By JEFF KAROUB
AP Business Writer
DETROIT (AP) - A new group aiming to tackle the growing problem of vacant and abandoned property in hurting urban centers says it can maintain its mission from a perch in the nation's capital.
Dan Kildee promises the nonprofit, whose working title is the Center for Land Reform, will remain rooted in its home community of Flint even though it'll be based in Washington.
The new center will have a Flint office in a historic downtown hotel that the Genesee County Land Bank helped bring back from the brink.
Kildee, a a longtime Democratic politician, helped create the land bank in 2002.
He says the timing was right to take his work to a larger stage.
He's resigning effective Jan. 1 from his duties as county treasurer and chairman and chief executive of the land bank to lead the new center.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
