GM Volunteers Set Record for Life Remodeled Project
 Construction equipment like this chipper-shredder will be a big part of General Motors’ overall involvement in revitalizing a blighted Detroit neighborhood next week as part of the Life Remodeled project. GM has 3,700 employee volunteers and several of the company’s suppliers engaged in the makeover of Osborn High School and a 4.5 square-mile area in the northeast part of the city. |
Company suppliers join effort to revitalize blighted neighborhood
DETROIT -- July 31, 2015: A record 3,700 volunteers from General Motors will help deep clean a high school, board up vacant residences, whack weeds and mow lawns next week as part of the non-profit Life Remodeled effort to make over the 4.5 square-mile Osborn neighborhood, among the most blighted in Metro Detroit.
Engineers, marketers, designers and others from GM’s four southeast Michigan campuses in Detroit, Warren, Pontiac and Milford will take on about 40 percent of the Life Remodeled project, joined by GM construction and landscaping suppliers equipped with front-end loaders, tree chippers and people who know how to operate them.
“It means a lot that our suppliers are working alongside teamGMCares volunteers, using their expertise to help make a difference to help bring back a community that has had a rough time for many years,” said Mark Reuss, executive vice president of GM Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain.
“The exterior debris is more significant this year than it was in the past. We’ll need larger equipment and bigger teams of operators,” said Ehrlich Crain, business development and diversity leader for Roncelli Inc., a Sterling Heights, Mich.-based general contractor that built all four phases of GM’s advanced battery lab at its Technical Center in Warren.
Twenty 30-yard capacity dumpsters will be moved into position each day to hold heavy debris before board-up and beautification teams can work effectively.
“It is easier to see the results on something like this because the areas are so far gone,” said Art Derrick, general manager of Backer Landscaping Inc., which along with AIS and Davey Tree will cut away and pulverize overgrowth from lots and yards in Osborn.
Backer was recruited by Aramark, a food, facilities and uniform supplier contracted to prepare hundreds of boxes lunches for distribution to the GM volunteers next week. Lowes home improvement is supplying unlimited free water and Weingartz Supply Inc. discounted equipment GM purchased for volunteers to use.
