The Last Days of Poletown

By James Kelly. Reported by Barrett Seaman/Detroit

A neighborhood faces doom and a new auto plant may rise

The sign above a brick archway in the basement of Immaculate Conception Church in the Poletown neighborhood of Detroit reads GM--MARK OF DESTRUCTION. It is a wry twist on the "mark of excellence" slogan of the General Motors Corp., but none of the few dozen mostly elderly and Polish-American homeowners gathered in the room last week were laughing. Members of the Poletown Neighborhood Council, they are engaged in a battle to save their neighborhood as the city of Detroit prepares to raze some 1,500 private homes, schools and businesses in order to make way for GM's new $500 million assembly plant.

The mood at the meeting was more upbeat than usual; lawyers for the group had just filed suit in Federal District Court to block the plant. Helping the council in its fight is Ralph Nader, a longtime nemesis of GM, who was invited into the fray by area residents last year. Thus, by all appearances, the battle is a classic confrontation: a heartless corporation vs. a handful of citizens trying to preserve a way of life--which for many of them dates back to the turn of the century, when their immigrant ancestors arrived from Poland to make a new life for themselves in America.

But Poletown's plight is, of course, not so simply put. When the GM plant is completed in 1983, it will employ 6,000 workers in a city where unemployment is at 18%. It will also contribute an initial $8.1 million a year in tax revenues to Detroit and the enclosed city of Hamtramck, where only 15 months ago the huge Chrysler assembly plant known as Dodge Main was closed. The GM factory will also offer new hope to a decaying city that has hemorrhaged hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past decade and currently faces a record budget deficit of more than $135 million. Some 3,400 people will be forced to move to make way for the plant, but as the Detroit Free Press editorializes: "It's a difficult call, but it is an essential step in rebuilding the city's economic base."

The confrontation began shaping up last June, when GM announced the closing of two outmoded Detroit plants that employed 6,000 people. At the same time, however, the company declared its intention to build a modern factory within the city limits if a suitable site could be found. Mayor Coleman Young lost no tune in taking GM up on its offer. After examining a dozen possible sites, the city finally decided to offer GM a 465-acre tract that not only included the shuttered Dodge Main plant but also swallowed up the surrounding 250 acres of Poletown. GM insisted that the new plant had to be built and in operation by early 1983, so Young took advantage of a recent Michigan law allowing a city to acquire land for use by private enterprise. Detroit began a crash program of forcing home and business owners to sell their properties to the city.

As the plan moved into high gear, so did the opponents. The Poletown Neighborhood Council, led by Chairman Tom Olechowski, 37, a state legislative aide and lifelong resident of the area, contacted Nader for his support. The consumer activist fired off a letter to General Motors Chairman Roger Smith, demanding that the company find another site "that does not destroy a community of 3,500 Americans." Young lashed back, calling Nader "a carpetbagger" and labeling his effort as an "obvious attempt at sabotage." The Detroit Coalition of Black Trade Unionists shot off its own letter to Nader, accusing him of "doing the hard-pressed citizenry of their area--both black and white --a real disservice."

City officials defend the plant site as the only one that met all of GM's specifications and contend that they are doing everything possible to ease the plight of Poletowners. Besides offering owners a "fair price" for their properties, the city claims it is paying out generous benefits (up to $15,000 for home owners and $4,000 for renters) to help defray resettlement costs. According to Emmett Moten, Detroit's industrial development director, the city is also purchasing federally owned housing units for Poletowners and offering them mortgages at a bargain 9.5% interest. Detroit hired a professional gerontologist to help assess the impact of the move on the elderly, who make up about half of those to be displaced. So far, 1,154 property owners --about 90% of those affected--have voluntarily sold out to the city. Says Moten of the opposition: "How many mass meetings have been held? Where do you see the evidence of mass support?"

Good question. Opponents contend that city appraisers pressured residents to sell their properties. Yet last week's turnout at Immaculate Conception Church, one of 16 Poletown churches marked for destruction, was hardly impressive. "The area never was very organized politically," says Rick Hodas, 28, vice chairman of the Poletown Neighborhood Council. "People lived here 50 years, paid their taxes and minded their own business." But other residents contend that the plant is actually a godsend, for it gives them the chance to leave the aging community and still get a decent price for their homes. Says John Kelmendi, 27, an area resident: "Ninety percent of the socalled silent majority here want to go."

As for the other 10%, that feisty minority vows to save the neighborhood from the wrecker's ball. Yet even if Poletown were saved, the community would never flourish as it did a generation ago. Concedes Henry Michalski, a Poletown Neighborhood Council supporter: "Over the long term, the place would continue to deteriorate because the old people will die off and the young people have moved off." For many residents, however, Poletown remains very much home, and the shock of being so hastily asked to move out has honed their resistance. "The plant project had a note of finality to it from the very beginning," complains Hodas. Gazing around the withered faces at the church basement meeting last week, Michalski observed: "I see people here who wouldn't be here if they'd only been treated better." --By James Kelly. Reported by Barrett Seaman/Detroit

With reporting by Barrett Seaman/Detroit

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.