Detroit task force unveils plans for blight fight

A Detroit task force putting together a strategy to remove blighted buildings and vacant lots around the city unveiled a comprehensive plan on Tuesday to address the problems plaguing a city in the midst of the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy.

The Detroit Blight Removal Task Force announced that it will cost as much as $850 million to tackle blighted neighborhood structures, which include residential and commercial buildings smaller than 25,000 square feet in lot size.

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It could take an additional $500 million to $1 billion to deal with larger-scale industrial sites “because of their scale and potential for greater environmental issues than other types of properties,” the report said, bringing the potential cost to nearly $2 billion. 

State-appointed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, who was among those at a Tuesday’s news conference to unveil the report, praised the task force for overseeing a physical survey of the 380,000 parcels of land in Detroit, gathering detailed information about the condition of every property in the city.

“For the first time in this city’s history, you have a comprehensive proposal to analyze all the properties in 144 square miles of the city, including lakes and rivers, with the resources and technology to address the issue,” Orr said. 

The city has deemed over 80,000 structures blighted, which is defined as being a public nuisance, fire hazard, a property that has code violations posing a severe and immediate health or safety threat, or one that has been vacant for five consecutive years and not maintained.

As for how the project will be funded, the report indicated that the city currently has a little more than $87 million “immediately available toward the blight removal effort,” while noting that an additional $368 million was pending approval by the U.S. bankruptcy court.  

The report said the city anticipates a “major corporate commitment” to come through as early as June 2014, but the present leaves the city millions short of meeting its goal to fight blight. 

“This shortfall is not an obstacle to immediate progress, but it is an important factor in the ability to increase momentum and impact across the city,” the report said. “It will be important to have unified, community-wide efforts in place to continue to seek and deploy additional funding.”

Recommendations for raising the money included seeking more funds from federal and state sources and strengthening ordinance enforcement.

"We're going to find the money, and we're going to get it done," said Dan Gilbert, a Detroit businessman and co-chair of the task force.

John Mogk, an urban development professor at Wayne State University, told Al Jazeera the city's plan is a step in the right direction, but there are more hurdles ahead.

“The city's biggest challenge after eliminating blight is to begin to assemble the land for reuse,” Mogk said. 

Detroit Gov. Mike Duggan, for his part, sounded optimistic, saying: “Six months ago we had no funding and no strategy, [now] we have the strategy and we’re working on the funding. I’m very excited about our future."

Philip J. Victor and Bisi Onile-Ere contributed to this report, with Al Jazeera and wire services