I have lived in LIncoln Park for 40yrs now, I grew up in Detroit, moved out of Detroit when I was 18yrs old. Just today I drove Outer Drive from Southfield, the new shopping center at Outer Drive and Southfield,which is beautiful by the way. I followed Outer Drive to Fort St. and I was shocked to see how horrible Lincoln Park looks lately. Where Johnny's Nursery was it nothing but weeds fenced in, and Fort St. is dirty, vacant businesses all over, trash all over the islands. I proceded down Fort St. through Wyandotte, Riverview and Trento, What a Difference all the businesses have nice lawns and the windows are clean, not any vacant buildings. I noticed all out business'es have nothing but weeds growing instead of grass, and some have cement all broken up with weeds growing in the cracks. It was very depressing for me as I remember how it used to be. Those nice planters along Downtown Fort are mostly used as ashtrays, nothing planted in them. I remember Detroit looking a lot like this when my family moved us out of Detroit. It used to be a Great City. Kind of reminds me of Delray, I used to say it looked like a bombed out city. I just wonder what is wrong in Lincoln Park, why all the empty store fronts, why does it look so bad, we pay enough in taxes it should not look like this. Why don't whoever's job it is to see that these business owners keep up their property. Like I said I was very upset when I seen all this. There is something wrong somewhere.

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We have our previous city administrations to blame for this. Fort and Southfield used to be prime shopping. It was beautiful. The downhill slide took years and years. It is imperative that today's council needs to take the bull by the horns, get innovative, think out of the box, and kick some life into downtown LP. They could start by having a big media campaign about how LP is sick of having a crappy downtown, start ongoing self-promotion to businesses telling them how they could get in at the start of a new and improved LP.
I don't believe this is our city manager's role whatsoever. I think it is Bill Hatley's job, but I think he's too busy to devote the incredible amount of time this effort will require. WE need a full-time PR person.

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poor Bill Hatley is too busy to do his job so let us blame PAST city admins. and hire a new PR person.

ok,lets...super idea

but wait, some of the people on council have been around awhile - but we don't want to blame them...no, we don't want to do that.

If I recall Mr Brown's campaign liturature, HE had a plan for the north end of the city! A real plan, so exciting...

BUT let's not blame him either. Just Past city admins only. PLEASE.

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Ditto Mummzzee,I too feel that the blight in our city is
shameful to say the least,but I also believe that it is
a direct reflection of the decaying cover my own behind
attitude of most of our city leaders and administrators,
some from the past and obviously many who now are
in place.My opinion as a taxpayer is first clean house,
not hire more fallguys for the ones who should be accountable.Secondly this is a blue collar city ran by
white collar group whose priciples are lost with their
combined cya practices.

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Mumzzee (09-25-05)

Both BRown and Murphy have been around forever. Nothing much to speak of has happened under their watches. Next with seniority would be DiSAnto and Kandes. ANd so forth.
Why are we re-electing Brown and Murphy when they've done virtually nothing for downtown LP? Why do many MUrphy (Brady and HIggins) on this site think it's okay that those 3 don't answer my direct quesitons about their plans to revitalize downtown LP? MUrphy has totally ignored my questions and so have the other two. If their supporters are satisfied because they get results on tree questions or barking dogs problems, then I guess they'll settle for no progress downtown.

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