Blighted county complex major draw for vandals
By Randy Coble
Have you ever driven through some of the worse sections of Detroit- you know, the kind that look like Beirut onan off day- thanking your lucky stars all the while that we don't have to live with anything remotely like that in Northville?
Guess again.
Yes, our upscale town has its own little slice of almost undreamed-of blight, a graffiti-covered wasteland that in a spot or two has the kind of bombed-out, burned-out look that you might associate with a war zone. Squint and it could be Sarajevo.
Sitting square in the south central section of Northville Township - a virtual stone's throw from subdivisions - is a chunk of land that going to be getting alot of attention in the coming months. It's the 900-odd acres that sit between Five and Six mile and Beck and Hines Drive, almost all of it owned by Wayne County.
Much of it has been abandoned for decades and in the interim decay, vandals and even gangs have taken root. Tonight however, will see the first steps toward turningthings around as the township board of trustees considers the county's new development plan for it's property.
Many say this is the best proposalin many years and could be the one that unlike those in th epast actually moves from the drawing board to reality. (see related story).
The reality there now is something to behold, a playground for kids from all over southeast Michigan who pass the time through everything fromvandalism to drinking and drug use to gang activity. There have even been rumors of drug deals and Satan worship taking place on the site.
"Most people in Northville have no idea that something like this is here." police Detective Fred Yankee said this week as he and Sergeant John Werth took The Northville Record on a tour of the buildings of the abandoned county Child Development Center.
"The word is out there, from Ann Arbor to Grosse Pointe,"Werth said. "We got kids coming here looking for a place to party and sometimes worse. There are a million places to hide, miles of underground tunnels."
Northville's been lucky that, relatively speaking, nothing too serious has happened on the county land yet, police say, but that that could could change.
"Were very fortunate that no one has been seriously hurt here yet but I really think our time's running out." Yankee said.
Even what goes on there now is intollerable, officials add. Township police visited the site 338 times last year, almost once a day. Those visits have turned up such things as alcohol, drugs, a machette and, last fall, a group of Ypsilanti youths triggering homemade pipebombs.
"We just don't have the manpower to patrol that entire area every moment of the day." township Director of Public Safety Chip Snyder said. "and that means that a lot can happen. Besides that, theres the fact that responding to incidents there takes up resources and manpower hours. That means an officer can't be doing other things for the citizens."
A walk through the property makes you wonder just what has gone on there when police aren't around. Weeds flourish, trash abounds. Beeer can cases lie near remnants of fireworks. Dirt and dust and mud pile up like slag in the blackened, hollowed-out hulks of once beautiful buildings.
Blackened beams attest to the fires that have been set inside them. Holes in the walls and ripped out wiring that wafts in the breeze coming through smashed out windows prove that a lot of vandls have been hard at work in them.
Inside and out the buildings are covered in grafiti, some of it crude, some downright artistic. Some of it innocent: "Jason loves Katherine. 1986" Some of it is actually funny, like" no diving" spray-painted on the side of an empty, garbage and rubble-filled indoor pool. "Today is casual dress day" Is scrawled on the concrete floor in green paint in another room. Some of it, however is not so funny -racial insults, swastikas, marijuana leaves, anti-Christian and pro-Satanic slogans litter many of the walls, floors and ceillings. Especially worrisome is the presence of the graffiti of organized, recognized street gangs - a lot of it. While there are (not?) any gangs operating within the boarders of Northville itself, police say many of th emembers of the hundreds of gangs located in metro Detroit have paid the county property visits since the late 1980's. They've left behind their marks, a kind of steet-hood hieroglyphics, telling of everything from drug deals and fights to murders. "This isn't kids having fun or all just a bunch of copycatting. Some of this is clearly gang graffiti." Werth said.
