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Posted Feb 10, 2016, 1:47 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: May 2012
Location: Metropolitan Detroit
Posts: 712
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While the nation has been absorbed with the water crisis Flint's downtown business's and boosters who weathered the great recession are betting that while property values will take a hit in the neighborhoods downtown's resurgence will be unaffected. I wonder what if this would have happened if Snyder didn't sneak through a referendum proof version of the Emergency Manager law by attaching it to the budget in the lame duck session right after he was reelected? Being from Saginaw albeit only for the first year of my life i know about the reputation of the Saginaw River and it's tributaries. I was pretty shocked when i heard that they were going to switch to the Flint River for drinking water but as it turned out that wasn't necessarily a problem, but a whole series of bad choices culminated with the state water agency not giving the Flint Water Plant the proper permit to use anti-corrosive measures. With a lack of transparency ingrained in law for the executive branch we prolly will never know what really happened. But on a positive note if Flint's new mayor has her way new pipes will start to be laid next month, i cant believe either that the initial response from the state gov was to say we should re-coat the water mains instead of replacing them.
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How Flint businesses are treading water through lead crisis
City's biz community hopes crisis doesn't wash away downtown rebound
February 07, 2016
By Marti Benedetti
Crain's Detroit Business
The Flint water crisis is taking a toll on the city that goes beyond lead poisoning.
The Flint Cultural Center, considered a jewel with its expansive neighborhood of theaters, museums and a large public library, could be hurt by declining property values and tax collections as a result of the water crisis. At the same time, Flint business owners hope water woes won't stem the downtown renaissance of recent years.
Kay Schwartz, director of library services for the Flint Public Library in the cultural center, said the water crisis has the potential to hurt library financing, but it has weathered financial crises before. In 2009, in the midst of the recession and General Motors' bankruptcy, a library millage of 2.9 mills produced $4.7 million. The library relies on a property tax millage for 90 percent of its income.
What has happened since provides a glimpse of how much Flint property values dropped in recent years. "We are at 4 mills now because our wonderful citizens voted an increase in 2010, and again in 2015," Schwartz said. "But 4 mills now translates to just $2.7 million, meaning the library lost $2 million in funding due to falling property values. We have had to make enormous cuts."
Those declines flattened out over the past couple of years. "But people thought values would go up again," Schwartz said. "Now, no one knows what will happen."
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The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, headquartered in a stately high-rise in the heart of downtown Flint, is doing what it can to keep the city's image from further deterioration. The $2.7 billion foundation granted $4.9 million to the Flint Cultural Center last August.
Ridgway White, the foundation's president, said the organization "doesn't want to let the water crisis reverse the progress of the many revitalization efforts that have been taking root."
John Henry, executive director of the Flint Institute of Arts, said a third of the institute's funds come from Mott, but the rest flows in from memberships, sales and admissions, tuition from its community arts school, and endowments.
"A situation like this causes a lot of anxiety in the people in the city and outside," he said. "We are constantly testing our water as we want to protect our visitors, not just the art."
He said the water plight has had a slight impact on operations, particularly income from people who rent the facility for events.
"The media has assassinated this community. It's like we're Chernobyl," Henry said. "Water is a national (problem). Why did this small town get so much attention from it?"
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Amid the image disaster, downtown Flint business owners are keeping their fingers crossed that downtown's momentum over the past five years will continue.
"We were having year-over-year growth with (the infrastructure improvements and loft developments) happening downtown recently," said Ron Sims, owner of The Torch Bar and Grill, a downtown fixture for 70 years. "Then we started having a slowdown in November and December."
Sims said sales were down 5 percent to 6 percent in January, although that month is typically slower, he said. "Still, people are every day, a hundred times a day, asking us about the water."
The Torch, like several downtown Flint restaurants, had a reverse osmosis filter installed in the fall and also offers patrons bottled water. Reverse osmosis allows water pressure to push tap water through a membrane, which filters out contaminants.
Sims bought The Torch in 2006 and did well even during the recession as downtown Flint saw some revitalization. Now he is not sure what will happen.
"Everybody is worried, but the flip side is we will get money for improved infrastructure like new pipes," he said.
Robert Kittel, who owns the downtown building that houses The Mad Hatter hat and sundries store, said it is hard to tell if his property has lost value.
"Not much has changed hands downtown to know," he said. "I think the city's real estate as a whole might lose value, but not the downtown. People are still upbeat on downtown."
Kathy Jackson: “I've invested in Flint's future. ... But with this water fiasco, you feel like Flint's image is falling further.”
Kathy Jackson, owner of Healthy Dollar in downtown Flint and a former reporter for Crain's Detroit Business and its sibling publication Automotive News, said her business has not been affected by the water crisis. But she fears her 8,000-square-foot, three-story retail building, where she also lives, could be losing its investment value.
She bought the property in 2008 when it was in foreclosure and has invested considerably in building improvements.
"The businesspeople down here are taking a chance and betting on the resurgence of this place," Jackson said. "I've invested in Flint's future. People have purchased property that was abandoned, but with this water fiasco, you feel like Flint's image is falling further."
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Thinking positive
Franklin Pleasant and Erin Caudell, owners of The Local Grocer, are taking a glass-half-full view.
"Flint is our home," Pleasant said in an email. "Throughout our lives and careers, we have chosen different ways to give back to our community. Nourishing Flint with healthy food and contributing to a healthier economy is something we are both passionate about."
After running a business at the downtown Flint Farmers' Market, the couple in December opened a grocery store just outside of downtown. It sells locally produced, all-natural products. They also farm and serve ready-to-eat food at the store.
Before opening the store, the couple had a water filtration system installed for the whole building.
Tim Goodrich and Cinthia Montague, co-owners of Sutorial, a shoemaking operation downtown, opened their business in Flint three years ago.
"We certainly realize the good and the bad here," Goodrich said.
He said water issues are not impacting their business. They are not tied to the local economy, but sell their boots primarily online. "But I'm surprised at the extent of how far-reaching the water situation is," he said.
Jessica Buchanan, 27, a barista and crepe maker at Flint Crepe Co., pointed to Sutorial as one of "the many wonderful things going on in the city." She added that she grew up in the area, left for a while and came back to embrace the city's arts and culture scene. "Things are popping up here," she added. "Flint will come back."
The crepe restaurant is one of four downtown businesses in which Robb Klaty is a managing partner. A Flint native, he started the crepe restaurant in 2011 and has since opened in the same downtown building as Merge, a bar with Asian-inspired fare; Table & Tap, serving Michigan beers and barbecue; and Tenacity Brewing, a microbrewery and restaurant. He lives above the crepe shop with his wife and six children.
"I want to be part of bringing Flint's core back," Klaty said.
http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...gh-lead-crisis
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New farmers market, MSU medical school growing Flint's downtown redevelopment
January 09, 2016
By Amy Lane
Crain's Detroit Business
Even as Flint is embroiled in a state of emergency and federal investigation over its water quality, there are other, more encouraging reinvestments in health and wellness in the city.
Case in point: When Hurley Medical Center opened a children's clinic in downtown Flint in August, it was significant for more than just for an expanded ability to serve patients.
The location, above the recently relocated Flint Farmers' Market, married health care with access to fresh food. And it marked one of the newest pieces of an emerging downtown Flint redevelopment — a health and wellness district that has grown to three city blocks and some $36 million in investment.
Some of the anticipated side benefits of the district include helping with health education and decreasing the number of local people with chronic diseases.
And even as a U.S. attorney investigates concerns over lingering water-quality issues, there is plenty of evidence of fruitful public health investments by nonprofit, medical and educational sources.
Once-vacant buildings now house medical students and faculty, researchers, loft dwellers, physicians and patients, and staff and seniors at a new elderly care center — outcomes of projects propelled by Uptown Reinvestment Corp., a nonprofit formed in 1999 to redevelop downtown Flint.
Photo by Natalie BrodaTim Herman (left) and Ridgway White: Spearheaded health and wellness district redevelopment in downtown Flint.
URC-commissioned studies of the downtown, and potential new uses for buildings that URC purchased, led to pieces of the district coming together, said URC President Tim Herman, who with Ridgway White of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, has spearheaded the district redevelopment.
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The farmers market, moving downtown in June 2014 from a location about a mile away by the Flint River, expanded in size and more than doubled its inside vendors. Foot traffic in its first year tripled, to some 750,000 visitors that included downtown professionals and college students, said White, on loan to URC for several years and now president at Mott, the foundation begun by his great-grandfather.
Above the market, 10,300 square feet attracted Hurley, which had been looking for more space for one of its three children's clinics. The new center brought resident and supervising physicians and pediatric specialists downtown and will treat about 9,000 patients annually. And proximity to a bus station and the farmers market are key plusses, said Annette Napier, Hurley senior administrator for ambulatory services.
Appointment no-show rates have dropped, Napier said, and patients can shop at the market, where vendors participate in programs like Double Up Food Bucks, which assists low-income consumers and doubles the value of federal nutrition assistance they spend. The market also houses classes for healthy eating and Flint Food Works, a commercial incubator kitchen operation.
It's the kind of activity that the state, whose community revitalization program assisted the redevelopment, hopes to see.
"We're trying to get multiple things to happen in areas, so that every dollar that we put in is leveraged four to five times and gets many more things and gets much more activity in an area," said Mark Morante, senior vice president of community development at the Michigan Economic Development Corp. "One thing leads to another. That's why catalyst projects are so very important to get done."
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The district's footprint began with URC's January 2012 purchases of The Flint Journal's former printing building and the Journal's headquarters, and the March 2013 purchase of the long-vacant, 19-story Genesee Towers office building.
That paved the way for three projects: the $3 million demolition of Genesee Towers to create an urban plaza; the $7 million relocation of the farmers market to the Journal's printing building; and the $22 million renovation of the Albert Kahn-designed Journal headquarters building to house a Michigan State University College of Human Medicine expansion and public health research operation.
Backing the projects were multiple pieces of financing. They included about $10.7 million in grants from the Mott Foundation; $5.9 million in federal New Market Tax Credits; a $5.6 million equity investment by the Michigan Strategic Fund, through the community revitalization program; $1.5 million from an anonymous donor; a $1 million loan from the Local Initiatives Support Corp. organization; and an $880,000 Flint community development block grant.
MSU's College of Human Medicine, which operates in seven community campuses through affiliations with local hospitals, physicians and other providers, had since the early 1970s been training third- and fourth-year medical students at Flint hospitals and outpatient clinics. But it had more student demand in Flint than available slots, said Aron Sousa, the college's interim dean.
Aron Sousa, interim dean, MSU College of Human Medicine
The college, hospitals and physicians wanted to accommodate more students. That led to added faculty, expanded training, and MSU's move into the former Journal building.
"We were able to increase our teaching capacity. And some of that is having a building and places to teach, some of that is hospitals and physicians teaching more of the year … and some of that is more staff," Sousa said.
Medical student counts have doubled from about 50 to 100, and the approximately 40,000 square feet MSU occupies in its new downtown home includes classrooms, study space, clinical skills examination rooms, a lecture hall and and conference rooms.
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The renovation also included 16 loft apartments, now occupied and with a waiting list, said URC's Herman.
The district's latest major piece has been the $3.9 million Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, or PACE, center operated by Genesys Health System. The center, which opened in August, provides comprehensive medical and social care for people ages 55 and older who are Medicare/Medicaid dual eligible and who qualify for skilled nursing home care but want to stay in their own homes.
http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...lints-downtown
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Water crisis strikes just as Flint begins to shed negative images
January 27, 2016
By Matt Sednesky
Associated Press National Writer
Crain's Detroit Business
FLINT — In a city long stereotyped for despair, some began seeing reasons for hope: A smattering of just-opened restaurants, students filling new college classrooms, fields of green growing where abandoned houses had stood.
The red-brick streets of downtown Flint became lined with once-unlikely businesses like a crepe shop and wine bar, and nearby, hundreds did the previously unthinkable, moving into new apartments at the city's core.
A sprawling new farmers market began drawing hundreds of thousands for everything from mango ginger stilton at a cheese shop to thick, fresh-cut pork loins at a butcher. New programs lured students from around the globe to the city's campuses, an ice-skating rink opened, the planetarium got a state-of-the-art upgrade and performances such as "Blue Man Group" put Flint on their schedule.
Even some signs of blight were beginning to fall, with hundreds of abandoned homes cleared away.
"It felt different," said Kimberly Roberson, a Flint native who directs grant-making in the city for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, "until we hit lead."
A water crisis that has flooded homes with fear and toxins has taken a tandem swipe at the city's psyche, returning it to the negative headlines it was working hard to escape, drawing a new spotlight to poverty and other wounds it never was able to fix, and bringing a renewed sense of insecurity about what the future holds for a place that's been through so much.
From its founding, Flint's fortunes essentially were entwined with a single industry.
First it was the fur trade, which shifted to lumber, which gave way to the horse carriages, leading to its being called Vehicle City. It was a fitting moniker for its next, most important role, as a powerhouse of auto manufacturing and the original home of General Motors.
Chevrolets and Buicks and lesser-known cars rolled off Flint's production lines, making the city a magnet for workers and ancillary businesses. At its peak in the early 1970s, GM employed 80,000 people in Flint who cashed paychecks strengthened by the United Auto Workers union born in the city. Some 200,000 people lived within the city limits, alongside sprawling factories, booming commerce, model schools and thriving arts.
"This was the most beautiful place on earth," said Pamela Copeland, 72, who was a teenager when she arrived in Flint in its heyday.
No one says that anymore. The oil crisis of the 1970s and corporate cost-cutting in the 1980s and beyond led to the decimation of manufacturing jobs in the city. Its population plummeted; crime soared along with unemployment. The stately Tudors and colonials that were symbols of middle-class prosperity became run-down emblems of urban decline.
http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...egative-images
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