The once-flourishing Michigan community built America’s muscle cars like the Trans Am. Some say it’s on the verge of a comeback, but the road is long.
PONTIAC, Mich. — As night fell over the city, teenagers traversed the scratchy overgrown weeds, past a red plywood “Danger, Keep Out” sign, and hoisted one another through a broken window and inside the once elegant but now vacant Elmer R. Webster Elementary school.They set up their own ragged basketball hoop, then pushed old lunchroom benches into a circle to relax.
After years of struggling, Pontiac may finally be on the way to a rebound. As Detroit’s downtown real estate prices rose, Pontiac attracted big companies looking for cheap space, local officials say. In 2018, United Wholesale Shore, a mortgage company, opened a 150-acre campus with a Starbucks, hair salon, and gyms for its 6,000 employees.
Far larger than Pontiac, Detroit has also long loomed like an older brother over the city. While Detroit had Motown and Eminem, Pontiac’s GM’s factory built the flashy muscle cars that appeared in films like “Smokey and the Bandit.” The city brags that the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, a symbol of her defiance against racism, was made there.
But now, there is reason to hope, said Jones, pointing to large tented vegetable gardens planted by residents and a local nonprofit. He picks up work watering and weeding the garden.While Pontiac continues to struggle with a high crime rate, lack of jobs and safe and affordable housing — problems that also are still a reality in large swaths of Detroit — local officials say the stars have finally aligned in Pontiac and they are closer than ever to turning once aspirational ideas into reality.
One high-profile effort to revive its prospects turned into an embarrassing boondoggle. In 2009, investors opened a movie studio in the abandoned General Motors plant with the help of government tax credits.The studio produced a few small films, including “Oz the Great and Powerful,” which began shooting in July 2011, but not the hundreds of jobs local officials were hoping for.
Connolly said he hopes to open a full-time “Pontiac Transportation” museum this year to re-instill “pride in the city for the school kids. They get excited about cars and can say, ‘Look what my city did.’ ”The museum could bring in thousands of visitors a year, he said, pointing to the crowds that showed up to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the two-seater Pontiac Fiero this year.
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