ways for different neighborhoods."

While the pace of blight removal has accelerated, there are still so many dilapidated homes to break down and cart away. Just ask Craig Fahle, Director of Public Affairs of the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA), to review his organization's property roll. The DLBA is tasked with turning the tide and selling city property. With a quarter of the land in Detroit under its control, the task is daunting. The agency's catalog currently includes 22,351 residential structures, 54,669 residential lots, 1,541 vacant commercial lots, 207 commercial structures, and 19 industrial structures. Fahle takes the long view, seeing steady progress in reactivating vacant land, stabilizing neighborhoods, and getting more banks to make loans. Last year, of the 4,500 total home sales in the city, only 450of them had a mortgage attached; that figure is, in effect, a referendum on the valuation of Detroit land.

"We're doing a good job of selling, but compared to the number we're taking in (he expects 7,000 more properties in January), it's going to be a bit skewed," he says. "It took the city 40 to 50 years to get here. We won't get everything back in a few years. The payoff for this will come."

Scores of new owners and entrepreneurs have taken advantage of the situation and created new businesses or projects. A new manufacturing center and food processing space is set to begin construction in Eastern Market to serve as an incubator for small businesses. A Spanish developer who purchased the iconic, hulking ruins of the Packard