Auto plant vs. neighborhood: The Poletown battle

John Saber, one of the last residents of Poletown, sits on the front steps of his home on Kanter Street in 1983.

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By Jenny Nolan, Detroit News
January 27, 2000

In 1981, General Motors and the cities of Detroit and Hamtramck collaborated in a grand plan to bring industry back to what was perceived as a dying city, to add to the two cities' tax coffers and to keep the automotive business centered in Detroit.

In the process, the city lost a neighborhood, the Catholic Archdiocese lost the faith of some of their flock and 4,200 people lost their homes.

At the tail end of the once promising urban renewal movement of the 1960's, Detroit had not seen much improvement. Neighborhoods had been razed for expressways, or for 'new development' which never materialized. Stores and shops were closing down at a rapid pace, churches were losing their congregations to the suburbs, and industry was turning elsewhere, moving out to the far suburbs where space was not at a premium and crime and crumbling infrastructure were not issues.

And then General Motors and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young hatched a plan: If the city would get the land, the auto company would build a state-of-the-art plant, crossing the border with Hamtramck, employing 6,000 people and providing a glittering example of what the auto companies and their suppliers could do in the city of their birth.  READ MORE

Here's another article about Poletown that appeared in Time magazine on March 30, 1981.

Have things really changed?

Money magazine (September 22, 2009) did a follow-up on what happened to the Poletown plant and other GM plants as well.  Now that the Volt is slated for production there, the plant may have a second chance to fulfill the promise of jobs and prosperity.  Time will tell.