News

It has been a busy summer.
The owner of the Hamtramck medical waste incinerator has agreed not to do business in the State of Michigan any longer, and his company has been sold to Stericycle Inc. It is not clear at this time whether Stericycle will seek permission to use the Hamtramck property for processing medical waste. This news comes after an announcement from the City of Detroit that they will no longer send trash to the incinerator on St Aubin.
Recycling continues in the city parking lot at Caniff and McDougall. The next scheduled days are August 30 and September 27. Dumpsters are now provided by Capitol Waste Management because the city can not afford the $150 per month expenditure.
GM Poletown and the Volt have been in the newspapers a lot lately. Articles said that GM would build Volts for Europe at the Hamtramck facility, and then GM began looking at a plant in Britain. The decision is said to hinge on tax breaks.
Workers at GM Poletown and American Axle are taking buyouts.
I’ve been meaning to buy one of these guidebooks by Design 99. The Joseph Campau location is closing today, but Design 99 will reopen “around the corner” some time in October.
Trowbridge House of Coffee brings the “‘wow factor’ through the roof” to Joseph Campau; Locals are non-plussed.
Hamtramck ice cream trucks were documented in the Metro Times, followed by a tour of the author’s Hamtramck apartment.
Record Graveyard will soon share space with Flavor, Titus Walters’ new restaurant.
A deficit of $34 million at the county may cause closure of the Dickerson Detention Facility and the release of 18,000 inmates.
The decline of the housing market continues.
The new head of sales and marketing at Ford is Ken Czuby, a Hamtramck native.
A Detroit visitor on an unguided visit to Hamtramck thinks the city is in decline.
A poem by Jack White contains a Hamtramck reference.
The city council went against an opinion of the State Attorney General and the Michigan Zoning Enabling Act by addressing the Zoning Board of Appeals and requesting that they reconsider a variance.
A few homemade pop bottle bombs made with household chemicals and tin foil have been found on the North end of the city. If you find one, you should call the Hamtramck police or fire department. Moving a chemical bomb can cause it to explode.
The US Census Bureau estimates that Hamtramck lost 1.8% of it’s population last year, leaving the city with 21,122 residents.
After 74 years, The Citizen finally has a website.
A visitor to Srodek’s on Joseph Campau chats with Aurelia, one of the bravest business people in Hamtramck.
It looks like we missed the “demo gig” for a “professional pillow fight team”.
Misty Farmer of Hamtramck was found not guilty of charges that she killed another another woman on Belle Isle; her friend, Alicia Yellow Fox-Hall, initially plead to a lesser charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm, but withdrew her plea when the recommended sentence was more than she expected.

6 thoughts on “News

  1. Tax breaks have never sealed a deal when the two locations were so incredibly distant and different from each other. Efficiencies attributed to the location intended for production will far outweigh any tax breaks. Tax breaks only play a real role when you’re talking about setting shop in Livonia/Plymouth, or Flint/Detroit. GM knows where production is going to be based. This is just a ploy to squeeze some extra money out of the deal.

    Can hardly blame them though as they’ve mismanaged away billions of dollars.

  2. …so how do we get toyota to michigan? We’ve got a workforce all ready for them.

  3. If I could, I would take the burden of health care from employers and create a single-payer system for anyone who lives in Michigan. It would be good for the housing market, good for both large and small business, and would create jobs in the medical field.

  4. The Citizen did briefly try to have a website in 1938, but the five buildings full of vacuum tubes which comprised their webserver burnt down.

    all i can remember about it is that the pop-up ads were pretty entertaining (I think max fleischer did them), although they unfortunately each took about 18 hours to load.

  5. Yes, and it was a real shame when the punch cards were thrown away during the recent move.