Hunter's excellent front-page diary rightly skewers Republican candidate Herman Cain's latest entry in the Clueless Economics Plan category. Hunter even posted an image of Cain's campaign stop poster. The poster shows the aging, decaying crumbling wreck of a building that is the old Michigan Central (railroad) Station in Detroit.
The MCS is an 18-story atrocity. Vacant since 1988, it is a prominent symbol of urban decay in a city that is chock full of such symbols. Its awful condition in a prime city location has been a major roadblock to growth in and near downtown for years. So it's the perfect backdrop to present Cain's "opportunity zone" plan, the Cain camp thought. If only minimum wage laws, zoning rules, payroll taxes, and building codes weren't in the way, places like this wouldn't have to crumble, right?
Wrong and very wrong. Not just because of the merits of Cain's plan, but because he fundamentally misunderstood what the MCS is.
America's favorite 9-9-9 candidate tried imply that he could address urban blight, by announcing his economic plan in the shadow of Detroit's Michigan Central Railroad station. The MCS is, admittedly, an 18-story hulk of a building - once glorious, now in shambles. Recent estimates have placed the cost of restoring this old building between $100 and $300 million.
But the reason it hasn't been restored is 't because of zoning problems, or building codes, or minimum wages, or problems financing the project. The MCS building is privately owned by a local oligarch named Matty Maroun. He's worth about $1.5 billion, and personally owns the Ambassador Bridge, which is the only bridge across the Detroit River to Canada.
Why hasn't the MCS been restored or preserved? Local opinions vary. One hypothesis states that Matty wants a bargaining chip to protect his interest in the nearby Bridge. There have been plans to build a second, publicly-owned bridge downriver that would force Matty to keep his bridge in much better shape than he currently does. There has also been a years-long dispute with the state DOT about freeway interchanges that connect to the Bridge; Maroun apparently built some items around the bridge that were contrary to his contract with the state. (He's now under court order to comply with the original contract).
There's also the matter of a price. Michigan voters in 1996 approved Proposal E, which authorized three casinos to operate in the City of Detroit. Maroun had hoped that one of the three new casino operators would buy up this railroad landmark and transform it - resulting in either a handsome price for the as-is building, or a lucrative long-term lease on a world-class building that someone else had paid to restore.
The bottom line, as all Detroiters know, is this: IF MATTY WANTED TO FIX UP THE MCS BUILDING, HE COULD. Instead, it has sat vacant since 1988, rotting in the breeze. Its unsecured doors and broken windows have made it a target for scavengers and urban explorers, as well as untold numbers of homeless and local street gangs. Why is the MCS in such bad shape today? Not because it's in need of extra tax breaks. Why this embarrassment to the city crumbling? BECAUSE THE BILLIONAIRE CHOSE TO LET IT.
In fairness, Maroun has (very) recently taken some steps to stop the MCS from completely falling apart. There are now (finally) some architects looking at the building, and some basic repairs to the windows are roofs are planned, promised, or in progress. Still, Cain's people obviously did not do their research, and the clearly didn't talk to any Detroiters ahead of their photo op. Detroit has both its problems and its rays of hope. And it's easy to understand how this prominent decaying building would seem like the perfect backdrop to show how urgently America needs Cain's plan. But the MCS isn't a symbol of the need for American redevelopment; it's a symbol of the excesses of the top 0.1%.
Occupy Wall Street should be proud of Herman Cain for helping to prove their point.