A depressed lower east side neighborhood in Detroit is about to get a newly planted forest come spring, thanks to financial services mogul John Hantz.
Detroit News columnist Laura Berman writes that Mike Score, the president of Hantz Woodlands, an urban farming subsidiary created by Hantz, turned over a $431,000 check to the city last week, along with a $10,000 deposit — for empty land that will be converted into a little forest. The area in question is about one square mile.
Berman writes that the plans call for 15,000 hardwood trees —each about three feet tall —to be planted on about 150 acres in its first phase.
Hantz is a businessman, who likes to make money.
Berman writes:
The Hantz Woodlands project sparked outrage initially because it’s for-profit. Hantz, a classic capitalist, believes that the city needs for-profit ventures: It needs people like him to pay cash for land, pay taxes on the land and eventually imbue worthless land with value.
Will the trees ever grow tall enough to be harvested? Will they be replaced by some other crops, like Christmas evergreens or broccoli, as urban agriculture gets more common? Or will the trees provide a pleasant green canopy until Hantz can eventually sell the land to a developer?
None of that future is yet clear.
