Page Four THE'MICHIGAN DAILY SUNDAY MAGAZINEMICHIGAN DAILY SUNDAY MAGAZINE February 6, 1977 February d, 1977 THE MICHIGAN DAILY SUNDAY MAGAZINE ._ f . .. s Y .. j ! Jacobson's dominates the corner of Liberty and Maynard in 1935. The same corner, circa 1977 t Downtown har an while' By MIKE NORTON forging Pho/os by A1 AN BIINSKY First of a Series ON WEST WASHINGTON, a block from Main Street, s t a n d s a large yellowing old building, four stories tall. In better days it was the home of the old Earle Hotel, but now its upper rooms are full of dust and dead pigeons. A fitting metaphor for downtown Ann Arbor, some people might say. A metaphor for the downtowns of America, mouldering quietly away -or dying savagely - while light, life, and money leak out into the surrounding suburbs. But appearances can be decep- tive. In the cavernous stone cellar of the old Earle, a swarm of workers are busy clearing rubble, spreading concrete, laying pipes and conduits under the glare of naked lights. A group of local businessmen, with a loan from local banks, have bought the building and are reno- vating it from cellar to rooftop- takipg care to preserve what they consider the best architectural fea- tures of the original structure. The huge basement will soon be a nightclub called the New Earle. The ground and second floors are to be a closed shopping arcade, and the two top stories will be convert- ed to townhouse apartments. The pigeons will have to go somewhere else to die. SINCE ITS FOUNDING in 1824; the fortunes of Ann Arbor have gone through cycles of rise and fall; and the downtown business district has been the most accurate barometer of those changes. The two large e m p t y storefronts on Main Street, for instance, lead ob- servers to talk of urban blight and the "death of downtown" as if Ann Arbor were a miniature Detroit. But there are important differ- ences between Ann Arbor and other communities of its size; to ignore those differences is to misinterpret much of the situation developing downtown. The most important of these, ob- viously, is the fact that Ann Arbor has since 1837 enjoyed a firm and steady income base-the University community with its hordes of stu- dents, teachers and employes, and the associated 1 i g h t industries which have sprung up around it. As a result, the city has escaped most of the problems of similar communities; the constant pres- sure of new tenants and shoppers has kept down the amount of un- used housing and business space, kept rents and p r o p e r t y values high, and controlled the frequency of urban-style crimes. A 1923 zoning law passed by City Council at the peak of Ann Arbor's postwar business b o o m governed the growth of the city until the early Sixties. In all that time- ~gs onto uncertair city, it spurted a sudden exodus of businesses from the downtown area and caused the failure of many of those that remained behind. And the influence of the huge enclosed shopping center has continued to be felt; it is the major reason for the present concern about the fu- ture of the central business district. 'THIS T I M E, HOWEVER, things are being done. The BriarwoOd crisis has forced Ann Arborites to take a close look at the downtown area, to reassess their ideas about the kind of place it is and the kind downtow ... . . . . ..s e. .:'X. . mas aimag...........................massssmmaamaaage mase x even through the Great Depression -downtown businesses prospered. "To put it simply, there was no place else for people to shop," says 1 o c a 1 historian Wystan Stevens. "Dowtown was all there was." IN 1959, HOWEVER, that situation changed. Arborland, the c i t y' s first shopping c e n t e r, was con- structed on Washtenaw Ave., far out in the southeastern reaches of town, and began drawing business away from the downtown area. The downtown merchants no 10 n g e r had a monopoly on trade. The fir'st crisis was the immedi- ate force behind the restructuring of Main Street which took place in the early Sixties. Trees were plant- ed, promenades were constructed, businesses renovated their store- fronts. Eventually, an- equilibrium was re-established and the crisis passed; even the advent of Maple Village Mall on Stadium Blvd. in 1966 raised few apprehensions. "The businesses slipped into a kind of complacency," said Guy Larcom, former city administrator and head of Ann Arbor Tomorrow, a nglnprofit organization promoting downtown development. "T h e r e was talk, but no one was interested in developing d o w n t o w n until Briarwood came along." Briarwood came a l o n g in the summer of 1973. A massive regional shopping center southwest of the of place it should be. It has spark- ed new interest in such topics as public transit, parking, and the preservation of historic buildings; it has brought out a number of new concepts of city living. Stevens, for one, considers the overall effect of Briarwood to have b e e n positive. "Downtown reeled from the impact of Briarwood," he said. "But it's recovering. It's true that there's a constant turnover of businesses, but it seems to be of a healthy nature." "It cleared out a lot of the dead- wood," agrees Louisa Pieper, staff member of the Ann Arbor Historic District Commission. "We've got live, young people down here now, people who are interested in down- town as a physical entity. Briar- wood,? What is Briarwood? It has no history." But the situation downtown is far from being idyllic, either. Few residents of the area, few officials, and fewer merchants believe the district can survive the decade un- less bold action is taken soon to make downtown Ann Arbor a bet- ter place in which to live, work, and shop. When, it comes down to concrete proposals, however, opinions begin to diverge. CITY OFFICIALS a g r e e, for in- stance, that there is a serious shortage of quality housing in the past, Sfuture downtown area. But as to how that problem is to be overcome, whether it can be dealt with by constructing high-rise apartment buildings ar by using existing structures, there is little unanimity. There is also the matter of the many i m p o s i n g buildings down town which no longer meet fire and safety codes. Are they to be torn down to make way for new buildings, as some have suggested? Or should they be preserved, re- modeled 1 o n g the lines of the Earle Hotel and given a chance for new life? The answer one gets de- pends on the position and persua- sion of the person one asks? In September of 1975, the City Planning Commission adopted a Master Plan for the "conservation and development" of downtown Ann Arbor, w h i c h was approved unanimously by City Council last February. It calls for development of the Liberty StreettCorridor con- necting the State Street shopping area with the central district, a traffic control plan, an improved mass transit system, and a strong commitment to new parking facili- ties on the edge of the downtown area. The plan has already run aground on the question of park- ing; angry citizens have attacked the funding program established to finance the p a r k i n g scheme, forcing at least a temporary halt to its implementation. In addition, resentment seems to be building about the Master Plan's provisions for downtown traffic flow. Oppo- nents of the plan c 1 a i m it will change Ann Arbor beyond recogni- tion; its supporters reply that only such measures can bring new life to the central business district. One way or another, the face of downtown Ann Arbor will have changed substantially by 1980. The new federal building at Liberty and Fourth, the Michigan Square de- velopment at Liberty and Division, the steady come-and-go of small businesses and large buildin;! willn make the downtown area a differ- ent place than it is today. Whether or not it will be a better place, however, remains to be seen. Mike Norton is a Daily Managing editor. ,,Pardi By PAUL EISENSTEIN THEN STEVEN KINNAMAN was drafted in 1965 and sent to Thailand, he was a strong supporter of the burgeoning American involve- ment in the Vietnam War. Today he's in exile. President Carter's p a r d o n of all draft re- sisters has pointedly left all deserters out in the cold. But Kinnaman, who fled the army-first to Laos and then to Sweden---is not one to sit by the wayside and shake his head dejectedly. Last week, Kinnaman visited Toronto as a representative of exiled American war resisters living in Sweden, at a conference called in re- action to Carter's pardon announcement. Thou- sands of young men who could not make the pilgrimage to Toronto have stakes in that con- ference-Joseph Jones, for example, a deserter like Kinnaman. and Richard Ricketts, a sym- pathetic resister. The experiences of all three are described here. * . * * "I survived from day to day," Kinnaman be- gan, eager to talk about his desertion and what life has been like since. "I worked on farms. I taught English, Lao- tian . . . I did whatever was necessary to sur- vive, short of stealing." KINNAMAN HAS spent ten years in exile, four illegally in Laos, and more recently as a resident of Sweden. But when he was first stationed in Thailand in 1966, his maor regretj was the fact that he didn't get Vietnam duty. "I felt I could serve my country best there," he remembers. "I'm from a typical working class family from Indianapolis-I never even knew about anti-war protests when I first went into the service." His enthusiasm with Thai culture however, soon put him on the wrong side of the military command. "I made a lot of Thai friends. I'even wanted to learn the language and took it up on my own. I learned to dress like they did, eat their foods . .. and I received a lot of flak for my actions. "My commander gave us a lecture: he was really putting down the Thais-making fun of their dress, telling us how bad their food was, making fun of their religion. All this time, my friends, some of whom spoke good English, stood there saying nothing. I was appalled by this racism."r "I began to be the target of company har- rassment. I guess they thought. I was a sub- versive. I wanted answers. I got oppression. I began to feel that the war was wrong and that we had no reason 'being there." IINNAMAN'S JOB was to direct planes headed on bombing missions against North Viet- nam. The fact that he had read denials about thnce same missions in the newspapers further diminiohed the military's credibility in his eyes. But the last straw came when, with only five months left of military duty, Kinnaman found out that he was being reassigned to the battle zone as an infantrvman-"I decided to desert." Kinnaman began his ten-year odyssey by r.eking his rnekack and heading for the Lao- tian border. He entered Laos, knowing that nep he ern* d the border, there would be no turnir back. Havino some knowledge of native languages, VIVAnmat1 bshle to find one way or another to survive-dav by day-for four years. Al- though he was an illegal alien, the authorities seemed to turn their backs on him-until his final months. Suddenly an investigation was launched into his activities, and he was told he would have to leav'. Somehow, he says, he sceraped up $60 from his friends, as well as a false Dassport. He crossed back into Thailand where he caught a plane bound for Sweden. QIX YEARS a Swedish reside.nt, Kinnaman now has a job,. His wife and chilren are Swedish. After the eno1 of the war, when the subject of amnesty was first broached, Kinnaman was faced with the question: Should he go home if he could? 4e T'd return to the U S. for visits, but I'm "not living to come back there. I haven't been back n en years. I couldn't be what I was ten years ago, but others can, and they have the right ;o be." "The American people are trying to forget the most shameful chapter in their history and the government is--trying to help them. I struggle for amnesty. I believe we will receive it. The American people felt the war was wrong. I am the guilty conscience that won't shut up." * . For Joseph Jones, a draft resister living in Vancouver, Carter's pardon means he can come home--but is home still the U.S.? "II'VE BEEN HERE a quarter of my life," re- marked Jones in an early morning telephone interview. "It's hard to live somewhere for so i eS .R RS - WILL $E ' -q Exiles corder By PAUL EISENSTEIN Special to The Daily TORONTO - SEVERAL hundred draft resisters, military deserters, veterans and sympathizers gathered here last week- end to call on President Jimmy Carter to expand his recent pardon of draft resisters. See EXILES, Page 8 i wo u/cl There's such in exile in Br because it see than anywhere Jones was in s' married. His h, settled. But the Cart Now Jones has "I'll probabl a visit sometim parents. They' glad I can visi moving back o "The one thi pardon is that registered for t but that's sho would never be "Carter s go] Defense study was a deserter to study my ca "Carter is tr break with the ple a feeling t You can't wipe them." There was pardon to Rich from the start racist-it touc easily pardona A DISPROPO came from This is general poor and in of their alter help, nor an i in a foreign co Ricketts ho trend. Coming ground, he des and is unders recent pardon. Ricketts con Both his fathe when he went "I became o '67. I was act was drafted se ferments. The situation-I er "Back then tried to resist I found that d "There was to Nam. I jus service. I had up and go a radical. "I decided t THEN RICI leave time vacation--from Both spoke flu in France. In the loner in Montreal. F city can be d the U.S. by b daries. But foi ture made Mi make a new - "I don't ha my situation.' few English s However ret still only 50 rr ever imaine c "Tf T was to less than an would it be? I Paid Fisens/ci m iwica lionS. long and not have it become your home." And so despite the fact that the opportunity to re- turn to the U.S. is open to him, Jones says he "doesn't see any major changes occurring in my life right now." Living in Canada was not always as easy as it is now for Jones, a native of North Carolina. He arrived in Montreal in August of 1970 and has spent the last six years in a series of moves west, finally settling in Vancouver. "I lost my deferment when I graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1970. I had a low lottery number. I knew I was going to be drafted. "I was thinking of joining (the Peace Corps) but deferments .for that kind of service had ended." LONG AN OPPONENT of the Vietnam War, Jones considered his alternatives. "Some of my friends told me that going to jail would be a good way to express my feelings. But I'd like to see anyone who succeeded. "I made my final decision to move to Canada between the time when the U.S. invaded Cam- bodia and the killings ,t Kent State." "The first six months were bad. Anybody who's a refugee has to get used to living in a new country. After two months looking, I was finally able to get a job as an office clerk at $65 a week." Jones later moved on to Toronto and went back to school at the University of Toronto. Life there was better, he said, but he still couldn't find a job that he felt suited for so he decided to move again.