Posted on 12/10/2004 9:51:07 PM PST by Dan from Michigan
Locals come looking for 'cool'
Friday, December 10, 2004
By Sharon Emery
Lansing Bureau
LANSING -- More than 1,100 civic leaders and cultural entrepreneurs from across Michigan came to Lansing looking for the "sweet spot" that turns great ideas for urban renewal into projects that spark real change.
The "Tipping to Cool" conference Thursday is part of the state's push to create "Cool Cities" by encouraging grass-roots efforts to draw people and economic development into urban areas.
The conference, sponsored by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and other state agencies, focused on making good intentions a reality -- getting them to the so-called tipping point -- a hurdle that critics of Gov. Jennifer Granholm's plan say remains formidable.
The message at the conference, however, was decidedly optimistic.
Keynote speaker Malcolm Gladwell, author of "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference," admonished the audience of developers, arts coordinators, neighborhood activists and bureaucrats not to be overwhelmed by the job of revitalizing blighted areas.
"It's wrong to think that because a task is large, it will take a long time to accomplish," Gladwell said, pointing to the surprising fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which required only one month of social protest once peoples' perceptions of its vulnerability spread. "Dramatic change can happen very quickly."
In forging change, "we spend way too much time thinking about political and economic power, and way too little thinking about social power" flexed by community leaders in getting the buzz started about local redevelopment, Gladwell said.
Some 150 communities -- up from 60-some a year ago -- have formed Cool Cities advisory groups, said Karen Gagnon, coordinator of the Cool Cities program. Such groups are required for a community to win one of the catalyst grants awarded annually by the state.
This summer $2 million in catalyst grants was awarded to 20 projects, with 12 more to be announced in June. The conference was designed in part to help local groups find out what the state is looking for. Last year about 150 projects competed for the grants.
A Tips & Tools Center let attendees share ideas and talk one-on-one with state agency employees, pilot grant recipients and community development experts.
The 2005 catalyst grants will be targeted at urban centers with historic district ordinances, an arts agency and a two- or four-year higher education institution, state officials said. Communities without those features will be able to win one of 18 other grants.
Robert Jones, mayor of Kalamazoo for the past eight years, a time of painful corporate downsizing for the community, said in a small-group session that his city resisted the mind-set that decline was inevitable.
"We changed the concept of 'waiting for the next shoe to fall,' to 'we can do things that make a difference,' " Jones said.
He pointed to the Innovation Center, which is supported by the city and which in the wake of the Pfizer-Pharmacia merger served as a technology incubator, helping create some 400 jobs for workers displaced by the merger.
"Government has to take risks to create the tipping point" for new economic ideas, Jones said. Simply providing the traditional services, such as trash pickup and street lights, "is not enough anymore," he said.
Debra Polich, president and CEO of Artrain USA, a nonprofit arts group in Ann Arbor, addressed a session on keeping arts organizations afloat and relevant. She said her group has reduced its office space by having some employees telecommute, and has stabilized employee turnover with a fellowship program that funnels art students into positions for set periods of time.
"Forget the standard way you do business and take advantage of every opportunity you can to sustain your organization," Polich said.
Russ Collins, CEO of the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, applauded efforts of officials at the Public Museum of Grand Rapids to look at what they were doing in a different way by providing events that customers -- not just curators -- wanted.
Holly Fisher, owner and director of Smartshop Art Gallery and Metalworking School in Kalamazoo, said in a breakout session on "Focusing on the Creative," that entrepreneurs "with the passion to do it" can harness the power of their communities. Fisher teaches metalworking to students ranging from age 8 to 80, and has bought a building from the city of Kalamazoo. She said community support is vital to such projects.
"The people who live in Kalamazoo are breathtaking in their dedication to the city," Fisher said.
Jennifer Goulet, director of the Downtown Development Authority in Ypsilanti, calls the city's revitalized historic Michigan Avenue business district "Hipsilanti." It is anchored by the Riverside Arts Project, a multipurpose venue for the arts, and the community was awarded a $100,000 Cool Cities grant to renovate an adjacent building.
Incorporating the arts into the plan was an "essential strategy" in rebuilding the downtown, she said.
Most of Michigan's core cities are blue collar cities and are largely "company towns". Detroit, Flint, Lansing, Saginaw, Jackson, Battle Creek, Bay City, Muskegon, Alpena, Midland, Ypsilanti(about 1/2 union, 1/2 college town), and Marquette. There are a few university towns as well like Ann Arbor, East Lansing, Kalamazoo, and Mt Pleasant.
In a large number of those towns - particulary Detroit and Flint - people have been leaving there consistantly for over 30 years. Detroit once has 1.8 million people, now 925,000. Flint had 200,000 and now has about 125,000. Why is that? It's because of the lack of Bohemian art......really. LOL.
It's because of poor schools, poor services, crime, high taxes, low property values, no jobs, poor schools, poor schools, and poor schools.
There's the problem. Fix those, then maybe those who want the city can stay there instead of bringing the city with them to my neck of the woods.
Methinks Jenny Granholm wants to turn Saginaw into a larger Royal Oak. Aint gonna happen Jenny!
Flint isn't helped by the fact that about everyone there and in surrounding Genesee County seems to be a socialist.
Jenny the Canuck is a commie. I warned people about her. But the morons voted for her because they thought she was either 1.) hot or 2.) a woman.
Maybe there's a reason all the people I know from going to college in Michigan, myself included, left Michigan and don't want to go back. Must be not enough Bohemian art.
3.) Canadian socialist.
As a Canadian, I apologize that we managed to export to Michigan another socialist that it dosen't need. I'm sure we'll be getting payback from the hordes of PEST sufferers expected to emigrate here.
Remember: There is a reason not to support a const. amendment to ban non-US born citizens from running for Pres., and Arnold is not it. It is Granholm.
Disguised as a renaissance of the arts, education and a celebration of tradition, the upshot has been a boon to the developers who have been saddled for a long time with taxes on otherwise unusable properties while the displaced and newly homeless are driven to the outskirts where they spring up in the once-quiet darkness like recently fertilized toadstools.
Since extra-urban law-enforcement agencies are often too small to be reflected in crime statistics and slow to receive funding, the backwash has yet to reach shore.
Give it a bit of time and once again the downstairs maid will be up to her armpits in avant garde truffle-strewn sewage.
More Bohemian beer....less bohemian art.
VERY well said.
Oh, and apology accepted. :) Our two countries need to find a better place to send the socialists.
It's been obvious for some time that Gadwell is clueless, but he'd down-right delusional if he ignores the previous decades of struggle, culminating with the brilliant presidency of Ronald Reagan, that led to the felling of the Berlin Wall.
As I recall, Granholm started this program to try to keep/bring young people to Michigan, while at the same time trying to cut scholarship programs. Part of the reason I stayed in Michigan when looking for colleges was the aid I would get from the state (like the MEAP award). If it would have cost me more to go to school in state then out of state, I probably would have gone elsewhere, regardless of how "cool" the cities are.
MGY
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