Dearborn City Hall was built in 1922.

For 90 years, the corner of Michigan and Schaefer has been the home of Dearborn City Hall.

Now, it appears that could change.

The Dearborn Press & Guide on Sunday reported that a proposal to combine administrative offices for the city and Dearborn Public Schools is getting serious consideration.

Call us nostalgic, but Dearborn’s City Hall building needs to remain the hub of Dearborn. The building may need repair but it is simply too important of a symbol to this city to simply leave it to others (like an art community) or, worse yet, raze.

Dearborn City Hall was built in 1922. According to Press & Guide editor J. Patrick Pepper, the parking garage behind City Hall is “falling apart and could require a complete rebuild within the next couple years. An addition put on in 1981 that connects the main City Hall building on Schaefer Road to the western annex also is in need of a new roof liner.”

Dearborn Public Schools administration is currently is housed in the 1950-vintage Ten Eyck facility on Audette. The Press & Guide reports that the former school building has “several structural issues that need to be remedied. For one, the roof leaks in some places and needs to be replaced. Even more pressing is a settling foundation on the backside of the building that has started to cause significant cracking in the cinder block walls.”

“Those are very major expenses that will need to be address so if there are opportunities to save money we’re definitely interested in exploring our options,” DPS Spokesman David Mustonen told the Press & Guide.

So where would Dearborn City Hall and the Dearborn School District relocate?

Top on the list is the old ADP Detroit sales headquarters on Michigan Avenue. Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr., told the Press & Guide that the property is about to revert to bank ownership and that within the next few weeks it should be on the market at a bargain-basement price.

The building is located across the street from Ford Motor Co. world headquarters and sitting adjacent to a nearly half-mile-long campus of other municipal properties, the move would consolidate all of the city’s biggest entities into one central location, the Press & Guide says.

The idea of combining administrative offices has been on the table for several years and was one of the considerations in 2003 when the city spent $2.3 million to purchase the 5.9-acre parcel between the ADP building and Henry Ford Centennial Library, the paper says. Part of the purchase agreement with Ford Land Development Co. was that the property, which is a grassy field, had to be turned into an office space within 15 years.

The Press & Guide says Dearborn could have a potential buyer for City Hall in the developer ArtSpace, which is looking to establish a live/work facility for artists in Dearborn. The mayor recently gave the Minneapolis-based nonprofit a tour of City Hall. With its big windows and tall ceilings, the Georgian-Revival style building fits a lot of criteria ArtSpace looks for in a redevelopment project.

“The timing of this is extremely good when you look at all the factors from the efficiencies too possible savings,” O’Reilly told the Press & Guide. “But we’ll do a thorough evaluation of it and if it works we’ll pursue it and if it doesn’t we won’t.”

Judge Mark Somers

The Dearborn Press & Guide is reporting that 19th District Court Judge Mark Somers has pulled petitions to run for Wayne County’s Third Circuit Court.

Somers, who has served as one of Dearborn’s three district court judges since 2002, told the paper that he reached the decision over the holidays after speaking with his family.

“With three judges retiring, I don’t know that there will be another opportunity like this in my life,” the paper quotes Somers.

Somers must collect 4,200 signatures by May 1 to appear on the November ballot. He said he plans to start collecting signatures immediately.

The city of Dearborn was awarded a $7.5 million low-interest loan from the State of Michigan to continue the massive federally-mandated combined sewer overflow work that has been going on in our city for more than a decade.

This particular loan will go toward the sewer-separation project south of Wilson Street, east of Telegraph Road and north of the Rouge River, City Engineer Yunus Patel tells DeepsaidWhat. Construction is set to get underway in February. If all goes well, construction of this phase of the CSO product would wrap up in October.

Costs for this part of the project are expected to total about $12 million. These costs and interest on the loan, a 2.5 percent rate, will be paid down through the special CSO millage instituted in 2004. Any other project costs will be paid “using various funding sources”, the Dearborn Press & Guide quotes Dearborn finance officials as saying.

The CSO project is aimed at putting an end to the discharge of untreated sewage into the Rouge River. The cleanup is mandated by the federal Clean Water Act.

Those of you who have been following this project will recall that our elected Dearborn officials first chose to address the problem by approving spending on constructing multi-million gallon containment shafts able to store any excess drain water. But the implementation and construction has been a quagmire of engineering problems, followed by lawsuits.

So in 2010, Dearborn officials decided to abandon the containment shaft and go to sewer separation, which was one of the original ideas proposed nearly a decade ago but rejected for reasons we simply can’t recall. While a little more intrusive to vehicle traffic, separation is less expensive and results in new paved surfaces once the work is completed.

The Press and Guide says that according to the DEQ, from January through November 2011, Dearborn’s CSO Outfall 004, which services the area that will see work beginning in February, there were 27 reported overflow events, which released 45.7 million gallons of untreated combined sewage into the Rouge River. Prior to Dearborn beginning their CSO control program, the total average annual volume of overflows per year was approximately 929 million gallons.

Starting in January, Dearborn City Council meetings will move to Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. in the City Council Chambers at City Hall, 13615 Michigan Ave.

Previously, council meetings were on Mondays at 7 p.m. It isn’t clear way the change in time and day were made but it should prove to be more convenient for residents.

There will be a few exceptions next year and some meetings will be held on Monday, including Feb. 27 because of the Presidential Primary Election on Tuesday, Feb. 28. The council will meet on Monday again on Aug. 6 because of the Aug. 7 election.

The following is a listing of the City Council Meetings for 2012:

January 10, January 24, February 7, February 27 (Monday), March 6, March 27 April 24, May 8, May 29 and June 12.

Meetings will continue July 24, August 6 (Monday), September 11, September 25, October 9, October 30, November 13, December 4 and December 18.

The Committee of the Whole meetings have also changed to 7:30 p.m., but will remain on Thursdays. This also is a more convenient time for residents who work during the day and may want to try and sit in on these sessions. The meetings, during which the council sets the agenda for the Tuesday meetings, will remain in the City Council Chambers at City Hall.

The following is a listing of the 2012 Committee of the Whole meetings:

January 5, January 19, February 2, February 16, March 1, March 22, April 19, May 3 May 24, and June 7.

They will continue July 19, August 2, September 6, September 20, October 4, October 25. November 8, November 29 and December 13.

For more information contact the City Council office at 313-943-2025.

A ground-level rendering of Dearborn's new train station. Construction is set to being in spring 2012.

The city of Troy turned down $8.5 million in federal grant money for a new train station but Dearborn continues to move forward with its plans for one, recently receiving a free grant for help to make its station more environmentally friendly.

Dearborn is one of just eight communities in America that will receive free neighborhood design consultation in 2012 from Global Green USA with the help of a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program.

The grant winners were announced last week.

The grant focuses attention on the new intermodal train station to be built in west Dearborn, and the surrounding neighborhoods that will be part of a transit oriented development (TOD) plan.

The grant pays for sustainability experts to make recommendations to the City of Dearborn on how to integrate environmentally-friendly and energy efficient concepts into the TOD.

The new train station itself will be built according to national recognized Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver standards.

Over the next six months, four sustainability experts will conduct three-day visits to Dearborn and the other seven communities. A specific timeframe has not yet been set.

As for the city of Troy, Mayor Janice Daniels can say “there is nothing free about government money” but you can’t help but wonder if there is something more behind her stand against taking the federal dollars. Remember, this is the same Mayor Daniels who posted a message to her Facebook page last June, after New York State approved same-sex marriage, stating, “I think I am going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there.”

Construction for the new train station in Dearborn is expected to start in the spring of 2012.

The train station, to be built on Michigan Avenue west of Southfield Freeway, will be the center of a TOD District that includes a historic neighborhood, business districts and Fairlane Town Center, the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Henry Ford Community College, The Henry Ford: America’s Greatest History Attraction, major thoroughfares and Ford Motor Company headquarters and facilities.

Other criteria for the grant included the presence of a strong neighborhood organization, the involvement of community leaders, the demonstration that the project contributes to a larger plan, and the ability to leverage federal, state or philanthropic funds.

“The City of Dearborn is excited and ready to work closely with Global Green USA through this program,” said Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr. “This is a timely opportunity for us to leverage the latest planning tools and concepts of LEED-Neighborhood Development for improving physical design and policies to develop strategies for our ultimate goal of a sustainable future.”

Walker Wells, director of Global Green USA’s Green Urbanism Program, said, “Cities are responsible for up to 70 percent of global warming pollution, but they can also be the laboratories for climate-friendly solutions that save money, improve health and quality of life. For nearly two decades, Global Green has been helping cities create sustainable plans for the future. We are excited to be able to bring our expertise to these eight deserving communities.”

The other communities are Lafayette, Indiana; Eden Prairie, Minnesota; Greensboro, North Carolina; Lakewood, Colorado; Oakland, California; Louisville, Kentucky; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Judge Mark Somers

In case you missed it, the jury verdict against 19th District Chief Judge Mark Somers was upheld by a U.S. District judge, which means the Dearborn judge is now looking at a total bill of roughly $1.2 million when interest and attorney fees are factored in to the original award.

Judge Somers had filed a motion to set aside the $732,361 jury verdict against him but U.S. District Judge David Lawson denied the appeal last week. This long-running case pitted 19th District Deputy Court Administrator Julie Pucci against Somers, her former boss.

Somers told the Dearborn Press & Guide that while he is “disappointed” with the recent outcome, he isn’t ready to concede defeat.

“I am understandably disappointed in the outcome of the motions,” Somers told the Press & Guide. “I believe that they were meritorious and I have already requested that the Attorney General’s Office initiate the appeals process.”

The state Attorney General’s Office, per Michigan law, provides legal defense for judges who are sued for something they do as part of their job.

It isn’t clear who will ultimately write the check for the roughly $1.2 million for this case.

Somers says Dearborn will be responsible. City attorneys have said the city is not responsible for the payment.

U.S. District Judge Lawson said the matter of who will end up paying will likely have to be settled in court.

“The more likely scenario is that Dearborn’s obligation to pay the judgment will have to be litigated,” Lawson wrote. “In the meantime, the judgment will remain against the defendant in his individual capacity, and he has not demonstrated that his ‘ability to pay the judgment is so plain that the cost of the bond would be a waste of money.’”

And to think this case could have been settled for less than $40,000, roughly the amount of Julie Pucci’s salary.

Dearborn residents should be aware that the curbside trash and recycling pickup schedules will be delayed one day for the weeks of Dec. 26-30 and Jan. 2-6.

Republic Services’ decision to delay trash pickup by one day was made after the City of Dearborn published information indicating otherwise.

The one-day delay throughout both weeks is due to the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays. Trash will be picked up on a Tuesday-Saturday schedule those weeks.

For example, homes with Monday trash pickups will have their trash picked up on Tuesday; homes with Tuesday trash pickups will have their rubbish picked up on Wednesday, and so on.

Residents may call Republic Services at 1-800-878-4626. Offices will be closed Dec. 26 and Jan. 2.

Beginning in January, Dearborn residents may no longer be allowed to have their car block the sidewalk while in the driveway during snow emergencies.

A new city ordinance will prohibit residents from parking in their driveway over the sidewalk during snow emergencies.

This change in the city ordinance regarding snow emergency rules is likely to be approved in January by the City Council. If approved, residents will no longer be able to park vehicles across the sidewalk during a snow emergency.

Dearborn officials say this practice is being eliminated because it is in conflict with the American with Disabilities Act. A car parked across a sidewalk may block a person with a disability from traveling safely.

Dearborn officials say by moving parked vehicles off of the street whenever three inches or more of snow is predicted to fall allows snow plows to clear curb-to-curb instead of working around parked vehicles.

If Dearborn declares a snow emergency, residents must remove parked vehicles from the street or you could be ticketed and your vehicles could be towed.

Police do not issue warnings during snow emergencies.

Generally, you may move vehicles back on the street once the street has been plowed curb to curb and no further heavy snowfall is expected.

Driveway aprons do become snow covered during snowplowing operations. Dearborn officials ask that residents not pile snow back into the cleared street and avoid throwing snow onto your neighbor’s property without permission.

You can check if a snow emergency has been declared via any of the following methods:

• Snow emergency hotline at 943-2444.

• www.cityofdearborn.org

• CDTV, which is cable channel 10 on WOW and cable channel 12 on Comcast.

• TV news programs and news radio stations.

• You may also hear the City’s emergency warning sirens go off.

• Twitter.com messages via the “cityofdearborn” account.

• Text or email messages sent to your phone or email from the public safety information system known as Nixle. Sign up for alerts at Nixle.com.

Service is Thursday-Saturday nights under 90-day pilot; special promotions tonight at bars, restaurants

After weeks of discussions and planning, Dearborn’s west downtown district will begin to offer free valet beginning Thursday for customers of participating businesses.

We’ve written several stories HERE about this plan and City Council approved it at Monday’s meeting.

The free service will be 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.

West Dearborn bars and restaurants will also offer special drink or appetizer deals on Dec. 15 (tonight) in conjunction with this new promotion, with proceeds donated to the Dearborn Goodfellows.

Two valet parking drop off points in public parking areas south of Michigan Avenue on West Village Drive between Monroe and Military will give customers easy access to restaurants, bars and shops in the district.

Two more drop off points are planned for north of Michigan Avenue between Monroe and Mason in the future.

With the support of the City of Dearborn and the West Dearborn Downtown Development Authority (WDDDA), the participating business owners have joined together to offer this free service to attract customers to the district, especially in the winter.

Patrons of other businesses in the district will pay $5 to use the valet service.

The complementary valet service is a 90-day pilot program initially lasting until mid-March. Its success will be evaluated at that time.

The participating businesses will pay the City of Dearborn’s parking system $40 a month for each space reserved for valet. That fee is in line with the system’s monthly parking permits.

At least 100 spots will be reserved, and more are possible based on the popularity of the service.

By offering free parking and free valet service, the west Dearborn businesses will encourage customers who may otherwise be reluctant to pay for parking, or who don’t want to trudge through snow during an evening out.

Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr. said the new service benefits all participants. “The parking system is still collecting fees for the spots used by the valet service, businesses are showing their appreciation for their customers and generating more traffic, and customers have the added convenience and value of free parking and valet service.

“We know there are great restaurants and bars in west Dearborn,” he said, “and we invite anyone who hasn’t been there lately, or who hasn’t wanted to pay for parking, to come back and experience a terrific meal or a memorable night out.”

Other parking is available in the business district for $.50, $.75 or $1 an hour, depending on the spot selected.

For more information, visit West Dearborn Downtown Development Authority on Facebook, visit www.dearbornwestonline.com or follow WestDearbornDDA on Twitter.

PARTICIPATING BUSINESSES VALIDATING FOR FREE VALET PARKING

as of Dec. 14, 2011

• Ciao’s

• Crave

• Don Yeyo Cigar Factory

• Double Olive

• Habuki

• iBurger

• Le Cigar Emporium

• Moose Martini Bar

• The Post Bar

• The Well

Giuliano's before . . .

Fakhoury says ‘will remove all buildings as soon as I can.’

One of three dilapidated buildings in the west Dearborn downtown district has finally come down but the city-imposed deadline to remove the other two buildings by week’s end will not be met.

Back in September, Dearborn City Council passed a resolution that by Dec. 16 (this Friday) the former Giuliano’s restaurant, Brother’s Tuxedo and Bally’s Vic Tanny would all be razed.

The buildings, all located between Mason and Military on Michigan Avenue, needed to be removed as the properties were part of a large-scale redevelopment proposed in 2005 by Dearborn developer Hakim Fakhoury.

As part of the agreement with the city and a way to save demolition costs, the foundations for each of the buildings could remain until the property was ready to be developed. So the Giuliano’s restaurant (only half of the building has been standing for several years now) was removed but the foundation remains.

. . . and after.

It isn’t clear what will happen next but Fakhoury’s request to city council for an extension to remove the buildings was denied.

Fakhoury tells Deepsaidwhat that he agreement that was signed only “contemplated” dates in which to remove the buildings.

“No one knows how much work it is to raze these buildings and the effort it entails,” Fakhoury said. “These date are arbitrary dates and should not be used as an excuse to inflict more financial damage to me more than I have already bared. I am moving at my financial pace and will remove all buildings as soon as I can. If the city seeks to use this as a reason to try to destroy me than I would of course I would have to protect myself by filing an action against them. We are living in very tough times and I am like many am only trying to survive them.

“I still feel very strongly that the request by the city to remove the buildings is not going to make downtown west Dearborn more appealing,” Fakhoury continued. “The intent has been to find a J/V partner who would invest in DVP (Dearborn Village Partners) and move the project forward which of course would include in removing the buildings at his expense not mine. I have spent much time and money to secure the tax credit that would be used to redevelop much of west Dearborn. These credits have become extinct and will be very valuable when the economy changes. DVP will have the ability through a financially strong J/V partner to amend the brownfield plan to even incorporate more west Dearborn buildings. I hope the city takes all this into account before they try to destroy me again and DVP.”

The tax credit Fakhoury mentions is on a state brownfield tax credit valued at $9.1 million and state and local tax capture worth $46 million. Regular readers of Deepsaidwhat.com will recall the story we wrote when the state of Michigan in December 2007 made a press announcement about the large-scale development planned in downtown. Here is what the state had to say:

Dearborn Village Partners– A state brownfield tax credit valued at $9.1 million and state and local tax capture worth $46 million will support a multi-phased mixed-use development across 12 sites along Michigan Ave. between Howard and Military streets in Dearborn. The project will completely renovate one city block in the city’s downtown and involve the construction of mixed-use retail and housing, including two 10-story mid-rise condos and a tri-level 881-space parking deck. The project is expected to generate $125 million in capital investment and create 350 new jobs.The West Dearborn Downtown Development Authority is assisting the project with $42.5 million in tax capture for public infrastructure activities.

Clearly, in this economy that development is simply a bridge too far. Dearborn city officials must now decide whether to remove the buildings on the city’s dime and then put a lien on each of the properties for the costs, which would be repaid if and when the property was developed, or let the buildings rot the downtown.

While taking action to remove the buildings would likely be a source of contention among some residents, it would go a long way to improving the look of the downtown. No one can deny that the removal of the Quality Inn at the corner of Michigan and Brady has done wonders to improve the look of that corner. Doing the same along Michigan Avenue to Fakhoury’s two buildings would have the same visual impact.

Having a clean canvas of land can go a long way to helping other potential developers dream about what could be built on each of these parcels of land.