The Detroit Free Press walks through a door that Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr opened recently by suggesting DIA treasures could be up for grabs by creditors in a municipal bankruptcy.
Riding a slippery slope on the first Sunday of June seems like fun to Mark Stryker and John Gallagher, who hang price estimates on other high-value city property.
If everything is indeed on the table when it comes to turning Detroit’s assets into dollars, then the possibilities are nearly endless. . . .
A healthy, breeding female giraffe from the Detroit Zoo could fetch $80,000 on the open market. Detroit’s half of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel was valued a few years ago at $65 million. A prototype of the 1963 Ford XD Cobra owned by the Detroit Historical Museum carries an estimated price of $1 million.
The acknowledge that the grim situation is "surreal and tragic," not playful.
The morass is deadly serious yet full of “Alice in Wonderland” perversity. . . .How does a citizenry cope with no-win scenarios pitting one indispensable gem against another?
If Detroit seeks federal bankruptcy court protection as part of a sweeping financial restructuring, the writers note, "pretty much all of the city’s assets will be up for scrutiny."
Beyond the DIA, water department and Belle Isle, other possibilities include key waterfront real estate sites such as Joe Louis Arena or Hart Plaza and other civic land such as Campus Martius Park downtown. The Detroit Historical Museum has a collection of about 60 classic cars worth millions, according to experts consulted by the Free Press. And while selling zoo animals isn’t necessarily practical, the zoo does sit on 125 acres of prime Oakland County real estate.
Orr hasn’t said yet that he plans to go down the road of selling off such treasures. But fixing the city’s finances is beyond daunting. Detroit owes as much as $17 billion, a lot of it in the form of unfunded pension fund liabilities and health benefits for city workers and retirees. The city is mired in annual deficits and cannot hope to pay what it owes without radical financial surgery, either in or out of bankruptcy court.
In a companion feature, the Free Press asks readers: "Which Detroit assets would you save?" Thumbnail photos show 14 choices that can be dragged to a voting column in priority order.
As of noon, the top five "don't sell" assets are the DIA, zoo, Belle Isle, Detroit Public Library and Eastern Market, in that order -- though the results graphic doesn't show how many readers voted. Least popular: Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport.
-- Alan Stamm
