foolmenot.comSeattle Times staff reporter
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
DETROIT — At a news conference Monday to welcome the media to Super Bowl XL, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm had the gumption to say, "This is a wonderful opportunity for us to share with you this great American city."
Predictably, her comment earned smirks from some reporters who would rather spend the week in Miami or San Diego.
But what smacked of boosterism is a deep-seated belief around here that the Super Bowl can deliver Detroit from decades of derision.
Stuck in people's heads are the enduring images such as the 1967 race riots, the inventory of abandoned skyscrapers and the burned-out hulls that pass for housing here. The population, more than 2 million in 1950, has dipped below 1 million, with the most recent diaspora taking away the very people the city would most like to keep: middle-class African Americans.
As Sunday's game nears, city and state leaders are challenging visitors to set aside their preconceived notions and enjoy a city — a well-scrubbed downtown, in particular — that has been remade because of one championship game.
Since 2000, when the city won the right to host the Super Bowl, corporate and public money has poured in. Two new downtown stadiums opened: Ford Field (where the Super Bowl will be played) and Comerica Park, which are Detroit's equivalents of Qwest Field and Safeco Field. Three casinos, including an MGM Grand, have opened, bringing in $300 million of tax revenue annually and rescuing the city from likely insolvency.
Compuware, a software company, consolidated its suburban plants into a downtown headquarters. And General Motors, which moved its administrative offices downtown in the 1990s, is not so lonely anymore.
The Super Bowl provided the impetus to rebuild two downtown boulevards. Sidewalks have been expanded to make room for al fresco dining — before any new restaurants committed to move in. Lampposts have been installed that look like they could be from the Roaring '20s, which, sadly, may have represented Detroit's heyday.
More than 60 new retailers, most of them restaurants, have opened within the downtown core as a precursor to the big game. A shiny new YMCA opened where there had been a gravel lot.
"This game has served as a catalyst to move Detroit economic development in a way we had not moved for 50 years," Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said at the news conference. The Super Bowl "can create revolutionary change in a city like Detroit."
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The Detroit Economic Growth Corp., a nonprofit focused on business development, bought three dilapidated office buildings along Woodward Avenue. New windows have been installed and facades have been power-washed.
Those buildings, however, remain vacant, with the idea that one day they may be flipped to a private developer willing to complete the rehab vision. For Super Bowl week, Detroit architects have installed artistic displays in the ground-floor windows.
But city leaders insist it is not just window dressing. Rather, they say, it's the beginning of what they like to call New Detroit — a great city, born out of a football game.
"We think this is going to be a blockbuster event for those outside Michigan who may look down their noses at the city," Granholm said. "This is our moment to turn around that perception."
Detroit, past and present
To understand how far Detroit needs to go, it helps to understand where it's been.
Native Laura Berman, a metro columnist for The Detroit News, has been writing about her hometown for 30 years. As she drove Monday morning along Jefferson Avenue, she was struck by the absence of trash and the modest new development along the street.
"It's amazing what a football game can do," she said. "Usually, my feeling about Detroit is that it looks worse than it did 30 years ago. But today, it looks better."
But just one block off the main street, Detroit's past and present are exposed: rows of derelict homes next to perpetually vacant lots where derelict homes once stood, all pleading for attention.
It would be wrong, Berman said, to assume that no one lives inside a house with a burned-out back end, that has boarded-up windows and a missing roof.
"There's a lot of land here available for reclamation," Berman said. Her word for urban renewal is reclamation, not gentrification, since gentrification implies displacement.
"People here understand that there are no miracles, no one-minute solutions," Berman said. "As a result, we're accustomed to measuring our dreams carefully. Yet people want a sense of momentum and hope. Anything that makes us feel like we are moving in a positive direction is a great uplift because there's been so much pointed the other way."
The Super Bowl, she said, is providing that uplift.
Attempts at reclamation
On Gratiot Avenue, another of Detroit's boulevards with a glorious past, there is scant car traffic and almost nobody out on the street. It's easy to imagine a merchant pulling down the security screen of his store 30 years ago, and never returning.
The Brush Park neighborhood, sandwiched between the new stadiums and Detroit's well-regarded arts district, once boasted luxurious mansions. They were abandoned long ago. Many of the eyesores still stand, begging for investment or, short of that, mercy. TV news crews like to use Brush Park as a backdrop for stories about depressed Detroit.
And the visual metaphors keep coming. A vacant storefront once housed a hip little music venue aptly named: Bittersweet Coffee House.
And yet reclamation is happening in Brush Park — slowly, sure, but it's happening. Loving and no doubt expensive restorations of historic houses are taking place. Some structures beyond hope are being leveled, with townhomes rising in their place.
But the biggest battle against blight is occurring downtown, where almost all of the Super Bowl events are taking place.
Peter Zeiler, special-projects manager for the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., said the improvements have been "pay as you go," with the city assuming little risk and no debt for its troubles.
"I like to explain what we've done like this," he said. "You have a dining room. Your carpet is outdated, you don't like the wallpaper and the chandelier has got to go. But you also need new tires, Junior needs braces. So you put off updating your dining room.
"But then you invite the entire family over for Thanksgiving. You replace the carpet, wallpaper and chandelier because you don't want Uncle Jim coming over and sneering at your dining room."
OK, fine. But what happens when Uncle Jim leaves?
"You've got a great dining room," he said. "The one you've always wanted."
Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com.