In most older neighborhoods, the main eyesores are rundown abandoned houses and overgrown vacant lots.
The area east of Saginaw High School is different. The major rough spot is the sprawling, abandoned Saginaw County Fairgrounds and horse track property.
Then head up East Genesee less than a half mile, and the old GM Chevy Transmission Plant constitutes another cavernous wasteland.
In most older neighborhoods, the blight villains are privately owned. But in southeast Saginaw, public entities hold the deeds.
In fairness, the Saginaw Housing Commission’s massive fairgrounds headache was created by previous leadership two decades ago.
Also in fairness, the Saginaw County Treasurer’s Office has possessed the abandoned auto-plant ownership for less than a half-year, after a mandated foreclosure last March. The property will be offered for sale at a public tax auction on Sept. 2, says Treasurer Tim Novak. The minimum bid at the auction will be $362,500, with an additional $30,600 owed for the summer taxes at that time. If the property fails to sell at the auction, it will revert to the County Land Bank Authority before the end of the year.
Homeowner Teresa Stitt represented the Fairgrounds Neighborhood Association at the City Council’s August 23rd meeting, and she said regardless of the background stories, residents finally want something done.
“We have 120 to 130 acres of (combined) badlands in the middle of our community,” said Stitt, who explained her opinion that the strife has led to the lack of amenities such as a grocery store, a bank or a community center.
She brings her own expertise as a retired Delta College academic dean for community development.
Stitt thanked city SCENIC staff for taking action to clean up 17 residential abandoned houses and lots, in cooperation with a youth summer jobs crew from First Ward Community Center, from a list compiled by the Fairgrounds Neighbors’ 20 members.
But she asked for more respect for citizens close to Saginaw High, and also across East Genesee from the fairgrounds.
Specifically, she requested for city leaders to draft a “rescue plan,” with a share of the city’s oncoming $52 million in federal covid anti-poverty aid, to clean up and restore the fairgrounds and auto plant properties, possibly for affordable housing or for any other valid purpose. This is the first clear-cut major proposal in the four months since the funding was unveiled last spring.
Long-time fairgrounds story
In the case of the fairgrounds, the Saginaw County Agricultural Society moved the county fair all the way out to Chesaning after 2001, citing sharp declines in attendance. Resentments, and accusations of racism, arose among some city dwellers.
The Housing Commission, acting upon the emotion of that time, immediately moved to buy the fairgrounds for $500,000. Members acted n defiance of HUD funding rules set in the Detroit regional office, with a stated goal of neighborhood development that would earn profit from the purchase price. The result was a HUD sanction, for this and other violations, that newer leaders through the years have struggled to address.
Lesley Foxx became director in 2012, a decade following the HUD penalties. She explains:
- The Saginaw Housing Commission still owes HUD for the sanctioned purchase, $535,903 to be exact, with an agreement to continue attempts to sell the property to repay the debt.
- Public housing day-to-day programs and services, in the meantime, are not negatively affected.
- Federal funds are designated for those programs, not for maintenance of property which the former local commission should not have purchased in the first place, 19 years ago. However, the Housing Commission has found methods to maintain and mow around the exterior, in order to decrease trespassing, vandalism and crime.
“The Saginaw Housing Commission would love to see the property developed,” Foxx says. “However, the Saginaw Housing Commission may only sell the property as defined by the repayment agreement. (HUD has) an interest in the property, and we are not allowed to do anything without approval.”
Stitt says an appeal to Congressman Dan Kildee for intervention may become the Fairgrounds Association’s next step.
“As residents, we look at the Housing Commission and HUD as one,” she said. “They need to figure out a way to internally collaborate on this. We are the ones who are suffering.”
Newer Delco developments
At the Saginaw Manufacturing site, in 1999 GM Motor Transmission switched the ownership moniker to Delphi Automotive Systems LLC. There was another no-cost switchover in 2009 from Delphi to JRG Saginaw LLC, which then sold in 2018 for $3.35 million to Allied Properties LLC, listed as a New York City real estate management firm, which changed its name to Allied Properties Saginaw but still faced the March 31 land bank foreclosure for failure to pay property taxes.
Treasurer Novak, who also manages the Land Bank Authority, says the 60-acre property is an industrial complex with a large office building still standing. The current taxable value is $482,900. This property is unsanitary and poses a potential health hazard. The last time a property tax payment was made was 2018, prior to the recent owners who never made a property tax payment.
“As for the neighbors, I would say that if the property isn’t purchased at the tax auction, the Land Bank will do what it can to keep the property secure,” Novak says. “More importantly, we will work with Saginaw Future to see if there are potential suitors for this property for development.
“In the past, for larger properties like this we have been able to secure grants that have helped to clean up the property which we would look for with this piece if it indeed doesn’t sell at the Land Bank.”
Teresa Stitt described the record-setting anti-poverty aid, in the name of covid but not totally linked, as a “gift from the hands of God.” She added, “We don’t want it said that Saginaw received a $52 million dollar gift, and they didn’t feed the hungry, didn’t shelter the homeless, didn’t give alms to the poor.”
Baker-Perkins finally to go
Covid-aid shares from D.C. (with surprisingly scant media coverage, except for your Michigan Banner) also will include $65 million for city schools, $37 million for county government and millions more for the suburbs and outlying small towns.
The City Council’s first on-record expenditure will be $197,700 for a long-awaited completed demo of the former Baker-Perkins site at 1010 Hess, a couple miles toward the river from the fairgrounds.
Novak says, “The Land Bank has partnered with the City of Saginaw to clean up this horrible eyesore over the past eight years. We have used EPA funds and other grants, along with Land Bank funds.”
“There was an out-of-town developer that bought the property in 2011 and tore the steel out to scrap it and left a horrible eyesore of half demolished buildings and piles of rubble,” Novak explains. “Three years later the property was again foreclosed due to non-payment of property taxes in 2014. The Land Bank has sold pieces of the site to a neighboring business to help them secure their property in exchange for promise of future development. The Land Bank also transferred part to the City of Saginaw, which owns a cemetery adjacent to the property. “
Buena Vista-based Rhode Brothers Excavating received the contract bid, an initial example of how the urban aid funds will promote job creation and preservation in the wake of the pandemic’s economic harm.
This property consists of various parcels that were purchased in 2011 from the County Treasurer at a public tax auction.
