Duggan's Amazon Scam
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>>142 acres of prime public land given away for peanuts, on a no-bid public contract. $9 million sale price was kept low in order to avoid giving tax abatements, which exempted the deal from having a legally required community benefits order. Duggan tried to puff up the figure being touted in the media to $16 million by combining the price of the $9 million Amazon parcel and the $7 million transit center parcel, which is to remain public land.
>>1,200 jobs TOTAL, not guaranteed for local Detroiters, as Duggan is touting. Amazon has the second highest turnover rate of any Fortune 500 company, guaranteeing that even if Detroiters got those jobs, they wouldn't have them for long enough to get out of poverty. Amazon is well known as a sweatshop, and Duggan is proud of bringing that kind of job to poor Detroiters?
>>There is NO written guarantee from Amazon of any benefits whatsoever—the paperwork does not contain the name "Amazon" anywhere—the contract is entirely with their land acquisition proxy company.
>>Heavy truck traffic putting extra wear and tear on our public roads, noise and diesel fumes in adjacent low-income residential areas. Already 650 people per year die of air pollution-related illnesses.
>>Forced relocation of a major public bus station without a public hearing. The hearing was intentionally moved to November, when the City Council vote to approve the project was scheduled for October.
>>Likely demolition of historic State Fair buildings.
>>Amazon is a monopoly / sweatshop business model, and still an unmitigated Covid19 deathtrap. Their sparkly $500 hiring bonus is there precisely because of that.
...And Duggan wanted to send this to City Council for approval just like that, with no further negotiation, as if the deal was going to disappear and go to some suburb. It's a good thing we have community activists in this town to protest and bring attention to these sorts of rushed, back-room deals, or we'd really be in some shit. The fact is, Detroit had the upper hand on this deal but because of Duggan and his loyalists on City Council, we didn't play hardball. Amazon wants the warehouse here because they need it as close to the Canadian border crossing as possible, for logistical reasons. They already have nine other warehouses out in the suburbs; they want this one to have close access to the international border, because mileage = money. But Duggan ain't negotiating on behalf of Detroiters, he's negotiating for himself.
Let's not forget that Amazon was one of Duggan's primary campaign donors...
Let's also not forget that the beloved Michigan State Fair was killed by Duggan's girl, Governor Granholm, when she vetoed its funding legislation during the Great Recession, and the fairgrounds remained vacant ever since. Coincidentally, the property was transferred to the Michigan Land Bank in 2012, the same year Duggan declared intention to run for mayor. It was then subsequently sold to the city of Detroit for $7 million. So why now is it being sold a decade later for just $9 million...? To help get it around the requirement of a community benefits agreement.
"The Detroit-based firm filed suit last week against the city, Mayor Mike Duggan and other officials on behalf of the State Fairgrounds Development Coalition. Resident Frank Hammer, co-chair of the coalition, said his group was challenging the appraised value of the property. He claims the property is being sold under value and should trigger the Community Benefits Ordinance, which would establish a Neighborhood Advisory Council of residents from the area the development would affect...A lawsuit further claimed that Detroit failed to provide a statutorily required notice of a proposed amendment to the city master plan, or to give adequate notice on the sale."
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2020/10/29/judge-order-halts-sale-detroit-former-state-fair-site/6076715002/
Even Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was opposed to the deal for similar reasons, after she and Congresswoman Debbie Dingell made a surprise visit to the Amazon center in Romulus and discovered flagrant Covid19 health risks:
Tonya Philips:
"The Mayor and the City Council were too afraid of “losing” Amazon to ask questions, require answers, exercise due diligence around health and safety, and conduct an analysis of Amazon’s net effect on poverty, employment, and small business attrition for the City and the region.
Mayor Duggan said he “can’t imagine who could be against this deal.” It’s a sad statement. Hundreds of thoughtful, empathetic people who examined the facts, and refused to mask the obvious harms, do not support this deal. The Detroit Amazon deal added one more hurdle to addressing systemic poverty in Detroit. The jubilant yet deceptive tweets of “jobs” masks the problem of environmental racism and the pain of the working-poor brewing beneath the headlines."
