MACKINAC ISLAND – With the Detroit Auto Dealers threatening to pull the North American International Auto Show from Detroit if Cobo Hall is not expanded soon, Southeast Michigan leaders agreed Friday to ad urgency to their deliberations. But they didn�??t come up with a framework to accomplish the task.

Though the four leaders agreed the facility needs to keep the auto show and needs to be bigger to do that, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and Macomb County Commission Chair William Crouchman said they still had questions that Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano had not yet answered in laying out his most recent plan. And Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said the final structure of the plan has to acknowledge that the city owns, and has financed, the current facility.

In the end, the project will also require legislation, but legislative leaders had agreed on WJR Radio earlier in the day that they would move quickly on whatever was needed to begin the construction. Primarily, that would be extending the lodging tax in the region, which expires in 2015, to finance the project.

One key stumbling block appeared to be the plan to pass the current facility to a new authority to own and operate.

Some elements, such as a proposed 50-year contract for a management company, were quickly addressed Friday. All four agreed that proposal was out.

But others, such as a six-member authority board with three members from Detroit, may be more difficult to overcome.

“Detroiters are not going to give away an asset without having some say,” Kilpatrick said.

Crouchman, on the other hand, argued that his county should have an equal say in the operation of the facility, even though he argued the estimate that 10 percent of the economic impact of the facility going to Macomb County was high.

Patterson said the operation of the facility also needs some review. He noted that the current process allocates space in the auto show based on market share. “They don’t want more space to go to their competitors,” he said of the Big Three automakers.

He also argued that other parties, like the Detroit casinos, should be at the table to help reach an agreement.

Kilpatrick argued that most of the issues Patterson and Crouchman had raised should be easy to address. “The policy discussion is the easiest discussion on Cobo,” he said. “The sticking point is the politics, not the policy.”

LEGISLATIVE LEADERS ON COBO: During a roundtable on WJR Radio, House Speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford Twp.), Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester) and Senate Minority Floor Leader Buzz Thomas (D-Detroit) agreed that keeping the auto show in Detroit is important for the state and the region.

House Minority Leader Craig DeRoche (R-Novi) had been invited to the radio interview, but did not show up.

Dillon said he spoke to officials from the auto dealers and they said the Legislature would have to act on some sort of plan expanding Cobo and keeping the show by the end of the calendar year.

While he said the need to keep the show is critical, Bishop said local community leaders need to figure out what they want to do in order to expand Cobo.

But Thomas urged his colleagues to work on the state legislation and not wait around for local officials to make up their minds.

Bishop said Sen. Nancy Cassis (R-Novi) recently introduced legislation dealing with the Cobo issue and he would review anything sent over by the House.

The most recent public discussion of the House legislation occurred earlier in the year, but since the text-messaging scandal involving the mayor became public, no action has occurred on the bills.

YOUNG PROFESSIONALS: The four leaders also disagreed on a key focus of the policy conference: young professionals. But they were able to quickly agree with the young professionals themselves.

All agreed that the region needed to have both the jobs and the quality of life issues that would attract young people, but disagreed which should come first.

Patterson argued the group already has the answer: “What they want is pretty simple: they want a job,” he said. “If we create an economy where they can get a job, they will stay.”

Kilpatrick agreed that the young professionals, if they had a job they enjoyed, would come to the region and make it the place they want to be.

Ficano said yon people now decide where they want to live and then look for work. So he said the communities have to build the amenities that will attract those workers and the businesses will follow them to where they are.

“The first thing we have to do is ask the young people what they want,” Ficano said.

But Kilpatrick said the first thing that need to happen is a change in attitude. “The reason people don’t want to stay here is it’s oppressive,” he said. “It’s a mad region. That’s been going on for 20 years.”

Members of the Chamber’s young professionals group said what they wanted was to be involved in the planning process, not merely asked what they wanted in the processes others were implementing. All four of the leaders invited members of the group to join their business roundtables to do just that.

This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com

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