolved into an expansive podium of lawn and trees. Even more surprising, was the view of the stately columns and pediment of the MSD Faye Hall, as clearly seen from the distant Kettering campus. They appear in the distance as apparition-like symbols of the community’s cultural and institutional strength, stubbornly surviving through turmoil and neglect.

Out of the wasteland resulting from a hundred thousand missing persons, there may be some unique, extremely visionary urban design opportunities that even the most attractive cities out there could never attain owing to the density and value of their built environment. The first might be the construction of grand boulevards visually connecting these places of prominence noted above, vis-a-vis the manner in which L’Enfant used the monuments, Capitol building, and White House in his plan for Washington DC. New development would be encouraged to locate along these new public esplanades in the hope of creating a series of vibrant and leafy urban links that would start, stop, and transition at the best areas the city has to offer, using abandoned lands that today sit idle.

The second idea consists of the construction of several millpond sized dams that would transform some of the worst portions of the urban wasteland into waterfront property. The creation of in-town lakes, supplemented by strategically planned parkways and the creation of inspired vistas, could be what it takes to attract the kind of urban dweller that can contribute to the vibrancy of the reinvented city.

Impractical pipedreams? You bet. But alas, with the right vision, inspiration, coordination, cooperation, (and star alignment), pipedreams sometimes can come to fruition. I once dreamed that the Durant Hotel would one day be restored and live on as an enduring monument to the great and colorful history of this ultra-challenged town. A funny thing happened on the way to oblivion, an impossible dream came true.

How to Shrink a City

Neither of these examples come from cities losing population, but they do give concrete examples — literally, in the case of Portland — of the steps you can take to make a city more livable by removing some of the things people typically associate with thriving urban areas. Portland and NYC are doing this by choice. Cities like Flint and Detroit need to do it out of necessity.

Flint Photos: Former Mayor Don Williamson with Lion

Flint Expats Who Returned Home

I'm doing some research on Flintoids who left the city, lived somewhere else, and then returned. If you fall into that category, send me an email at gordieyoung(at)sbcglobal(dot)net. Thanks.

Flint Postcards: Hamilton Dam on the Flint River