trampled part three

March 25^th, 2017

the neighborhood association meeting was scheduled. Our fearless leader, timothy shaw-harrison had done a lot of work to get the FORD land people to show up. They were rather unprepared – and while i was angry about the project – i felt sorry for the people who were trying to explain to a crowd of many that things were gonna be alright.

I had contacted as many people as i could about the meeting. It was held at whitmore bolles school, like all our other meetings. Usually there is a small and dedicated crowd. But on this night – there were at least 135 people. Younger people and the FORD land team did not know the history of the area. They were uninformed about the issues that had unfolded before, in the 70s and the 80s when the campus was open to workers walking onto it through gates and school kids cutting through the lots on bikes and workers parking on side streets in front of homes they did not live in to have easier parking. FORD was unaware of the Edison school closure, of the need to close the military street entrance and build a berm in the road – in the middle of elmdale – the berm that separates the neighborhood on our side of the complex. They knew nothing of the many times trees had been planted and died and replanted and died and finally never replaced. The crowd hit them with so many questions they had no answers for.

The FORD team brought a video that would not work. They tried to explain in words what they were doing. The team threw short erik under the bus and had him stand at the podium and try to field questions. He claimed he did not know which streets were which, or where we were asking questions about, even though he had been at my house and deb';s house and knew exactly where we lived. He could not answer questions about WHERE exactly was the border of the FORD property – as many questions dealt with exactly how close the new parking decks and buildings were going to be to our houses. Was the border the curb along elmdale? Was the border where the fence sits, which is anywhere from 50 to 150 feet from the curb? Was the border actually on the side of the houses – and the street was theirs? No one had answers for us – no exact answers.

It was during this barrage of questions that an even more important issue came up – which is why so many people had come to this meeting. The other side of the complex from where i live is a high school. FORD R&D has 2 entry points along Rotunda that are across from the high school. These residents wanted to know how was FORD going to protect their children from being injured or killed by a now doubling of cars trying to get on campus at 7am each day – at the same time their kids were walking to school and getting off buses and trying to cross the street. They said children had already been killed in the past by FORD workers in a rush in the morning,a nd how was traffic going to be handled so all the kids were safe? Short erik said there were traffic studies being done and there was a plan to close the entrance nearest the school and ask everyone to exit the site closer to oakwood, or off oakwood. The crowd started complaining all at once.

You see – the area of outer drive, oakwood, rotunda, and michigan ave are already extremely busy when the FORD complex lets out each day. Even with staggered quit times, if you are in the area of the complex, on any of those roads, btwn 330pm and 530pm – it's a madhouse,. And that is with 12,000 employees on site. The new plan is to at least double that number. There is no way to widen any of these streets – traffic is going ot be a nightmare. And in the midst of all that traffic is a whole high school of kids coming and going to class, to sporting events, to everything that goes on in a school setting.

Finally, short erik was able to leave the podium. That is when barry murray – the city's economic development head stepped up to the mic. Barry is a politician. I think of him as a slippery fish – you cannot get ahold of him or hold him to anything. He also did not know the borders of the FORD land, but tried to reassure us all that there were "rings" of how construction next to residential areas could be handled. That within the first so many feet you could only build to 75 feet high, and then the next inner ring you can build up to 100 feet high, and on the interior you can go as high as 150 feet, which he was not aware of the project needing to achieve. And yet he then told us he had seen no plans for what FORD was doing, that FORD only had to ask the city for a variance if something they were doing was out of the norm, and as citizens we would be given no information or asked our opinion unless an actual variance had to happen. AND since this was all FORD land – they really had the ability to build what they wanted where ever and when ever on the acreage they owned....

so as citizens living all around this 340 acre overhaul – we did not have to be told a thing. FORD did not ever have to meet with us, talk to us, give us info, ask permission – nothing. They were allowed to do whatever, and we simply had to deal with it.

The crowd asked for a central point of contact – would there be a website set up that anyone could view that would have information for all of us? Could there be a single point of contact with a member of one of the neighborhood asscs where ford would tell them and they could relay it onto us? Over and over this was asked, and an answer always seemed t be "contact us later and we will see. We'll see what we can put together.

Ultimately frustrating. I kept looking at the plans displayed on all the major news sites and on the youtube videos, and over and over i was saddened. I wrote the mayor, and i sent that letter to many of the city council people. I was not shy in telling him my thoughts, my fears, my anger. I said it was not fair to build the parking decks so close to our houses, so close to the park where all the little kids play. I said that our neighborhood should have been given an advance warning so we could move if we chose to, to escape the impending upending of our lives – because construction is loud and dirty. We should have been warned about a ten year overhaul of the earth mere feet from our homes, and how our homes were going to be destroyed if that kind of violent shaking happened over and over to build so close to us. And, that if our neighborhood fell – if so many houses went up for sale at once due to the issues, he would be dealing with a whole strip of neighborhood that would be filled up by undesirable home owners and renters. That next to the city's pride and joy – the historic ford homes – would be a stretch of homes not cared for and turned into rentals. I begged him to get FORD to rearrange the plans for the campus – to put the new walkable green space on the sides where our homes sit, and not to have it all in the middle with tall concrete and reflective buildings walling off our view on the outside edges. I asked for the green space to be a moat around the complex so workers could look out into the neighborhood and see happy homes and people and want to live here, instead of simply parking in a huge deck and walking the opposite way.

this picture shows an earlier plan - where 3 huge parking decks would be built along the elmdale side of the complex. they are the buildings on the left with the dark squares on the roofs. 

Yeah. It is hard to be a human with feelings, and to want to stand up for not only yourself but for those around you too. Except, not everyone wants to be helped. Or sees eye to eye. And as i've already explained – dearborn is the city owned by FORD. They are the religion of this land. There is a whole city in need of a million things and they want FORD to bring them all back to us, to all of us. So for me – the small ant – trying to move mount everest – there was no contest.

I had been warned by neighbors that in the 80s – the last time FORD expanded the R&D complex, homeowners near where i live had stood up and tried to stop the changes. They had written newspapers, they held meetings, they petitioned the mayor. And any of them who also had businesses in the city had been threatened with lawsuits. Either back off or get sued or run out of town. It was not so long after writing the mayor and the council people that we were asked to move our business out of the building we were renting. Even though the building owners knew we desperately wanted to put our home on the market and move before any construction started – they asked us to move out of their building. Of course they said we could take our time, but when you suddenly feel as if you are not wanted somewhere – why stay? And besides – people from all over town were telling us that it seemed very political to them......who is friends with who and why and connect the dots.

So in the summer of 2016, when i truly wanted to be selling our house and moving to get away from what i knew was coming, we had to move our shop instead. That is how we spent our time – find a new space, get it ready, pack, move, try to advertise to let people know that you moved again after only 20 months in the previous space......

in the past – i'd see the mayor at events and we would talk. Now, whenever i see him, he quickly walks the other way.

September came, and the FORD land people held an informational meeting again at whitmore bolles school. It was organized by tim again, and as in the past i was happy he was working so hard to help us as a community. There were boards and pictures and drawings. The main parking deck closest to our house was moved over some, making a small amount of green space that we would be able to see out our living room window. The plan was to move it down some – and it now stretched all the way down to the end of the block and the end of edison park. It meant that all the houses along elmdale, even the ones who do not face the street but their side yard is along it, would suffer equally to my house. That the woods near those houses which previously was a buffer for sight and sound, would be clear cut and the deck would be there for all to see.

Some of the boards showed multitudes of trees being planted along the fence to help shield the ugliness of the deck and new design center, but so far only one small patch of trees has been put in. Right in front of deb's house. And i'm glad for her – but there is another 1,000 feet of fence line that needs trees and shrubs and enhancing. I'm also not sure the non-evergreens planted in the late fall actually made it – they look dead. Not sleeping - dead. No one ever came to water them. And the week they were planted was hell – loud trucks and constant beep beeping of trucks backing up. Heavy planting eqpt that tore up the grass and left deep ruts. Just a big mess and mud all over the sidewalks and trees that maybe did not live through the winter. So many things point to a lack of respect for humans living in this area.

revised  - our house sits btwn the small long parking deck on the left side of this plan, and the huge white rectangle which will be the design center. our house is on the curve of the front of the p

dark grey is flat parking - lots of flat parking. and no close buildings - just a lot of sun and sky and moonlight at night.

My husband kept telling me to stop worrying. He did not think any of the things i kept ranting about were going to happen. He was sure the plans would be changed and there would be no big tall buildings near us, that we would not lose the view of the moon rising at night, or the view of the fireworks form our upstairs, or any of it. Until the first morning in oct when the pile driving started in the center of the complex. At 7am. He literally sat up in bed and said, "we're moving.". The fact that the building across from us had already been worked on on a daily basis had not bothered him. The fact that construction hours were said to be 7am to 330 pm mon-fri, but the work began at 6am and often times lasted until 10pm (honest – they jackhammered on the roof and side of the big brown building for 2 or 3 weeks in the autumn until 10pm each night), but the pile driving at 7am finally got him. It was too late by then.

Our house went up for sale in november. We would sit with our dogs in the car and wait for people to do viewings. But it was the holidays and who sells their house at thanksgiving? Or at christmas? The timing was wrong. Then – on about january first – the cranes came. FIVE 100 foot tall cranes that rumble and shake and belch exhaust – came and parked right across the street form our living room window, just inside the road that lets you drive all the way around the complex. So then – we would sit in the car with the dogs and watch people show up to view our home, and they would stand out front and point at the cranes. They would stand in the living room and point at the cranes. They would come during the day and there would be loud shaking belching cranes doing work of all kinds. And in the end – it was those cranes, and this project – that made the appraiser deduct 30% of our home value and therefor the buyers could not get a loan.....this plan that is supposed to help all the people in dearborn, bring jobs, bring money, tax dollars, increase our home values....just cost us 30% of our home value. And, if you haven't looked at home prices in dearborn right now – there was about nothing else in the city we could have afforded for what a small amount our home was valued at. To see the prices of so many homes bought in 2010 go up 50%, or 75%, or even double – and ours was barely more than we had paid back then.....

you can see the parking deck in the center of campus now. Everyone is surprised. Wait till that same thing is on the edge of our street, the edge of our park. Wait till your kids play in it's shadow when they used to play in the sun. I did not want to wait for it – i wanted to get out. Now i can't.