Some restoration
The Ilitch gang has been given a free ride in Detroit for too long, from the $8 million in public funds used to clean up the Fox to the barrel of public money they now expect to use to knock down the first in a handful of critical historic buildings they’ve managed to buy for speculation (“Whither Madison Lenox,” Metro Times, Feb. 5-11).
If they were truly “big restorers,” then they’d have found uses for the buildings on Park Avenue they’ve been itching to level. And they’d have taken better care of the Adams Theatre, instead of allowing ever-growing holes in the roof. And they’d have sealed the United Artists Building well enough that it wouldn’t look like a Christmas tree with the recent spate of colorful graffiti in nearly every window.
That’s not to mention the gigantic land grab for Comerica Park or the numerous vacant lots Olympia owns and continues purchasing whenever possible.
I just hope the word gets out to a large enough local audience so that when the Red Wings come begging for another $100 million for a new arena, voters tell them to sell what they haven’t used already or go to hell.
—Michael Boettcher, [email protected], Detroit
Granholm is boxed in
Relative to Jack Lessenberry’s column (Politics and Prejudices, Metro Times, Feb. 12-18) on Granholm’s speech — what do you suppose she would say: “I was born in Canada, and where I come from we had a healthy motor fuel tax to help defray all costs of government, not just to pay for roads”? She would have been eaten alive. Michigan’s problem is that the public-sector employees had their wage package patterned after the Big Three, particularly the rank-and-file. Even Engler wouldn’t or couldn’t mess with that. Now times are tough and we will just have to tough it out. Granholm has already said that some glaring tax loopholes should be plugged such as failing to make any effort to collect taxes on catalog sales, which must be a bunch judging by all the catalogs I receive throughout the year but particularly at holiday time. —Larry D. Egan, Livonia
London, yeah; Liane, nay
It is funny how Shireen Liane used the sentence “But I can’t breathe and feel positively hateful” in her most recent Letter from London (Metro Times, Jan. 29-Feb. 4). That is how I feel every time I read one of her self-serving, “live show reviews.” It seems that Ms. Liane aspires to use her article as a platform to mention her band or relate her trials and tribulations on getting into a venue, as opposed to relating what kind of show actually took place.
Let’s for a moment also discuss the credibility diatribe that Shireen goes on at the end of her article. She seems angry that a Detroit band would actually get airplay, that someone like Zoë Ball would even know who any of them were. So Zoë knows about the Electric Six. Good for her, and good for the Electric Six.
How much longer must the good citizens of Detroit endure Letter from London as written by Shireen Liane? Why not throw a benefit to send Chris Handyside or Eve Doster to London once a month so they could do it? Or better yet, have Zoë Ball write it. —Amy Abbott, [email protected], Detroit
Erratum
A recent review of Wood-Ruff’s Supper Club in Royal Oak (“A promising place,” Metro Times, Feb. 19-25) should not have said that all menu items are a la carte.
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