Magazine
Dispatches
State-Sanctioned Cool
Benton Harbor is not on most Michiganders’ radar. A city of just over 10,000 on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, its close proximity to Chicago and location on the St. Joseph River made it a hub of heavy industry for decades. But like so many Rustbelt cities, Benton Harbor emptied out, and today, it is considered a blighted backwater to its sister city, St. Joseph, just across the river. In 2000, the median household income in Benton Harbor was just over $17,000, and about 40 percent of families lived in poverty. Visitors and residents alike are struck by the stark racial differences between the two cities, as more than 90 percent of Benton Harbor residents are black, while St. Joseph and its surrounding townships are over 90 percent white.
The city burst into the national spotlight following two nights of heavy rioting in the summer of 2003. Suburban Benton Township police entered into a high speed chase with Benton Harbor native Terrance Shurn, who died after crashing into a house at over 100 miles per hour. Vigils the following night grew violent after dark; crowds numbering in the hundreds hurled projectiles at riot police and torched more than 20 houses. While the city has seen its share of civil disturbances, the 2003 uprising brought television crews from across the country. Even former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon press conference that the violence raging across Iraq was nothing compared to “the kind of rioting you saw on television last night in Michigan.”
Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm responded by creating a 23-member task force to address the crisis in Benton Harbor. The task force included businesspeople, clergy, and city and police officials, who drafted a lengthy report that sought to address everything from police-community relations to housing and job training. Several task force members formed Citizens for Progressive Change (CPC), an organization created to address the root causes of the 2003 conflict. The organization’s CEO, Dr. Marcus Robinson, envisions CPC as a “catalyzing agent” in Benton Harbor’s revitalization.
The Miami native says, “we’re like glue, creating linkages with various stakeholders in the city.” Under pressure from her urban constituency to funnel more money into the state’s downtowns, Granholm also established the Cool Cities Initiative in 2003. Based on Richard Florida’s idea that cities retain vitality by attracting the “creative class,” Granholm (who, in 2003, called Mr. Florida the “prime minister of cool”) allowed Michigan cities to compete for grants of $100,000. One Benton
Harbor businessman, Richard Vance, applied for $100,000, which he used to convert a long-abandoned office building on a Main Street strip into artist studios, an art gallery, a wine tasting room, and a retro furniture store last year. Vance, a mustachioed, middle-aged white man from St. Louis, predicts that, with a few more new businesses like his, “this downtown area is just going to explode.”
But standing, as he was, among rows of half-renovated artist studios overlooking an otherwise bleak Main Street, it seemed even Vance was unclear exactly how Benton Harbor would make the leap forward. He acknowledges he has made no profits so far on his businesses. The trickle-down neighborhood revitalization theory that Benton Harbor is gambling on goes like this: fix the downtown and surrounding neighborhoods will follow. Robinson convinced the Michigan Department of Transportation to put $14 million toward reducing lanes on the city’s main thoroughfare. By 2009, the DOT will install traffic circles to encourage walkability (one of the features the creative class covets). Critics are skeptical that the trickle-down will have much impact on longtime residents. Jack Lessenberry, a Michigan Public Radio host, calls the Cool Cities Initiative a “glitzy, cosmetic approach to solving urban problems” that is “more about media hype” than addressing root causes. Alex Kotlowitz, whose book The Other Side of the Ri er: A Story of a Death, Two Towns, and America’s Dilemma brought Benton Harbor national attention, says, “you can have an artistic center and vital core, but if nothing else is done, you can travel to the outskirts and you’ll see how troubled it is.”
The city is buzzing about Harbor Shores, a $500 million luxury housing development scheduled to open in 2009. Its owners claim it will bring 1,500 jobs to the area. But in a city where the schools rank among the worst in Michigan and other social problems are pressing, plenty of people are still skeptical. Benton Harbor native Marvin Chaney, who lost his job when a canning plant closed in the 1980s, believes the only permanent jobs at Harbor Shores will be low-paid housekeeping positions. “There’s gonna be no jobs people can support a family on,” he says.
This article appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of Next American City magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW!
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