Now I know why developer Pat Gillespie looked so relaxed at Ryan Field last Saturday as he enjoyed the Spartans’ comeback against Northwestern.
On that rainy, then sunny Saturday, Gillespie’s big Market Place project was in limbo. The City Council had twice deadlocked on approving brownfield tax credits. Conflict was high; chances for progress seemed low.
Barely 48 hours later, Gillespie was back on track, though. Ingham Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina reviewed Gillespie’s legal request for relief from the council and granted it, forthwith. State law was on Gillespie’s side, a point Lansing City Attorney Brigham Smith had tried to make to the council before its votes.
So, where does this leave politics in Lansing?
On Monday night, with litle attention, the council approved a brownfield plan for the redevelopment of the Knapp’s building.
Moments ago, Mayor Virg Bernero announced that GM will, indeed, expand Cadillac work at its downtown facility. Bernero and the council had agreed on tax incentives for GM in an effort to convince the automaker to do what it has just done. (And GM, you will recall, is rebuilding itself by, among other things, slashing pay rates to its unionized work force.)
So, this really isn’t about tax credits, is it?
What is it about?
More than one attendee at the council session where Gillespie got his second “no” vote remarked to me about the generational divide in the audience between a cohort of young advocates for Gillespie’s project (and presumably downtown redevelopment in general) and an older cohort of labor officials/members.
I think this fits with my Lansing 1958 theory that one faction of the city (and Greater Lansing generally) has grown uncomfortable with how the world is going and resists more out of reflex than out of a political agenda. To riff off the classic film “Network”: They are as anxious as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore. And they do vote.
The local story to follow next year is whether the folks who are cheering on Gillespie will show up at the polls in equal or greater numbers to the 1958’ers.
