New home construction slows to craw

The “rust belt” � the industry-driven upper Midwest, ravaged by recession � cinched area housing development tight in the early 1980s.

“For all practical purposes, the housing industry in Genesee County was shut down during the 1980s, particularly during the first half of the decade,” said Barry Simon, president of the Builders Association of Metropolitan Flint.

“What many people don’t believe or realize is that for the Flint area, the recession that began in 1979 wasn’t a recession � it was an out-and-out depression. Our housing industry literally fell from 2,200 new single-family starts in 1978, to 222 in 1982.”

According to Builders Association figures, 1980 sales of new homes had dropped from late 1970s levels by 63 percent. Those sales figures hit bottom in 1982, at an 86 percent drop.

But glimmering amid the rust, in the shape of southern and southwestern Genesee County, was a “golden triangle” � one that brightened through the course of the decade.

This prime economic area was comprised of the cities of Fenton

and Grand Blanc, and the townships of Flint, Fenton, Grand Blanc and Mundy.

A 1987 economic development study financed by the Mott Foundation dubbed the area Blinton � derived by combining letters from each of the cities and townships’ names.

At the heart of the Blinton study was a proposal to create a common body that could work toward controlled, well-planned growth in all the municipalities involved, meeting the needs of each without creating a hodgepodge scattering of industrial, commercial and retail development.

As such, Blinton would establish an overall marketing program, create financial incentives to attract development, apply for joint federal grants and establish uniform zoning districts throughout the region.

The economics experts loved it.

Community officials hated it � or, at least, couldn’t agree on a way to make it work.

“A multi-municipality plan is a good idea and it should help bring order to zoning throughout the area,” said Ted Goupil, then the Fenton Township clerk, in a 1989 interview.

“But the problem I see is the provincial attitude of government and these artificial boundaries we have between us. That’s what we have to break down. It’s going to take an awful lot of cooperation, and quite frankly, I’m not very optimistic that’s going to take place.”

The Blinton Regional Development Plan, finalized in March 1989, was dead almost on arrival.

But while Blinton as a concept died, the region it encompassed did far more than merely survive.

“From 1985 on, anything that was happening in Genesee County was happening in that area,” said Simon.

In Flint Township, the commercial growth that began in the 1970s continued, with $135.9 million in commercial construction from 1980 to 1989. Stone Bridge on Linden Road in 1983, Somerset Town Centre on Miller Road in 1985 and Sam’s Warehouse Club on Corunna Road in 1989 were just a few of the commercial developments that helped solidly establish the Genesee Valley area as Genesee County’s new “downtown.”

Burton’s “mall wars,” begun in the late 1970s, raged hot and heavy in the early ’80s but ended up going nowhere.

The City Council and planning commission got as far as approving initial plans for a 100-store mall at Davison and Belsay roads,

called the Regency Square Mall. Plans showed four anchor stores; at the time, Genesee Valley had three.

But before the competing plans of three prospective developers were sorted out, the deepening economic recession drowned the mall-building talk. The rival groups dropped their plans in September 1981.

Ground was broken on only two new single-family subdivisions in the entire county � Lin-Hill in Mundy Township and Chateaux du Lac in Fenton.

While there were expansions to some existing subdivisions in the decade, the location and demographics of the only two new ones were strong indications of what was soon to come.

It is probably no coincidence that Del Pratt’s Lin-Hill subdivision was located just down the road from a new Meijer Thrifty Acres, which opened its doors in August 1981 on W. Hill Road just off U.S. 23.

The new business corridor really came into its own in 1988 with Mansour Development’s Gateway Corporate Centre on Hill Road at U.S. 23, and Eldon Auker’s Grande Pointe at I-475.

By year’s end, Mundy Township officials estimated that $5-million worth of commercial development was under way along the three-mile stretch in between.

1985’s Chateaux du Lac, a luxury development on Silver Lake in Fenton Township, was perhaps even more significant as a herald of coming trends.

At a time when the real estate market was virtually at a standstill, Chateaux du Lac offered maintenance-free living in palatial lakefront homes, with price tags starting at $400,000.

It was the birth of the lakefront luxury condo, and the start of the new goldrush into southern Genesee County: upper income professionals seeking upscale suburban and lakefront living, and commuters fleeing the congestion and high prices of Oakland and northern Wayne counties.

By the second half of the decade, 48.4 percent of all single family homes were built in the southern third of the county.

“After that, growth in Genesee County was never the same again,” said Simon.

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Starting point for the 20th Century series. Includes an overview of all of the decades.