By Michael Betzold
Monday is Earth Day. On Belle Isle, this year Earth Day is being celebrated Motor City style — by turning over the most accessible part of our most precious natural public space to a billionaire's organization to start setting up his private racetrack.
Ugly barriers, fencing, and corporate ads will begin to scar the landscape — with access for park users impeded more and more as spring progresses.
Grand Prix race on Belle Isle (Photo: DepositPhotos)
Last year at this time, state parks chief Ron Olson was insisting he knew nothing about any proposal for a new contract for the Grand Prix. After spurning requests for an environmental impact study of the race and setting aside surveys that showed a strong majority of regular park users opposed the event, Olson and the DNR eventually approved a new three-to-five-year race permit. The new deal allowed the public one extra week free of corporate occupation — but that week, or more, may soon be given back.
This year, Olson is again professing ignorance, insisting at a recent meeting of the Belle Isle Park Advisory Committee that he hasn’t heard anything from his corporate partners about the Auto Show wanting to piggyback on the Grand Prix by holding events on Belle Isle, starting next June. I guess he doesn’t have access to the Internet.
The park last year had a record number of visitors, and the island had to be closed in mid-afternoon on Memorial Day, a third of it strangled by the Grand Prix set-up. This spring looks even more impossible.
Picnic shelter rentals have long been booked, weddings are as common as geese, and the world-renowned Piet Oudolf is going to start planning his garden in May — even though no one bothered to tell him his plot is smack dab inside a turn on the Grand Prix racetrack.
The DNR has newly designated five “event spaces” on the island to handle a slew of runs, walks and other activities, and a trailhead is being constructed for the UP-to-Detroit “Iron Belle Trail.” Adding to the mess are many infrastructure programs — including massive digs for new DTE service and road blockages for river-to-lagoon connection projects. Yet there is no plan for handling the influx of new visitors, certainly not during the Grand Prix spring takeover.
Since taking over the park (over the objections of City Council) in 2013, as part of the state’s “bankruptcy rescue,” the state has poured millions into Belle Isle and done much to make users feel safe there — including instituting a user fee, closing the island each night at 10 p.m., and having state police ticket speeding drivers. By most measures, the makeover has been a massive success (albeit with some not-so-covert racism — some race supporters spout variations of the narrative that “it used to be a shithole until Roger Penske saved it!”). But is there a limit to the island’s carrying capacity, particularly during Grand Prix season?
Belle Isle is at a crossroads — how to prioritize public versus corporate uses? It’s such a beautiful spot that everyone wants a piece of it, including Penske and his pals. But it’s hard to see how the Oudolf Garden can coexist with the Grand Prix — his gardens are internationally famous and much bigger year-round tourist attractions than dying motor sports.
The new race contract runs through 2021, with a two-year extension queued up for DNR rubber-stamping. And waiting for their piece of the action: the car dealers, who put on the Detroit auto show. Belle Isle Conservancy chief Michele Hodges, a reliable voice for corporate agendas, swooned at a BIPAC meeting over her vision: the Auto Show restaging classic car commercials in the park. Hardly what those of us who regularly use the park have been longing for.
Thre writer is a former Free Press reporter, and a contributor to Deadline Detroit. He is a member of the Belle Isle Concern.
