A few month's ago, City Council said they wanted to receive a fair price for the public land on which Mike Ilitch plans to build a new hockey arena. Yesterday, there was noise that the deal would require a solid community benefits agreement to win Council's ok. Today, Detroit's legislative body is expected to rubber stamp give the publicly-funded project an up-or-down vote.
Detroit Free Press: The proposed deal — 39 vacant parcels just north of downtown for $1 — would be the city’s chief contribution to the proposed arena, a joint venture between companies controlled by Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch and the Detroit Downtown Development Authority, an agency which promotes development with tax breaks and other incentives.
Some city officials say they’re concerned about the deal and think the city should get more for the land. A Free Press analysis of city records shows that several private landowners succeeded in netting millions for themselves by selling similarly situated land in the arena’s footprint to Ilitch-controled (sic) corporations.
But, right now, millions of dollars from the public treasury isn't what the bankrupt city wants. Council President Brenda Jones says she want a guarantee of jobs for Detroiters from the Red Wings in exchange for virtually free public land.
Of course, as Field of Schemes' Neil deMause points out, you can create more jobs by allocating public resources on virtually anything other than subsidizing an octogenarian billionaire's new hockey arena just a couple miles up the road from his old hockey arena. For instance, paying people to fix broken street lights would "create jobs."
However, it would do little to help with City Councilman Gabe Leland's Edifice Complex: “This is an opportunity for us as Council to create a platform that can create jobs, both construction and post-construction,” he told WDIV.
One assumes the post-construction arena jobs will be completely new and different from the existing arena jobs at the Joe.
