FLINT, MI--Tom Peterson remembers Spring Grove — a natural wetland area near downtown Flint — as his backyard growing up.

“Me and my brother used to terrorize nature back here,” Peterson, 61, of Fenton said.

But it wasn’t always all nature. The area now known as Spring Grove, a Genesee County Land Bank-owned property, was once a manufacturing site covered with a cement slab and home to two 70-foot silos. Over the years, volunteers removed the cement and watched the natural spring bubble back up, leading to the two ponds that can be found there now. But the two silos are still there, concrete pillars no one knows what to do with.

But some artists have ideas.

Peterson was among about 50 people who went out to Spring Grove to see the second event in a series called Spring Grove Nights, events that challenge artists to think of ways the silos could be reused and then travel to Flint to set up temporary installations.

On the evening of Aug. 1, the silos were transformed into giant “tents.” Pink ropes were bolted to the side of the silos and staked into the ground creating a series of see-through tent-like spaces that people wandered through.

The event was set up through the Flint Public Art Project, Grand Traverse District Neighborhood Association and other volunteers as a way to reimagine how the silos could turn from eyesores into attractions.

The first Spring Grove Nights event featured a giant swing slung between the two silos.

“It’s great,” said Jerome Chou, director of operations for FPAP. “The best thing about Spring Grove Nights has been the number of people who come down and tell me ‘I had no idea this place was here,’ or ‘I haven’t been here in so long.’ I feel like we’re helping people rediscover this place.”

He held an empty paper plate while he talked, having just left the community pot luck table before speaking. Near the food, where people milled about in the shade, acoustic bands played on a temporary stage.

A committee looked at different designs submitted for Spring Grove Nights and awarded the winning designers a $3,500 budget to build their design.

New York architects Soojung Rhee, 31, and Sooran Kim, 32, designed the tent structure.

“We were brainstorming and we didn’t want it to just involve the silo, but the whole site,” Kim said. “So we came up with this idea of a tent structure. … We created these different pockets and spaces people can be under.”

Alycia Socia, president of the neighborhood association, said she was excited to have the New York artists there, and hopes that the Spring Grove Nights can lead to permanent change.

After the Spring Grove Night events are over, she said the neighborhood will hold meetings to talk about what could permanently be done with the silos.

“We’re just excited to see these art installations inspire people to think long term,” she said.

That sounds like a pretty good idea to Tom Peterson, who still returns to Flint to volunteer in the neighborhood.

“It’s easier to repurpose them. You’re never going to use them as a silo again. What are you going to do with them? They might as well be art,” he said.