The Local Area Watch

ENCORE: PHILANTHROPY DONE RIGHT

[Note:  This article was first published on September 19, 2005.  It goes to show that genuine philanthropy does exist in Grand Rapids, even if it has not packed the wallop of the last week's anonymous gift to pay for the college tuition of the children of the citizens of Kalamazoo.]

Here in River City we're pretty good on slapping ourselves on the back about what a generous community we are.  We like to point out the Van Andel this or the DeVos that as examples.  But you know, the generosity of the pyramid-builders' philanthropy is a bit strained, as I noted in last week's article on the CAA.  With the G.R. Press and the Amway P.R. team bragging up DeVos or Van Andel participation in a so-called public-private venture like the arena, we forget what genuine philanthrophy looks like.

Fortunately we have Fred Meijer's $5 million donation to the $9.9 million renovation of the Civic Theater downtown to remind us.  Meijer's gift is in the same league as Amway founder Rich DeVos's donation to the DeVos Place Convention Center and his late partner Jay Van Andel's donation to the Van Andel Arena.  However, Meijer is neither buying an ersatz legacy by getting his name plastered on the renovated theater.  Nor will he or his business partners profit from the operations of the theater or any other relationship with it.  Nor is his gift contingent upon further financing that sticks the taxpayers with a big bill.  In short, Meijer's donation to the Civic Theater is philanthropy done right.

A SALUTE TO OUR PRESENT (AND FUTURE) VETERANS

Today we honor the men and women who have served in the defense of our country.  I think it's important to remember that these people were men and women when they signed up to fight for us.  That is, they were adults, not boys and girls.  I make this point because there is a tendency to infantilize those who have chosen to wear the uniform today and are now risking life and limb in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other faraway theaters in our global war against Islamist terrorists.

Too often we talk of them as though they are children who committed themselves to a cause without quite comprehending the horrors of combat that they might face.  Indeed, we literally call them children, boys, girls.  We talk of them as though they are helpless in their plight, mere pawns of the dark machinations of powerful men.  We pity them for the blood they shed.  We think of them as victims.

Too seldom we honor them for the courage of their convictions, that proud patriotism to put themselves, unlike most of us, in hazard's way.  Even when we acknowledge the dignity of their duty, we balk at attaching any glory or adventure to it.  We become mute because we must not let anything good or decent come from the reason for a soldier's being:  War.  But regretting war should not translate into regretting the choice so many men and women make to be soldiers.  Their choice is an act of charity, because they risk what is most dear to them to protect what is most dear to us.

So let us also honor, not pity or regret, our future veterans, those men and women bearing arms for us now.

OUR SCANDALOUS ELECTION DAY ADVICE

We can't say it any better than we've said it on the day of the primary elections ...

"Finally, dear readers, remember that today is election day for a host of municipal primaries in the area.  If you know what's going on and have an opinion, go and pull a lever.  If you don't know or don't care, don't vote.  Don't let anyone sell you on the idea that it's more responsible to vote than not to vote when you have no interest in the outcome of an election.  A proper respect for your right to vote is not use it frivolously."

BLOWING OUR OWN HORN

The Local Area Watch was founded in September 2000, and so it’s our fifth anniversary.  To celebrate we thought we’d blow our own horn.  Some of our accomplishments …

[1] The developer of the DeVos Place Convention Center stiffened the controls over the removal of contaminated urban fill from the project site as a consequence of our complaint to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality over the lack of such controls at the Boardwalk project site.

[2] Philanthropist Peter Wege decided against a $20 million gift to the Global Enterprise for Water Technologies project to redevelop the Monroe North water filtration plant as a museum and research center after we informed his office of the dumping of the Boardwalk project’s contaminated soil on the ground of the filtration plant and that the GEWT was a creature of the companies involved in the illegal dumping of that waste.  Instead Wege made a gift to the new art museum in downtown Grand Rapids.

[3] Similarly Michigan State University pulled its technical support from the GEWT project and the MDEQ ditched a $10 million grant for it after we prompted state legislators to inquire into the matter.  Because of their pressure, the MDEQ opened an investigation of the illegal offsite dumping of the Boardwalk’s contaminated soil.  Although the MDEQ did not prosecute the dumping as it should have, public bodies like MSU and the MDEQ did pull their support from GEWT which was nothing more than a front to cover up the dumping at the filtration plant.  That busted GEWT, which immediately folded its tent.

[4] The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland investigated and penalized Fifth Third Bancorp for improprieties in its acquisition of Old Kent Financial Corporation in response to our declaration of bank fraud filed with the U.S. Justice Department.  Also the bandit David Wagner, former chief of Old Kent, then lost his sinecures with both Fifth Third and the Federal Reserve – a good result we were indirectly responsible for.

[5] Kent County Circuit Court Judge H. David Soet resigned his seat on the local bench with two years left in his term after we filed a complaint against him in U.S. District Court for improperly pressuring a defense attorney to call River Rat Robert Wardrop as a witness in a trial to affirm false testimony he had given earlier the proceedings which were related to the illegal dumping of hazardous waste from the Boardwalk project site.  Soet had relied upon Wardrop’s false testimony to keep open for the Boardwalk’s developers an access road they needed for the rapid removal of contaminated soil from the project site.

There’s more to our credit, but I think posting five achievements for a fifth anniversary will do the trick.

PHILANTHROPY DONE RIGHT

Here in River City we're pretty good on slapping ourselves on the back about what a generous community we are.  We like to point out the Van Andel this or the DeVos that as examples.  But you know, the generosity of the pyramid-builders' philanthropy is a bit strained, as I noted in last week's article on the CAA.  With the G.R. Press and the Amway P.R. team bragging up DeVos or Van Andel participation in a so-called public-private venture like the arena, we forget what genuine philanthrophy looks like.

Fortunately we have Fred Meijer's $5 million donation to the $9.9 million renovation of the Civic Theater downtown to remind us.  Meijer's gift is in the same league as Amway founder Rich DeVos's donation to the DeVos Place Convention Center and his late partner Jay Van Andel's donation to the Van Andel Arena.  However, Meijer is neither buying an ersatz legacy by getting his name plastered on the renovated theater.  Nor will he or his business partners profit from the operations of the theater or any other relationship with it.  Nor is his gift contingent upon further financing that sticks the taxpayers with a big bill.  In short, Meijer's donation to the Civic Theater is philanthropy done right.

BIG BUCK BIO-TECH JOBS?

The Press ran a feature in the business section that illustrates the amorphous nature of the bio-tech boondoggle that state and local government officials are touting.  Perhaps it is a good sign that bio-tech boosters are beginning to reckon with reality, because it looks like the new p.r. thrust for bio-tech is the wealth of opportunity the "life sciences" offer existing manufacturers in River City.

The feature focused on the ups and downs of Rose Technologies Inc., a small "bio-tech" company on the West Side.  Rose Technologies makes components for medical devices.  Nothing really new for Grand Rapids, which is a major center in North America for machine shops and tool-and-die makers manufacturing any manner of precision parts needed in a sophisticated, high-technology economy.  (The photo to the left will give you an idea of the type of medical devices that our local shops can already produce.)  Nevertheless, Rose Technologies is being promoted as an example of what a bio-tech future holds for us if only we will embrace it.

Todd Grimm, president of Rose Technologies, reports that his fellow manufacturers are not too eager to join the bandwagon.  He said to the Press, "When I ask tool and die makers for a tool, they just run because they're afraid of the liability."  No kidding.  Product liability insurance premiums are stiff for medical devices compared to other products.  So, most of the shops in the area don't carry the insurance for that unless it's an important part of their business.  Until the class-action hyenas (a bio-tech buster the boosters never get around to mentioning) are neutered, it's just not reasonable to expect local shops to take on medical device work on a sporadic basis.

Well, they would if paid enough to cover the risk.  But if Rose Technologies is a typical example of the customers for medical device work that local shops can expect, I'm not sure where the money will come from to make taking that risk worthwhile.  Rose Technologies does $2 million a year in sales and feeds 25 employees off that revenue.  Even at the low wages it pays, running between eight to thirteen bucks an hour, that's a pretty skinny financial profile for a manufacturer.  No wonder Grimm can't find tool and die makers to do work for him.  He can't pay them enough.

So much for the bio-tech promise of high-paying jobs and robust businesses.

WELCOME "STREET TALK" READERS

I see that in this week's "Street Talk" column, the Grand Rapids Business Journal staff has recommended checking us out.  In particular, they have suggested reading our "incendiary retelling of the Old Kent/Fifth Third Bank merger and the formation of Spectrum Health."  Those stories were told in a four-part series on local lawyer Charles McCallum of Warner Norcross & Judd and his involvement in the demise of Autodie, Butterworth Hospital, Amway, and Old Kent Bank.  These are the links to those articles:

     The Fixer, Part I:  The Fall of Autodie ... and the Rise of Autocam.

     The Fixer, Part II:  Bail-out by Butterworth.

     The Fixer, Part III:  The Piggy Bank.

     The Fixer, Part IV:  Pyramid Dust.

If you want to know why we think self-dealing, fiduciary breaches, bankruptcy fraud, money-laundering, bribery, and several other RICO predicate acts mark the disappearance of River City's landmark business institutions over the past dozen years, learning about the Fixer's lawyering on behalf of the area's most powerful businessmen is a good place to start.

PROTESTING THE PROTESTERS

The usual suspects with their usual sanctimony gathered yesterday at Veterans Memorial Park by the library to protest the war in Iraq.  The pretext for this protest was a show of support for Cindy Sheehan, who is presently camped outside of President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, demanding a meeting with him.  Sheehan lost a son in Iraq and has subsequently joined the worst elements of the Left by denouncing Bush as a terrorist and a mass-murderer.  Her story is sadder still, because her family believes she is exploiting her son's death rather than honoring his sacrifice to his country and is now alienated from her.

But Sheehan has a new "family" now.  The anti-war crowd has adopted her and will hold her close until she no longer serves their purpose.  Hence, yesterday's local protest.  By all means people should march about with their signs, shouting and singing, chanting their slogans, shaking their fists against Bush and the war in the Iraq.  Heaven knows there's a lot to complain about.  (Although I suspect my complaints about Bush's conduct of the war are quite different from those of the protesters.)  But there was something particularly repulsive about how our local lefties self-righteously glommed onto Sheehan's shamelessly public show of grief.

Please, let's not cut the woman too much slack.  Sheehan has said her son was “murdered by the Bush crime family”and that Bush should “send his two little party animals to die in Iraq.”  She has demanded of Bush: “You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana.”  Not too high on the Land of the Free, is she?  Indeed:  “America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for.”

This is the woman who the protesters say has a claim on our compassion.

I'll be straight with you, folks.  I just can't take the protesters' compassion for Sheehan and her son as genuine.  After all, where were these oh-so caring people when Army Sgt. Todd Robbins was killed in Iraq?  How about Ranger Sgt. Sean Reynolds?  Army PFC Nicholas Blodgett?  Marine Cpl. Michael Lindemuth?  Army Specialist Eric Burri?  Or Army Specialist Brian Derks who was killed just last week?  All were local men.  Where were yesterday's protesters shouldering the grief of their families when these warriors fell in defense of our country?

AWOL, of course.

MISS BLISS DIDN’T VOTE AND THAT’S A GOOD THING

As reported last week, Grand Rapids mayor George Heartwell endorsed youth over experience in this year’s City Commission race in the 2nd Ward.  His nod went to youngster Rosalynn Bliss over oldsters Shaula Johnston and Art Kroon.  On Friday the Grand Rapids Press followed up with its usual campaign season article on the record of voter participation of the candidates for local office.  It found that Miss Bliss made it to the polls only six times out of the past twenty-three elections, whereas her elderly opponents each missed only a handful of elections.

Apparently among right-thinking folks not voting is a bad bad thing.  I suspect that’s doubly so for Miss Bliss, a self-identified progressive who believes that the government (i.e., taxpayer dollars) is the solution to most of life’s problems.  However, I’m not so big on voter participation.  If you don’t know what the hell is going on in an election, you shouldn’t be in the voter booth pulling a lever.  Most young people pay no attention to the candidates or issues in a typical election, especially local ones.  Of those who have, too many merely parrot slogans they’ve picked up from those who have influenced them (let’s say a self-righteous banker turned preacher turned mayor).  So, I actually think it’s a good thing that most twenty-somethings never make it to a polling station.

Miss Bliss doesn’t put it quite my way.  Her excuse:  “You’re creating your space in the world, developing roots.  As you feel more connected, you feel you need to get involved.  With age, it’s true, we learn how important voting is.”  Well, that’s, um, very organic.  But her last statement sums it up correctly.  Voting is too important to encourage to the polls people who have paid no attention to public matters.  If Miss Bliss avoided the polls until recently because she had other things to do in her callow youth than follow the to-and-fro of politics, good for her.  She did the honorable thing by not casting ballots in ignorance.  A decent respect for democracy demands nothing less.

REMEMBER THE PERSONAL COMPUTER REVOLUTION?

Three weeks ago Michigan had a pavilion at the BIO 2005 International Convention in Philadelphia.  Like all trade shows, the purpose of BIO 2005 was to give players in the bio-tech biz a chance to meet each other and see what deals might be done.  To this end, the state of Michigan put together a joint exhibit of eighteen bio-tech companies and twelve public agencies to hawk the merits of doing business in the Winter-Water-Wonderland.

Yeah, there's nothing unusual about an economic development agency having a booth at an industry trade show.  But it's time to scratch your heads, folks, when nearly half the exhibitors are public organizations, especially when they include the likes of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, a taxpayer-funded boondoggle with two dozen executive vice presidents receiving six-figure salaries to look busy about the business of business.  If the bounty of great wealth and great jobs of bio-tech is really everything that it is cracked up to be, why does it need all this government-sponsored boosterism?

Remember the personal computer revolution that started a quarter-century ago and remade our economy?  How much help did that boom need from the taxpayers?  None.

LOCAL PROF SEZ WE'RE BIBLE-BEATING BIGOTS

Professor Ben Rudolph of Grand Valley State University has a regular column in the West Michigan Business News.  I often find myself in agreement with Prof. Rudolph as he casts perceptive eye upon the local business scene.  However, his June 27th column is quite a clunker.  It reveals more about the blinkered pieties of academia than any truth about local businessmen.

Rudolph tells us that we shouldn't blame the politicians for the sluggish local economy.  Instead we must be introspective and realize that it's our racist, sexist, homophobic, religiously bigoted, anti-intellectual, timid, and -- yes -- even prudish business culture.  He equates all these nasty attributes to the generally conservative worldview of the denizens of West Michigan.  This keeps the more enlightened from migrating to the area and delivering us from our economic blight with their skills and talents.

To this end, Rudolph scolds us as racist:  "Many of the most competent and talented people in the world are not white Protestants."  He then bemoans the region's religious mores with a little calumny tossed in: "Well-educated Americans tend to be secular and non-dogmatic people.  They do not want to come here to have their children educated in an environment where science and rational-thinking are not taken seriously."  And just to make sure we get the point that we are a pack of finger-wagging prudes, the good professor reminds us:  "Bars, restaurants, casinos, entertainment and sex are all things most people really enjoy."  No kidding.

Once Rudolph gets past painting us with the broad brush of bigotry, his criticisms that are actually pertinent to business culture don't make any sense.  For example, he lambastes West Michigan businessmen as too timid in management style.  Yet, he uses as examples General Motors and Ford.  Well, neither are headquartered here, and the problem with these ailing auto giants is not that they are run by conservative Republican WASPs but by bean-counters who climbed the greasy pole of corporate America.  To further undercut his thesis, success in that climb to the top requires in no small part bowing deeply to the political correct pieties that Rudolph denounces West Michiganders for lacking.

As I said at the beginning of this article, I often agree with Prof. Rudolph.  He has excoriated the corrupt clique of players and their "go-along-to-get-along" lackeys that are the bane of River City.  However, he has gotten their motivation wrong.  It is not that they are Bible-beating bigots.  It's a lot simpler than that.  They're greedy bastards.  Lumping in with them the majority of West Michigan businessmen who don't have the same affection the professor does for ivory-tower multiculturism is unjust.

TUESDAY'S TOPICAL TAKES

Some quick thoughts on this fine Tuesday -- well, OK -- this hot and muggy Tuesday ...

[1] The state legislature, toadying to the state's tourism interests, is going to consider passing a law that forces all public school districts to start the new school year after Labor Day.  State Representative Ed Gaffney, a Republican representing Grosse Pointe, complains that the summer break for kids is already too short and needs to be lengthened.  Well, then, let him argue that with his local school board.  What makes him think his preference is the one everyone in the state should have?  The statehouse has already meddled in this issue by requiring the Labor Day break to be a four-day weekend for public schools.  Let each district set its schedule to reflect local preferences.  Enough of Lansing dictating the minutia of school administration, especially ...

[2] ... when the state pols can't get the big stuff straight.  If the Education Trust, a Washington D.C.-based public interest group, is correct, then Michigan can't even figure out how many kids are graduating from high school in the state.  Michigan has been reporting to the federal government that fewer than one of six kids are dropping out.  According to the Education Trust study of graduation rates in each state, more than one out of four Michigan students are drop-outs.  Of course, letting the low-performance students drop out is surely one way of boosting those achievement scores and keeping the federal dough rolling into public school district payrolls.  Don't expect any improvement in the graduation rate soon.

[3] Mary T. Scott is the big whistleblower on Metropolitan Hospital's alleged Medicare fraud who was awarded $1.1 million out of $6.25 million settlement the hospital struck with the U.S. Justice Department two years ago.  Scott then followed up that victory with a wrongful discharge suit against the hospital claiming that she was fired because of her whistleblowing.  Well, Judge Enslen of the U.S. District Court in Kalamazoo chucked out Scott's case.  It seems that she falsified evidence, including minutes of a hospital board meeting, to support her allegations.

Although Enslen's dismissal of Scott's wrongful discharge lawsuit has no effect on the Medicare fraud case and the award she won from it, Metro's spokesman crowed that the hospital stands vindicated across the board.  If so, why did Metro cough up more than six million dollars to settle the Medicare fraud charges in the first place?  Metro says it did so to avoid bad publicity while trying to sell a $165 million bond for its new campus in Wyoming.  Yeah, that makes sense.  Copping a plea looks a whole lot better to the public than defending yourself against false accusations.

[4] Speaking of bonds, Goodwill Industries sold a $1.5 million one to raise capital to spruce up its retail operation here in town.  Goodwill's new retail outlet at 3270 29th Street S.E. is more like a department store now rather than a second-hand fleamarket.  This pricey upgrade in image is supposed to attract new customers.  Goodwill sells used goods donated by the public to raise money to educate, train, and employ the mentally, emotionally, and physically handicapped along with others who are down on their luck.  We hope the new venture works for Goodwill and doesn't turn out to be another glitzy non-profit bricks-and-mortar boondoggle.  (If Metropolitan's new nine-figure campus comes to mind, you thought of that all by yourself.)

[5] Dave Morren is quitting as chairman of the Kent County Commission while keeping his options open for higher office down the road.  Without regard to his record in public office, Morren is a contemptible man.  He once testified under oath that my mother, whose kind-heartedness hasn't rub off on her son like it should have, was a "liar".  No doubt Mom, the tolerant person she is, will take me to task for bringing the subject up.  Nevertheless, Morren has put himself out as a public person and so the public should know what sort of person he is.  Thus, I'm warning you, folks.  Now that he has assaulted motherhood, what's next?  He'll probably leave apple pie alone so as to not stir up the apple growers in the county, and everybody is already down on baseball.  So what does that leave in Morren's sights, dear readers?  Yes, that's right:  The American Way!

THE MAKERS OF THINGS

In last week's article "Lost Cause" we described how the City of Grand Rapids and the players who had access to the machinery of government sold out Monroe North's industrial future for healthcare gold.  Well, the scheme didn't quite pan out, so Monroe North's something of a mixed bag of haphazard redevelopment these days.  Those who wrecked the promise of big manufacturing dollars being made right smack in the middle of River City can, and have, justified themselves by citing the big trends of the past few decades.

One interesting trend is the shift in jobs since 1970 from manufacturing to healthcare, as noted in today's Wall Street Journal.  Thirty-five years ago, one in four Americans was employed in manufacturing.  Today only one in ten.  Meanwhile, the healthcare sector went from employing one in twenty Americans to one in ten.  Thus, the two trend lines have crossed.

The mistake in interpreting these trend lines is that manufacturing is a losing bet and healthcare is a winner.  Not so.  What is not grasped is that manufacturing has made tremendous leaps in productivity and so is going the same way as agricultural in this country.  Making things is here to stay just like farming.  However, the hard fact is that fewer people are needed to put out more and more goods.  Nevertheless, we still need some people to make all those things -- i.e., create wealth -- if we want to pay for all those people who don't -- e.g., lawyers, nurses, teachers, actors, bloggers ;).  (Click here for more on this point.)

And just like some parts of the country remain large centers of agricultural, other parts of the country will be concentrated centers of manufacturing.  Grand Rapids is ideally suited as such a center.  Just because manufacturing invokes the image of old-fashioned smokestacks in some minds, that's not a reason to run from it to embrace all that vaporous bio-tech blather that is vague enough to include everything from bio-molecular scientists to bedpan attendants.  After all, a dollar made from manufacturing spends the same as one made from bio-tech.  And another hard fact is that the manufacturing dollars are here right now whereas so many of the bio-tech dollars remain nothing but a hope -- or hype.

Of course, the doomsayers of manufacturing can support the bio-tech hype by showing how many local jobs are tied to healthcare.  That's true, but why do we want anymore healthcare jobs than required to take care of local needs?  They don't pay as well as manufacturing jobs and their employers don't contribute to the local taxbase as much as manufacturing does by most measures.  Indeed, many healthcare employers are non-profits adding little or nothing to the taxbase.

So what do we need:  More consumers of the taxbase, or more contributors?  Fortunately, the choice isn't either/or.  Make River City friendly to the makers of things, and we'll have the wealth to pay for all the healthcare jobs our community wants or needs.

MONDAY MUSINGS

This and that on a Monday ...

[1] The Pistons are in the NBA championship series.  That's certainly front-page news -- in the sports section!  However, in its relentless quest to make the news marshmallow soft, the Grand Rapids Press has taken to reporting each blow-by-blow of the Pistons tussle with the Spurs on Page One.  Let's consider this for a moment.  What must the Press think of us when it headlines huggable news instead of hard news on its front page?

[2] Guv Jen, statehouse Republicans, the Grand Rapids Press, Dr. Luis Tomatis, Peter Secchia, and all the players downtown have drilled into us that bio-tech is our future.  Who can argue?  Bio-tech is hardcore science and technology, and there the path to progress always lies.  (Yes, that's a none-too-subtle pun.)  Leading the bandwagon is River City's premier hi-tech organization, the Van Andel Institute.  A curious thing about that.  This paean to science was the late Amway-founder Jay Van Andel's favorite project.  But how soon we forget Jay's second favorite fancy -- a creationism center in Arizona.  To think the foundation for River City's bright and shiny bio-tech hi-tech future was laid by a fella who wanted to prove the Earth was created in 4004 B.C. and men walked with dinosaurs.

[3] Conflict of interest alert:  The other Amway founder, Rich DeVos, has partnered up with old friends to build a series of medical towers across the street from Spectrum Health's main campus.  Spectrum will be an anchor tenant in these new buildings, yet Spectrum CEO Richard Breon told us a couple of weeks ago that the hospital needs to jack up rates by 8% next month to help purchase new buildings.  So if we all have to pay more because Spectrum needs to buy buildings, why does Spectrum also need to plan on renting buildings from DeVos?  No doubt Spectrum's board has approved all of this with good reason.  After all, the board is fortunate enough to have DeVos as a member who can give them all the good reasons they need to rubberstamp these plans.

[4] The City Attorney's office is batting for the Boardwalk polluters again.  Last week Assistant City Attorneys Daniel Ophoff and Catherine Mish filed an appeal with the Michigan Supreme Court asking it to dismiss the Toxic Towers hazardous waste complaint against the City and the Boardwalk developers.  It's a "Hail Mary" pass that none of the other defendants in the case could justify spending any money to make.  However, the City Attorney's office has you the taxpayers to cover the cost, so Ophoff and Mish are making this snowball's-chance-in-hell appeal, which, if on the slight chance it succeeds, benefits all of the defendants.  Shamelessly the City continues to use your tax dollars to help protect these polluters.

LOST CAUSE

At the June 10th annual meeting of the Monroe North Business Association, developer Jack Buchanan of Blue Bridge Ventures pitched a plan to demolish the Western American Mailer and GR Spring industrial facilities for a "mixed-use" development of those properties.  Lunch buckets are out and suits & ties are in, as he announced that the Monroe North district is no longer suitable for an industrial park.  What a shame.

Monroe North was ideally suited for redevelopment as a city center industrial park in the wake of Autodie's collapse into bankruptcy twelve years ago.  In the heart of River City it had all the infrastructure modern manufacturing required including a railroad spur right through the middle of it, yet it had the unique quality of being surrounded by buffers to keep it separate from the residential and business districts around it:  To the west was the Grand River, to the east Lookout Hill, to south the I-196 freeway, and to the north Leonard Street.

Monroe North was an opportunity for Grand Rapids to show how a rust-belt city could successfully integrate manufacturing into its very core on the brink of the 21st century.  Regardless of the century and the promises of this or that neat idea for the future, a city needs a strong job and tax base to prosper.  That is what manufacturing provides.

Instead Grand Rapids city planners continued their blinkered campaign to drive manufacturing out of the city and into the suburban greenspaces surrounding it.  They became enamored with the idea that Monroe North should be converted into a mixed-use zone in which offices, apartments, and factories would happily jostle up against one another.  Of course, that sounds like precisely the opposite of zoning, which is intended to keep incompatible uses apart from each other.  However, even if a mixed-use zone abandons the very rationale for zoning, it does allow city planners to control the plan for the zone.

That control was important, because then-mayor Boss Logie and his business clients had plans for Monroe North as early as 1992 for a new satellite campus for Butterworth Hospital (now Spectrum Health), educational and research facilities along the lines of the Van Andel Institute, and all the latte-sipping amenities and loft apartments that appeal to the non-profit crowd.  To that end the City wrangled millions of state and federal tax dollars to prettify the district on the false promise that there was nearly $300 million in private investment ready to be poured into Monroe North.  To help justify that figure, the City initially booked the Boardwalk project as a $150 million investment.  (That's now down to $20 million and the subject of the current FOIA fight with the City.)

However, Logie's agenda collided with a development plan promoted by Proto-CAM Inc., a manufacturing company (owned by my family) located in the heart of Monroe North.  Proto-CAM put together a plan backed by venture capital from Chicago and elsewhere to redevelop the district as an industrial park based upon its Datafacturing® technology which creates good-paying jobs for low- or no-skill core city residents.  The plan also called for a charter vocational high school to be located in the district.  To kickstart its plan, Proto-CAM filed a request with the City Planning Department in 1996 to convene a hearing before the Grand Rapids Planning Commission to clean up the industrial zoning of Monroe North that had been sliced and diced to accommodate Logie's agenda.

And that's where the industrial resurrection of River City got strangled in the cradle.  Proto-CAM's re-zoning application simply disappeared into the bowels of City Hall, exposing the company's utter lack of political clout.  Unsurprisingly the venture capital behind the plan then also disappeared because Proto-CAM's owners were unwilling to launch a Datafacturing industrial park elsewhere.  However, the conflict did expose the machinations by Boss Logie's camp and so their big vision for Monroe North didn't come to pass either.

Now neither fish nor fowl the redevelopment of Monroe North drifted.  Because River City had made itself unattractive to manufacturing, by default Monroe North fell towards commercial and residential redevelopment to the point where, as Buchanan announced, an industrial park is no longer in the cards.  But worry not, folks!  The politicians, the bureaucrats, and the Van Andel panhandlers will make good on this lost opportunity for Grand Rapids with the bright shiny future of bio-tech -- if we agree to fork over to them a billion bucks or two.

FRIDAY FUN STUFF II

A few loose thoughts as we wrap up the week ...

[1] I'm sure the relationships that Grand Rapids Press publisher Danny Gaydou has with potential beneficiaries of any government bio-tech largesse has nothing to do with this, but it's clear that River City's daily is in the grip of bio-tech mania.  Wherever there's an angle, a story now gets connected to "life sciences" or "bio-tech".  The latest example is a short article on the 90th anniversary of Grand Rapids Community College buried on page B4 of last night's edition.  The headline reads:  "What began as a U-M feeder school now trains for life sciences".  [My emphasis.]

The bio-tech bandwagon is a-rolling, folks.  If you have to get on it, just make sure you jump off before it goes over the edge of the cliff.  How will you know?  It's when the Van Andel Institute changes its mission for the fourth time and becomes a weight-loss clinic.  Or else, you can keep reading here. ;)

[2] Van Andel's panhandle:  This week David Van Andel, chairman and CEO of the Van Andel Institue, graciously announced that he'll accept either the state senate Republicans' one-billion-dollar bio-tech bond hand-out or Guv Jen's two-billion-dollar high-tech bond giveaway.  All that he demands for his neutrality is that he has a say in how that taxpayer funds get spent.  Meanwhile, no further news regarding what if any commitment the Van Andels are making from their Amway fortune to their namesake institute.  As I warned you, folks, the VAI is a Van Andel family operation set up to run on other people's money.  Watch your wallets!

[3] Guv Jen says we should support her $2 billion high-tech bond proposal because it will create 72,000 jobs that "could not be outsourced".  Short of repealing the Thirteenth Amendment and re-introducing chattel slavery, I am not exactly sure how the good governor plans to make good on that promise.  Well, the whole thing is rather silly anyway.  How does Granholm have the slightest clue how many, if any, jobs would result from the State of Michigan picking the winners and losers in the high-tech bond lottery?  How does a lawyer-turned-politician, whose knowledge of making a profit comes not from private enterprise but instead the McNamara machine, think she knows the ups and downs of venture capital investment well enough to make such a promise of success?

By the way, dear readers, that's her plan.  Granholm wants to use the funds raised from her two-billion-dollar bond to buy for the State of Michigan stakes in high-tech businesses and start-ups.  You'd think with all the casinos around the state, Guv Jen would have plenty of other opportunities for rolling the dice other than this boondoggle with taxpayer dollars.

[4] At least Dick DeVos Jr. in his bid to unseat Granholm as governor next year went on the record here in town on Wednesday that he disapproves Guv Jen's bond proposal because the state shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers -- just like we said here a couple of months ago.  On the one hand we're flattered that Dick Jr. thinks well enough our pontifications on these matters to incorporate them into his campaign rhetoric.  On the other hand we're disappointed that he didn't credit us with his insight into the matter.  Perhaps he remains a bit miffed at us for our comments regarding his stewardship of Amway and Windquest. ;)

[5] And speaking of Dick Jr., a final thought crosses my mind.  Remember the "Young Turks" of River City that the Grand Rapids Business Journal lauded about ten-fifteen years ago?  The movers and shakers of the rising generation who were going to remake Grand Rapids included Dick Jr., Steve Van Andel, David Wagner, and John Kennedy.  Their paths to glory were Amway, Old Kent, and Autodie.  Throw in Butterworth and Blodgett hospitals (Dick was president of the Butterworth Foundation and Wagner the chairman of Blodgett) and we can see how these "Young Turks" unmade our town.  None of those institutions that had defined River City exist today.  This will merit further thought.

CORRECTION! CORRECTION! CORRECTION!

As astounding as it may seem to you, dear readers, your executive director has published articles that need correction.  These involve the Ambassador, a.k.a. Peter Secchia.  I have received information from new sources that contradict what I have written.  After having consulted my original sources, I believe fairness requires me to extend my apologies to the Ambassador and change the record.

These changes involve Secchia's position on Old Kent's acquisition by Fifth Third (he opposed it), requests for tax subsidies like Ren zone status for his development projects (he has never asked the government for tax subsidies), his recommendations to the Kent County Commission for completion of Millennium Park (a tax increase was only one of three recommendations he made and not his preferred one), and his current residential status (he still works and lives in our community).

These links will take you to the corrected articles.  Please check them out.

Of course, we still oppose any public funding or subsidy or accommodation (outside the ordinary) to bring Michigan State University's School of Human Medicine to Grand Rapids, which the Ambassador supports as part of a plan to make the Michigan Street "medical mile", with the Van Andel Institute as the anchor, an incubator of bio-tech businesses.  We have no reason to believe that the Ambassador's support is nothing but a publicly spirited vision of where he thinks our future lies.

Nevertheless, we'll be keeping an eye on the deals that take place around the Hype of the Hill, at least until we know more about how much of their own money the Van Andels are willing to bet on the VAI.  We hope the Ambassador has a similar "show me the money!" attitude about this.

FRIDAY FUN STUFF

A few odds and ends on a Friday before a holiday weekend ...

[1] Looks like there's more than meets the eye with St. Mary's hospital's sudden and unexpected withdrawal of support from the Catherine's Care Center medical clinic for the indigent, as reported here last week.  What's becoming clear is that the decision was made without the knowledge of St. Mary's executive staff and was in fact prompted by a vendor for the hospital who disliked the doctor who has been donating his time and talent to the Care Center.  The whole thing stinks, folks, and threatens the well-being of one of the most effective healthcare programs for our community's impoverished citizens.  I'll have more on this story for you next week.

[2] Better late than never.  Looks like the editorial writers for the Grand Rapids Press have gotten aboard our bandwagon in demanding that the Grand Rapids Public School District return to the taxpayers the 2.5 million bucks it raised from them last year to buy new school busses.  Yesterday, a week after we had propounded upon the issue, the Press agreed in its lead editorial that those dollars needed to be returned to the taxpayers now that the school district has outsourced student transportation and no longer needs to buy busses.

[3] Speaking of outsourcing the bussing, it looks like G.R.P.S. superintendent Bert Bleke told a fib to school board members and taxpayers.  The $250 bonus each district bus driver is slated to receive when he or she converts to an employee of Dean Transportation isn't being paid by Dean but by the school district.  Bleke justified his tall tale by explaining the ruse:  The check for each bonus will be coming from Dean, but the school district is providing Dean the funds for it.  Well, folks, what can you expect of a man who is grimly holding onto the superintendent's seat long enough for his pension to vest and then is retiring -- BUT not actually retiring because he will then let the school district pay him as a consultant to advise the new superintendent?

[4] Speaking of government pensions, where is the hue and cry for the scalp of Grand Rapids City Manager Kurt Kimball who tripled the City's pension liabilities to get the union for City workers to agree to a temporary slowdown in pay hikes?  And what about the City Commissioners who agreed to this?  This is a financial tsunami just over the horizon that will drown River City. If General Motors and Ford are on the verge of Chapter 11 now that they are in the shadow of their own pension tsunamis, what made Kimball ever think he could triple the liability of a defined-benefit plan without even getting his shoes wet?  People, this is the height of incompentence or arrogance or both of a city manager who has had this post for far too long.  We deserve a lot better for the $130,000+ we pay Kimball every year.

[5] Speaking of budget woes:  This story will give you a taste, dear readers, of how the City of Grand Rapids will use its cash crisis to stick it to area residents in some very petty ways.  As you know, the Grand Rapids parks department hosts a softball league for adults.  The teams of the league pay the City a fee to cover the cost of umpires, lights, and other direct costs.  This season a parks department official notified the league members that the City will not let teams make up softball games that are rained out.  Keep in mind, folks, these teams have paid the City for the services it provides to host their games, and if there is a rain-out, then no game was played and so the City has incurred no costs.  Of course, the City has not offered to refund the portion of the fee it collects for games not played.  Nothing but a grubby grab for a few tax dollars.

ENCORE: MY CITY, MY PIGGY BANK

[This article originally appeared on March 1, 2005.]

The other day the Ambassador, a.k.a. Peter Secchia, assured White House political advisor Karl Rove that he could safely ignore Grand Rapids Mayor Heartwell's call for "rebellion" against cuts in federal largesse to urban coffers.  Well, I think all of us already knew we could safely ignore the excitable Rev. Heartwell.  In fact, I'm certain that the Bush Administration was so sure that it could ignore Heartwell that no one listened to him in the first place.

The Ambassador's call to Rove was interesting because he claimed Grand Rapids as "my city".  Like most of the self-proclaimed movers and shaker who strut about town, the Ambassador does not actually live in the city.  I'm not even sure if he has any offices in the city.  The headquarters for his company, Universal Forest Products, are perched in the 'burbs outside of town.

Nevertheless, Grand Rapids, whether it likes it or not, has always been good to the Ambassador.  He seems to have found luck in downtown Grand Rapids where periodically some public entity would announce its plan to move its offices to a building there that he just happened to have acquired an interest in.  To be fair we should note that the Ambassador has done good works, like a residential hall for Grand Valley State University's downtown campus or Millennium Park on the banks of the Grand River southwest of town.  But then he finagled an egregious extension of a Renaissance zone to encapsulate one of his downtown projects, so maybe it's only just that we get back some of the taxes he has avoided.

As we know from his call to Rove, the Ambassador would disagree that's how his piggy bank -- I mean, his city -- sees things.  No doubt he prefers us to support the type of public largesse he receives than the type Heartwell wants to control.  So long as both support throwing away taxpayer dollars on white elephants like the new Convention Center, maybe it's time for the piggy bank to rebel against everyone who wants to shake dollars loose from it.

A.W.O.L.

Dear readers,

Your executive director will not be minding the store (at least not too closely) this week.  However, I have arranged for encore editions of articles that I think you'll find interesting to pop up fresh throughout the week.  Your e-mails and comments are still welcome while I am gone, and Mary Hines, our office manager, will still be here to take your calls.  In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your visit here.

Best regards,

Bill Tingley, Executive Director

FOWLER'S FOLLY

When I was a kid I loved my Lincoln Logs, my erector set, and my Legos.  I would build, build, build with them.  I remember my first set of Legos came in a large cylindrical container that featured a Lego skyscraper on it.  My childhood quest was to top it -- and I did.  Later on my brother and I would build entire cities for our Matchbox and Hotwheels cars to zip through.  By the time I had to reluctantly follow St. Paul's admonition to put my childish things away, I was quite the toy urban planner.

Maybe you have similar fond memories of building Lego empires.  Keep them in mind as I continue with this article.

A couple of days ago I lampooned Jay Fowler's "wayfinding" sign project.  It boggles the mind that the City blew nearly a million bucks on signs to tell people which newly defined "district" of downtown they are in.  But what can you expect when you let planners like Fowler operate on your dime?

Now let me say that I know Fowler and he is a sober fellow who takes his job seriously.  He is presently the executive director of the Downtown Development Authority having moved over from the City Planning Department.  He is a dedicated public servant.  While Fowler was still in the Planning Department, I had to do a lot of business with him about ten years ago.  I was trying to stop his ill-fated plan to gut one of the best manufacturing districts remaining in the City with a mixed-use commercial zone.  Fowler was not unsympathetic to my concerns, but in the end I lost and he won.  The results were the Toxic Towers dumping scandal and a shriveled tax base.

From this episode I learned a bit about the thinking of Fowler and his colleagues in urban planning.  One of the things that boggled me was Fowler's infatuation with mixed-use zoning.  To me that sounds like a contradiction in terms:  Isn't the whole point of zoning to keep different land use separate from each other?  But Fowler saw it differently, because mixed-use zoning gave government planners a big role to play in the development of such a zone:  Let the planners manage the conflicts and implement their vision of urban harmony.

That makes me think back to the joy I had in building my cities of Legos and Lincoln Logs.  So I understand Fowler.  I also understand how grandiose, profligate, excessive, and wasteful my toy cities would have been, if had free access to Mom's purse or Dad's wallet.  Fowler had access to about a million bucks of our hard-earned tax dollars, so he executed his vision of a downtown divided into little districts and posted 135 signs to tell us where those districts are.

The lesson of Fowler's Folly is not leave cash lying around in the City coffers.  It will get spent -- always with the best of intentions -- even if it means spending it on $6,000 "wayfinding" signs.

END OF AN ERA

This isn't exactly within L.A.W.'s bailiwick, but the end of an era is always worth noting.

I was surprised to learn from the news last night that Rogers Department Store is closing after a half century of business.  It's a shame.  It is the last of the area's homegrown department stores.  Wurzburg's, Steketee's, and Herpolsheimer's all fell long ago, and Rogers carried on.  It was the best of the bunch.  It was the clothing store that defined service.  Also, founders Hy and Greta Berkowitz had the savvy to locate their store on a stretch of 28th Street in suburban Wyoming just as that district was consolidating into a regional shopping destination.

Unfortunately, service apparently lacks the cachet it once commanded among consumers.  Price competition from national specialty chains has stripped Rogers of all but its loyal customers.  Plus, its once bustling location is now a bit downmarket.  The old shopping plaza across the street from Rogers has long passed its zenith as a premier retail location.  It took a long slide into oblivion anchored to the now extinct Montgomery Wards.  The neighborhood has been on an upswing, but only as a draw for locals which isn't enough for a premier clothing store dependent upon a regional customer base.

However, Daniel Hurwitz, president of Rogers and grandson of the founders, assures us that even if the big store on 28th Street is closing for good, Rogers is not.  Plans are to re-open the old store's most popular departments as separate specialty stores or as part of an expansion of Daniel's -- Rogers' high-end clothing retailer located on the opposite end of town.  We wish Hurwitz luck and hope that these reincarnations of Rogers carry on the service that made his grandparents' store an icon.

GENERAL GEORGE'S LAST CAMPAIGN

In a gushy multi-page spread on General George and his wife in Sunday's Grand Rapids Press, the General said that he probably won't seek another office.  Mayor of Grand Rapids is his last stop.  Between expositions of his poetry, the General explained that he is too "progressive" for area voters to win a seat in the U.S. House and that the state legislature was beneath him.

Too progressive?  Hmm.  How about too sanctimonious?

LOOKING FOR LOGIE'S LEGACY

My brother and I were discussing some of the more "conflicted" characters in River City's political history.  One thing became evident to us.  Even a crook like Frank McKay, who may have gotten away with murder, has a building downtown named after himself, but Boss Logie who relinquished his grip on the mayor's office a couple of years ago doesn't have even a bench in park with his monicker slapped on it.

This will not do, folks.  We should not forget the man who's responsible for the bag of unpaid bills the taxpayers are left holding after twelve long years of his regime.  One suggestion was to name a parking space at the Van Andel Arena after the ex-mayor to commemorate the fit he threw when a special spot was not reserved for his car at the grand opening of the arena.

I don't know.  I think he needs something grander than that.  How about re-christening Clearwater Plaza, f.k.a. the Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant, as "Logie's Landfill"?  What better way to remember the poison he poured into the political process here than to name after him the toxic stew he let the Boardwalk developers brew at the filtration plant?

"COOL CITIES" NOT COOL

I've written before on the foolishness of Gov. Jennifer Granholm handing out $100,000 grants to turn places like Grand Rapids into "cool cities" .  Guv Jen's inspiration is that if we turn G.R., Kalamazoo, and Livonia into little Manhattans, then these towns will be flooded by hipsters with dynamic companies following to hire them.  Hmm.  The cause-and-effect sounds a little dubious to me.  At least Guv Jen has the excuse that it's not her idea.

Like a lot of ideas that enamor policy wonks and impoverish the taxpayers, this one is an ivory tower product unmoored from reality.  Awhile back Prof. Richard Florida of Carnegie Mellon University invented the notion of a "creative class" that was the economic and cultural engine for high-growth cities during the 1990's.  He thinks that if humdrum cities cultivated or imported their own "creative classes" -- i.e., became "cool" -- they would evolve into economic dynamos as well as hip places to live.  (An aside:  I note that from the pictures like the one above displayed at the "Cool Cities" website that the cool are neither fat, old, or ugly.)

One big problem with Prof. Florida's (and Guv Jen's) "cool city" scheme:  There's no truth to it.  During the past twenty years it has been the uncool cities of North America that have created more jobs than the purportedly cool ones by 60 percent.  Boring things like good government and low taxes were the best predictors of a city's potential for job growth.  In fact, the latte-lappers of the "creative class" were mostly found in economically moribund cities.

For more about the fallacy of "cool cities", I recommend Steven Malanga's recent article published at City Journal's website.  Finally, a tip of the hat to John LaPlante of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, whose column in Monday's edition of MiBizWest is a solid reminder of why we shouldn't let the wonks play with our tax dollars.