GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Overlooking a busy corner on Alpine Avenue NW and Ann Street, a mysterious billboard stood tall for over a month, claiming the site it stood on to be a historical landmark.
"I want people to experience remembering in a different way, so they remember more."
Artist and Activist, Kate Levy, visiting and teaching in Michigan as part of Grand Valley State University's artist in residence program for the 2023-24 school year.
"With the billboard, it's like, 'wow, I had no idea that this history existed!'"
Levy referring to the plot of land her billboard overlooks, once owned by a bumper stamping and plating company called Gulf and Western Industries, founded in Grand Rapids.
The same Gulf and Western Industries that would go on to purchase a struggling Paramount Pictures, the same Paramount that would bring television shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants and films like The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) to screens all over the world.
Levy, a filmmaker, choosing to mark the site with a billboard. While unconventional, Levy finds it played right into her messaging.
"Billboards are primarily used to advertise gambling, church, cancer treatment, luxury watches, mental health [and more]. These are all [an] escape from the hard things in life," she explained.
"I wanted to make it mysterious."
A mystery she unraveled after searching through the Grand Rapids City Archives where she found a history of economic and environmental struggles with Gulf and Western industries before and after their Paramount acquisition.
"As I looked into these individual sites, I realized that nearly every single site suffered contamination from the plating process," Levy explains.
Through newspaper clippings dating back to the 1930's, Levy discovered a history of economic and environmental challenges plaguing Gulf and Western Industries, and by extent the sites they operated on.
"The land was so contaminated from decades of Gulf and Western's operations that the property was worth nothing [to the city]," she elaborated. "The site that gulf and Western sat on has finally been demolished [and] the ground is so contaminated that it's going to cost a great deal of money to pull up the foundation."
Based on her findings, Levy believes that Gulf and Western industries closed its manufacturing operations as environmental regulations mounted, and focused on entertainment industries like Paramount as their primary revenue source.
According to documents obtained from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) the site at Alpine and Ann was indeed owned by Gulf and Western. But the liability of contamination was unable to be connected to Paramount Global by EGLE.
"Just because Gulf and Western doesn't exist, it doesn't mean that there's no liability, because when Gulf and Western stopped existing, they became Paramount Communications," Levy explains, referring to Gulf and Western's dilution as a company as Paramount consolidated through mergers and acquisitions, eventually becoming Paramount Global.
But Levy believes that this history and the fight for our environment deserves to be remembered as not only a tale of a Hollywood giant, but a warning.
"This site mattered, and this site has a history. We need to understand [that] history, because it's a very real phenomenon to trust companies that say they're working your best interest," Levy said. "The more we hold these entities accountable, the more it becomes our norm to do so."
Levy's full project is viewable at AceInTheHoleProject.com. The billboard has come down at the time this article is published.