COLEMAN A. YOUNG (1918 - 1997)
Tomorrow
On the eve (10/22/85) of his re-election to an unprecedented fourth term as mayor of Detroit, Coleman Young spoke to the Metro Times about the future of the city he loves.
by Ron Williams
originally published 11/6/85 in the Metro TimesMETRO TIMES: Mayor Young, your re-election campaign slogan has been "Power for Tomorrow." What I'd like to do today is talk about the future of Detroit as seen through your eyes. You ran for re-election presumably because you still see much that needs to be done in the city of Detroit. What are the challenges that lay ahead for the city?
COLEMAN YOUNG: Well, I think that the challenge of survival is still a very real one for Detroit. Detroit is the hardest hit of the great American cities by the recent economic recession, which manifests itself as a depression in Detroit. Right now our unemployment level is around 20 percent, and if corrected, or "actually," it would be in excess of 25 percent. The general definition of a depression is when the work force of any society is at 25 percent unemployment. So Detroit is, and has been, in a depression for most of the last 10 years.
We are building up a permanent underclass of people without hope and without jobs. That underclass could very well be 10-15 percent of our population right now, with no relief in sight. Other cities have the same problem, but I think that we are the forerunner. We're the shock wave of the future. You can see the future of America here in Detroit--unless something is done about it. Obviously Detroit's been primarily dependent on the automobile industry. That industry will never be what it was as far as American domination. The Japanese and other foreign manufacturers have seen to that. And you also have the introduction of automation, which calls for fewer workers yet. So what I'm saying is that although in the near future, certainly well into the 21st century, I see Detroit as the auto city, with the auto as our prime industry, it certainly will not be our exclusive industry in the manner it has been in the past, and we'd be foolish to rely upon it as such. We have to diversify our industrial and commercial base in order to provide jobs for our people.
Only way you can address the underclass I'm talking about is jobs. The only way you can deal with the social problems that confront our city--crime is one of the foremost manifestations, so is dope--is through jobs. We are making some progress in that direction. We've been able to persuade General Motors, for instance, to build one giant plant here. If we could get two or three more such plants, that would go a long way toward putting our city on the right road. I think we must look to other types of job markets, and that is why we're proposing to expand Cobo Hall. Third among the industries in our state is tourism. First there's manufacturing--auto, then agriculture--and then tourism. Tourism is a major and growing industry. You know, there's a real contradiction taking place in our country with automation and high technology, fewer people are producing more. Workers are working shorter hours. That means that some workers are escalating into the middle class in terms of their income level, while other workers fall off the cliff into the permanently unemployed. We must find jobs for those workers who are now unemployed. Tourism is a major source of those jobs. City after city in this country is competing for tourist dollars everywhere you look--new stadiums, new convention facilities are being built. Obviously there are not enough tourists to furnish jobs for all the cities in America so you enter into a new round of competition. I think Detroit's got to be out front. The newly expanded Cobo Hall will give us a leg up. We've got to keep going.
Detroit is ideally located in terms of the water we have. I believe that will become more and more of an asset for us in the next 15-20 years. The shortage of water is already beginning to stunt and reverse the growth in the Sun Belt. So I think that we have a future if we hang on to it.
What we need to do is get into food processing. We're a great agricultural state. We could process all types of food right here in Detroit. The great network of the Great Lakes is an ideal distribution point for that. Since we are still the headquarters and the center of concentration of the auto industry in our nation, the development of computers is still a major future for this city and this area. I understand this and I think I've demonstrated some ability to put together projects and see them through to a successful conclusion. I would like to continue with it.
MT: In your next term, do you think we're going to see additional federal heat applied to your administration? Will we see the Reagan Justice Department back for another round of investigations?
YOUNG: It's entirely possible. I wouldn't rule that out. I'd hate to predict. I think we're also going to put heat on the Reagan administration. I think the one thing that is responsible as much as anything for the growing underclass that I talk about--for the unemployment and social problems, the increase in crime, drug addiction, etc.--is the fact that we have a federal government that refuses to live up to its responsibility to the people to provide jobs. I think the central issue in the next election will be whether or not the federal government has a responsibility as employer of last resort. The Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution talks about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and I believe that the pursuit of happiness is broad enough to include the right to a job. You can't achieve happiness without dignity, an opportunity of a job.
I contrast the problems we have today with our young people with what happened during the '30s when we had an even more disastrous depression. In some instances what's happened today is worse than then, because in the '30s, when I graduated from high school, as far as you could see, as far as I knew, everyone was poor. Poverty and unemployment was a uniform condition. Today, you have a pocket of poverty in the midst of sinful affluence, with television making sure nobody misses out on the things that are happening. And that makes it very, very rough on people who don't have any damn things. But I think also, for his own reasons, Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized that the country was at the point of explosion--literally. We had the same unemployed underclass built up, and he initiated the alphabets: the WPA, CCC, RNA, etc. And they went a long way to relieving the social pressures but, more importantly, to restoring the dignity to those who were impoverished. If you were on WPA, you didn't get rich, but you did a meaningful job--it wasn't a handout. Many artists, writers, painters and others, great artists got their start in WPA. They were allowed to do what they did well. CCC was an opportunity for young men--who could very easily have been into gangs and the type of shootings, killings and muggings that we see now--they were given a minimum income, taught self-discipline, given some pride in themselves, and I think CCC turned up the lives of many people that I personally knew during that period. I saw it happen through WPA.
What I'm saying is, I think that these are the steps we must take to deal with the problems that confront us today. And these are precisely the steps that our government adamantly rejects. These are the issues around which the next election will probably be fought. The last one was fought around those issues, too. We got soundly defeated. We may be defeated again, but I can say to you I don't see any way out for this country unless we address the dangers of a growing underclass which at some point is going to explode--and with it the nation.
MT: The future of downtown and the future of neighborhoods: how are they connected?
YOUNG: You can't separate them. How can you separate a city from its downtown? Without exception, go across the country and show me a dead downtown and I'll show you a dead city. Downtown is generally the part of the city where the offices are located, it's where all the streets converge, it's where the jobs are; it's where people come for entertainment. If there are no jobs downtown, if there's no activity downtown, then where do the salaries come from to take back into the community to pay for the homes, to keep the homes up? Detroit is not a bedroom community. Detroit has always been a community that has had a mixture of commerce, offices, manufacturing and residences. Each one of the elements is essential to the health of the city, and to neglect commerce, manufacturing, offices and services for homes would be a very foolish thing to do. Homes cannot exist without jobs.
MT: Let's get back to national politics for a minute. The Democratic presidential nomination in 1988--who do you have your eye on right now?
YOUNG: I don't.
MT: You're not looking at candidates right now?
YOUNG: No, I'm not. I haven't the slightest ideas. I'm not blessed with clairvoyance, and I don't pick a horse and ride him--you try and look at the issues of the candidates and then select the candidate who is most responsive to those issues. None of the candidates or would-be candidates have begun to address the issues yet. As a matter of fact, the issues have really not clearly emerged. It would be the purest type of speculation on my part to try to deal with that now. I like (New York Gov. Mario) Cuomo, early on, based on my knowledge of where he stands on certain issues, but it's a general knowledge, not a specific one.
MT: What do you foresee as Jesse Jackson's role in the '88 Democratic primary?
YOUNG: If he plays the same kind of role he played in the last one, he'll be a spoiler. Again, he will not have a chance to win. You know, I don't see any black person being elected president of this country in the foreseeable future as long as racism remains as it is. And incidentally, I view Lucas' aspirations for governor through the same eyes.
MT: The Uniroyal site: certainly right now, it's one of the choicest pieces of real estate in a major American city that's still available for development purposes. What's going to be built there?
YOUNG: I don't know. We're shopping that site. A couple of major manufacturers--it could be a considerable headquarters for a major manufacturer.
MT: Offices or manufacturing sites?
YOUNG: I'm speaking of offices. I don't see it as a manufacturing site. First of all, a modern manufacturing site requires a hell of a lot more acreage. That's a manufacturing site for a bygone era. That's one reason it had to come down. It was vertical rather than horizontal. The new GM Poletown plant, for instance, takes damn near 500 acres. Uniroyal is a mammoth site, but it's only 60 acres. So I see it as offices or a combination of office/commercial and even housing. You could have some offices there, some high-rise apartments and various commercial offerings.
MT: You have a couple interests now that are competing in terms of proposals?
YOUNG: Yes, we're dealing with at least three potential customers.
MT: What does the city deem most important in looking at those proposals?
YOUNG: We compare them one to another. I think that as we deal with the new opportunity to build the riverfront from scratch, we need to preserve public access this time around in a way that was not done when all these private firms went right to the water line and excluded the public. That means I would envision walkways and bikeways going the length of that riverfront from the Belle Isle Bridge all the way back to the Renaissance Center. We should have recreational areas. The whole riverfront now should be set aside for recreational purposes, some for business/commercial, some residential. We've already made some start in that direction. As you know, we have three linked parks along the river. Chene Park is almost finished. I think it's a jewel of a park. It's the middle-sized one.
There will be a park at the foot of Mt. Elliott over there by the Coast Guard--that will be the smaller one. St. Aubin will be the big one. In St. Aubin we hope to have an enclosed transient marina, so that people with boats can come in for an hour or two hours and shop and do what they want to do. Also, a boat passenger terminal, something like the ones they have in Toronto, where the Boblo boats and other excursion boats can be loaded--people could take advantage of that. And an area that would appeal to boaters with all kinds of boating supplies, backed up by offices and entertainment.
Among the commercial developments on the river we see considerable entertainment outlets and that's developing, as you know. If you've been along that area, you know that there's 10-12 very nice places. Well, one of those old warehouses, I think it's on Franklin, I was down there just last week, there's an old warehouse that's being converted--you wouldn't know from the outside, into a mammoth nightclub. It has the very latest in acoustics and in lighting. And it will be directly in back of the steak house (1940) on Jefferson and I think that they're going to do the (WDIV's) "Saturday Night Music Machine" from there. And that could be the spark that just turns on and revolutionizes that whole riverfront. It's the coming entertainment center for Michigan, if not the Midwest, in my opinion.
MT: The '86 Democratic nomination for county executive--who do you have your eye on?
YOUNG: There again, I would like to see the issues emerge. I do not believe in the King theory--that great men make history. I believe history makes great men. Let the issues emerge, and then let someone emerge with a program to address those issues.
MT: The lines are forming.
YOUNG: Oh, I know that, but they're forming in terms of "I want to be county exec." What do you stand for? That's what I want to know.
MT: How active a role do you anticipate taking this time around? You had a very low-key role in the first county executive race.
YOUNG: Well, my low-key role was purposeful. I supported William Lucas. I thought he could win. It was a particular type of primary, in which you have Wayne County that's about 30-35 percent black, predominantly Democratic--70-80 percent Democratic. Blacks constitute about half of the Democratic party. It was my feeling that Lucas could consolidate the black vote, and in a three-four person race, win the nomination, since blacks were maybe 40-46 percent of that Democratic vote, and the thrust of the Democratic Party was strong enough in Wayne County to allow him to win. As it turned out, the Republican opposition was weak to nonexistent, so weak in fact that one of the Democratics, FitzPatrick, switched over and ran as a Republican. So my best role in that one was low-key and that's what I did. But there's no doubt that I supported Lucas. I was instrumental in getting the first and the 13th district of the Democratic Party for Lucas as well as the black ministers, which I think was the key to his election. I wouldn't do it again.
MT: The advent of the so-called Big Four (Young, Bill Lucas, Dan Murphy and Walter Franchuk) is certainly one of the brightest spots on the local political horizon in a long time. How important is this group, and what do you feel are the most pressing issues the group needs to deal with in the coming years?
YOUNG: I think it's very important. I consider it one of the most important developments in which I have participated since I've been mayor. I think it speaks to my belief that what's good for the city of Detroit is good for the rest of the region and vice versa, and that none of us can advance unless we bring the rest along with us.
I think that the most important thing testing us right now is transportation. We came together around the issue of transportation--the reorganization of SEMTA and the reinstitution of a plan for rapid transportation in this region. And we are hopeful. I think it's the most important thing that the Big Four can immediately do. Detroit and the area around it, southeastern Michigan, is the fourth or fifth largest region in the nation, as you know. It is the only region in the nation within the top 20 with no vestige of rapid transportation. Some 10 cities, many of them much smaller than Detroit--cities like Buffalo, Baltimore, Atlanta, Seattle, St. Louis--these are small cities, have or are building rapid transportation systems. We are embroiled in a civil war here, some sections of the region are so afraid that rapid transportation will be good for Detroit that they hurt themselves as they oppose it. I think that the Big Four might be the first step in overcoming that type of suicidal parochialism.
MT: The lack of mass transit in this area--how serious a barrier is that to future economic development when this area needs to compete with other areas?
YOUNG: I think it's fatal. It's so blind. You must have mobility--you must have the ability to move your workers from where they live to where the jobs are and back. Public transportation is a basic economic necessity. And it must be subsidized. This is, as I said, one of the major philosophical debates that will be conducted on a national level. The president and the conservatives among the Republicans believe when they say get the government off the people's back, there should not be federal subsidy of transportation. Let the market rule. To me it's a prescription for suicide.
MT: The Belle Isle casino plan--what is its future?
YOUNG: Very dim, I think.
MT: Why?
YOUNG: Well, first of all, Patrick Meehan persisted in advancing the program on his own; he's in no position to do anything but agitate, and prematurely surface and kill (the idea). He's aroused a whole lot of opposition which I believe is hypocritical. I cannot see how anybody in Michigan can, with a straight face, oppose casinos and tolerate Lotto, lottery, horse racing and parimutuels, but they do it. That's life. I believe that casino gambling should be studied. I don't think it's as bad as people say it is. I think it might offer us a chance for economic stimulus. But the hype that surrounded it, and it results from Meehan and others' constant hyping of the situation, created a controversy, and I'm not ready to expend my energy in such a controversy--there are more important things to do.
MT: Will you indeed appoint the blue ribbon panel to study the question?
YOUNG: I'll do that, but I'm just telling you in advance that when you keep coming back and people start taking positions on either side of this issue and become rigid, that I don't have the time or the energy to try and blast through the one position. There are other things to be done. So I think it makes it highly unlikely. I would say at this point that casino gambling's greatest enemy are its loudest supporters.
MT: Oakland University and Oakland County have come together in the creation of a very successful high-technology park in Rochester adjacent to the university. Have discussions occurred between the city of Detroit and Wayne State University to create a high-tech park in the Cass Corridor?
YOUNG: I think you know that they have. We've created this park, and ours precedes Oakland County, by the way.
MT: There is the former Kresge headquarters, and you're saying that is the germination, the beginning of a park that might expand . . .
YOUNG: Well, we are not blessed like Oakland County with cornfields, but we do have the Kresge building, and in consortium, the city with WSU did form a high-tech center long before Oakland County ever dreamed of the idea. We are proceeding. In fact, there's some kind of groundbreaking sometime soon. The city has put in $1 million or more, and Wayne State has donated the Kresge Center which it inherited from some other educational institution. We have three or four tenants including several moderate-sized high-tech firms, and we have been working on it for some time. In our city plan, that whole area around the Kresge building is our high-tech crescent. We have plenty of room there to expand.
MT: A lot of demolition has occurred, foreseeing a time when there will be high-tech companies that may wish to locate there?
YOUNG: We see the crescent going all the way from Eastern Market back over to Wayne State and to the Cass Corridor.
MT: Why should a high-tech firm locate there, as opposed to somewhere else that's not in Detroit?
YOUNG: Well, because we have WSU which, with all due respect to Oakland University, has somewhat greater resources. Detroit, with all due respect to Oakland County, has greater resources, support, more plants and more internal transportation arteries. We're more centralized, and we're closer to Ann Arbor. We're attempting to strengthen the relationship between WSU, the University of Michigan and the city of Detroit. In the end, I think that whatever's happening in Oakland and whatever's happening in Wayne could very well proceed on a cooperative basis. That's also one of the side benefits of the Big Four. We have to learn to be mutually supportive, and that we don't necessarily have to be competitive or self-destructive of each other.
MT: To what extent to you feel Detroit is realistically competing with southeastern Michigan communities for relocation decisions?
YOUNG: There's no question about it. Certain interests in Oakland County have sought to denude and to actually transfer the center of activity from Detroit out to Oakland. As a matter of fact, it was openly proclaimed when the Silverdome was built that it was located in the new population center for the region, and there were widely proclaimed plans for a convention center, hotels, a new arena--that's why we built Joe Louis, because there were threats from Oakland to build an arena to take the Red Wings and the Pistons out of here, and they took the Pistons anyhow. There's no doubt that the competition has and does exist. Oakland County and the Silverdome are realities, and we should deal with those realities. But so is Detroit a reality, and it's not going away. Oakland County should deal with us and that's a base line from which I think we can establish cooperation.
MT: Scenario: Bill Lucas wins the Republican nomination for governor . . .
YOUNG: I'm not very good at fairy tales.
MT: Question: what would a Lucas-Blanchard gubernatorial race look like? What would some of its features be?
YOUNG: I think such speculation is pointless. I don't know what its features would be. In the first place, Lucas has not come up with any carefully delineated or even roughly delineated platform that that I can see--unless he's telling those folks up in Escanaba something he's not telling us here in Detroit. Devoid of positions, it's hard for me to deal with political contests. I don't look at it as a personality contest.
MT: Do you think Lucas has a good change of winning the Republican nomination?
YOUNG: I doubt it.
MT: Why?
YOUNG: For racial reasons. It can be very hard for many, many racist people in the Republican Party, to vote for a black for top office. By the same token, there are some who might vote for him for the wrong reasons. They might look to him as the one Republican with a chance to win by cracking up the Democratic Party and as a method of attracting black votes to the Republicans without advancing a platform that meets black needs. It's a superficial approach.
MT: More tactical?
YOUNG: That's right. In fact, that's the whole approach, as I see it, of the Republican Party to blacks. You know, you get a couple blacks up top who parrot the philosophies of the Republican party . . .
MT: Clarence Pendleton comes to mind . . .
YOUNG: You have a very active mind. You jump right to the point.
MT: Recently, with the last go-around about the People Mover, there was some discussion about tensions between yourself and the governor. I'm wondering whether you could give us a sense of what kind of job you think Blanchard has done in his first term as governor?
YOUNG: On the whole, I think he's done a good job. I think that he displayed rare courage on the big issues facing him. The biggest, of course, was the need to raise taxes in order to meet the needs of the state. And one cannot easily dismiss that. There are some around him, I believe, who'll never agree with that position and who are preaching caution, who are preaching the classic wisdom I spoke of earlier: that you have to steer clear of too closely associating with Detroit or with controversial issues related to Detroit--which is another way of saying black votes.
MT: Scenario: The deficit spending the Reagan administration has engaged in over the past five-six years, and the other economic policies the administration is following, results in a severe economic downturn, perhaps as early as 1986. Question: what happens to the city of Detroit?
YOUNG: A severe economic downturn at this point could put America on the rocks. Detroit would be at the leading edge.
MT: To what degree do you think solutions to the city's problems are going to have to be dealt with and addressed on either a state or a national level?
YOUNG: I think that the city of Detroit has no power to dictate either national or state policy that is necessary for its best interests. Faced with a negative national and state policy, we could take those measures to protect ourselves and help ourselves keep alive, we can hardly move ahead. But no other section of the country is in a position to survive independent of national or state policy. We're very interrelated, and there's no way you can separate those relationships.
MT: Give me a sense of what in the future to your mind are the most pivotal downtown development projects that are in discussion or on the drawing boards or under negotiation?
YOUNG: In the next several years? Well, I think that the resurgence of downtown as a retail center is probably the single most pivotal thing that could happen to restore the balance in the region and re-establish the proper relationship between Detroit, its suburbs, downtown Detroit and the shopping centers that surround it.
MT: Will we see a resurrection of the Cadillac Mall idea? Or is that dead and gone?
YOUNG: Oh, I think you'll see some version of it. I don't know whether the Cadillac Mall idea will ever re-emerge as it was drawn, because times change. But that's what I'm saying: there will be, in my opinion, within the next several years and hopefully sooner than several years, the re-emergence of downtown Detroit as a major retail, as well as wholesale, shopping center.
MT: The city of Detroit in the year 2000--can you give me a sense of what the defining characteristics of the city would be?
YOUNG: Well, I think that it would be a headquarters city--headquarters for commerce, for banking, for communications, for manufacturing, particularly automobiles, hopefully of automation/communications. It would be much more diversified than it is today. I think that the city's greatness is ahead of it. I can see the period when Detroit could, perhaps in the next 50 years, be as large a city as it was in 1950 and be more of a center primarily because of its strategic location on the Great Lakes and the increasing importance of fresh water as well as a transportation value of those Great Lakes.
Ron Williams was the Editor of the Metro Times at the time this interview was published.