Michigan’s tale of two cities
The border between struggling Detroit and the well-heeled suburb of Grosse Pointe Park has many blocked roads.
The border between Grosse Pointe Park and Detroit represents a huge dividing line separating the haves and have-nots:
Detroit’s median household income is $26,955 ($30,712.21 Canadian). Grosse Pointe Park’s is $101,094.
The average response time for Grosse Pointe Park police was 3.4 minutes in 2012. In Detroit’s Precinct 4, which borders Grosse Pointe Park, the average response time that year was 30 minutes. A drive down Alter Rd. sums up the challenges facing the well-to-do suburb and the former industrial powerhouse.
On the Detroit side, there are dilapidated houses and vacant lots overflowing with weeds. On the Grosse Pointe Park side, a main street leads to yoga studios, beer gardens, antiques stores and even feel-good music being piped from the quaint lamp posts.
Tensions between the cities are palpable as one tries to remain one of the most desirable suburbs in the region, despite its border with a long-troubled city that declared the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Earlier this year, Grosse Pointe Park erected a barrier on Kercheval Rd., one of the few streets that allow car access between Grosse Point Park’s leafy streets and the blighted ones of Detroit. Grosse Pointe Park officials say the barrier, which resembles a barn, was erected for a farmers market.
Last winter, Grosse Pointe Park was accused of plowing snow to create a barrier that blocked the street to Detroiters.
“There’s so much tension between the suburbs and the city . . . I think they’re very determined to try and insulate themselves from the cost of the bankruptcy,” said Kevin Boyle, a Detroit native who teaches history at Northwestern University. “The suburbs are terrified by the thought that they’d be caught up in Detroit’s problems.”
There are also racial tensions. At the Pointes, as the five Grosse Pointe municipalities are called, residents must show an ID to enter public parks. As Detroit’s fortunes flagged, black residents abandoned the city for the suburbs, often as renters. Equipped with new IDs, they began showing up at parks, prompting grumbling that out-of-towners were using the spaces or inviting too many guests.
Grosse Pointe Park, with about 11,000 residents, is 85-per-cent white. Detroit, population 688,000, is 82-per-cent black.
There have been complaints at the suburb’s premier park, which resembles a country club, with yachts listing quietly in the lake, bubbling fountains and an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
“I do sense it from some of the residents. If there’s an African-American picnic there, and people are hopping in the pool, I sense a bit of, ‘What are you doing in my park?’ ” said Paul Wargo, who mans the gates.
But Grosse Pointers seem to be realizing the cities’ futures might be linked. After all, Detroit’s financial woes were caused in part by the decline of the auto industry, which also affected the suburbs.
The median sales price of homes in Grosse Pointe Park dropped 71 per cent from a peak of $385,000 in 2007 to $111,000 in 2012.
Alana Semuels is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.