In a normal Michigan world the River of Glass wouldn't be in the location it is today. The glass blowing shop took over an old gas station on the edge of downtown Mt. Clemens earlier this year and has turned it into an eclectic gem of a store that adds to the city's unique character.
For years, the 1950s-era gas station was boarded up and abandoned. Spilled automotive fluid and old rusting tanks filled with gas, oil and who knows what else made the property an undevelopable blight.
Conventional Metro Detroit wisdom said knock it down and leave it as a vacant parking lot with the hope that someone would redevelop it one day. It's the path of least resistance, a strategy used time after time by Michiganders, leaving blocks of vacant dead space between downtowns and their adjacent neighborhoods.
But that didn't happen in Mt. Clemens this time. Why? Because of what some regard as a bit of technocratic jargon – brownfield designation.
City officials used specially created incentives to keep River of Glass, which was looking for a new home to create their glass art, in the city. Brownfield funds (normally used to help spur development in contaminated or obsolete properties) help determine the level of pollution on a particular site then clean it up.
"I knew going into it what was there," says Chris Winn, co-owner of River of Glass. "I had been worried about what (pollution) was there and knowing I could end up being responsible for it. As silly as it is to say, the brownfield [designation]
made me feel safe."
In fact, the site turned out to be a perfect fit. The former gas station is at the edge of downtown, bringing in a lot of customer traffic. The large garage area provides plenty of industrial space for Winn to do his work (he's making a glass chandelier for Greektown Casino) while the big windows in the old office area provide some high-visibility storefront.
The building's walls have been painted bright, lush colors by a Metro Detroit graffiti artist in a stunning piece of public art/store signage. And Winn's business gives visitors a reason other than drinking, dining, and concert going to check out downtown.
"It's a show-piece for the city now," Winn says. "It worked out well for everybody."
Brownfields = Green money
The definition of brownfield is a bit ambiguous. It can range from an old industrial site with pollution to an old building that has outlived its original purpose. Perhaps it's easiest to think of brownfields as an ugly duck of a property that, with the help of incentives, allows developers to turn into a swan.
"It's a very broad term that can include contamination, blight and functionally obsolete," says Mike Kulka, president of Hazel Park-based PM Environmental.
"You can even include sites that have buried foundations. … That's a lot of money when you redevelop those properties because you have to take all of that out."
One of Kulka's company's specialties is redeveloping
difficult brownfield sites. Past projects have ranged from decrepit gas stations to the old Detroit Artillery & Armory site. The common thread is that there is some aspect to these properties
that makes them harder to develop than your typical cornfield. The tax incentives change the calculus and permit landowners to get creative.
Kulka points out that without these brownfield incentives a lot of projects wouldn't become reality and the few that would wouldn't be as grand. The truth is, Brownfield projects include many of the major urban redevelopment projects you have heard of in recent years. Think of the renovations on the Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit or the Crofoot in Pontiac. Brownfield incentives are a major component, worth millions of dollars, in the plans to save a portion of Tiger Stadium.
The money is typically used to pay for removal of toxic substances once
deemed safe; like asbestos, lead paint and even the sludge pumped out of the ground where River of Glass now stands. The end game is to encourage developers to reinvestment their money in the region's decaying city centers, where most of these sites are located, rather than sprawling further out into farmland.
"You need incentives to offset the additional costs," Kulka says.
Expanding brownfields
Believe it or not, the concept of brownfield incentives are nothing new. But they have evolved over time. The designation used to be reserved for contaminated properties in inner cities. Now the definition has been expanded to cover a wide range of undesireable elements and continues to grow as officials and developers become more creative.
For instance, state officials are upping the brownfield tax credit from 12 to 20 percent for urban core communities, such as downtowns and commercial corridors. The idea is that these new incentives will encourage denser, walkable, mixed-use developments.
"You're going to see a continued focus on mixed-use, downtown-like areas," says Corey Leon, director of development incentives in the Detroit office of AKT Peerless Environmental Services. "For example, in Detroit you'll see more in the downtown and Midtown areas and the corridors."
Leon has handled brownfield incentives on dozens of projects for nearly a decade. Most notably, he helped make the brownfield credits work for the Book Cadillac Hotel because of, among other things, its rooms were too small.
"When the Book Cadillac was built it was built with 1,100 rooms," Leon says. "Those rooms were tiny. Some of them would be considered closets today. Now it has 400 rooms."
He also sees more non-profits taking advantage of these credits for their own redevelopment projects. It's a significant and promising trend since non-profits typically struggle to intiative capital projects. Which makes the brownfield incentive program a double threat: Community-based organizations find an affordable home while blighted properties are cleaned up and reintegrated into the neighborhood.
Which was exactly case for River of Glass. A case where the Mt. Clemens Downtown Development Authority smartly used brownfield credits to keep another building out of the landfill. Because as Arthur Mullen, executive director of the Mt. Clemens DDA, points out "on some projects it's absolutely vital."
Jon Zemke is a Detroit resident and News Editor for metromode and its sister publication Concentrate. He loves the irony that something named brown can make so many buildings beautiful again.
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