City Council - workshop

Thank you.

Hello, hello. That sounds better. Got one of these for she. That's so cool.

That is so cool.

Yes. That's when you retire.

That's when you retire.

That's when you retire. That's when you retire. She just said she had come. She was there for You know who's supposed to be presenting? 609.

We don't need a corn for a workshop, do we? No voting. Can we get started, please? Six o'clock. We don't need a corn for a workshop. Manica's not going to be here, and Ms. Martin's not coming. Okay. Well, we wait in the customary 15 minutes. All of a sudden, the child never waited before. Not even when you was council president, you didn't wait no 15 minutes to fight it. Exactly. Exactly my point. Yeah, I know you don't like me. I'm saying, I hate you. I'm saying, you know, all of a sudden we got all of these new requirements all of a sudden.

It's always been to me that the money

I'm going to be honest. I'm hoping nobody show tonight so we go home. That's the hope and the dream. I'm going to cross my fingers on it. Hey, you don't know by the show.

Well, Kiki is going to be 49 tomorrow.

Oh, Lord have mercy. She still ain't old enough to buy alcohol. Tell her to let me know when she turns 52. Hey, she can buy some alcohol. Y'all cross your fingers. They don't know by the show, so we get out of here in five minutes. Come on, cross your fingers. Cross your fingers.

Cross your fingers.

That's why I'm not crossing my fingers yet.

You feel like Michael Jackson today.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know I'm in a good mood.

What you say? You feel like Michael Jackson today. I'm in a real good mood.

I tell you, in the nowhere court on the 8th, the judge dropped the charges. What? Yeah, she said that the blood test showed I wasn't intoxicated and the blood test showed I wasn't intoxicated. I didn't hear you going to charge me with it. Hello? So she threw everything out. Bye-bye.

Yeah. Oh, trust me.

Now the fun part starts. The lawsuit starts now. Slavery, deprivation, the whole shebangabang starts now. Because they started that. I didn't start that shit. They did that. They tried to get me out of the seat. Shit is backfiring on their ass, and now they looking all stupid and shit. That's their problem, not mine. But you're definitely gonna pay for slander in my name. Definitely gonna pay for that. You know, so check it out, right? So my lawyer said, you know that the incident happened March 7th of last year, right? The news report with the body cam footage came on March 8th. Never in the history has a foyer been filled in less than 24 hours in any municipality. But they had that video footage out the very next day. There. Yeah, it wasn't even 24 hours.

He said the meeting's been on for 13 minutes. Thank you.

Yeah, you know, it wasn't even 24 hours. Mr. Lackey, do we have anybody from the Greenway on?

I guess that's enough. Is it 15 now? Yes.

It is now 614.90.

You know, I haven't missed a council meeting since I've been here. Not one.

Not one.

Nope. You know what, I did, but I made it back in time for the meeting. I haven't missed not one, I tell you. In almost four years, I haven't missed a meeting.

In almost 12 years, I haven't missed a meeting.

I haven't missed one meeting.

Okay, Mr. Claiborne, we'll say something. Start when you want to. He's on the phone right now. I asked Mr. Lecker, was there anyone from the Douglas Greenway on here that was fine with you?

No. Hey, Mike. Just tell him you're here. I have an air condition. I just spoke with Mr. Lackey. He says he's trying to get them on.

There's some technical. Thank you.

Hmm. Hmm.

All right. So we won't have a presentation, I guess. I don't have to worry about seeing this at the next meeting. I don't want to see you at the next meeting. Time to run out to the council meeting.

Thank you. hmm. What's up Mark? Hey Mark. How are you?

Who called for this workshop? Okay, because I know this Council President, his signature wasn't on the bottom of it at all. I say his signature is usually on the bottom of it. I keep scratching my right hand all the time. No, no, no, no, no. I'm going to give some money. Right hand is received. Yes, I'm left-handed. Right hand is received.

Right hand is received. Right hand, I get money.

Take that money.

Impress them by hiring me a lawyer. You're not today. You're always so dumb. You can legally represent me. I don't understand.

Ask me, what are you doing?

Workshops. Progress.

Hey. Yeah, I have a question.

Can somebody control that? What did you say?

She said she's not here. She said she's not here.

page two of the property values.

Will they go up? Oh, absolutely. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about.

Oh, okay. Okay.

All right, well, good evening.

Hello, good evening, everybody.

It is 6.23. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? The workshop.

Councilman Ashaki. I am here 23 minutes after the hour. Councilwoman Martin. Councilwoman Manica.

Excuse me.

Council.

Council President Thompson. Council President Thompson. Hello, hello.

Alright, so I do have Leona from the Joe Lewis Greenway Partnership. Leona.

Hi.

She's going to be presenting for the Highland Park Trailhead of how she got to the decision and go through the presentation that I did pass out to y'all. So, Leona.

Good evening, everyone. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Good evening, thank you so much for allowing me to share this presentation with you all and to present to this honorable body. Carlton, thanks for all of your support in getting us here. So if you give me one moment, I'm gonna pull some slides up on the screen. Give me one moment.

Okay, now I'm not here. So now I'm not here.

If y'all knew ahead of time everyone was going to be here, then we shouldn't have sat away 23 minutes after the hour to hear from people that's not going to be here.

I'm talking to everybody.

Okay, so then lower your voice. I don't need to lower my voice, too. Okay, I'm just here just to watch. If they knew everybody wasn't going to be here, then what was the purpose of the workshop then? That's what I'm asking.

I'm here just like everybody else is here.

Yeah.

Okay, so now what? I simply ask the question, is who you? No, I'm not in your face right now.

Okay, so let me stand back a little bit.

I'm not in your face.

I ask a simple question. You said you knew they weren't going to be here, but what was the purpose of the workshop if we knew they weren't going to be here?

Who are you asking?

I'm asking whoever's going to answer the question.

Okay, well, are you getting the answer? Okay, then.

I'm out.

I'm out. I'm on page two, and it says, identify feasible locations for a trailhead on Woodward Avenue, Joe Lewis Greenway. This analysis included property values. My question is, will they go up because of the Greenway? Ms. Jones, did you hear me?

No, I'm sorry.

Can you repeat the question? I'm on page two, project goals. Will the property values go up because of the Greenway?

We haven't done an assessment. So the partnership is a nonprofit organization and we focus on the programming and the activation of the space. So our assessment doesn't encompass any additional property value or property evaluation outside of this particular project. I would though, be interested in exploring that with the city of Highland Park and surrounding property values. But we really have focused our work on bringing this public space and this park to the area, not extended beyond looking at the construction and the bring up the park itself.

Thank you. Okay. I guess in Detroit, now it's talking about access from Woodward and parking. Where would that parking be? Is that for you?

So what the Joe Louis Greenway partnership has done, because we do have the valuable part of going across Woodward, right? So what the partnership has done is they evaluated all four corners and came up with their recommendation and their assessment of how they would like to proceed, which is they would like to proceed on the high school site. So when Leona is here today, let's talk about the process of how they got to choosing that and the different things they went through to get to this point and what it looks like moving forward at this stage.

So you mentioned the high school site. Nothing has been done as far as mediation.

Remember, the beginning of the front of the high school site was remediated when they tore it down.

We got that paperwork. Can we get that copy of that?

I'm sure they got me in the records. I'm not sure where it would be. What year was that?

Yeah, so I can share a little bit. If you'd like, I can kind of go through our process that could answer some of some of those questions. So the Joe Louis Greenway Partnership was awarded $1.3 million from the Knight Foundation to embark on a project to bring additional access by way of public space to the Woodward Corridor of the Joe Louis Greenway. So this is funds that we've already secured to embark on a project like this. Through our due diligence and our feasibility, we engage in the way- Am I coming in fuzzy? I was getting some feedback. No, I can hear you clearly. Okay. Okay, great. So we engaged, we put out an RFP, we went through an evaluation, and we hired a consultant company to help us evaluate where we should bring this project to. So I did share, I'm not able to share my screen, but I'll run through some information and I can share it after the presentation after this meeting. So our goals were to understand where we could bring a trailhead along this Woodward Corridor area. to support public activation of this space, to ensure that residents in the area and visitors would have a safe access point up to the Greenway. And to your point, while it needs to be studied, that the Joe Louis Greenway would have a project that was centered in Highland Park, that was still Highland Park-owned land, and that we as a nonprofit would support through the fundraising and development of this project. The conversation started actually with looking at the 20 Bartlett property. So we were approached by a private land owner that wanted us to purchase their property. But instead of just looking at that one single property, we said, well, why don't we evaluate all four corners, specifically at the Woodward corridor and see which one presented the best opportunity. And we had some basic criteria for evaluating what that project would look like. And some of that criteria was, is it publicly owned? You also mentioned about contamination and remediation, what was the existing conditions, the property value, the sale price, a number of criteria that OHM, when they came on, used to evaluate the feasibility. So they looked at the southwest corner of the Greenway, the northwest corner, the southeast, and the northeast. So as we looked at those corners, one of the corners, there's already access to the Greenway. So that is that northwest quadrant where the city of Detroit is creating that walkable access. But currently, that's the only access to the Greenway. So you'd have to maybe park on Midland or Bartlett, walk down Woodward. not necessarily the safest access point. The northeast corner is the site of the old high school, and that is the parcel that runs adjacent to the Joe Louis Greenway that the county acquired in collaboration with the City of Highland Park. The southeast corner, that's that Foreman Mills and on that 91 Manchester property. Then the southwest corner is the Bartlett property, the one that started all of this conversation. So after evaluating, there came up with two potential sites for us to do this on. One is the 20 Bartlett. which is the southern corner, and then the northern corner, which is the former high school site. We felt that it would be a best use of our resources and the highest and best use of this project to go with a site that was publicly owned because we do want the public space to stay in public ownership, and then to try to partner with the city of Highland Park to bring the funding that we have secured and any additional funding to build this trailhead access there at the corner in Woodward. So our team went out, they worked with the city of Detroit, they met with Carlton and team to talk about the space and some conditions, and they did some due diligence in the background, looked at some EGLE documents that deals with the contamination And the remediation on the segment of the parcel that we're looking at, which really kind of just covers that smaller section at the front where the turnaround is and evaluated that and saw that the remediation on that site had already been done. And through this project, we wouldn't need to do any additional remediation. The purpose of this is how do we provide safe access for people to get to the Greenway on the east side of Woodward? How do we provide dedicated parking for the public to be able to come a walking path up to the Greenway and then also some beautiful, beautiful public space right off Woodward in the city of Highland Park? So what we're looking at right now in the renderings, and I did just get updated renderings this afternoon that I'll also share with this body. But what we are looking at is anywhere from 40-ish parking spaces, some walking path, lots of greenery, plantings, maybe a pavilion as we are able to continue to fundraise for. But we're trying to do the project in the money that we have, which is about 1.3. We've also applied for some congressionally directed dollars that would go towards this project. And we also have some other philanthropy that looks like we may be getting some additional resources to go through with this project. So I'll stop there and see if there are any questions. Okay. Yes, no problem.

So during the site preparation, what part of the Greenway is actually the historical designations?

It's not a historical designation.

It's listed on here. I'm asking the question. So there aren't any?

No. And then just kind of to answer your remediation question, as far as the rest of the site, I am working with MCA on getting some state funds to come in and help to locate and see if there's anything hot in the back part of it.

Okay, so is that going to be the end of yours?

No, I mean, we'll come back to another workshop, but with the renderings and take more questions so we can get to some type of understanding on it.

So we're just really concentrating on the Highland Park section and not trying to worry about the section on Oakland between Great Lakes Aggregate and Rider.

Where are we starting? From what we're almost to where the first turnaround is. Right now, they got the fence just that front part.

Okay. Right there. And then how they got it come hit it from off the ground on what works right there.

Yeah, they'll come in.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you got the stairs and then you also have the driving way in where there'll be some parking spots, like you say, some, some paths to get to the greenway, some green space, that kind of thing to beautify it.

Do you have any questions? Well, I'm the only one here, but if you have any questions, I can write them down and answer them later. Are you okay?

No, I don't have any questions and definitely would come back at any given time.

Thank you so much. Appreciate you. So I guess that's it. That's all you got. Thank you. Okay. It is 636, Madam Clerk. This workshop is adjourned.

Very interesting.

Very interesting. Hmm.

How about this?

Session here.

Session here. Are you doing that? Can you give me a call? You need the same one.