Detroit at the re-creation

As a reporter at the Detroit News and Free Press, I spent years driving the city’s streets, chronicling decay and tragedy in its neighborhoods, questioning how government worked (and didn’t), and writing about downtown revival visions (some that came to fruition and some that didn’t).

Rarely during my reporting days was I as touched as I was on a damp night in late fall 2008. The Center for Michigan was hosting yet another Community Conversation, but this one was in an unusual location — the Cliff Bells tavern. For two hours, two dozen diverse young professionals — small business owners, techies, lawyers, PR mavens, you name it — talked about the vibrant city and state they wanted.

They worked in the city. They lived in the city. They were INVESTED in the city at a time when conventional wisdom suggested every talented young person in Michigan was headed someplace else… Chicago, New York, LA, Boston, Austin, etc., etc., etc.

They talked about the ability to CREATE new communities right here instead of FOLLOWING like sheep to join somebody else’s communities in another state.

And now, they are smack-dab in the middle of a full-fledged re-creation of Detroit.

You don’t believe it? I know, it’s hard to believe. I’ve heard more big dreams and redevelopment plans than I care to recall. (Remember when Lee Iacocca was going to refashion the old Hudson’s building into a casino?)

It feels different this time. There’s too much going on in too many circles.

Never before in my professional life have business and foundation leaders basically plotted an overthrow of the city’s education system. The group, Excellent Schools Detroit, boldly plans to open 40 new high-quality schools in Detroit in the next five years. “The problem isn’t the students, it’s the adults,” Lou Glazer, one of the founders of this movement, writes in a guest column elsewhere in this newsletter. “At its core, the strategy is designed to use markets combined with tough student achievement standards, rather than politics, to drive change. Parents – in their role as shoppers rather than voters – can transform teaching and learning in Detroit by enrolling their children in high quality schools. To do that we need to increase the supply of good schools, and by helping parents become better shoppers, also increase the demand for those schools.”

The city’s media outlets are devoting plenty of ink to what Detroit can look like ten years from now.

GM’s Hamtramck plant is gearing up to start production of the Chevy Volt electric car later this year — they’re gearing up for big, curious crowds, too.

Across town, Ford is leading the auto recovery.

Vanguard’s purchase of, and new investment in, the Detroit Medical Center provides all kinds of new momentum for the retail, residential, and mass transit development in the city’s Midtown Area.

The Bing Administration has bulldozers on the street, committed to razing 10,000 abandoned buildings in the next four years.

None of this is going to be easy. Tens of thousands of Detroit homes are in foreclosure. The mayor’s office, with its expansive river view, might as well be in foreclosure — city finances are in shambles.

But the recreation has begun.

And the city’s young professionals — represented by those we met with at Cliffs Bells — are right in the middle of it.

They were a major force behind the passage of the Council by Districts ballot proposal last fall which will finally bring some neighborhood accountability to the Detroit City Council.

And they’ve launched Detroit Declaration — an online movement 11,000 people strong.