In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul caught nicely how we so often can glimpse only a blurred vision of ourselves and our future, but then as time goes on, gain a better, clearer understanding.
In these early days of the New Year, we can only see, at best, a fuzzy vision of Michigan’s economic future. Yet while it may be unclear today, as the year goes on, the vision is bound to get stronger, more detailed and more compelling.
And for a clearer glimpse, you might focus on these major elements as the mist clears:
High Technology Spin-Offs from Universities: The impact of new firms spun out from discoveries in university labs has been relatively slight, measured against our entire economy.
But two recent events provide hope that things may soon take off on a much larger scale. Last month, the University of Michigan announced it would buy the entire vacant Pfizer research campus in Ann Arbor for $108 million. At 176 acres and 2 million square feet of modern laboratory space, the deal may be the biggest real estate steal in recent memory. More to the point, the U of M says that over the next decade, the site will be used to create 2,000 new high-paying, public-private research jobs, mostly in the health sciences.
And the U.S. Department of Energy picked Michigan State University as the winner of a national competition for the Isotope Science Facility, a high energy atom smasher designed to explore how new elements are formed. Construction of the new $550 million facility will take a decade and require additional federal funding. But that lab, too, should generate substantial spin-off economic activity once it gets going.
Automobile Research, Engineering and Manufacturing: Now that the federal government has agreed to give bridge loans to General Motors, Chrysler and the now-independent General Motors Acceptance Corporation, it’s pretty clear the auto industry will survive and have a future in Michigan. But it won’t be like the old days: High-wage, low-brain, insular companies producing bad products at high cost while dominating the state’s economy and distorting its politics.
Even under the best-case scenarios, the auto companies will be net job losers, but the industry will still mean thousands and thousands of good-paying jobs in Michigan, supported by existing research and development and engineering operations. We shouldn’t forget, by the way, that more automotive engineers are working here than in any other place in the world.
Regardless of what happens to Chrysler, the jobs that will be left are likely to be more cost-competitive than in the past. That’s thanks in part to new pressure being put on the United Auto Workers’ union by the feds, in return for the bailout loans. Hopefully, the surviving auto companies will be able to fend off incompetent and self-serving political pressure from Washington and make cars that people actually want to buy.
Urban Re-Development: Drive over the hill into downtown Grand Rapids, and all you see is cranes and shiny new buildings. The new Grand Valley State University campus is bustling, and the health science Medical Mile is taking shape. The Gerald Ford Museum and the Grand Rapids Museum of Art are both top-notch. All are stimulating an urban renaissance of restaurants and bars that attract the kind of young, college-educated folks Michigan needs.
A couple of weeks ago, Michigan’s resident Brain-Wave Maker In Chief, Craig Ruff, wrote a piece for the on-line magazine, Dome, that proposed an entirely new vision for Detroit. Ruff points out that Michigan’s most rapidly shrinking big city offers something like 30 percent vacant, re-developable land, more than any large urban area in the country. Assuming that the city’s incendiary and self-destructive politics actually turn around, Ruff offers an entirely new way of thinking about redevelopment of America’s worst-off city.
Parks and open space. Urban forests and urban pioneers. Neighborhood gardens and commercial farms. Sane living conditions, with plenty of space and easy access to amenities.
That won’t happen overnight, but re-making Detroit as one of the greenest cities in the world is an idea that can excite the imagination and offer a truly distinctive future.
These days, it’s conventional wisdom for the sneerocracy to write off Michigan’s future. But these elements of our future, even though seen darkly today, are real, ready to take form in the mist. They can provide hope for a prosperous future and an agenda for our state’s leaders — if we have the courage and will to act on them.
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Editor’s Note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics, and a former chairman of the Michigan chapter of the Nature Conservancy. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a centrist think-and-do tank which publishes the Michigan Scorecard. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net.
2 Comments
I echo Phil’s recommendation to read the Craig Ruff article at:
http://domemagazine.com/features/dec08/cover1208.html
Detroit will not flourish by trying to copy others but by creating its own unique identity.
There is a wonderful organization called the Greening of Detroit who could play a big part in this. Wayne State would be an important player as well.
How can we possibly have a serious conversation about the future of the auto industry without mentioning “right-to-work” legislation. There isn’t a manufacturing manager — who wants to keep his job — who would recommend Michigan as its next site location. Growth in right-to-work states, without exception, is far more robust than non-right-to-work states.
We’re “circling the drain” and, most recently, we’ve become aware that our auto companies, and their suppliers, are closer to the drain pipe than we’ve thought. And, the Mastodon in the room is compulsary unionism.