Part of Detroit destroyed for a failed GM factory

The Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, as officially designated by GM, has a very controversial history, including a highly contested attempt by local authorities to use the government's eminent power to seize 1,300 homes, shops , churches and hospitals on an area of ​​200 hectares. , then shave them for the builder's project.

At the time, the mayor of the time, Coleman Young, had justified this measure by proposing to a city in difficulty to obtain a significant number of jobs, after GM had threatened to shut down two factories in Detroit.

From another angle, GM has advantageously used the struggles of Detroit – and Hamtramck, a hamlet surrounded by Detroit – to sign a favorable contract for a new factory.

What kind of agreement? This is how the New York Times summarized it in 1981:

The company expects to receive up to $ 440 million in public grants from federal, provincial and local governments. This money will take the form of assistance with the purchase of land, the preparation of sites and tax rebates. The Detroit-Hamtramck project alone could cost up to $ 320 million in public funds, including $ 200 million in on-site assistance and at least $ 120 million in tax relief.

Not bad, especially since the GM president at the time made fun of Chrysler just two years ago for relying on the public job, saying it was "a fundamental challenge to American philosophy" .

But the project raised a fundamental question about how a government can use its eminent domain power and sparked national controversy that has attracted personalities like Ralph Nader and the Gray Panthers.

"Compromised" security of all private property

Of course, with so many jobs on the table, many residents have supported the project, but the Detroit City Council's decision to seize property for a private entity has given rise to a major lawsuit brought by an association neighborhood and several residents of the affected area, known locally. like Poletown, who argued that the deal was illegal. The case was eventually referred to the Michigan Supreme Court, which supported the project in 1981 by a 5-2 decision.

The court held that Detroit had a public purpose: seize private property and give it to another private landowner for the project. And so the destruction began.

In 1982, residents expressed resentment at this venture, according to The Detroit News:

Bitter locals told a News reporter that they were not reconciled with their move. Ann Locklear said that she had "lost my faith in the Church, the City and General Motors.

Walter Jakubowski said: "They destroyed our roots, our house, everything.

Louise Crosby's husband, George, became depressed after the couple moved to the Van Dyke-Seven Mile area. "He did not stop saying," I want to go home, I want to go home. "One winter day, he left the house and was found three hours later, wandering in the freezing cold, and ended up in a retirement home.

A subsequent study by a University of Michigan researcher found that nearly four in ten residents who were paid to leave Poletown for the project reported that their relocation payments did not cover the cost of their new home. reported the News.

But the impact of the relocation of such an important part of the city for private development was obvious, what Judge James Leo Ryan, one of the two dissident members of the Supreme Court of State who opposed the measure of the eminent domain, has grasped well.

In his dissent, in which he stated that the case "endangered the security of all property of private property," Ryan wrote that the radical change in legal thought "can be explained by the overwhelming sense of inevitability that has governed this litigation from the beginning, a feeling attributable to the combination and coincidence of the interests of a desperate municipal government and a giant society eager and able to take advantage of of the opportunity that presents itself to her. "

"The justification, just like its inevitability, was made more acceptable by the chorus" team spirit "which approved the project and which was provided by the voices of the unions, companies, industry, governments, finance and finance, even the media, "wrote Ryan.

"Virtually the only discordant noises come from the tiny minority of citizens most deeply affected by this case, the people of Poletown whose neighborhood was destroyed.

Thus, a city facing a massive loss of population to the suburbs has accelerated this trend by displacing thousands of poor residents from an ethnically diverse neighborhood in order to theoretically return to a semblance of economic prosperity. .

Aaron Foley, writer Neighborhoods and aliste Jalopnik, summarized the impact in an article published Monday afternoon:

The factory opened in 1981 and the remaining Poles in the neighborhood have instead followed their displaced neighbors to the suburbs (and stayed there), further impoverishing the neighborhood. The corridor of Chene Street is faded. Church congregations have been divided. An ethnic enclave has been lost.

The worst part is that GM's promises have never been kept.

A fraction of the promised jobs

The land at the time required some 6,000 jobs in the area. Today, about 1,500 people work on the site.

And the promise of spin-offs to compensate for what has been lost – like recent arguments from Ford to justify tax breaks for a redevelopment project located just west of the city's downtown core – never succeeded.

"In the end," said Ryan to Jalopnik, "they did not hire so many people after all because they installed robots, and all kinds of businesses did not come up . "

This is covered in detail by Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B. White in their book Come back. GM's chief executive at the time, Roger Smith, specifically aimed to make Poletown a highly automated factory. From the book:

The automated paradise envisioned by Smith did not work very well. Ingrassia and White write:

While GM's promises did not keep their promises, the position of the state Supreme Court on an eminent domain did not last either. In 2004, Ryan's point of view was accepted when the High Court decided to reverse its earlier decision by justifying the seizure of land for GM.

A local county government wanted to build an industrial park near the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, but the court ruled that the government could not use a prominent estate to take possession of a property and transfer it to another private owner in the name of economic development, Detroit Free Press noted on Monday.

"It really makes me sad, so many of these poor people, mostly poor, at least under moderate economic conditions, were kicked out of their homes," Judge Ryan said by phone. "Now, after all these years, the factory is apparently down."

Ryan explained that he was not trying to win a victory round and say, "I told you so," but simply stated at the time that taking a land for GM does not did not mean the threshold of a greater "benefit" to the public.

"I thought our constitution made it very clear that you could not condemn a property in Hamtramck or anywhere else except for" public use, "said 86-year-old Ryan. "The majority of my siblings wrote that they thought" using "was synonymous with" benefit "and that there would be a clear and indisputable advantage from General Motors when building this plant, because there would be a collateral activity of all sorts of things going around, which will relieve the very serious economic problems of Detroit. "

We need to learn from Poletown today, especially with the selection of Amazon's HQ2 site at the center of the debate. If the game resembling Amazon's Hunger Games was the culmination of the tendency to pit the cities against each other in order to obtain the best package for the well-being of businesses, Poletown was probably the starting point which led us to this point.