hotfudgedetroit.com

Ansel Rakestraw wrote:Is that netting on the Metropolitan to catch falling debris?

Toolbox wrote:

Ansel Rakestraw wrote:Is that netting on the Metropolitan to catch falling debris?

It's to keep the interpretive urban storytellers form throwing shit out the windows.

What was that guy screaming the day he tossed all the shit out of the building????

Ansel Rakestraw wrote:

Toolbox wrote:

Ansel Rakestraw wrote:Is that netting on the Metropolitan to catch falling debris?

It's to keep the interpretive urban storytellers form throwing shit out the windows.

What was that guy screaming the day he tossed all the shit out of the building????

Something about being the Mayor. My favorite part is that he just walked out cool and calm as can be, thinking he would blend in. Almost made it too until citizens yelled.

Also, I got a parking ticket because they yellow taped off the block and then cited the cars that were parked in a crime scene.

Wayne County is working on a deal with the state to bail itself out of its wildly over-budget new jail project and instead take over and renovate a state prison in Detroit.

The jail construction on the northeast side of downtown is already well under way, with parts of five floors built and five new cells being completed every day. The county has spent well over $100 million to this point.

But cost overruns threaten to add $65 million to $100 million to the approved price tag of $200 million, and Wayne County doesn't have that money. The county has asked its architects for a new design that would reduce capacity to 2,000 beds from 2,192 to shave costs.

"They're in way over their heads," a high-ranking source in the Snyder administration told me Sunday. Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano declined to comment.

So the state is offering up its abandoned Mound Road prison in northeast Detroit, where the city of Detroit is also building a new detention center for prisoners.

The hope is that Mound Road could be renovated and built out for an amount that would allow the county to stay within the $200 million bond issue it sold to fund a new jail. The county commission authorized up to $300 million in bonds for the project, but the state has no confidence that the county, with a $125 million budget deficit, can repay that much.

The state offered Wayne County a similar deal two years ago, before construction of the new jail began. At that time, all the state wanted was $1.5 million to pay off the outstanding debt on the Mound Road prison. But Ficano turned it down and went ahead with building the downtown facility.

Detroit-based Walbridge Aldinger Co. is project manager of the jail construction, along with DCK Worldwide of Pittsburgh.

When I called John Rakolta Jr., head of Walbridge, last night, he said he couldn't talk because the contract he signed with Wayne County forbids him from talking with the media about the jail, a provision I've never heard of before in a taxpayer-funded project.

A second Snyder administration source said the Mound Road takeover hinges on finding an alternative use for the partially built jail. Talks are under way with Greektown Casino's new owner, Dan Gilbert. The casino doesn't necessarily need the land, but isn't crazy about having the jail as a neighbor. If the property were to go to Greektown, the county would have to remove what's been built so far. Any such deal also would likely include the old jail, which is adjacent to the property and would be torn down.

The jail project has been a fiasco for Ficano. The money shortage has already forced him to push back the opening beyond the original September 2014 date.

And even if it is completed, the jail may not be large enough to fulfill its mission of replacing the three existing Wayne County lockups. The total number of inmates in custody today exceeds the revised 2,000 capacity of the new jail.

It's an embarrassment for scandal-plagued Ficano, who is heading into next year's re-election campaign with the likelihood of facing, for the first time, a legitimate challenger in Westland Mayor William Wild.

Had he agreed to take over Mound Road when he first had the chance, county taxpayers would be $100 million to the better. Now he has to explain to them why he thought spending twice as much on a new facility was a smart decision.

And county taxpayers would be spared spending up to another $100 million on a new jail that's rapidly becoming a white elephant.



From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2013 ... z2V90G0rfY