The wall on Detroit’s east side rises 15 feet at its highest points.

It stands in two sections spread across a mile and a half.

Some say the wall beats the view of industry from a backyard; others doubt its stated purpose and scale, comparing it to the Berlin Wall or the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Sound barrier or dividing line, Detroit’s newest landmark splits well-kept homes, a few churches, blight and vacant lots from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ massive expansion project nearby.

Detroit's new landmark near Fiat Chrysler plant is a wall The City of Detroit and FCA are partnering on a large mural near a new auto plant, but that artwork will be on a controversial wall. Detroit Free Press

The white surface against a gray Michigan winter sky is striking, although ivy and artwork are supposed to eventually soften the look. Made of concrete, the wall, or most of it anyway, features a stone pattern. Smooth areas are there, too, ready to feature what has been billed as one of the city’s largest municipal art installations, a mural project that is generating its own controversy because some artists view it as an effort to cover up the expansion's impact on the neighborhood.

The $5.07 million wall, a project of the Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority on land owned by FCA, seems to zig and zag, fronting Beniteau Street across from Southeastern High School or slipping behind an alley as if creating a maze. The wall stretches in two sections from Kercheval Avenue on the east end to Warren Avenue on the west, with the only opening between at Mack Avenue.

Aerial images from January show the new wall built around FCA's Jefferson North Assembly Plant along Beniteau Street on Detroit's east side. Mandi Wright and Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press

Reactions from neighbors range from acceptance to anger. Viewing a giant auto plant so close to their homes is not ideal, even with its promise of jobs in a hard-hit area, but many question the value of a wall billed as a sound barrier that they believe does not offer protection from plant emissions. City officials say the size was dictated by a sound study.

Rosemary White wondered what President Donald Trump would think. The wall on the Southern border isn’t finished, even with all his efforts, but the wall near Beniteau is firmly in place.

“It’s plain ridiculous. What is it stopping? What’s the purpose?” she said, standing bundled against the cold on a recent February morning, talking through a screen door without much of a screen. “You can hear everything,” she said of the plant construction underway on the other side of the wall.

White is staying in a house she said she lost over taxes, and she has had other challenges, too, with the death of her husband and a continuing bill of $60 a month for an old student loan. She’s just hoping that one of the community groups she has contacted can help her find a permanent place soon.

At 72, White says she won’t stay in the house another winter. Without electricity or gas, she has had to pay for propane and batteries for heat and light, and rainwater damage has forced her to live on the second floor. White says she won’t be driving the gleaming new Jeeps expected to roll off the line at the new plant later this year.

After all, a car note’s a house note, she said.

Timothy Jackson, on the other hand, is not opposed to the wall. He just wishes there would have been another option.

“It ain’t hurting me to see it there. The only hurtful part is they could have come through and bought us out and let us go where we would go,” said Jackson, whose two-story house has a clear view of the wall, rising up from the edge of the alley behind several empty lots on the opposite side of Beniteau.

He’s near the eastern end of the wall close to Kercheval and a large, fenced enclosure for a retention pond with some trees planted.

Jackson, 69, has been around — born in Detroit, raised in Alabama, lived in Seattle. He said he used to have a job with a builder in Clinton Township but got let go when people were brought in who would work for less. Jackson would prefer to take $15,000 being offered as part of a benefits agreement with FCA to fix his own home, but he said he was told he’d need to have a signed deal with a contractor.

He said his father was a minister who taught him right from wrong, and he sprinkles in bits of religion as he talks about the state of the world:

“God is love. Ain’t nothing greater than love.”

FCA says it’s committed to making life better for those in the impact area.

“We really are excited about addressing some of the long-standing needs in the area in a holistic way … to find out what it is that we can do to transform it into an area (where residents) want to stay and others want to move to,” said Ron Stallworth, FCA’s lead for external affairs in Wayne County.

“We’re listening and engaging with community members and residents,” said Stallworth, who participated in community meetings with residents. “As long as we continue to engage in that process, at the end of the day this will be a win-win-win for the neighborhood, City of Detroit and for FCA.”

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The wall. Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press

He cited Detroit's fraught history with large-scale developments — an example would be the removal of Poletown for a General Motors plant years ago — and the fact that many residents wanted to keep their homes as the reason the company did not try to buy out Beniteau residents.

Officials at both the city and company as well as many residents tout the east-side Detroit project as a kind of economic development miracle, the first new auto assembly plant within the city limits in decades. The new plant and an expansion at Jefferson North Assembly, also separated from Beniteau by the wall, are supposed to bring almost 5,000 new jobs, with Detroiters getting an early hire window. It’s part of an overall $4.5 billion investment in southeast Michigan announced a year ago.

The company touts millions of dollars in educational investments, training programs and neighborhood improvements planned for the area, while critics point to the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies and incentives for the project, including millions that would have gone to schools.

Beniteau Street is a showy reminder of faded stability, with its mix of empty lots and blighted houses, some of them suffering visible collapse, as well as well-maintained houses. Homes are in line for $15,000 grants for repairs as part of a community benefits agreement negotiated with the company, but some residents say that falls short when many homes are so damaged, and it will likely be even harder now to sell properties if residents want to move. They say vibration from the construction has damaged some homes even more.

Residents, activists and politicians have asked about pollution from such a large industrial expansion so close to a residential area, a charged topic for a company that says its new plant will have the “lowest emissions rate of any auto assembly plant in the United States.” Those individuals are also angry that the company will be allowed to offset emissions at the new plant by lowering emissions at the Warren Truck Assembly in Macomb County.

FCA already has the emissions permits it needs from the state. The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy approved the company’s air permit applications for the site. And after initially deeming the additional ambient air quality monitoring plan “not acceptable,” the department on Feb. 28 signed off on the company's revisions. That plans calls for, among other things, construction of a new air monitoring station and additional tree plantings.

FCA, Detroit's Office of Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship and City Walls Detroit murals program are seeking artists to paint one of the largest municipal mural installations. City of Detroit, City of Detroit

Pushback, however, goes beyond emissions concerns.

A call by FCA and the city for artists who would create a large mural along portions of the wall is meeting claims of “artwashing” from some artists who say the project is meant as a distraction from injustice.

“A lot of the folks there don’t feel like they’ve been dealt with respectfully,” said Halima Cassells, an artist leading a petition drive opposed to painting over the “destruction of a neighborhood.”

Rochelle Riley, a former Free Press columnist who is now director of Arts and Culture for the city, offered a different take on the project.

“This wonderful gift from FCA is just another example of how much arts and culture are alive and well — and thriving here,” Riley said in the announcement of the mural project. “And even more great things are coming in Detroit — where the arts are a way of life.”

In that same announcement, Mark Stewart, FCA’s chief operating officer for North America, said the company’s commitment goes beyond the facility, and that the company, city and residents have a shared responsibility for the neighborhood around the new plant.

“These murals will reflect the values and identity of the community and our shared vision for a positive future,” Stewart said.

A rendering of the future mural area — the release says it would be 15 feet by 1,500 feet long — shows an active street scene with people walking or riding bikes. The mural is vibrant and filled with color.

It’s a dramatically different view from what one sees there now.

City officials have pushed back against any contention that the wall is meant as a way to segregate Detroit.

“This is not the wall on 8 Mile that was created to keep people away,” said Charity Dean, the city’s director of Civil Rights, Inclusion and Opportunity, referencing a different barrier on the north side of the city originally designed to segregate black from white, although now it features colorful murals.

The engagement with the east-side neighborhood that led to the wall and other planned improvements and investments showcases a unique community benefits process that allowed for negotiation with the company, Dean said.

Other cities are not getting the kinds of benefits that Detroit is, she said.

“We're trying to be innovative and strategic," she said.

With the removal of a berm along St. Jean Street, residents wanted some separation from the plant, said Kai Bowman, executive director of development in the mayor’s office.

St. Jean, which runs parallel to Beniteau, used to connect East Jefferson Avenue and Warren but it's now closed for most of that expanse, a frustration for those who ask about the impact on bus routes and traffic.

Bowman acknowledged that many residents aren’t excited about having a large wall in their backyards, but said residents had signed off on a wall.

To Darnell Gardner, the wall is less a preference than the best available option. Gardner, 61, is a member of the Neighborhood Advisory Council, a group created through Detroit's Community Benefits Ordinance process to work with FCA toward those community benefits.

He lives in the house on Beniteau where he was born and, although he can live elsewhere if he wants, Gardner, who works for Ford, chooses to stay. For him, there's always been an auto plant in view of his home — the new assembly plant and paint shop replace the Mack Engine complex — and he doesn't want to look out on a plant parking lot. When St. Jean was open to traffic, illegal street racing would frequently bring hundreds of people to the area and that was disruptive, Gardner said.

"In terms of the wall, it looks like the prison-industrial complex. I'm not going to lie. But again from my perspective, it's going to be quieter than it was before," Gardner said.

FCA's operations are not new, Gardner said, and he disputed the claim that the company is destroying the neighborhood, which has struggled for years.

"I've seen it go from the premier block to live on in the area to a total slum," Gardner said. "Yes, they have a bigger footprint, but in terms of them being (there), they have always been there. In the past there (was) absolutely no relationship between the plant and the neighborhood. Now there is one," Gardner said, asserting that the project is "breathing new life into the neighborhood."

Two of the major benefits from the deal reached between the city and FCA, according to Gardner, are the planned demolition of 300 blighted homes in the area and the $15,000 home repair grants. As of late last month, 57 homes had been approved for grants, with two having completed repairs, according to mayor's spokesman John Roach, who said most of those remaining should be completed in coming months.

“We want those houses torn down, and this deal does that,” Gardner said.

For Dexter Gentry, the wall is a symbol of division.

Seeing such a large structure in the neighborhood was so disturbing that he penned a poem about it.

Here’s an excerpt:

"I speak these words with no love, no happiness, and much sadness, and with regret. That they build a wall in Detroit, and build it with no respect. A wall to keep us separate, a wall of the haves and have-nots, and Detroiters I say again, they builded it with no respect. ... Detroit is not a prison, we do not need walls to keep us right. This is our land and we must stay together and unite.”

Dexter Gentry discusses the wall on the east side of Detroit. Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press

Gentry has strong feelings about this neighborhood. He’s a Southeastern High graduate and he grew up nearby, on the other side of Jefferson in the home where his father was born in 1925. He’s the son of the late Bronson Gentry, a man who spent much of his life fighting to make sure the children in the Jefferson-Chalmers area would have access to recreation.

Gentry, who lives in Detroit but closer to downtown, thinks the community deserves a better deal, and he's concerned by the loss of a key corridor such as the now-closed St. Jean Street.

Gentry is also skeptical of the wall’s purpose. He sees in the mix of blight, an urban prairie and occupied homes that aren't too far from ascendant, whiter neighborhoods closer to downtown and changes that are underway there.

“This is not just blight, this is danger. Something happened. Ten years ago these people didn’t live like this,” he said during a drive on a recent drizzly morning past some of the more blight-ravaged houses on Beniteau. “There never, ever in the history of us living here … it never looked like this.”

Some people, he said, call it gentrification at work.

“You get the land to be so cheap that anybody can walk in, get it for dirt cheap,” Gentry said as his vehicle rolled along Kercheval.

At Mack Avenue and St. Jean, Louie Nafso opened a section of what appeared to be bulletproof glass so he could talk to a reporter in his convenience store. He has lost business, he said, because of the construction and the closing of St. Jean, which he called his “bread and butter,” and he’s not positive he can hang on.

Nafso isn’t opposed to the new plant. In fact, he believes it’s a good thing for the area. People in the neighborhoods have a chance at jobs that pay a decent salary.

“This is a great project we have here. We needed this,” he said.

But he doubts that his business will recover much once workers begin building Jeeps there.

Nafso, who has had a shop in the area for 40 years and at his current location since 2005, said he has been vocal about his feelings at community meetings.

And the wall, he said, was not an answer.

Aerial images show the new wall built around FCA's Jefferson North Assembly Plant along Beniteau Street on Detroit's east side in January. Southeastern High School of Technology and Law can be seen at left. Mandi Wright and Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press

That wall now offers a backstop to part of his parking lot, which, he noted, has suffered because of all the trucks connected to the construction that now turn around there, damaging the asphalt.

He wonders whether the rendering of the mural is a joke.

“If you paint it (or) don’t paint it, it’s still a wall. I don’t have to go to Mexico, I’ve got a wall right here,” Nafso said. “They did us wrong. They did not do us justice.”

For U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the main problem with FCA’s project isn’t the prospect of a massive visible barrier, it’s the proximity of the facility to the residents who live there.

For her, it’s an issue of justice for vulnerable communities.

“We have to have an honest conversation about where it’s humane and morally responsible to have families living so close to industry,” Tlaib said. “There has to be a buffer. It’s common sense.”

Tlaib, a Democrat from Detroit, has had other fights in the area over industrial pollution, such as with the Marathon refinery in the southwest.

People deserve better, she said.

“They have a right to breathe clean air. They want jobs, but jobs can’t fix cancer.”

Staff writer Susan Tompor contributed to this report. Eric D. Lawrence covers Fiat Chrysler for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him: elawrence@freepress.com or 313-223-4272. Follow him on Twitter: @_ericdlawrence.