This is Episode Two of the second season of What's the Deal, Grosse Ile? The podcast that explores the people places history and events that make Brazil unique. I'm your host Ben Fogt. Now, Grosse Ile has some major challenges ahead of us today in September 2021. We still have the lingering threat of COVID-19 and how that has affected the island's School District and businesses. The effects of losing bus service for even just these first few months of the school year has many families at their wit's end. The Parkway bridge being out for a second year makes distrust of every level of local government understandable, it's easy to get caught up in the complacency and complaining. One of those areas lies west of us where Trenton and Riverview meet on the river shore. What remains of them clouds steel mill in September of 2021 is nothing like it once was a massive industrial facility and then later a massive eyesore and a symbol of our membership in the rust belt. Now cleanup has begun concerns have migrated from its appearance to its future. Many see it as it has always been, while others see it as an important piece in Riverfront redevelopment that has been revolutionizing Detroit and Wyandotte and can do the same for Riverview and Trenton. Today, we're talking about that property and other development on our facing shores. Well, I'm so happy that I get to talk with Ryan Stewart today. He's president of the... I can never say right
McLouth Waterfront Alliance.
McLouth Waterfront Alliance,
I have been told by Irish people that it is technically pronounced mclooth. Whoever okay.
Yeah, I think there are probably four different official ways to say it.
I'm sure.
You know, I want to thank you for the work that you do. And thank you for joining me today to talk about the waterfront.
Yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity to have the chance to get out there, you know, thank you for the signal boost. I know you've done a lot of work in the broadcasting space for the community. And obviously, this is an issue that impacts gross yield to a very significant degree. And, you know, you guys are in a unique place where you don't have as much influence at the municipal level as communities like trending river view where the property is physically located. But you do bear a lot of the external negative consequences from certain particular types of development that may come at that site.
Absolutely. And we could benefit tremendously, too. I think we'll we'll talk about both sides of that eventually. But absolutely. So obviously, the main focus of the Trenton channel right now is the development of the McLouth steel plant site. looking up information about I didn't know a whole lot about it. We moved here in 2016. So it's been out of commission long before that, but it was built in 1948. And it had a tremendous impact on downriver communities, not not just where it exists, but further out, for sure. Even then it closed in many cases. Well, yeah, absolutely. So what makes this the space so important now?
Well, what makes it important now is if we reflect back on the previous decades of environmental cleanup and revitalization efforts through the Detroit River and south, you know, as far into the international wildlife refuge in southern Trenton and Brazil, what we what we recognize is that to have a mile of waterfront land on the Detroit River, essentially is part of the Great Lakes region is a very rare opportunity, right? There's not a lot of undeveloped property or land when it comes to waterfront, especially in Michigan, right? This, this state has the largest access of fresh water in the world. So, you know, when you take into the context, the fact that Okay, there was a very heavily industrialized site. And now there's an opportunity next to the continents only international wildlife refuge, which is a strong partnership with the Canadian government as well, you know, we're really in a unique position to create a keystone development there. Right. If it's been there since around the 40s. And industrialization, I mean, you're looking at, gosh, 80 years before we've had the opportunity to transform something like that.
And you said it was about a mile long of coast of of waterfront. Yes. How, how many acres? Is that total?
Yeah. So there's a portion of the property in Riverview and a portion of the property in Trenton a majority of its in Trenton, it is 273 acres total. There's 197 acres, and what's colloquially referred to as the southern portion, 183 acres of that are a Superfund site. So a majority of that property is currently on the national priorities list and receiving EPA attention and funds to help with the cleanup efforts.
Well, of course, acreage numbers, it's hard to hard to put into perspective what that is, but if it's 200 acres, that's that's like, what the average property on gross yields probably quarter acre. So you're looking at 800 houses could go there if we were just to build it into into normal houses.
Yes. So there A reference that I would always give is that a football field is 1.32 acres. So if we take even the 183 acres that's under Superfund and we divide that, that's 100. That's almost 139 football fields. So maybe that, you know what I mean, it's easy to speak in units. But sometimes when you give tangible, tangible numbers that helps people understand a little bit better. I know that when I, when people say, Oh, the sun is this large, I just go, Wow, that's really big. But when you go this many Earths fit in it, you're like, Okay, my frame of reference is a little bit more tailored to understanding how big the earth is, right? Holy cow.
That's huge. Yeah. And of course, we can only see it from the side. And if we're flying over it, we we can't really see where the borders are necessarily. So. So yeah, it's it's hard to put that into perspective. Now, do you know what was there before it became a steel factory?
You know, I really like that you asked this question to my understanding of is a wetland or like a marsh? Right. And so I think that they did some terraforming and change some of the landscape to provide a little bit more stability. But it's funny you mentioned this because when we had our booth at the wind street fair, a young man stopped by he'd actually written a research paper for his history class on the McLeod's steel site and the quarry at Sibley one right there at Sibley in Fourth Street. It's a DTE industrial landfill. Now, he had written a paper on the two sites. And so that's actually where I got that information. I was like, oh, how interesting, you know, historical perspective. And so it was cool. He had some references to pictures out of the Wayne State Library and stuff that they took. And yeah, it was just marshy, marshy wetland. Yeah,
we may have to go back to john Hartigan find out. Yeah, gives us another reason to talk to him. So it seems like a lot of people think that everything around that steel plant site is industrial. And certainly if we, if we turn north from the toll bridge it, it's industrial until we get, you know, well into the wind. And if we turn left, of course, we go down to the the steel plant site until we get to King and the railroad tracks are basically on the other side. But how is it all industrial in that area? Or is there more mixed stuff?
Well, that's an interesting question. I would say it depends on how you want to look at it. So when we discuss industrial, there's two questions, we can talk about the business itself, or we can talk about as like a zoning category, right? Or a cleanup, or even a cleanup standard if we want to if we want to separate that into three distinct categories. And so what I would say is that, sure, there's other industrial stuff there. But there's a strong distinction between light industrial development and heavy industrial development, right. And that is namely how it impacts the surrounding environment outside of the site itself in terms of things like traffic and pollution and noise pollution, right. And so there's some there's some like storage facilities, some of its zoned for light industrial if you that quarry, or that landfill is on the other side of there's a there's a really nice and popular restaurant there simply gardens it remains gated community. I'm sure a majority of people on Grosse Ile have heard of it as well, right. And so if you want to look at it from a zoning standard, it has its own distinct category now, which is waterfront revitalization. And so actually, McLouth waterfront Alliance formed out of a strong grassroots movement of people who opposed what was originally going to be what was called industrial waterfront category that included a lot of heavy industrial development, right? This new one includes mixed use and commercial type development. And then if you want to look at it from a cleanup, or pollution standard egle Michigan's Department of Energy, Great Lakes in the environment, they have to clean up standards as residential and non residential, and those are rooted in exposure risk pathways. So what that would mean is how much time someone spends there and the likelihood that they are to be exposed to a certain level of chemicals that has a certain probability of causing a certain negative health outcome. Sure. And I know that that's, that's kind of hedging language, kind of hedging language. Right. But right, the devils in the details, as they say, so there's a lot,
but if so, if kids are gonna play in the backyard, if if people are gonna sleep there 300 nights, you know, that's exactly right, versus a hotel would be on and it would be on a non residential space. Right, people are staying there.
And yeah, that's a great point. And what I will say too, is that the way that they mitigate some of that pollution can depend on the cleanup and what the development wants to be. And then keep in mind, there are a lot of I mean, if you look at wind dots, a perfect example of a community that was heavily industrialized for a really long time, and you know, I was young and you weren't in the community yet. But you know, you hear the anecdotal stories, people used to drive into wine bat and your nose would burn from the smell of the chemicals, and those are things that they've revitalized. And if you look they have strong commercial mixed use development on the ground level, right. So that needs a standard people aren't constantly in there, but then they have a lot of upper upper level residential right. And so one of the questions that we've been pushing at the community advisory group is Can we dig into the details a little bit? If we're talking about exposure pathway risk? What is the difference between having a ground unit residential dwelling and an upper level, above say, a commercial development? Because Wouldn't that arguably reduce the risk of being exposed to some of those contaminants that are in the in the soil or in the groundwater down there? So I think the big push now is to continue to get a lot of clarity on specifics and details rather than these high level blanket statements that well, it's been industrial, it's always going to be industrial. And there's industrial everywhere in the area.
Right? So we're talking about the cleanup there. The just for those that are going to be listening in the future here. It's it's 2021. In my notes, I have 2020. I've gotten stuck. So it's 2021. It's It's July of 2021. And the when we're talking and it's the obvious parts, all the towers have been have been removed at this point. And so it seems like it's been cleaned up, how much how much more is left to do at this point? And is there is there a projected date when it will be absolutely clean? And in what state of cleanness are they looking at? Those are all really good question. And I realize it's not up to you. But right. Well, the
process is essentially just started, right? So sure the demolition and the tear down of the buildings that came in a flash, right? That site's been sitting there for decades vacant, right? There are times where it was voted by the community is one of the greatest eyesores and most frustrating things for people to look at, you know, I mean, it was there. My entire life. And so it's just one of those things that I took for granted until you know, I left and came back and I'm like, you know, not a lot of places have 200 acre abandoned vacant steel mills taken up all the waterfront property. But thank you, thank you. Right, thank goodness, first and foremost, thank goodness and a lot of communities like like Pittsburgh, and even Detroit that have have gone through great efforts to revitalize and clean up because they recognize the positive health outcomes and quality of life outcomes and even economic generative development. I mean, you look at the Detroit Riverwalk, 1515 minutes drive north of here and they're generating billions of dollars in economic value getting injected right into local businesses in the community because people want to visit it was just voted the best Riverwalk in the country. So there's a lot to a lot to be said about the mid to long term cost benefits of revitalizing formerly industrial property, especially in a waterfront location. Yeah.
I just talked to some folks from Atlanta last weekend who came up to stay on the on the waterfront in Detroit. And that's where they were spending their time.
Yeah, it's it's a main draw. Right. And so to answer your question, the Superfund process itself is practically just starting. Right. So we had a project manager on site for the demolition part of the purchase agreement between the owner and Wayne County who transferred them the property through the County Land Bank stated that the owner had to invest $20 million in cleanup activity was the terminology that they use for some of the demolition or the takedown on the site, which I thought was interesting that rather than placing standards on contaminants and pollutants, for the initial cleanup, or process oriented, it was about dollar investment. Right? That's pretty interesting. Because when you think of the the variance in construction and demolition costs, and you know how bids carried out, but I won't get into the I won't get into the weeds on the front end stuff. What we know right now is we're moving into phase two, which constitutes a feasibility assessment under Superfund, the Superfund rule. So, you know, they factor in things like okay, what's the property's zoning status? What does the developer want to build? What does the community want? Right? And so, you know, when we got that zoning change in Trenton after we had those rallies, and we push the I think it was 500 people to oppose the purely industrial zoning at the Planning Commission meeting for the city of Trenton, one of the big wins was to have some of those mixed use and commercial developments included in the zoning, you know, gets leveraged into the feasibility assessment or cost benefit analysis of what the site could potentially be redeveloped into. And so, you know, one of the main focuses of our organization, McLeod's waterfront Alliance is to engage and inform people but also to remind them, it's really important that we show up because the public input is weighted heavily in the cleanup process and the standards that they'll apply right Superfund as limited money. So if not, a lot of people show up if they don't think that the community is engaged or cares. And the developer comes to the table and wants to build something, they're not going to use their resources to clean up a site or to mitigate certain pollution and exposure risks if they don't think that the community is engaged or that matters to them. Right. They'll focus on communities that were more people show up so so again, I get a little bit off topic, but long story short, I think we're looking at About a 10 year timeframe, because they will have to do you know, with a feasibility assessment comes a more thorough understanding here the pollutants, here's how they might impact people, here's the type of remediation efforts that we've been need to take them out, then there's a Department of Health and Human Services assessment, right. And that's where they assess exposure risk pathways, you know, what are the potential health negative health outcomes of certain developments over others, how they mitigate manage some of that waste, right? And then from there is when the actual cleanup work, and mitigation begins to take place. And that's essentially EPA will help to an eagle will help to decide, okay, like, here's how you can reduce these pathways based on what you're going to use. Here's what the community said, you know, maybe you got to dig X amount of dirt out of the ground and dispose of it, maybe you can just put a cap, maybe you can use clay. Right. So we're still in the information gathering phase. So it's really hard to give specifics and timelines so far out, but they're estimating about a decade.
Wow. So that means that anyone who's planning to use that property is planning for 10 years from now,
that's a good question, too. So the information that we are currently receiving from EPA is that there will be some parts of that site that can be developed on based on use, as long as it falls into the standards allowable based on the level of contamination. And then
for just segments of that property, right. And
so here's an example of this. Prior to the sale, the tax foreclosure process and sale through Wayne County Land Bank in 2017. There is a business that got permission to stores raw cane sugar outside on the property. And so people you could like drive by you could see piles of people thought of assault, but it was sugar, right. And so I guess they were storing it in a place where the contamination, I'm not a I'm not an environmental engineer or a scientist, but that's the sort of thing that could feasibly take place, as long as all of the appropriate legal measures were taken. Right, that might include, like municipal permitting. And and yeah,
that's one of those stories of this, that that just sounds almost unbelievable. Like it's a, it's a Superfund cleanup site where we're gonna store sugar there.
It's really hard to make the case that is too polluted to do anything with, but except store sugar. Yeah, you know,
it's just one of those. One of those things that's just so hard to believe. But you know, wow, it's really something. So we've sort of avoided talking about it, but but the marine family's crown enterprises owns the property right. And right, Who's that? Who's doing the cleanup? Correct. And and so then they'll either develop it or sell it in the end. Right? Or they could could they possibly sell it even before the cleanups done?
Sure. So I did want to push back because you said they're in charge of the cleanup. As it stands. Remember, EPA, through Superfund is in charge of I should say they're funding it, they're funding it, EPA is funding it, they will, they will be required to contribute a portion of the cleanup costs, right. But keep in mind that through the federal government, you and I, and everybody who pays taxes are footing a substantial portion of the bill. So I just it's I just think that's an important point to always bring up, right, that's kind of what usually a developer would own a site. And as long as they're doing what is allowed within the zoning and codes, you know, we don't have a lot of input or say, but specifically, because it's a Superfund site, and our taxpayer money is going towards it. That's why we have a rare opportunity as a community to influence the trajectory of the project. So
okay, it's just you said they're there $20 million, then that they that they're committed to so that was for tearing down the buildings and demolition and tear down getting started. Okay. Yes, that makes sense, then. Okay. So as far as as far as how they develop it or sell it, so. So the cleanup we have a lot of input on and and then from what we've talked about already, we have some influence on zoning it probably limited but but you know, it's political influence, we show up and we tell people what we think. But as far as as far as how the development and all that goes, is there any way to know to get an idea of how they're doing it? Do they listed on a, you know, is there Zillow for industrial industrial sites? I mean, is there a way to keep track of what they're trying to market it as?
that's a that's a great point. I mean, they came out a couple of weeks, right. The purchase agreement with Wayne County stated that they wanted to build an intermodal shipping port, right. So train semi trucks, potentially, freighters coming in and out of that channel, obviously, they'd have to do some work in dredging to make sure that it's accessible, right. They'd probably have to work with the Army Corps of Engineers on Channel maintenance, but
we know what that's like.
So so that's what they said. And then there's a long period of time where they would come out and say, Hey, we don't, we don't know what we're gonna build. We're open to options and ideas. But now that the teardown is complete, they have again come out and said, Look, we're going to build an international shipping port. We are soliciting international developers, right? We're seeking them out. So you know, the initial process for the this site was handled by Wayne County. And they came there are Fq process was to solicit developers and they have specifics about the information about where and how that went out. So at the, you know, there was a Riverfront waterfront development Town Hall a couple of weeks ago and the assistant county executive khaleel. Rahal, who was who kind of spearheaded that development effort, he said that he at some point, one of the people in the audience asked a question about how the, essentially who was solicited for that type of development. And he said that he'd furnish a list right. And so my, my big thing is that if the property was zoned for majority of mixed use, if you look at the verbiage of the RFP, which specifically states that the property is set up for a million square feet of industrial space, and so I look at it like, you know, when you're buying a house, you look for houses that are on the market, it's not necessarily a prudent use of your time to knock on people's door and ask if they will sell you their house. So if the for sale sign that you're putting up says industrial space, even though it's mixed
these days, it might be okay to do that. But
fair enough. Things have changed a lot. Yeah. But you get the general idea I'm going for, right, the how you market the site, if you're a mixed use developer, and somebody sends you a solicitation for a million square feet of industrial space, you know, that's, that's one of those things. You filter that out? And if that's not in your spam, right, yeah, that's a great way to put that spam. Right. One of the one of the proposals actually was from an organization called CDC. And so they have a lot of, if you go to our website, www dot mcloud, future.org. We have a couple of examples of industrial to mixed use redevelopment, and one of the companies on their CDC has done a lot of work with buying industrial sites, and then transforming them into mixed use cleanup. And so an example might be the Marysville DTE power plant right on the water there where they plan to do a public waterfront access and mixed use recreation based development on that site, even though it was a power plant. Right. And so their proposal said that they were that they would engage it in industrial level. But it also a large portion of it also states specifically, well, we work with the community too. And so we recognize that community input is one of the most valuable aspects of the development process, because that's important to make sure that the community is on your side with the development that you want to build. Right. And so when it comes to the development and the potential outcomes that we can have here, they're currently seeking international developers for a shipping port. But they have said, hey, yeah, I mean, we're open to to whatever, right, we would take a mixed use development, we just don't have any yet. Right. And so, okay, well, we have seen that they have Santa, at the end of the day, their business, right business, is to make money. And, you know, they took on the liability and risk of purchasing a Superfund site, they've done work in the cleanup. So my I'm not, and most of the people I've talked to, you aren't opposed to them making a profit. Right. That's the point are, we've seen that we've seen that they have divested from the real estate portfolio in places like the old train station in Detroit. Absolutely. And so they can generate, I mean, there are plenty of companies that purchase industrial property and clean them up and then flip it or sell it for substantial profit, especially if they're going to get resources and money from the EPA to help subsidize some of those costs. Yeah, you know, at the end of the day, my taxpayer money is going to that cleanup and they generate a profit from it. But it gets developed into something that benefits the community. That's great. And I would wager that there are a lot of people who feel the exact same way. And so you know, we can influence I wouldn't say that there's anything we can't force them, obviously, to do anything in particular, but it makes good business sense for them to clean that up.
I guess we could start a GoFundMe and buy it. Hey,
I am open to anything legal. I would imagine that that is is just legally fine. You could probably do some type of Rei t real estate, private partnership ownership, you know, there, I'm open. You know, I would I would imagine that as more awareness of this is raised. There'll be a lot of suggestions and recommendations like that I say crowdsource all sorts of ideas, right? The wisdom of the crowd, in some instances can come up with some really innovative and great ways to tackle to tackle large problems with creative solutions.
So as an organization, what what do you think the best possible outcome for that spaces? What What is the organization see is the best use of that space?
Yeah, mixed use development and what that specifically means is a diversified development part of the reason We are in the issue as a community that we are in now is because we put all of our eggs into that industrial basket, and the bottom fell out from underneath us. And you can see a lot of post industrial cities all over the United States. And it really hit a lot of Appalachian regions, especially hard because they were even they had even less economic diversity than we did they truly put all their eggs in that industrial basket, right. And as we're pivoting into an information in automation based economy, what we see is that the potential for finding ourselves in the exact same position that we are in now, further down the line, but potentially with even less options is very concerning. So as somebody who plans to live here, you know, I'm 30, I will see a lot of this development unfold over the course of my life, the best possible option would be to diversify in a way that leans into the current economic trends, right, so so some of the industries that are up and coming, we've got automation and technology, right? There are states like Ohio, who are already investing research and development money into automating semi trucks, right? That's the most common job and I think 32 states, right? So rather than build an international shipping port, that's essentially a storage lot or a parking lot for shipping containers, and international commerce where we're importing manufactured goods from other places, you know, we can we can look at things like hotel conference center, public waterfront access, right, it leans into our world class, walleye fishing and recreation industry, right. So a perfect example is, you know, we briefly touched on the varying degrees of, of industry from light to heavy, right. So like light industrial manufacturing, the Hazelwood green site in Pittsburgh developed light industrial manufacturing facility partnered with a skilled trade automation program that procured an $80 million grant from the Department of Defense, right, so these public private partnerships centered around emerging industries, really, really would position us in a place to get the wins of a changing economy at a macro level into our sales. So you know, skilled, skilled trades, that's a that's a line of work that requires a critical thinking skill set that just can't be automated away, especially with some of the infrastructure issues that we have in our region with the recent flooding, you know, with the quality of our roads, and especially if there's infrastructure spending coming down the pipeline from the federal government just sort of lining up, a lot of those financial resources could really put us in an advantageous position, right, we've got skilled trades around the construction development and maintenance of renewable energy resources, right. So there are companies like innovative solar, you know, who I've spoken with, and they've done the largest solar energy redevelopments this side of the Mississippi River, you know, formerly brown field and Superfund type sites. I mean, with the DTE plant closing in a year, we're looking at a an opportunity to for how the energy and municipal energy infrastructure can be converted, or translated, right. And so, hotel conference center, mixed use development, you know, commercial businesses, I'm still open to learning more about the the possibilities of upper unit residential right, like I said, there's some will be pushing for and so just sort of diversifying that economic basket outside of heavy industry is would be ideal.
And you mentioned the wall I and I've, I've tried to tell everybody that that will hear me that that what belongs on that property is a Bass Pro Shop. I think folks down river don't realize just how many folks how many people come from across the country for our walleye all summer. I mean, it's not just the walleye. It's the white bass too. And, and hopefully, later this this season, we'll we'll get a conversation with the folks that deal with the Great Lakes fishing, the fishery and how how our fish are doing, but people come from all over, but the thing is that they don't have a place to stay. We don't see them that much. Because they they go from their hotels over along I 75. Maybe they're in maybe they're staying in Flat Rock, maybe they're staying, you know, a bit toward Dearborn where the hotels are Yeah, but they're, they're leaving their boats, you know, they're leaving their boats of Elizabeth Park and and going out and then they have to go all the way into England where there are no big hotels to put them up. And there are no you know, big supply houses.
So it's a great point, I'll put it this way. You know, my grandma own Bishop's cottage bed and breakfast on grow Zealand so throughout the summer, she was jam packed with people who had come to the region, you know, a lot of them would be like, wow, you know, this is a fantastic place to stay. It's right in the heart of the area where I want to be grows eels, a beautiful, quiet, engaging community, right. It's kind of often beaten path but it really leans into what I think a lot of the that sort of environmentally recreation based activities. It kind of aligns with the with that interest and so, you know, we would he I would hear all the time about how prominent big that was. Right, we have like the downriver walleye Federation. And so they have regular meetings. It's like a hit. It's like a hidden gem almost. And like you said, it's like if people are coming to this region or from external areas, if you're not engaged with that, it might not be something that you even recognize about how substantially that contributes to the local economy even Right, right, just from like a business decision. The ancillary economic benefits of having that can't be overstated, right.
And another thing that people don't realize is that the the Great Lakes tourism, people are finally once again, getting on cruise ships, and cruising from New York City to Chicago, and going through all the Great Lakes. So they'll go up everywhere. And one of the stops is, is to visit Detroit. And either they stop, honestly, most of the time they stop in Windsor, and they cross the bridge, that probably won't happen this summer. If they're coming, if they're coming to the States, they're probably going to stop at Porter to tree, but they have been stopping it why and they actually dock up at Bishop Park and the bark there to go to the Henry Ford.
Okay. And that right, there is a really great point to write, and especially talking about Canada, because when you think about it, if we look at the trend channel development, a perfect example is the city of Cleveland just has been working and developing an organization and providing some funding for there's like an eight mile stretch on the Kuya hoga River. And if you remember the Kuya, Humber River was so polluted that it literally caught on fire, right? Post industrialization. And so now they've revitalized in a way where they have this eight mile stretch of land, which is like the equivalent of the southern portion of the International wildlife refuge, all the way up to Bishop Park, you got communities in Canada, like amherstburg, that are very heavily focused on their environmental tourism. And it's great honor there. Okay, yeah, imagine a situation where we can have in the same way that we have the partnership with the international Wildlife Refuge between Canada and the United States. You know, there are a lot of opportunities to partner internationally and nationally, right, as well as focused on, like you said, I know that there was a period of time where Great Lakes cruises where we're being very highly considered, at least when I think Rick Snyder was governor, that was something that the state of Michigan had been in talks with the Canadian government and Ontario,
they were thinking at the turn of the century, you know, in the 19, teens, 1920s. That was the thing, right? So yeah, it's, it's there.
It's there. And the key is just connecting with and engaging and being proactive about the vision that we want to cultivate and then working towards that goal consistently, right? It's not enough. You know, I think part of the issue I used to work as in sales and as like a workflow, consultant. And so when I would work with business owners, I would sit down and have an initial conversation, okay, like, let's talk about your business plan. How did you set this up? There are different stages of the business life cycle. And the first one is you hang up your shingle, and people come in, and they ask you to do something and you say, Yes, what else can I do for you, right, as you're establishing your business and your clientele, but then you hit a point where the amount of work that you are doing becomes too much. And so your option is to either expand and bring on more staff. But it can be really hard to bring on additional staff. Right. So Your other option is, how do I parse down the work to focus on either the highest profit margin services? Or how do I couple that with work life balance, and what I like to do, right, and so I worked with accountants, and so I was working with a payroll service. And payroll was obviously a low margin service, and you provided it as a hook to bring other businesses to bring in the rest of the business's accounting needs. But at the end of the day, you're spending a lot of time on something that doesn't have a high profit margin, you can't add a lot of value. And at the end of the day, if you make a mistake, the mistake is very costly, right. And so the way that we would approach that conversation was you make a lot more money from doing your tax returns or from from doing financial and business consulting for your clientele. So how do you reduce? How do you essentially reduce the amount of time that you take on something that's not valuable to you to really lean into the things that are most valuable? And what we know is that the industry in this area has been it is the backbone of our southeastern Michigan economy through manufacturing, right. But now, we are in a place where it does not provide the same types of benefits to the community post industrialization, as it did at the beginning of the industrialization period in the in the 30s and 40s, in the United States. And so, really, our high value comes from our recreation and our environment and our waterfront access, right these are these are highly leverageable commodities when it comes to cultivating a resilient economy and not only that, it impacts quality of life. Right? It's good for the wildlife, it's good for the people, it's better for health outcomes, right. There's a lot of negative health outcomes in this area tied specifically to a lot of the industrial pollution that's cultivated even a little further north right not only at the Trenton coal burning power plant but further north at the marathon. Oil Refinery. And so now that we know better, it is time that we factor that into our decision making. It doesn't, it is no longer the case that you have to pick heavy industry or the environment, it is, in fact, the best business decision to have a healthy and sustainable environment,
one of the great assets that we've got is that people are already appreciating what we have here. And it seems like one, one choice is to actually destroy that, again, after spending all this time rebuilding it. And the other option is to bank on it and actually make it profitable. Even more. So.
That's exactly right. Yeah, that's the choice we're faced with.
That's right. So lots of big developments going to be going on on South of there, too, right? We talked about the Trenton power plant, and then also the Eastman plant, or I forget the the other name that that plant goes by. But yeah, that's it. So when those close in the next couple years, that's going to be a big, big piece that will probably go through the same sort of process with there's going to be some cleanup there. What is what is MW as role in that? are you sticking to just the steel plant area? Or are you going to take on some of that that advocacy as well?
that's a that's a great question. So we certainly have McLouth in our name, but we also have waterfront Alliance. Right. And so the McLouth site, as far as our organization is concerned, the McLeod steel site is really the first domino in a Rube Goldberg machine of cascading events, right. And so what we know is that certain types of development or momentum beget more of the same. And so part of our concern about McLouth as being a keystone site is not only because of its location, and the rarity with which we have the opportunity to transform that. But what comes with that is what type of developers or development do we continue to attract? Right, it would be a hard sell, if we had an international shipping port that created substantial air pollution and infrastructure damage that we have to subsidize out of our tax money and noise pollution, and everything associated with that. And the types of other businesses that'll attract like gas stations, right, that just increases the amount of of pollution and industrial type developments. It'd be a hard sell to somebody who wants to develop a cleaner or mixed use vision, a mile down the street from something like that. Right? If we're talking about it, being a hard enough sell as it is to get a mile of newly minted waterfront land on the Detroit River sold, imagine the kind of conversation that we would be having, if that's if that's full on heavy industrial development. So while we're focused on the cloud steel site, it is just one part of a larger holistic picture of things like the Riverview landfill, and the DTE coal burning power plant, and even at quarry right there on Sibley right. That's 300 acres of industrial landfill space right now. And that's something that we'll be focused on. So these developments all correlate and impact one another in very substantial ways. And if we look at it, like if at one end of the spectrum, I'm going to do this on the on the camera. Right, I'm going to, I'm going to visuals. Yeah. So if we look at mixed use development here, and heavy industrial development here, and let's say we're sitting smack dab in the middle. If we do industrial developments, each one puts us closer to this one, which begets more momentum and that more momentum in that direction. If we do if we focus on mixed use and environmentally resilient cleanup, we move further and further this way, right. It is about momentum, and then how you're able to market and essentially sell your community to to developers and businesses.
Well, this really segues into the the question that I asked everyone at the end of the podcast and that is so if you had a wish that you could grant to the people of grow seal or the downcast downriver community at large. What what would that be and it doesn't have to tie into what we've talked about at all, but I suspect it might
it would be that the grazi Oh, three bridge gets fixed. Well, okay. Oh my gosh, I know. And I'm not even pandering like, Okay, I have family that lives on Rosie All right, there is there is oh my goodness, the impact that that has on the two communities not only just for like Ease of Access, but even access to Trent the trend business community imagine a situation where I don't think that the general population in Trenton or maybe they do and and I'm doing a disservice by just kind of projecting this position onto them. But the amount of traffic that goes over that bridge and patronizes the downtown Trenton business community is extremely valuable, right because if you're talking the type of development, you know, restaurants and and professional offices and services like salons and hair, those are services that it's kind about how they're framed, right and so if there's a situation where somebody has to go off the north end of the island and they're closer to Wyandotte, then Trenton and the st types of services and goods that are provided in downtown trend are similar to what the community of wine dot involves. It's like a it's like a behavioral economics type situation about how it's framed. Well, I can I can drive from the south end of the island north and then drive all the way back south to go to trend and then all the way back north and then all right back south, or it's just easier if I turn right off the bridge and go right there. Right wind, right. So it's just about traffic flows and patterns.
And right now the toll is is a problem. But But once the bridge is fixed, and and you're choosing every once in a while to spend that $2 each way. It may be it's not such a big deal to keep going to why and that's the that's the real impact on Trenton is, is this is two years of going to Wyandotte instead of Trenton Yeah,
and obviously the taxpayer, the taxpayer money subsidizing it, right like we are putting band aids are kicking the can further and further down the road. And so it's a sunk cost. It's like a bad car and you keep, you just keep putting money into it and you get new tires, but then you write like, the value that you're gaining from continuing to put patches on something that's structurally unsound is money that could be saved up front, it's like a short term fix. But with compounding, mid to long term problems, almost like credit card debt, right compounding interest, you can make the minimum payment on it, but it balloons exponentially in ways that are incomprehensible, until you get there. And then you're like, oh,
yep, yep. And of course, nobody, you know, it's nobody, nobody that's hurting from this is at fault for for the way things have gotten. And so that makes it that makes it horrible. But But hopefully we'll be we'll be through that by the end of this year. And, and maybe you know, most of the people that listen to this well into the future will have no idea what we're talking about. And that's, that's my wish. I wish Well, thank you so much. Your advocacy and the vision have made a huge impact on how people see this area. And I'm confident that with us working all together we can we can really make what's best for waterfront a reality. And that just want you to know that I appreciate you and all the work you've done.
Yeah, I appreciate you too. You know, again, thanks for giving this platform and I think the key point that you bring up is working together because you know, I may have spearheaded some of this stuff, but it is only through every single person who's participated efforts that, you know, we've been able to make the change that we that we can whether it's just telling a neighbor putting up a sign sending a letter making a phone call every little step in the right direction. It's like like Lana lane and brick, you wake up one day and you built a whole building, but you got to do one brick at a time. So I'm appreciative of everybody who's participated, you know, from from me to the person who knock doors to you, right? Everybody contributes in the way that they can and without the whole team, we wouldn't be able to do things that we've accomplished.
That's how it works anyway. All right, well, thanks.
Okay. Thank you so much, Ben.
We've got a lot of work ahead of us to make the waterfront the best thing for everyone involved. I know that I'm glad that there are people leading that charge and I'm glad that Ryan is one of them. Thanks, Ryan. You can find links to the McLouth Waterfront Alliance and everything we talked about in this in the Episode Notes. What's The Deal, Grosse Ile? is a production of Fogt Media Productions LLC. Check the Episode Notes for way ways to get in touch, provide feedback and share with your friends, family and neighbors. Thank you for listening to What's the Deal, Grosse Ile?
