The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: CG6468 on December 22, 2011, 03:39:41 AM
-
Now That the Factories Are Closed, It’s Tee Time in Benton Harbor, Mich.
Mark Peterson/Redux, for the New York Times
By JONATHAN MAHLER
Published: December 15, 2011
On the northern edge of Benton Harbor, just beyond the grim grid of housing projects, shuttered storefronts, boarded-up homes and junk-laden yards that dominate much of the town, sits an emerald oasis known as Harbor Shores. As the name suggests, Harbor Shores is a resort development. At its heart is a pristine Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course that meanders along a river and creek; through woods and wetlands; and, most striking, across tall, white sand dunes overlooking Lake Michigan.
The golf course was built largely on fallow, polluted land that was once crowded with factories: holes No. 4 and No. 5 were the slag pit for a company that made automobile brakes. Holes No. 14 and 15 were a former Superfund site once occupied by a company that used radium and mercury to manufacture components for fighter planes.
Metaphorically speaking, Harbor Shores is supposed to have a similarly salutary effect on the poor, overwhelmingly black town that surrounds it. No mere resort, it was envisioned by its developers as a “single, signature project to drive economic development and bring social change to Benton Harbor,†in the words of one promotional video.
Not a pot to pee in, but dey gots cups to piss in (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/magazine/benton-harbor.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1)