The Motor City’s population is back where it was 100 years ago, dropping 25% since the 2000 census to 713,777. Ex-NBA star and current Mayor Dave Bing says “the city would seek a recount,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“If we could go out and identify another 40,000 people that were missed, and it brings us over the threshold of 750,000, that would make a difference from what we can get from the federal and state government,” Mr. Bing said at a news conference Tuesday.
In the 1950′s, when all Americans aspired to drive Chevrolets, Detroit was the center of the car-making universe, and a couple million people lived in the Motor City. Detroit was also headquarters for the Motown sound, with Berry Gordy’s Motown Record Corporation operating out of the Hitsville U.S.A Motown building located at 2648 West Grand Blvd from 1959 to 1968. Motown had 110 top 10 hits between 1961 and 1971.
During the city’s boom, writer George Plimpton made the Detroit Lions famous with his book Paper Lion. A then 36-year old Plimpton joined the 1963 Detroit Lions training camp attempting to be the team’s 3rd string quarterback. The book was made into a movie and launched a movie and television career for Lions defensive tackle Alex Karras.
Detroit’s Tigers couldn’t win during the city’s hay day, but the team featured Al Kaline, who at 20 years old was the American League batting champion in 1955, hitting .340. Kaline would go on to win 10 Golden Gloves and play in 15 All Star games.
Now Forbes reports that Detroit is the 10th emptiest city in the nation. “The Motor City’s population is shrinking faster than its housing stock, although Detroit has demolished entire blocks in an effort to clear its neighborhoods of vacant homes. The vacancy rate for single-family homes is just a couple of ticks above the national average of 2.7%.”
Mayor Bing has put together a plan to entice police officers who live outside Detroit to buy homes in the city. A couple hospitals are doing the same, but it’s a tough sell, “People are still looking to move out for safety and services,” said Kurt Metzger, director of Data Driven Detroit, which compiles Census data for the city. Taxes remain high and the schools are failing according to the WSJ.
Hollywood is doing its best for the Motor City with ABC’s Detroit 1-8-7 and HBO’s Hung ,however, Detroit is only a shadow of it’s former self.
But when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Fresh from being fired from his Two and Half Men job, Charlie Sheen is taking his show on the road. Sheen’s “My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option Tour” sold out in 18 minutes.
First stop, Fox Theatre Detroit, Michigan. Sheen has a message that Detroit needs.
Charlie, please hold a ticket for Mayor Bing.
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Detroit’s Tigers couldn’t win during the city’s hay day
Define Detroit’s “hey day”. I would define it having ended in 1970, the year the Clean Air Act was passed.
The Tigers won the World Series in 1968.
The Tigers won the world series in 1984 (starting the season with a 35-5 record). They went to the world series (and lost) in 2006.
I’m not sure that baseball is a good correlation for government driven economic decline.
I’m not sure that baseball is a good correlation for government driven economic decline.
Of course it isn’t. Football is.
In all seriousness, I don’t see how you could have inferred that from my post. I was merely pointing out a minor factual error.
A recount? Identify 40,000 people that were missed? Sounds like there will be some “ballot stuffing” happening soon.
My daily commute takes me though the city. Sadly, another landmark is now being demolished – the old Cass Tech building:
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/27287513/detail.html#
Some Lions trivia – in my lifetime they have built more new stadiums (2) than they have playoff victories (1).
In the mid-1990′s, I was en route to upper-michigan for vacation, and I had to stop in Detroit for two days. I was astonished because it looked like a laughable cliche of urban decay. It’s hard for me to imagine that it’s gotten worse but it has.
Fast forward to 2008, when I saw a CNN news report about Michigan. The report mentioned that Michigan attracted film shoots due to a much lower tax rates on movie production companies. The fact that little regulation and lower taxes attracts businesses, no matter what they may be; was lost on both administrators and the person reporting the story, who didn’t think about extending the same thing to everybody else. Of course, that scenario involves the entire state of Michigan (not just Detroit) but the principle remains.
Detroit makes a wonderful setting for post-apocalyptic wasteland films.
Makes you wonder if the folks who created Robocop had a crystal ball.
Unfortunately, they’re not “lower tax rates,” they’re tax credits, reimbursing studios something around 40% of costs out of taxpayer money. Let’s hope they don’t extend it to everyone else.
I wish the city of Detroit well, but Charlie Sheen is not Shinola.
Charlie will put the Tiger back in the Tiger city. Winning!
Like!
J. Cortez-
It’s actually far worse than just a different tax rate; the state reimburses movie studios for 42 cents on every dollar they spend in the state.
Here’s a summary of the bill:
http://www.michiganvotes.org/2008-HB-5841
“Introduced by Rep. Andy Meisner (D) on February 28, 2008, to authorize a Michigan Business Tax credit of up to 42 percent of a film studio’s expenses for shooting a film or TV show in Michigan. The credits would be refundable, so if their value exceeded a studio’s tax liability the state would send them a check for the difference. The bill contains no cap on the aggregate value of the film subsidies.”
I’m sure we could attract many other industries if we agreed to refund them nearly half their costs.
the going hasn’t got tough yet. there’s still the matter with the adl in court.
The decline of Detroit may be the model for other big cities in the US. Long a bastion of political power for the left, it was never one of the left’s favorites (like Chicago, New York or LA). Now it’s lost it’s political power in the state (i.e., not enough population to counter the rest of the state) so can no longer call the tune in Lansing.
Michigan also has virtually no military patronage infrastructure for the Feds to leverage (the old SAC bases are long gone and the only remaining base of significance is controlled by the National Guard).
The patronage through Government Motors doesn’t touch enough people for it to be considered important outside of the media or unions. The new governer and legislature is already cutting spending and programs and the ‘outrage’ has hardly been significant (sure not like Wisconsin).
There are some libertarian ‘green shoots’ in Michigan (e.g., “end the fed” first chanted on the Diag at U of M, Justin Amash elected to Congress). The decline of Detroit is definitely a broken window, but it’s a broken window in the socialist house, not the libertarian.
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