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Detroit Revival Vies With Industry’s Decline
By MICHELINE MAYNARD and NICK BUNKLEY
The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit opened in 2006 and showcases a rotating line-up of modern art. The museum is located in a former auto dealership.
DETROIT — For decades, city leaders and local business executives here have been predicting an imminent revival of their desolate downtown. For all their cheerleading, though, nothing much changed.
Even the Renaissance Center, an enormous office and hotel complex with seven soaring glass towers built 30 years ago on the city’s riverfront, did not spark the turnaround that its name promised.
But finally, downtown Detroit is showing signs of life — just as the automobile industry, its life force, is facing a further decline in 2008.
Regardless of what looms, investment money and people are pouring into the city — at least to visit. Thousands of people thronged to the renovated Detroit Institute of Arts when it reopened on Thanksgiving weekend, offering 32 hours of free admission.
Two new casinos opened this fall, creating thousands of jobs, and bringing luxury hotel rooms to a town where one of the few upscale choices was at the airport.
More rooms will come when the Book Cadillac Hotel, a city landmark from the 1920s but vacant and often vandalized for the last 20 years, completes a $180 million renovation next year that will create a 455-room Westin hotel and 67 condominiums, including the first in the city to sell for more than $1 million.
More jobs will arrive when Quicken Loans, a mortgage company, chooses the site downtown where it will move 4,000 employees from Livonia, a desirable middle-class suburb, putting all those jobs downtown next year.
Even the Detroit Lions did their part earlier this fall, scoring an impressive string of victories at the start of the N.F.L. season.
“Things are rolling,†said Detroit’s mayor, Kwame M. Kilpatrick.
But the direction is arguably as much downhill as up. Automakers have laid off nearly 100,000 workers in the last two years, announcing more cuts this fall and another round of buyout offers Tuesday, despite new agreements with the United Automobile Workers union that were supposed to be a new, leaner start for the American industry. The companies plan deep production cuts in the new year, which company executives and analysts expect will bring the worst industry sales since the mid-1990s.
Detroit’s poverty rate, 28.5 percent, is the nation’s highest. The area’s foreclosure rate is the second highest, behind Stockton, Calif., according to RealtyTrac, a statistics firm in Irvine, Calif. One in every 33 homes in Wayne County, home to Detroit, is in default.
Last month, The Detroit Free Press printed a 121-page pullout section listing more than 18,000 foreclosed properties across Wayne County. An estimated 4,500 homeowners attended a forum in Detroit last week, where they met with representatives from 23 lenders in hopes of saving their homes.
Even as a snowstorm battered the city on Sunday, local television reports showed one man slinging his possessions into a U-Haul van, forced to leave because his lender had seized his home.
Detroit’s population is now half its peak in the 1950s, and the city is as small as it was in the 1920s, before the auto industry boom that made Detroit an industrial powerhouse and one of the nation’s largest cities.
Houses sit begging at every price level, from the wealthy Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills to modest bungalows in the city. The average home requires six months to sell, compared with three nationwide.
And in a blow to the city’s heritage, Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, and the city gave up on a plan to build a museum and entertainment center that would feature the record label’s music. The center was supposed to replace Motown’s second Detroit headquarters, which the mayor ordered torn down two years ago on the eve of the Super Bowl, declaring the long-empty building an eyesore.
“It has been 30 years of a strategy that says if we revitalize downtown the rest of the city will follow,†said Kevin Boyle, a Detroit native and professor of history at Ohio State University, who has written extensively on the city. “And that is simply not true.â€
To Mr. Kilpatrick, though, one of the biggest obstacles is overcoming the city’s reputation — an unfair one, in his eyes — as a civic failure.
“In 2007, the perception of Detroit is as far away from reality as we’ve ever had it,†Mr. Kilpatrick said. “We’re ready to reintroduce the city to the world.â€
On Thanksgiving weekend, many people took the mayor up on his offer. More than 57,000 patrons visited the art institute when it was reopened after an extensive renovation for 32 hours straight, with free admission, instead of the $8 admission charge that has been made mandatory (patrons previously were allowed to pay by donation, yielding an average $2.50 a person.)
“There are pockets where it is all starting to come together,†said Margaret Birkett, 38, of Huntington Woods, a Detroit suburb. She and her husband, Michael, had traveled into the city to attend his 20th high school reunion at a city restaurant, an event that never would have taken place downtown a few years back.
“It’s a long way to go, but we like it here,†he added.
Judy Dapprich, 65, of suburban Belleville, Mich., used to come to Detroit with her husband for special events like Christmas Eve, when they would shop at the J. L. Hudson’s department store, since demolished. Now they make six to eight trips a year. “I’m very impressed with everything that’s been done,†she said.
One big attention-getter is the new MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, which opened in October. Its gaming revenues rose in November compared with last year, when it was housed in a temporary building. But the occupancy rate at the hotel, where rooms start at $299 a night, is below the 55 percent average for the area, the owners told the state gaming commission this month.
And in the eyes of some, the new casinos, which include the 17-story Motor City Hotel and Casino that opened on Nov. 28, may be doing as much harm as good.
Some of the casino’s patrons include Detroit’s homeless. They used to buy food with the nickels and dimes they received for collecting returnable beverage containers, said Chad Audi, director of the rescue mission, which sits on a side street a few blocks from the Motor City.
Instead, these gamblers are spending their change in slot machines. “It’s turning into a very bad, negative impact on us,†he said.
This year, the rescue mission serves about 1,200 people daily, up from about 900 a year ago. More of them include entire families, not just single mothers or homeless men, Mr. Audi said.
He applauded the new investments downtown, but said there are not enough new jobs in neighborhoods “so people can have the lives they have had.â€
Jennifer M. Granholm, Michigan’s governor, said she hoped areas beyond downtown would start to reap the benefits soon.
“There’s a lot of great stuff happening, it’s just got to filter out into the neighborhoods,†Ms. Granholm said this month, in an interview during a holiday party at her residence in Lansing. “No state can thrive without a vibrant urban center.â€
But even Mr. Kilpatrick said the city could not completely rebound without better times across the state, which has an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent, up 0.2 percentage points in October from 2006.
Still, John Ferchill, the Cleveland hotel developer overseeing the Book Cadillac project, is not concerned. The hotel, scheduled to reopen next fall, is already booked for special events through the end of 2008, while advance room reservations are “way over what we thought they would be.â€
He added, “If there’s a bad economy, the Book Cadillac doesn’t know about it.â€
But the city has a long way to go before it will be called vibrant. Indeed, many streets are largely deserted after dark, and echo with distant sirens. New developments are surrounded by empty buildings, with streetlights burned out on nearby roads. Tiger Stadium, stripped of its seats, signs and other memorabilia, sits awaiting its fate, which may include demolition.
And the Lions, meanwhile, lost their sixth consecutive game on Sunday, in a 51-14 rout by San Diego that ended their hopes for a winning season.
Still, long-patient local residents see signs of hope. “People’s hearts and minds have got to get over the past,†said Jay Meehan, a sociology professor at Oakland University in suburban Rochester, Mich. He spoke while sitting on a bench inside the art institute in front of murals by Diego Rivera that depicted the Rouge assembly line in the 1930s.
By MICHELINE MAYNARD and NICK BUNKLEY
The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit opened in 2006 and showcases a rotating line-up of modern art. The museum is located in a former auto dealership.
DETROIT — For decades, city leaders and local business executives here have been predicting an imminent revival of their desolate downtown. For all their cheerleading, though, nothing much changed.
Even the Renaissance Center, an enormous office and hotel complex with seven soaring glass towers built 30 years ago on the city’s riverfront, did not spark the turnaround that its name promised.
But finally, downtown Detroit is showing signs of life — just as the automobile industry, its life force, is facing a further decline in 2008.
Regardless of what looms, investment money and people are pouring into the city — at least to visit. Thousands of people thronged to the renovated Detroit Institute of Arts when it reopened on Thanksgiving weekend, offering 32 hours of free admission.
Two new casinos opened this fall, creating thousands of jobs, and bringing luxury hotel rooms to a town where one of the few upscale choices was at the airport.
More rooms will come when the Book Cadillac Hotel, a city landmark from the 1920s but vacant and often vandalized for the last 20 years, completes a $180 million renovation next year that will create a 455-room Westin hotel and 67 condominiums, including the first in the city to sell for more than $1 million.
More jobs will arrive when Quicken Loans, a mortgage company, chooses the site downtown where it will move 4,000 employees from Livonia, a desirable middle-class suburb, putting all those jobs downtown next year.
Even the Detroit Lions did their part earlier this fall, scoring an impressive string of victories at the start of the N.F.L. season.
“Things are rolling,†said Detroit’s mayor, Kwame M. Kilpatrick.
But the direction is arguably as much downhill as up. Automakers have laid off nearly 100,000 workers in the last two years, announcing more cuts this fall and another round of buyout offers Tuesday, despite new agreements with the United Automobile Workers union that were supposed to be a new, leaner start for the American industry. The companies plan deep production cuts in the new year, which company executives and analysts expect will bring the worst industry sales since the mid-1990s.
Detroit’s poverty rate, 28.5 percent, is the nation’s highest. The area’s foreclosure rate is the second highest, behind Stockton, Calif., according to RealtyTrac, a statistics firm in Irvine, Calif. One in every 33 homes in Wayne County, home to Detroit, is in default.
Last month, The Detroit Free Press printed a 121-page pullout section listing more than 18,000 foreclosed properties across Wayne County. An estimated 4,500 homeowners attended a forum in Detroit last week, where they met with representatives from 23 lenders in hopes of saving their homes.
Even as a snowstorm battered the city on Sunday, local television reports showed one man slinging his possessions into a U-Haul van, forced to leave because his lender had seized his home.
Detroit’s population is now half its peak in the 1950s, and the city is as small as it was in the 1920s, before the auto industry boom that made Detroit an industrial powerhouse and one of the nation’s largest cities.
Houses sit begging at every price level, from the wealthy Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills to modest bungalows in the city. The average home requires six months to sell, compared with three nationwide.
And in a blow to the city’s heritage, Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, and the city gave up on a plan to build a museum and entertainment center that would feature the record label’s music. The center was supposed to replace Motown’s second Detroit headquarters, which the mayor ordered torn down two years ago on the eve of the Super Bowl, declaring the long-empty building an eyesore.
“It has been 30 years of a strategy that says if we revitalize downtown the rest of the city will follow,†said Kevin Boyle, a Detroit native and professor of history at Ohio State University, who has written extensively on the city. “And that is simply not true.â€
To Mr. Kilpatrick, though, one of the biggest obstacles is overcoming the city’s reputation — an unfair one, in his eyes — as a civic failure.
“In 2007, the perception of Detroit is as far away from reality as we’ve ever had it,†Mr. Kilpatrick said. “We’re ready to reintroduce the city to the world.â€
On Thanksgiving weekend, many people took the mayor up on his offer. More than 57,000 patrons visited the art institute when it was reopened after an extensive renovation for 32 hours straight, with free admission, instead of the $8 admission charge that has been made mandatory (patrons previously were allowed to pay by donation, yielding an average $2.50 a person.)
“There are pockets where it is all starting to come together,†said Margaret Birkett, 38, of Huntington Woods, a Detroit suburb. She and her husband, Michael, had traveled into the city to attend his 20th high school reunion at a city restaurant, an event that never would have taken place downtown a few years back.
“It’s a long way to go, but we like it here,†he added.
Judy Dapprich, 65, of suburban Belleville, Mich., used to come to Detroit with her husband for special events like Christmas Eve, when they would shop at the J. L. Hudson’s department store, since demolished. Now they make six to eight trips a year. “I’m very impressed with everything that’s been done,†she said.
One big attention-getter is the new MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, which opened in October. Its gaming revenues rose in November compared with last year, when it was housed in a temporary building. But the occupancy rate at the hotel, where rooms start at $299 a night, is below the 55 percent average for the area, the owners told the state gaming commission this month.
And in the eyes of some, the new casinos, which include the 17-story Motor City Hotel and Casino that opened on Nov. 28, may be doing as much harm as good.
Some of the casino’s patrons include Detroit’s homeless. They used to buy food with the nickels and dimes they received for collecting returnable beverage containers, said Chad Audi, director of the rescue mission, which sits on a side street a few blocks from the Motor City.
Instead, these gamblers are spending their change in slot machines. “It’s turning into a very bad, negative impact on us,†he said.
This year, the rescue mission serves about 1,200 people daily, up from about 900 a year ago. More of them include entire families, not just single mothers or homeless men, Mr. Audi said.
He applauded the new investments downtown, but said there are not enough new jobs in neighborhoods “so people can have the lives they have had.â€
Jennifer M. Granholm, Michigan’s governor, said she hoped areas beyond downtown would start to reap the benefits soon.
“There’s a lot of great stuff happening, it’s just got to filter out into the neighborhoods,†Ms. Granholm said this month, in an interview during a holiday party at her residence in Lansing. “No state can thrive without a vibrant urban center.â€
But even Mr. Kilpatrick said the city could not completely rebound without better times across the state, which has an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent, up 0.2 percentage points in October from 2006.
Still, John Ferchill, the Cleveland hotel developer overseeing the Book Cadillac project, is not concerned. The hotel, scheduled to reopen next fall, is already booked for special events through the end of 2008, while advance room reservations are “way over what we thought they would be.â€
He added, “If there’s a bad economy, the Book Cadillac doesn’t know about it.â€
But the city has a long way to go before it will be called vibrant. Indeed, many streets are largely deserted after dark, and echo with distant sirens. New developments are surrounded by empty buildings, with streetlights burned out on nearby roads. Tiger Stadium, stripped of its seats, signs and other memorabilia, sits awaiting its fate, which may include demolition.
And the Lions, meanwhile, lost their sixth consecutive game on Sunday, in a 51-14 rout by San Diego that ended their hopes for a winning season.
Still, long-patient local residents see signs of hope. “People’s hearts and minds have got to get over the past,†said Jay Meehan, a sociology professor at Oakland University in suburban Rochester, Mich. He spoke while sitting on a bench inside the art institute in front of murals by Diego Rivera that depicted the Rouge assembly line in the 1930s.
