JUSTIN A. HINKLEY
It was Gov. Jennifer Granholm who, back in the early parts of her first term, started the Cool Cities initiative. She urged Michigan cities and towns to come up with plans to make their downtowns hot spots for hip people, and she promised grant dollars for it.
I haven't heard the phrase "Cool Cities" in a couple of years, but I don't think we have much to worry about, anyway.
With the weird bungling over the state budget recently, Lansing managed to get the whole country laughing at us and so many business and working people scared for their pocketbooks that we'd have a hard time attracting the "hip" crowd even if we made coffee free inside state borders and filled the state Senate with old Motown players.
The country was frustrated with us again over the push for presidential primary slots, which, no matter how right or wrong the Dems or GOP may be, created a big and ultimately unnecessary mess for Michigan voters during an already confusing campaign.
Couple this with an embattled manufacturing industry and Michigan comes up on the wrong end of the toilet pipe.
As far as "cool cities," Michigan of today has only a few medium cities to speak of and perhaps only one (Detroit) that anybody outside of the state has ever heard of. The rest of the cities are struggling to survive, along with all of their residents.
I've been covering a lot about small towns in our area (Athens, Bronson, Coldwater, Homer, Charlotte) all fretting to try to at least sustain a population level that can make a city run.
The idea behind Granholm's Cool Cities is to stifle the outward migration of Michigan teens from all of those small towns, thereby keeping all of the money those young people will make in their lives inside the state's borders.
All of the conventional and new wisdom says that towns need to create a vibrant cultural center downtown, with plenty of arts and entertainment so that a safe environment is created for all of the Gen-Xers and younger will sit and drink coffee or beer and feel happy with their hometowns.
But I think we're getting far away from that dream. The state's no help and these cities are left to fend for themselves, trying for federal grant dollars and creating their own endowment funds.
But when a Michigan high school senior picks up the paper or turns on the TV and sees that his state lawmakers are bogged down in infighting and all of the money's going away and taxes are going up and jobs are going out, it won't matter how lively and vibrant his downtown is. He'll want to be somewhere where he can watch a dueling pianos show and still have money left in his wallet.
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