Coleman A. Young (1918 - 1997)
Station art kept on track
by Desiree Cooper
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12/3/97Fearing that his vision of a light rail system in Detroit was going down the tubes, Coleman Young took over the Detroit People Mover project from the fumbling hands of the Southeast Michigan Transit Authority in 1985. But by then, the vision had been downsized and the price tag upsized from an initial projection of $137.5 million to $200.3 million.
To add insult to injury, planning for the project had begun nearly a decade earlier when President Gerald Ford committed $600 million in mass transit aid to Detroit. Years of squabbling over the money ensued and continued through the Carter administration. President Ronald Reagan's first budget proposal in 1981 allocated no funds to Detroit mass transit. The money was restored after much lobbying by Young and Republican U.S. Rep. Carl Pursell.
SEMTA didn't break ground for the People Mover until November 1983. From the beginning, the project was embattled. In 1985 SEMTA discovered that 67 of the 170 girders were cracked, and that repairs would take the price tag up to $200 million. In 1988, after the city's Detroit Transportation Corp. assumed control over the People Mover, it was discovered and revealed by the Metro Times that some of the steel piping for the project had been manufactured in South Africa in violation of a city ordinance against doing business with the country. The mayor ordered the piping to be replaced with steel made in the United States, and the cost of the replacement to be borne by the general contractor and the steel supplier.
Despite the problems, a 10-person commission was able to raise $2 million from the private sector to fund public art for the People Mover stations. Sixteen works of art, including some from local artists Tom Phardell, Allie McGhee, Charles McGee and Glen Michaels, were installed in the stations.
It's a good thing the public art project did not rely on federal funds. Money for expansion of the People Mover and other public transportation projects dried up for Detroit during the Reagan era.
Perhaps that had something to do with Coleman Young's term of endearment for the chief executive of the United States: "President Pruneface."
Desiree Cooper is the Editor-at-Large for the Metro Times.