NEW YORK: A never-used $1 million state-of-the-art-facility along the Detroit River designed to handle U.S. customs operations is now being used to store chairs.
Two years after completion, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have never used the 4,000 square feet of offices, holding cells and labs built for the agency inside the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority Public Dock and Terminal at Atwater and Bates.
The facility includes a floor designed so that Customs could process cruise ship passengers. The agency says the facility doesn’t meet standards; port authority officials say they can’t afford $170,000 computer and camera upgrades to make it suitable.
So the waterfront offices, next to the Renaissance Center, are crammed with chairs, linens, tables and signs owned by a catering company that hosts weddings and corporate events on the second floor of the building.
The situation is an absurd case of government run amok, said authority vice chairman Jonathan Kinloch.
“Sometimes, when you are dealing with bureaucracy, the dog is chasing the tail,” Kinloch said.
“At some point, you’d hope the dog would stop going in circles … but right now, it doesn’t make any damn sense.”
Most of the key players who guided the project for the authority no longer work for the agency, so Kinloch and others are trying to figure out what went wrong.
The problem is the latest for a $22 million facility that opened to great fanfare in 2011. The public terminal was championed by retired U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, as a way to accommodate cruise ships and attract ferry service and water taxis. Federal and state funds paid for most of the construction.
