Read all about it....5 years after they got the money....the article in #1 reflects the NEXT 5 years
http://www.freep.com/news/locway/dzone17_20000117.htm
Residents see no progress in 5 years
'They're not putting it in the neighborhood'
January 17, 2000
snips:
BY JENNIFER DIXON
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Broken glass crunches beneath her feet as Leontine Person takes stock of the east-side working-class Detroit neighborhood where she has lived for 51 years.
Abandoned homes, doors and windows gaping open, sit side by side with tidy bungalows. Household rubbish is heaped at the curb. Alleys are a tangle of weeds that shroud discarded appliances. Even Mrs. Person, as she is known in the neighborhood, doesn't want to venture too far down the alley that runs behind her block on Bewick Street.
"I know for a fact that President Clinton and Vice President Gore gave the money. Somebody's got to be putting it in their pocket because they're not putting it in the neighborhood," she says.
President Bill Clinton designated Detroit and five other urban areas as empowerment zones in December 1994 as part of a 10-year plan to rebuild inner cities by roping off their most distressed areas.
Each zone received federal tax credits to keep and attract business, and $100-million block grants to design and fund economic development, housing, job training and social programs. Three rural empowerment zones and 95 enterprise communities got lesser benefits
Five years later, $84 million in taxpayer money that should be making a difference in lives of the zone's 101,279 people is untapped.
A 6-month analysis by the Free Press found that many of the zone's 80 programs are making slow progress in living up to goals that are supposed to be reached by 2004
On the other hand, there's Brightmoor, Gratiot, and the area by the old City Airport.
In mid-2000, Mayor Dennis Archer reported that Detroit's Empowerment Zone had
enjoyed over $6 billion in new investment or commitments since its
http://www.crcmich.org/EDSurvey/fedzones/ez.html
Theres some good news to this story. Things will get much worse before they get better if ever. Although I feel for the people left behind after all the producers have vacated, maybe someone will learn a lesson.
Clinton and Gore gave them the money? Out of their own pockets?