HAMTRAMCK, MI – It would be hard to find another small city as diverse and fascinating, as hip, celebrated and misunderstood as Hamtramck, the symbol of Polish America … and also a town where, today there are far more Yemeni Muslims.
There are also more Bangladeshis and African-Americans. But it also has become a magnet for young artists and writers of all colors who love its diversity, funky shops and galleries and housing that’s suddenly much more affordable than the booming areas of Detroit.
Hamtramck, after years of slow decline, has been experiencing a mini-population boom, with perhaps as many as 25,000 people crowded into the barely two square miles of this tiny enclave city, almost entirely surrounded by Detroit.
But though it is popular, it is still largely poor. The housing stock was mainly built almost a century ago, on tiny lots.
The city has bounced in and out of emergency management over the past two decades. It’s been on its own again for a year, struggling but solvent — and now facing a big new threat: General Motors’ planned closing of the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant, known locally as “D-Ham” or the Poletown plant.
The unexpected closing was announced in November; the first wave of jobs disappeared last month. The plant, about one-third of which is in Hamtramck, did get a partial reprieve, and some workers will remain on the job till early next year.
But if D-Ham closes completely, it will cost Hamtramck an estimated $850,000 a year in tax revenue alone, plus more when jobs that serviced the workers disappear.
That’s according to Kathy Angerer, Hamtramck’s city manager the last couple years: “The thing about Hamtramck is that for many, many years, it has been at a tipping point,” she said.
“Does it finally take that big step on that path to prosperity – or take a step backwards?” said Ms. Angerer.
Permanent closing of the Poletown plant would be a big step backwards. But GM has been coy about what it is going to do. Some think the plant’s future could be a bargaining chip in this fall’s contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers union.
The automaker has not definitely said it will close forever, or indicate what might become of the property afterwards. “There are all these unanswered questions,” the city manager said.
“Do they leave it just as it is to decay? Do they do something else with it? They’ve been making record profits.
“What I’m trying to say to them is, if you leave, you have to leave us with a purpose, a way forward,” she said. Ms. Angerer comes from a GM family; her father worked for more than 37 years at a Cadillac plant in Detroit, which also abruptly closed decades ago.
Nor is she naïve about politics; she represented her native Monroe County in the state legislature from 2005 till term limits forced her to leave in 2011. There’s a unique political dynamic here, too. There’s nothing new about auto plants shutting down, but if the Poletown plant permanently closes, it will feel like a betrayal.
Back in 1980, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young announced he would use eminent domain to uproot and displace 4,000 residents, a thousand homes and many businesses from the area where the plant now stands. There was a bitter legal fight, which ended in 1981 when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in favor of the city. (Ironically, in 2004 the court indicated that case had been wrongly decided.)
Now, many feel that General Motors is betraying the promises it made to both Detroit and Hamtramck, not to mention the nation, which spent billions to save GM a decade ago.
Building the Poletown plant also probably helped speed the decline of Hamtramck’s Polish population. Still, Hamtramck is where the TV cameras and the crowds still come to get their jelly donuts on “Paczki Day” just before Lent, and some signs are still in Polish.
Today, those of Polish ancestry are probably only about eight percent of the population, according to Greg Kowalski, the director and driving force behind the Hamtramck Historical Museum.
Mr. Kowalski, a retired newspaper editor, has lived his entire 68 years in “Hamtown,” and has written nine books on the city. But he will tell you that the Bosnian heritage is just as valid as the Polish.
“We celebrate our diversity,” he said, indicating a series of new murals in his museum, with panels celebrating every major ethnic group from Native Americans to Albanians and Germans.
Though he still has a job as a communications specialist in Bloomfield Township, he sees building the museum, in a former barber college on Joseph Campau, as his life’s work. “We celebrate the good and the bad,” he said.
The museum, still very much a work in progress, has exhibits on celebrities who hail from Hamtramck, as well as the often entertaining gangsters and hoodlums from the anything-goes Prohibition era. “We never run out of fascinating history,” he said.
Meanwhile, others are working to raise funds to save and restore Hamtramck Stadium, home of the Detroit Stars of the Negro National League, back when baseball was segregated.
The local Hatch Art group is painstakingly restoring the huge, fantastical outdoor folk art installation “Hamtramck Disneyland” which has drawn tourists for decades.
“Hamtramck endures,” said Mr. Kowalski. He intends to spend the rest of his life making sure the city’s residents celebrate their diversity and learn about and don’t forget the past.
Hamtown’s heritage is in good hands. Now, all it needs is the key to a more prosperous present.
