No matter what the issue during his first year as Detroit mayor, Mike Duggan generally refrains from sharp language and criticism -- especially when suburbs and suburban leaders were involved.
Duggan's tone changed abruptly Friday night when he drove (himself) to the corner of Kercheval Avenue and Alter Road -- the border between Detroit and Grosse Pointe Park -- and slammed Park leaders for what he called their lying about removing the farmers sheds from the middle of the street.
Officials had the sheds installed this past summer. They called the move an enhancement to the burgeoning commercial and entertainment district on the Grosse Pointe side, but the structures blocked access to and from Detroit, and critics saw them as a racially charged blockade.
"I'm tired of the lying and tired of the dishonesty of the Grosse Pointe Park leadership," Duggan told Fox 2's Ron Savage. "They promised the sheds would be gone at the end of November, they promised yesterday that they would be gone today. I think at this point, we're going to have to look at moving to the next step.
"It's obvious we can't trust the Grosse Pointe Park leaders - they don't mean what they say."
Grosse Pointe Park City Council voted to move one of the sheds off of Kercheval from the farmers market.
Duggan says Grosse Pointe Park is not fulfilling their end of the bargain."This street has been open for nearly 100 years," Duggan said. "And to have someone through sheds in the middle of a commercial thoroughfare is ridiculous."
The mayor of Grosse Pointe Park is Palmer Heenan, 92, a Princeton-trained lawyer who was first elected in 1983. Running the day-to-day operations is longtime City Manager Dale Krajniak.
The explanation from Park officials that the sheds were meant as an enhancement only was greeted with skepticism by Detroiters – and many Park residents – who noted that, over the years, the Park had blocked nearly a quarter of its residential streets that connect with Detroit as the neighborhoods on the city side were becoming majority African American.
Yet in recent years the border between Detroit and Grosse Pointe Park has been growing less forbidding. African Americans are gradually reshaping the Park, where 10.5 percent of the population is black, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. The Park was only 3.5 percent black in 2000.
Previously on Deadline Detroit:
The long, fraught history of the Grosse Pointe-Detroit Border
