Vacations

I'm figuring on travelling to Detroit and Cleveland this summer to take in ball games.  I know, why would somebody plan vacations to two of America's fastest dying cities.  I guess I just don't like crowds.  I figure I can go on the River Rouge factory tour while in Detroit, and maybe visit the Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland.  Does anybody else have any recommendations for things to do in these fine Midwestern metropolii?  Here's a Cleveland tourism video.

Company Remining Iron Ore Tailings Moves Ahead

A couple of years ago, I saw this article about a company processing the waste tailings piles in the Minnesota Iron Range to capture more iron ore:

Gazing across the craggy canyon that is the Hull-Rust-Mahoning mine in Minnesota's legendary Iron Range, it's hard to believe that our planet's most abundant element - iron - is mostly locked away in the earth's core. For here iron-bearing rock has shouldered its way to the surface in heroic quantities, and men and machines have carved out the world's largest iron-ore pit. And as it has for over a century, Range iron still forges the steel sinews of the American economy. But more than a century of mining has left Iron Country scraped and scarred, a landscape dominated by vast quarries and basins of stony waste from processed ore - tailings, which sprawl across the land like a mighty river delta. Now largely covered by scrub vegetation, these tailings are the remains of a struggle to wrest a living from the earth that began with the great Iron Rush of the 1880s. Fortune hunters from far afield flocked to the rich hematite mines of the Vermilion and Mesabi ranges, which were soon minting millionaires so fast that by 1910 regional capital Duluth was reckoned to have more than any other city in the world.
Two world wars brought boom times as the Range answered the call for iron and steel to arm the nation. And there were busts too, notably during the Depression, when output crashed from 47 million metric tons in 1929 to just 2 million metric tons in 1932. And all the time those tailings kept accumulating - a buildup that will continue until the ore runs out. Then the Range will fall silent, closing a long chapter of American history.
Or maybe not. Just west along Route 169 from the Hull-Rust-Mahoning mine, near the town of Keewatin (pop. 1,164), a vast domed structure dominates a tailings basin left by the defunct Mesabi Chief mine. The dome can't be seen from the highway, and few Rangers (and even fewer mining corporations) know it's there. Inside sits equipment that could prove to be as significant to the region as the 1950s-era discovery of a way to extract iron from low-grade taconite rock. The earlier technique arrived in the nick of time for the Range, for its hematite - known locally as "natural" ore - was almost depleted. Similarly, the dome at Keewatin is home to a revolutionary process, dubbed "magnetation," that can extract valuable iron from the tailings - just when the Range is in need of new sources of ore.

I was curious what happened to them, since I hadn't heard anything since.  So after a search, I came across this:

According to Magnetation, the patent-pending Rev 3™ Separator technology allows mining operators to recover a marketable, high-grade iron ore concentrate from low-grade hematite iron deposits, including material left behind from prior mining and mineral processing operations.
The recovered product can be sold to a variety of iron-making industry customers.
As part of the agreement, Cargill has the exclusive, worldwide right to jointly develop and apply the technology with Magnetation, and the right to market the recovered iron concentrate to its international iron ore customers.
Cargill’s financial involvement will help enable Magnetation to boost its production of recovered iron in Minnesota from 150,000 to 450,000 tons per year.
Magnetation points to the promising commercial aspects of the technology internationally, as well as to the environmental benefits in transforming iron tailings basins into functioning ecological wetlands.
“This pioneering technology generates, in essence, a new source for high-grade iron concentrate from existing resources,” said Larry Lehtinen, Magnetation chief executive officer. “Cargill’s support of this iron recovery technology demonstrates the real commercial value it presents to the iron industry worldwide, as well as the promise it holds in terms of its positive environmental footprint.”
“We are pleased to contribute to the advancement of what we see as next-generation technology in iron recovery,” said Bob Mann, vice president of Cargill Ferrous International. “This agreement capitalizes on Magnetation’s iron recovery expertise and Cargill’s international commodity merchandising and asset development capabilities.”

 So apparently, things are going forward with that technology.  That there appears to be one of those billion dollar ideas.

Milwaukee and the Braves

From the SI archive in 1998, after the Brewers switched to the National League, a look back at the Braves run in the city:

Playing in the second smallest city in the majors (pop. 725,000), they became the first National League team to draw two million fans in a season. They did it annually from '54 to '57 and came up just 29,000 short in '58. And while the Braves relied on the rest of Wisconsin, as well as Iowa, Minnesota and northern Illinois, to accomplish that, there should be no doubt as to where the wellspring of love for them lay. Back then you could walk into the best restaurants in Milwaukee—Karl Ratzsch's, Alioto's, Ray Jackson's—and always find the Braves game on the radio. In the city's multitudinous taverns there were never cries of dismay when Earl Gillespie, the voice of the Braves, reported that a fan had leaped onto County Stadium's diamond; the drinkers simply started betting on how many bases he would touch before the grounds crew hauled him down.
If you ask why the drinkers weren't at the game themselves, it was probably because they couldn't get tickets. Most of the time their best shot was to hop on a tavern's chartered bus and follow the Braves to Wrigley Field, where in those days there were always plenty of empty seats. Selig paid his most memorable visit to Chicago in 1954 when the Cubs were honoring their lumbering slugger, Hank Sauer, who concluded the festivities by dropping a fly ball to give Milwaukee the win. "The Cubs had printed up these signs that said THANKS, HANK," Selig says, "and all the Braves fans started waving them."
Nobody who took those bus trips south ever got shortchanged, but Ruthie Patzke was starting to think she might be an exception when her group dragged her to a restaurant to listen to a Milwaukee Journal sportswriter. What, Ruthie wondered, could be so interesting about some joker who'd just seen the same Braves-Cubs game they had? When the sportswriter started talking, though, Ruthie noticed that his blue suit complemented his hazel eyes. So she took the trouble to learn his name—Bob Wolf—and then she wangled an introduction, and before you knew it she and a girlfriend were at a cozy little bar having a drink with him. No night of lust followed for Bob and Ruthie; this was 1953, and they were delighted just to see each other at Wrigley the next afternoon. Thirteen months later, just before the start of the World Series, Bob and Ruthie said "I do" to a marriage that is still going strong.
The love affair between Milwaukee and the Braves looked as if it would be equally enduring. No suitor courted Elizabeth Taylor, always a league leader in marriages, as ardently as this city did its baseball heroes. It wasn't just the good-time guys such as Mathews, Bob Buhl and Lew Burdette who never had to pay for a meal and always got a free car to drive. It was all the Braves. And the bounty didn't end with T-bones and Dodges, which were no small consideration during an era in which the minimum player's salary was $7,500, and raises for journeymen were measured in pennies. The players got free gas from Wisco, free dry cleaning from Spic 'n' Span, free beer from every brewery in town. "Soap powder and produce were just about the only things that weren't delivered to our door," Burdette says. It turned out to be too good to last.
There is no single explanation why. Bad news simply begot more bad news. In the early '60s Braves management barred fans from bringing their own beer into County Stadium, hardly a valentine to a populace historically as thrifty as it is thirsty. And then the first wave of crowd pleasers started getting old and getting traded. Suddenly attendance couldn't climb above 775,000, even though the Braves continued to make every season a winning one. When the first notes of Atlanta's siren song drifted through the air, the team's owners started checking flight schedules.

My favorite part of the whole article is where it says the Braves management banned the fans from bringing in their own beer in the early '60's.  So from 1953 until the early '60's, fans could carry their own beer in the game.  No wonder they got great crowds.  There is no doubt in my mind that Milwaukee is by far the most fun city in the country.  If you want any kind of festival during the summer, they have it.  If you need an excuse to drink a beer, thy've got it.  It is also extremely friendly, and has some great cheese and sausage to go along with that beer.  If you get the chance, spend a little time there.

Does Cutting State Taxes and Expenditures Increase Growth?

Richard Florida looks at a new economic study:

A new study by Tulane's James Alm and Janet Rogers of Nevada's Department of Budget and Planning (h/t Ryan Avent, whose deadpan tweet noted that it was likely to spark a "lively discussion") takes a close look at the effects of tax and spending policies at the state level.  Entitled  "Do State Fiscal Policies Affect State Economic Growth?", it examines  50 years of data  (from 1947 to 1997),  tracking  the effects of state tax policies, spending policies, and political orientation on economic growth. Looking at the different policy approaches and strategies that have been pursued at the level of states and cities and comparing their results provides a useful lens through which to examine pressing national issues. Alm's and Rogers' main findings are certainly interesting; "lively" is quite likely an understatement for the sort of debate their findings should inspire.
There are two major take-aways. First, a "state's fiscal policies have a measurable relationship with per capita income growth, although not always in the expected direction." Tax impacts, they report, are "quite variable"; "expenditure impacts are more consistent."
Second, they find "moderately strong evidence" that a "state's political orientation, as indicated by whether the governor is Republican or Democrat, whether the state has enacted tax and expenditure limitation legislation, and whether the state frequently elects a governor of the same party as the incumbent, have consistent, measurable, and significant effects on economic growth."  And then they drop their bombshell: "Having a Republican governor," they conclude, "is associated with lower rates of growth." They qualify their conclusions slightly--but only slightly--noting that past measurement errors may have introduced some distortions into the record.
Taken together, these findings seem to support the spending orientation favored by liberals and pose a rather stark challenge to Republican governors who are embracing austerity.

In the current political environment, any data may run into a chicken or egg problem.  Midwestern states which have lost large numbers of manufacturing jobs have been losing young people for years.  Their populations are aging, and have fairly low college graduation rates, their economies are struggling.  It might be more of an issue of demographics leading to Republicans getting elected, in which economic growth is already stagnated.  Then when the Republicans start pushing through their gay marriage bans and abortion restrictions, they drive away even more young people.  It is an interesting concept, though. 

Grain Belt Brewery in Minneapolis May Become Housing

Grain Belt Brewery

MPR:

Minneapolis city officials are asking developers to propose a reuse for a portion of the historic Grain Belt Brewery complex in northeast Minneapolis. The city says it will sell two parcels of the site, including the Grain Belt office building, "as is." Minneapolis City Council Member Diane Hofstede, whose ward includes the area, said neighbors appear to favor housing on the site.
"We've just added one of our most recent parks along 13th Avenue along the riverfront so this parcel will be along a riverfront park," Hofstede said.
The Grain Belt brewery closed in the 1970s, and the property deteriorated. In 1989, the city of Minneapolis stepped in to save it from demolition.

Grain Belt is now brewed by the August Schell Brewing Company in New Ulm, MN (more German brewers).  Histories of Grain Belt Beer here and here.  I had a couple of Grain Belts at the Twins game last year.  Not too shabby, but it was a damn hot day.

Grain Belt Beer sign on Nicollet Island in Minneapolis

Under the City of Cleveland

Salt mines:

The Subtracted Cities

Deborah Popper, via Mark Thoma and Richard Green:

Detroit stands as the ultimate expression of industrial depopulation. The Motor City offers traffic-free streets, burned-out skyscrapers, open-prairie neighborhoods, nesting pheasants, an ornate-trashed former railroad station, vast closed factories, and signs urging "Fists, Not Guns." A third of its 139 square miles lie vacant. In the 2010 census it lost a national-record-setting quarter of the people it had at the millennium: a huge dip not just to its people, but to anxious potential private- and public-sector investors.
Is Detroit an epic outlier, a spectacular aberration or is it a fractured finger pointing at a horrific future for other large shrinking cities? Cleveland lost 17 percent of its population in the census, Birmingham 13 percent, Buffalo 11 percent, and the special case of post-Katrina New Orleans 29 percent. The losses in such places and smaller ones like Braddock, Penn.; Cairo, Ill.; or Flint, Mich., go well beyond population. In every recent decade, houses, businesses, jobs, schools, entire neighborhoods -- and hope -- keep getting removed.
The subtractions have occurred without plan, intention or control of any sort and so pose daunting challenges. In contrast, population growth or stability is much more manageable and politically palatable. Subtraction is haphazard, volatile, unexpected, risky. No American city plan, zoning law or environmental regulation anticipates it. In principle, a city can buy a deserted house, store or factory and return it to use. Yet which use? If the city cannot find or decide on one, how long should the property stay idle before the city razes it? How prevalent must abandonment become before it demands systematic neighborhood or citywide solutions instead of lot-by-lot ones?
Subtracted cities can rely on no standard approaches. Such places have struggled for at least two generations, since the peak of the postwar consumer boom. Thousands of neighborhoods in hundreds of cities have lost their grip on the American dream. As a nation, we have little idea how to respond. The frustratingly slow national economic recovery only makes conditions worse by suggesting that they may become permanent.

 Abandoning urban centers and increasing suburban sprawl will look pretty foolish if we hit peak oil.  The sadly beautiful ruins in Detroit are frustrating.

Michigan Central Depot in Detroit.  Photo from Forgotten Detroit.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Ohio County Loses Its Young To Painkillers' Grip, in the NYT.  It takes a look at Scioto County, whose county seat, Portsmouth, lost its steel and shoemaking industries in the '70's and '80's.  From the article:

Nearly 1 in 10 babies born last year in this Appalachian county tested positive for drugs. In January, police caught several junior high school students, including a seventh grader, with painkillers. Stepping Stone House, a residential rehabilitation clinic for women, takes patients as young as 18.
In Ohio, fatal overdoses more than quadrupled in the last decade, and by 2007 had surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death, according to the Department of Health.
The problem is so severe that Gov. John R. Kasich announced $36 million in new spending on it this month, an unusual step in this era of budget austerity. And on Tuesday, the Obama administration announced plans to fight prescription drug addiction nationally, noting that it was now killing more people than crack cocaine in the 1980s and heroin in the 1970s combined.
The pattern playing out here bears an eerie resemblance to some blighted cities of the 1980s: a generation of young people who were raised by their grandparents because their parents were addicts, and now they are addicts themselves.

Kasich has been pushing this issue pretty hard, which seems to be a lot more constructive than many of his other policies.  But then again, the overall drug war has been pretty destructive, so things might not get better here.  It really is a sad deal.  I read a really dark set of short stories called Knockemstiff a couple of years ago, which was generally set near Chillicothe, in Ross County, but dealt with painkiller addiction, amongst other problems and perversions.  It was extremely depressing.  Southeastern Ohio faces a lot of difficult challenges, I hate to see drugs making things worse.  According to the article, now things are getting violent.  Good luck to Governor Kasich and the local lawmakers.

The German Triangle and U.S. Beer History

The German Triangle, between the cities of Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati, was the destination of a large percentage of German immigrants in the middle and late 19th century.  When they came, they brought with them their love for beer, especially lager beer. 

Map of German Population in 1900

 So it is not an accident that two of the three cities would become home to the largest breweries in the United States.  All three have a rich brewing history.  Besides being the home of Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis was also home to William J. Lemp Brewery, which brewed Falstaff.  At one time, there were 40 breweries in St. Louis.  Also, Belleville, Illinois, outside of St. Louis was home to Stag Brewery.

Milwaukee was home to Miller, Schlitz, Pabst and Blatz.  At one time they were four of the largest ten breweries in the world.  Over the years, more than 40 breweries operated in Milwaukee. 

Cincinnati was home to Christian Moerlein, Hudepohl, Red Top, Schoenling, Burger and Wiedemann, among dozens of breweries over the years. In 1860, Cincinnati had 36 breweries.Cincinnati also had a prodigious saloon culture:

Taverns-Bars-Saloons-Beer Gardens-Cafes, call them what you will Cincinnati and beer were synonymous with each other in the 1800's and early 1900's. In 1840 Cincinnati had 8 breweries to satisfy a population of 46,000 people. By 1860 there were 36 breweries for 200,000 people. Beer production in 1870 was 354,000 barrels. Ten years later it rose to 656,000 barrels and in another ten years it had soared to 1,115,000 barrels. This equates to a staggering total of  35,700,000 gallons of beer of which a little less than 1/2 was exported. The rest was consumed locally. The per capita consumption of beer nationally in 1893 was 16 gallons. In Cincinnati an incredible 40 Gallons for every man woman and child was consumed. In 1887 there were an amazing 1,837 saloons for a population of 225,000. In 1890 it dropped to only 1,810 for a population of 297,000. This meant since only adult males used saloons there were, in 1890, ONE SALOON FOR EVERY 37 MEN. In 1890 there were 34 saloons on Court St., 41 on Liberty St., 55 on both Walnut and Main Sts. Central Ave. had 100 saloons, but the all time high was Vine St. with 136. On Fifth St. between Main & Sycamore Sts. (1 block) 20 saloons flourished. A corner location was preferred because it gave the bar the most exposure to potential costumers, and if it were illegally selling beer on Sunday, it was easier to spot the police.
  Carrie Nation arrived in Cincinnati in 1901 with her famous hatchet to wage battle with demon alcohol. Most tavern owners knowing Carrie's propensity for taking her ax to glass windows, ordered new glass ahead of her visit. Carrie was asked later why she had not broken any windows was heard to say: "My goodness, child, if I had undertaken to break all the windows of all the saloons on your Vine Street I would have dropped from exhaustion before I had gone a block". Before leaving the Atlantic Garden, a woman lush laid her head on Carrie's shoulder and cried. She then left promising  the temperance leader she would mend her ways and lead a better life. Ten minutes later Carrie noticed that her earrings were missing. Carrie forgave the woman for lifting them.

Unfortunately, today Anheuser-Busch is merged with InBev. Miller is owned by SAB. Hudepohl, Schoenling, Burger and Christian Moerlein are trying to carve out a regional niche, and Pabst, Schlitz and Blatz are shadows of their former glory in a combined Pabst Brewing Company amongst a large number of formerly well-known brands, including Falstaff and Stag.

Redeveloping Old Factories

Waterfront View of Existing Domino Site     Photo:Charles Curkin

The Atlantic:

Across the Atlantic, in Brooklyn, another monumental project on a former industrial site is also finally moving ahead. The Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg sits on nearly a dozen prime acres facing the East River. It’s long been a sentimental favorite—the 40-foot-high Domino Sugar sign, with its jaunty script, sits like a comic-book dialog balloon over a grim Ashcan School tableau. The sugar factory closed in 2004; shortly afterward, it was acquired by the for-profit arm of a nonprofit seeking to build affordable housing. In 2007, the city landmarked the 1880s-era Romanesque Revival sugar refinery at the heart of the complex, and plans for its redevelopment called for residential towers to flank the old factory, much of which would itself be converted to apartments. Missing from the initial designs? The Domino sign. “It just looks empty, like there is a void,” Dewey Thompson, a member of Brooklyn’s Community Board 1, told a New York newspaper after seeing the designs at a meeting. Back to the drafting table: under revamped plans, a refurbished sign will glow again from atop the remodeled refinery.
The London and New York projects have several things in common. Chief among them: Rafael Viñoly, the Uruguayan-born, Argentinean-raised, New York–based architect famed for soaring steel structures such as the Tokyo International Forum and Seoul’s Samsung Jong-ro Tower. In charge of the master plan in both cases, he is designing new edifices for each site. But something else is worth noting: in both projects, Viñoly and his co-developers are trying to map a route through the hazy and treacherous borderlands that lie between architectural history and public nostalgia.

Ohio has plenty of potential redevelopment sites, just nobody interested in developing them, and no demand for the new buildings.

Schlitz

A little history of Schlitz from wikipedia:

The Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company was an American brewery based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and was once the largest producer of beer in the world. Its namesake beer, Schlitz, was known as "The beer that made Milwaukee famous" and was famously advertised with the slogan "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer". Schlitz first became the world's top beer producer in 1902 and enjoyed that status at several points during the first half of the twentieth century, exchanging the claim with Anheuser-Busch multiple times during the 1950s.
The company was founded by August Krug in 1849 but acquired by Joseph Schlitz in 1858. Schlitz would eventually be bought by Stroh Brewery Company in 1982, and subsequently be sold again along with the rest of Stroh's assets to the Pabst Brewing Company in 1999.

The company flourished through much of the 1900s, starting in 1902 when the production of one million barrels of beer surpassed Pabst's claim as the largest brewery in the world. Schlitz was continuously in competition as one of the top breweries in America for the next 70 years. While prohibition forced the suspension of alcoholic brewing, the company changed its name from Brewing Company to Beverage Company and adapted its slogan to "The drink that made Milwaukee Famous."
Popularity of Schlitz's namesake beer, along with the introduction of value priced Old Milwaukee in 1955, kept the brewery on a strong financial footing. However, changes implemented in the early 1970s led to its eventual fall.
Faced with the need to meet large volume demands while also cutting the cost of production, the brewing process on Schlitz's flagship Schlitz beer was changed in the early 1970s. The primary change involved using high-temperature fermentation instead of the traditional method. Schlitz also experimented with a continuous fermentation process. even designing and building a new Baldwinsville, New York, brewery around the process. The reformulated product resulted in a beer that not only lost much of the bite and taste of the old formula but spoiled more quickly, rapidly losing public appeal.
Schlitz remained the No. 2 brewery in America as late as 1976, but ongoing problems with formula changes continued the downfall. The ultimate blow to the company was a crippling strike at the Milwaukee plant in 1981, which led to serious financial difficulties and acquisition by Stroh Brewery Company of Detroit, Michigan, after a lengthy 1982 legal battle.
What remained of the historic Schlitz Brewery complex in Milwaukee was transformed with Tax Increment Financing and other government support into a mixed-use development called Schlitz Park.

During the reformulating period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the original Schlitz formula was lost and never included in any of the subsequent sales of the company. Through research of documents and interviews with former Schlitz brewmasters and taste-testers, the 1960s formula was reconstructed; the new beer, along with a new television advertising campaign, was officially introduced in 2008.

Schlitz was my beer of choice throughout college, because at $6 a case, I couldn't beat the value.  It was also cool in that time frame when they brought out old style cans in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of WWII, when Schlitz was provided to soldiers, and was also the #1 selling beer in America.  I didn't realize that Schlitz introduced Old Milwaukee.  I thought it was always a Stroh's beer.  I guess it doesn't make sense that a Detroit brewery would start another beer named Old Milwaukee.  Here is a link to a detailed history of Schlitz from 1933-1969.

Steel Making

Detroit Shrinks

From the Free Press:

The shocker from Tuesday's release of 2010 census data: One in every four Detroiters left. With 713,777 people, the city reached its lowest count in 100 years, though officials will contest it. The decade's exodus -- dropping the city from 10th to 18th nationally -- was a larger percentage than during the white flight of the 1970s, when population dropped 20%.

At its peak, about 1 in 3 Michiganders lived in Detroit. Today, it's 1 in 14.

The changes will reduce Detroit's political clout and add to it in Macomb County and western Michigan, which both grew.

Overall, Michigan was the nation's only state to lose people, as about 400,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared, forcing many to flee for work.

Hulett Iron Ore Unloaders

Information on the Hulett Iron Ore Unloaders which showed up in the intro to Major League:

The Huletts were invented in 1898 by George H. Hulett, who was born in Conneaut, Ohio, but grew up in Cleveland. The Huletts were revolutionary at the time, greatly speeding up the process used to unload lake ore carriers. According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: “They could completely unload a ship in 13 hours. Earlier, the same task had taken nearly a week. In their years of service, it is estimated that they unloaded some 100 million tons of material.”

The use of the Huletts spread to other areas around the Great Lakes, with many of them around Lake Erie in the Ports of Cleveland, Conneaut, Ashtabula, Huron, Toledo, and Lorain. The Huletts also played a big part in the development of the iron ore industry – and other related industries – in Ohio. Huletts were not suited for use near ocean waters, due to the rising and falling tides.

The Huletts became increasingly obsolete in the 1980s as the Great Lakes fleets converted to self-unloading ships. Cleveland last used a Hulett in 1992.

Even more here and here.