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Steve Myers
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A General Motors spokesman said Friday the company hasn't committed to any specific project regarding the former Buick City site.
The comments come a day after Mayor Don Williamson said he was in talks with GM about the corporation giving land from the site to the city for city-owned factories. The factories would make truck accessory parts.
John M. McDonald, a GM spokesman in Detroit, said the automaker is in continuing conversations with city officials and the Flint-Genesee Economic Growth Alliance, among others, about the fate and future of the property.
"We've been talking with the mayor and the growth alliance for a period of time about what will (happen with property at Buick City)," McDonald said. "There are always lots of great ideas and it would be nice to see something come out of that - but we're not there yet."
Full Story:
http://www.mlive.com/news/fljournal/index.ssf?/base/news-26/1109424028129050.xml |
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Sat Mar 05, 2005 11:27 am |
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Steve Myers
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Buick City to become truck accessory city?
Mayor Don Williamson wants General Motors to give the city property at the former Buick City site for a city-owned factory concept that he proposed in 2003.
The mayor made the proposal in his State of the City address Thursday.
Conroy, one of Williamson's top aides, said after the speech the mayor plans to build multiple factories, including the one that would build a high-end aluminum truck cover and employ 450. At the time he announced this a year ago, Williamson promised a factory would open within eight months, but so far nothing has materialized.
"He'd really like to make Buick City the center of the truck accessory manufacturing effort in this country," said Conroy, who added it was too early to discuss how the factories would be funded.
The announcement was one of several initiatives Williamson unveiled or offered new details about during the 20-minute address. Others included:
Promising to start a city-owned towing and storage business that would generate hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling the cars whole or in parts.
Backing a new parking deck downtown and the installation of new water and sewer lines to help upgrade older buildings now under renovation.
Renewing a city commitment to the federally supported Smith Village single-family housing development just north of downtown. The mayor also promised to clean up N. Saginaw Street, including an effort to bring a new supermarket to the area.
Promising new streets that connect many of the city's educational and health care institutions by redoing Third Avenue from N. Saginaw Street to beyond Kettering University and rebuilding Chevrolet Avenue from north of Kettering through the Miller Road area.
The mayor also said he's acted "now, not later" to address city problems since he assumed administrative control July 1 after the state takeover ended. He took credit for helping to bring $450 million in new investment from GM, eliminating the city's remaining $7.7-million deficit, paving miles of streets, reorganizing the police department and cleaning up trash from neighborhoods with his own money.
Looking to the future, Williamson promised to continue his reform efforts.
"We are fixing Flint and we are making it the city we all want it to be and we all know it can be," Williamson told an audience that packed the City Council chambers. "We will not give up and we will not put it off. Let's do it now, not later."
Williamson also asked the City Council for cooperation, including their support to tear down 300 houses within the next six months and to spend $16 million to make the city water treatment fully functional. The council and the mayor are embroiled in a lawsuit over the 2004-05 budget.
"Flint is simply too large, important of a city to rely on others for its water supply," he said. "We need to place Flint's future in Flint's hands."
Council members, who didn't applaud at the end of the speech, were mostly lukewarm on the mayor's message. One, 2nd Ward Councilman Ed Taylor, a vocal Williamson critic, didn't attend. The Flint Journal could not reach Taylor on Thursday night for comment.
"Hopefully, it'll all come true and we'll move forward - I'm not holding my breath," said 4th Ward Councilman Joshua Freeman. "When you're (previously) called a thief and a crook and that I'm a bribe-taker, it's kind of hard to stand up and applaud him, even if it's out of courtesy."
But 1st Ward Councilman Darryl E. Buchanan, the councilman who sides with the mayor the most, said he was encouraged by the speech, which he says detailed where the city has improved.
"I am hopeful that at some point that a majority of council members will hear the mayor's message and we will all get on the same page to move this city forward," Buchanan said.
Residents, too, had a differing views.
Melodee Hagensen, a 24-year-old University of Michigan-Flint student and life-long city resident, said the mayor is ruining the city's nonprofit network when he decided to review all the federal community block grant funds. She said it's not good for the mayor, a multimillionaire businessman, to pay for things out his own pocket and put groups that help out long term out of business.
"It's crazy," she said. "He doesn't have a cohesive strategy."
But Alonzo Goodman, 44, of Flint liked what the mayor had to say. Goodman said he hopes the council and the mayor can work their differences out.
"It's just a personality thing that's going on right now," said Goodman, who is in real estate. "I think truly the mayor has the city at heart " and so do the councilmen, so hopefully they can get it together."
Full Story:
http://www.mlive.com/news/fljournal/index.ssf?/base/news-26/1109424039129050.xml |
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Sat Mar 05, 2005 11:30 am |
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