The Feds Gift Waterford a Downtown, While Detroit Hollows Out
Everyone wants a walkable downtown, even though good policing is really what makes a community prosper
Most every city has a nerdy city planner with a masterplan for converting some high-traffic area into a fashionable and eccentric downtown. Waterford is the next to try. The township just received $750,000 in federal grant money—which is to say taxpayer money—to reinvigorate an obscure plot of land, known by almost nobody in Metro Detroit, as “Drayton Plains.” And the township is looking to secure more government largesse.
You’ve probably never heard of Drayton Plains, but suburban Metro Detroiters have likely driven through it along Dixie Highway near Loon Lake Rd. It’s a bad area, with a few empty storefronts and abandoned lots nestled into a busy working-class subdivision; but with discretionary spending from the $1.7 trillion money bomb signed into law by President Biden in late 2022, which made FDR’s New Deal look like a fart in a stiff wind, area residents should be able to say, “Now we’re in Waterford” as they drive through.
The drive from Detroit to Waterford is about 40 minutes through the yawning emptiness extending out from Midtown into the western and northwestern reaches of the city. There are also large tracts of unused land, extending northward on Gratiot from Eastern Market. And let’s not forget the empty subdivisions and countless abandoned city blocks in Brightmoor.
These areas are dying for urban renewal. So how does a suburban town like Waterford get taxpayer charity to plan and build a walkable downtown, while the major city next door continues its skid into the gutter? And moreover, how do these initiatives continue to occur with every new state and federal administration?
Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm came up with the Cool Cities Plan in 2006 to fire taxpayer money at a dozen Michigan cities to splash paint on some facades, remodel some marquees for the theater kids and wine moms, build some welcome centers, and host some live music. This plan was such rousing success and massive economic game-changer for the state that I’d never even heard of it until writing this piece.
