In Our Opinion

7/23/08

Last week Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed a bill into law that will allow all Downtown Development Authorities to expand their roles.

This is welcome news for Hamtramck.

In a nutshell, the law allows our DDA to channel grant money to businesses so they can fix up their interiors. Before this law came to be, DDAs were restricted to helping fund fix-ups for the outside of business buildings.

A number of businesses on Jos. Campau, which is our city’s sole DDA district, have taken advantage of past grants to improve their exteriors, usually the fronts or facades of the buildings.

Hamtramck has been lucky in recent years in getting special help from the state. With this expanded role for the DDA we now have one more valuable tool to beef up our struggling main business area.

We often note how government can fail communities and individuals. It’s not often that we get to praise state government for doing the right thing.