The winding down of 2024 brought another effort to distribute state taxpayer money on yet another Detroit-specific building project. This one involves the famed Renaissance Center and its owner, General Motors, as well as Bedrock, a real estate firm owned by local business executive Dan Gilbert. But the state should not offer a dime of taxpayer support. Subsidies such as this one are expensive, unfair and ineffective.

The plan would involve a $250 million subsidy to help demolish two of the RenCen’s seven towers and repurpose others. The subsidy would come from state taxpayers, according to published reports. They propose to demolish two towers.

This would not be the first time either partner has asked for and received fiscal favors from the state. In 2016 Gilbert-owned Rock Ventures successfully pushed legislation to subsidize developers. The legislation, known as a “Transformational Brownfield Plan,” was adopted and used to underwrite the construction of “Hudson’s Detroit,” a project at the site of the former J.L. Hudson’s department store that is nearly finished.

General Motors is also a long-time subsidy recipient The value of a single deal the company snagged in 2009 came to $3.8 billion. GM was the first corporation in 2022 to receive money from the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve, a state subsidy program created the year before. The direct subsidies authorized through SOAR came to $666.1 million, but GM received tax abatements as well. Its deal was done in partnership with Ultium to build a battery cell plant. The plant was in the news recently when GM announced it had sold off its stake to LG Energy Solutions.

Lawmakers are not completely convinced that a subsidy should be offered. The $250 million suggested by GM and Bedrock received a cold shoulder when it was announced. In response, GM suggested that it would at its own expense tear down five Renaissance Center buildings instead of two. The corporation has since offered to make donations to Detroit-area nonprofits from potential future profits tied to the demolition.

The Renaissance Center was built in the late 1970s with the promise that it would anchor a revival in Detroit. It cost $350 million ($1.8 billion in today’s money) and was sold to General Motors in 1996 for just $76 million. That fact alone should tell the reader that the project failed as an economic revitalization tool. To its backers’ credit, the Renaissance Center was built entirely with private funds.

Other flashy projects were later built in Detroit and were also hailed as launching a new comeback, rebirth or renaissance for the Motor City. Many of them came with direct state subsidies or other fiscal favors. Comerica Park, Little Ceasar’s Arena, the Detroit Pistons practice center and offices, and the light rail QLine have all received subsidies of some sort. Fox Theatre and Compuware’s downtown headquarters were likewise viewed as pivot points in the city’s turnaround or rebirth.

What has the state — if not Detroit — gotten for its decades of these and other subsidies?

A development façade.

As with a movie set, the front may look real — even pretty — but a walk through the door reveals that little or nothing is there.

In 1980 the city’s population stood at 1.2 million, but by 2020 it had plummeted to 639,000. This is not evidence of a renaissance. It is evidence that people voted with their feet, and they did not vote for Detroit.

That’s just one measure of the city’s health. In a 2017 article in the journal “Cities,” four university scholars contrasted the perceptions of Detroit’s purported rebirth with reality, as measured by variables such as business recovery, unemployment, population, poverty and crime. They conclude that their data “cast doubt on the prospects for a sustainable recovery in the city, even in the downtown core” and that the “real progress that has occurred in recent years in the Downtown/Midtown core has been insufficient to offset continued citywide negative trends.”

Detroit does not need another state subsidy. It needs governmental bodies to stick to their knitting. Provide high-quality public services at a reasonable cost. Growth and development will take care of itself.

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