Columns



Jack Lessenberry

Magic Plus vs. META Expo



DETROIT — Back in 1849, when Zachary Taylor was president and Michigan had been a state for barely a dozen years, the state’s farmers and merchants held the first state fair in Detroit.

The fair moved around for a while, until 1905, when Joseph L. Hudson, founder of the state’s iconic department store chain, bought some land on Woodward Avenue, near the city’s northern border.

He then sold it to the state agricultural society for a dollar, so that the Michigan State Fair would have a permanent home. And for more than a century, it did. Every summer, sometimes more than a million people flocked to the fair. While attendance gradually fell off, the fair still attracted hundreds of thousands a year.

The fair was the only opportunity many urban kids had to see farm animals, some of which they could watch being born, and learn where the food people eat comes from.

Then, four years ago, then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm suddenly killed the state fair by crossing it out of the budget — and vetoing an attempt by legislators to save the fair. Now, there is an intense, if largely under-the-radar, debate over what to do with the land.

While one group of big-name developers seem to have the inside track, a plucky group of local activists have their own set of plans — and insist that there should still be some room for a fair.

“We haven’t made a formal decision, but there is only one proposal that has met the minimum standards,” set for bids, said Kim Homan. An attorney, she is also the executive director of the Michigan Land Bank Fast Track Authority.

That is the agency now charged with figuring out the future of the 157-acre fairgrounds area. Though there were rumors that a big developer was in the wings when Granholm killed the fair in 2009, nothing happened during the last year of her term, nor the first year of Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration.

The buildings slowly began to deteriorate; the iconic giant wooden stove caught fire and burned down. Finally, last April, the legislature voted to transfer the fairgrounds to the Land Bank.

They promptly put out a request for proposals. Three were received, though two fell quickly by the wayside. Now, the only one remaining belongs to Magic Plus, LLC, a group for whom the public face is, as the name suggests, former basketball hero Earvin “Magic” Johnson, though he isn’t the only investor.

In fact, the major players seem to be Joel Ferguson, a longtime Lansing developer and Michigan State University trustee, and Marvin Beatty, a former Detroit fire official who is now a vice president of the Greektown casino. They say that if their bid is accepted, they plan to building a variety of retail and housing developments in stages.

Overall, they say they plan to invest $120 million, But that doesn’t impress members of a largely neighborhood-based group called the State Fair Development Coalition.

Jim Casha is a 57-year-old civil engineer and a farmer who lives both in Detroit and Ontario, whose card proudly proclaims that he is “The Chicken Man.” He pleaded with the Land Bank at their last public meeting on the fairgrounds Jan. 17.

“Because the Magic Plus proposal falls so far short of the people’s expectations and because of the recent passage of the Regional Transit Authority legislation, this proposal should be rejected and the process started over,” Casha argued.

He was referring to a new authority designed to operate a network of high-speed buses throughout the three major metropolitan counties, something signed into law, but which can’t happen until the counties each approve millages to pay for it.

Casha and his allies have come up with a stunning conception of what the fairgrounds could look like — something they call META Expo, for Michigan Energy Technology Agriculture.

They have put together a beautifully rendered set of architectural drawings of what their vision for the fairgrounds would look like. They’d leave some space for an annual fair.

But they’d also have green space and residential developments, plus a multi-modal transportation hub.

They did not, however, submit a bid themselves, partly because that would have taken a minimum of $25 million, and the META group doesn’t have any money. In any event, bids are now closed, and the Magic Plus group’s is the only one still on the table.

However, Homan says that doesn’t mean the state couldn’t require any bidder to make changes in their proposal.

Some officials have reportedly voiced concern that the Magic Plus plan lacks green space and a transportation hub. After the last meeting, Magic investor Ferguson felt the need to announce that “We are not building a strip mall,” and add that his group would be open to “tweaking” their proposal.

The fast track authority’s next meeting is March 16, and Homan confirmed that it is possible — but by no means certain — they could accept the Magic Plus group’s bid then.

Keeping up the vacant fairgrounds is costing the state about $1 million a year, she said. Not yet negotiated is what any successful bidder would have to pay the state for the fairgrounds.

Whatever happens, someone is likely to be unhappy. Kenneth Weikal, a landscape architect with the State Fairgrounds Development Coalition, wrote the governor to say he feared the Magic Plan “radically under-utilizes this historic public property.”

“We need a development that attracts talent and entrepreneurship to live and work in our communities,” he argues.

Nobody would dispute that.

But in any event, it seems sadly unlikely that there will ever again be a fair in Detroit where farm kids can show off what they’ve raised to other kids who have never been anywhere near a farm.

Veteran journalist and national Emmy Award winner Jack Lessenberry teaches at Wayne State University, serves as Michigan Radio’s senior political analyst and writes regularly for several publications. He also serves as The Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman and is host of the weekly television show Deadline Now on WGTE-TV in Toledo.