Being on the wrong side of progress is embarassing...

Just something I noticed following the death of Jack Kevorkian last week --

Here is Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Jessica Cooper berating Kevorkian after he was convicted of second-degree murder in April 1999 for personally triggering the death of one of his patients:

"You invited yourself to the wrong forum," she said in a lecture that was broadcast worldwide. "When you purposely inject another human being with what you know to be a lethal dosage of poison, that sir, is murder and the jury found so.

"Then you had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did and dare the legal system to stop you. Well, sir, consider yourself stopped." (Detroit Free Press)

Now, here is former Oakland County Circuit Court Judge (and current Oakland County Prosecutor) Jessica Cooper responding to the news Kevorkian's death:

“I think he brought to light a debate that needed to take place, and one that continues in medical schools and Main Street today,” Cooper said. “And in the last decade or 12 years, we’ve seen the growth of hospice, a movement toward death with peace and dignity, and I think we can thank him for that. This debate will continue in a calm and reasoned fashion. My condolences go out to his family and friends and supporters.” (Detroit Free Press)

...oh, and sorry for sentencing you to 10-25 years in prison!

Collected news, May 14

Burton Theater on Cass closes over a financial dispute with the building's landlord, hope to move to a new location in the fall (Detroit Free Press)

Obama administration allocates $336 million to high speed rail between Detroit and Chicago (Detroit Free Press)

At the Park Shelton, rentals are 100% occupied, the remaining 14 unfinished units are being built for sale, and commercial space will most likely soon be full (Model D Media)

Woodward Light Rail construction now being planned in one phase (Jefferson to Eight Mile), hopefully running in 2015 (MetroTimes)

Le Petit Zinc, 1055 Trumbull

Le Petit Zinc, an awesome French restaurant at the corner of Trumbull and Howard, in the often overlooked southern end of Corktown. Everything I've had here has been great, including crepes and coffee drinks. And there's a patio!

36 Hours in Detroit

From the New York Times:

"No video can portray the passion one finds on the streets of Detroit these days, where everyone from the doorman to the D.J. will tell you they believe in this city’s future. While certain areas are indeed eerily empty, other neighborhoods — including midtown, downtown and Corktown — are bustling with new businesses that range from creperies and barbecue joints catering to the young artists and entrepreneurs migrating to Motown, to a just-opened hostel that invites tourists to explore Detroit with the aid of local volunteer guides . . . No urban enthusiast will want to miss the recovery that Detroit is now attempting."

Collected news, May 5

• Broderick Tower interior demolition is 75% complete (Model D Media)
  

• More on small business activity in Corktown, along Michigan Avenue and in the former Baile Corcaigh space on Trumbull (Detroit News)
  

• First townhome for rent in North Corktown's formerly abandoned Spaulding Court (Model D Media)
  

• Hostel Detroit opens at the corner of Vermont and Spruce in North Corktown (The South End)
  

Holy Trinity Church, 1956

This is such a great picture.

Woman painting Holy Trinity Catholic Church with watercolors on the trunk of her car.

March, 1956

Porter St, Corktown

(photo from the WSU Virtual Motor City Collection)

Street Folk

Art X Detroit, a week-long series of events involving Kresge Artist Fellowship recipients, occurred last week at several venues throughout Midtown. One of the artists involved was Tyree Guyton, founder of the Heidelberg Project (which completely transcends the term "installation art"). For Art X Detroit, Guyton unveiled a new environmental installation called "Street Folks," which consists of thousands of shoes scattered over one block of Edmund Pl. between Woodward and John R. On a fence on the north side of the street, he has attached photocopies of letters from some of the people who donated to the project, telling personal stories about their pair of shoes. It will be displayed until April 24.

The installation specifically confronts homelessness and the idea of "the streets," which are at the same time a dangerous, welcoming, and ubiquitous presence in all of our lives. Guyton writes:

"The street has no respect of person so there are no guarantees. You may not be on the street today, but you might be tomorrow . . . The shoes are a reflection of people, all going in different directions and yet they are all in the streets. The streets have no closing hours they are open 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, all year long. You have night people living in the streets and you have day people living in the streets but we’re all living in the streets chasing whatever your life calls for. In some cases you don’t know what you’re your life is calling for. In the end, we are all Street Folk."

I found it pretty powerful to walk among this overwhelming field of shoes and think about all the lives that had been lived in them, feeling some sort of vague connection to every anonymous person. Many of the letters posted on the fence contained very personal stories about the shoes' former owners.

However, this was probably my favorite note:





(Photos by Margaret O'Leary)

Whole Foods in Midtown (the media's collective head is about to explode)

Rumor is that Whole Foods is searching for space in Midtown, and I've heard that they've been considering a particular lot on Woodward. Nothing has been officially confirmed, but the Free Press reported on Monday that Whole Foods and the president of Eastern Market Corp. "have held preliminary meetings in Detroit to explore lining up local growers and other potential producers to supply food products to a store in Detroit." And last week, Dave Bing said that "it's not a question of 'if' but 'when,'" according to Crain's Detroit.

It seems a little strange that Detroit would go from having no national chain grocery stores to having a Whole Foods, especially since the store generally caters to the upper-middle class demographic with enough extra time and money to be concerned with eating organic food (earning it the nickname "Whole Paycheck"). Still, if Whole Foods is willing to invest in Midtown, they must see some potential, and it would probably be a dumb move to discourage them. Detroit can certainly use all the help it can get in attracting new residents and businesses, and the very well-known "Whole Foods" name could be great for Midtown's image as a flourishing neighborhood.

In other grocery store news, Eve's Downtown Gourmet opened on Washington Blvd, and MLive writes that it is preparing to "fall right into media cliche territory." Well, at least the cliche is starting to turn positive, right?

Trying to pull something positive out of the 2010 Census...

By now, you've probably heard endless analysis of the 2010 US Census results. In ten years, Detroit lost a quarter of its population and is at its lowest numbers since 1910. The Free Press published a pretty interesting map showing population change over the last ten years by census tract. The official count (713,777 residents) is apparently far lower than anyone expected, and Dave Bing plans to challenge that number. He might be right, because the Free Press article mentions that the Census undercounted Detroit by 50,000 residents in 2000, and the city was successful in getting the number changed.

The Census results are obviously bad news in many ways for Detroit -- on a practical level, the city will lose state and federal funding as well as representation in government. And this is just more glaring proof that the city's epic decline refuses to quit, even into the twenty-first century.

Still, I don't think these Census results mean that Detroit is on the brink of total collapse and that everyone should abandon ship as a quickly as possible. For one thing, I don't think it's necessarily devastating for Detroit to end up with a lower population than it had at its peak in the mid-twentieth century. Large population does not equal a better city. Honestly, I don't think it's that big of a surprise that Detroit lost 25% of its population. You'd be pretty hard-pressed to attract either new residents or businesses to most of the decaying neighborhoods on the far east and north sides. Most of the population movement in these areas is understandably moving out of, not into, the city.

If you look at the Free Press map, the majority of census tracts which either gained population or lost relatively little population are clustered around the downtown/Wayne State/Woodbridge/Southwest Detroit area. These are clearly the areas that are attracting the most attention. If Detroit ended up as a smaller, more dense city with a lot of green space and great public transportation, I think that would be an overwhelmingly positive change. So, the Census results basically validate what Bing has been trying to do -- stop wasting resources trying to desperately fill in a sprawling, disconnected city. Detroit can be smaller and better.

Even Yahoo thinks Detroit is underrated

Yahoo Travel included Detroit on its list of the most underrated cities in the world.

"A new breed of urban homesteader is helping to revive Motor City. Abandoned factories and warehouses like the Russell Industrial Center have been turned into studios for artists and artisans, while gardens now flourish in formerly vacant lots. The exuberant Heidelberg Art Project turns urban blight into a symbol of hope. Detroit's food scene, meanwhile, is taking off. Foran's Grand Trunk micropub, the Eastern Market, Supino Pizzeria, and Slows BBQ are just some of the gastronomic must-dos. Don't forget the city's museums, including the Detroit Institute of Art, home to Diego Rivera's 'Detroit Industry' murals, and the delightful Motown Museum."

They also suggest that you not miss Cafe D'Mongo's.

The article's comments section provides a nice example of the way in which people feel the need to make ridiculously uninformed, hyperbolic comments about Detroit. A user named "pkr" has this piece of knowledge to add: "There may be some really nifty new features in Detroit but you'll be robbed or killed getting to them. Detroit + Late night Friday = murder\death\kill"

Keep that in mind. If you're in Detroit on a Friday night, you will be murdered.

Cafe D'Mongo's Speakeasy, 1439 Griswold

Cafe D'Mongo's on the left / Downtown Synagogue on the right




Fireplace at Cafe D'Mongo's (photo by Margaret O'Leary)


This place is truly bizarre. Located on the northernmost block of Griswold, next to a synagogue and across the street from a strip club, it looks like some cramped combination of diner, jazz club, and Victorian parlor.

Go here on Friday night, because it's closed every other day of the week. This is the kind of place that is able to quietly thrive in a city that has a fraction of the respect but twice the personality of its contemporaries.

More on brownfield and historic preservation tax credits

An article in Saturday's Free Press discusses some specific consequences of eliminating Michigan's tax credits for the redevelopment of brownfield sites and historic properties.

Gov. Snyder hopes to get rid of these tax credits (along with others), which have helped to finance the redevelopment of abandoned structures, to "create a more level playing field" for business in Michigan. Snyder is always saying that the future of Michigan is strongly tied to the future of Detroit, but he seems to ignore the fact that older cities like Detroit are at an automatic disadvantage when it comes to economic development. For most of these projects to work, an extra investment is needed.

The article lists five major projects which will almost certainly be scrapped if these tax credits are eliminated:

1. Shopping center at Old Redford High School
2. Retail/residential project at Uniroyal industrial site on Jefferson, next to the Belle Isle bridge
3. David Whitney Building
4. Gateway retail center at Woodward and 8 Mile
5. Several properties near Capitol Park

Corridor Stories

"People Live in the Cass Corridor" is a series of short stories inspired by Douglas Ekman's five years living in the Cass Corridor, a neighborhood which was considered ground zero for urban decay in Detroit. Ekman took a job in advertising at Chrysler in 1977, and he and his future wife moved into a rowhouse near Second and Willis, decades before the Corridor was given the more friendly designation, "Midtown." The stigma worked hard against the neighborhood and prevented most suburbanites from doing any more than pass it on the freeway, but Ekman found "a very close-knit community, not unlike any small town made up of people... good people who through no fault of their own attempted to live their lives in the eye of a storm."

These stories, loosely based on Ekman's five years in the Cass Corridor, both confirm and shatter the neighborhood's bad reputation, illustrating the complexity beneath the very one-sided story that is told about the decline of Detroit's (and America's) urban areas.

Another interesting aspect of this project is that the stories are not available in print - Ekman made studio recordings of himself reading each of them, and you can listen to the audio recordings for free at http://www.peopleliveinthecasscorridor.com/. Single stories or the entire album can also be purchased on the website.

Cutting off brownfield and historic preservation tax incentives could halt development progress

Gov. Snyder's proposed state budget ruthlessly eliminates state tax incentives for a number of industries and projects in favor of lower overall business taxes. While the incentives for filmmaking have gotten the most attention, the elimination of state tax incentives for the redevelopment of brownfield sites and historic preservation may be the most crucial issue for Detroit.

The brownfield credits apply to "brownfield sites," which the Michigan Economic Development Corp. loosely defines as "properties that are either contaminated, blighted or functionally obsolete." These incentives, along with others for the preservation of historic properties, have been responsible for many high-profile redevelopment projects, including the Book-Cadillac and Fort Shelby. As I wrote earlier in a post about redevelopment around Grand Circus Park, the redevelopment of the Broderick Tower was literally made possible by state tax credits.

I understand the need for a balanced budget, but it seems that many of Snyder's proposals would set Detroit and Michigan backwards, leaving us to rely entirely on the hope that his "good climate for business" idea is going to pan out. Nancy Kaffer and Daniel Duggan of Crain's Detroit write that the elimination of these tax credits "could slow or stop the flow of redevelopment projects in Detroit," and the article quotes the vice president of board administration of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., who says that "it's hard to think of a big project that hasn't used the credits."

With all the progress that's been made recently on these projects, the idea of cutting off the state tax incentives seems very misguided.

The Silent Impact of Robocop

The Robocop statue has been a pretty divisive topic. I'm not really sure how I feel about the symbolism of Robocop, or that so many people outside Detroit donated money, or that a group of people who have been in Corktown for only a few years are building a seven foot statue in their backyard.

Either way, while you might think it’s stupid, the Robocop statue fundraiser has accomplished what you had probably not even thought of attempting: raised thousands and thousands of dollars for a Detroit project. I certainly did not think $50,000 would be donated to the construction of a Robocop statue, especially in less than a week. Some people claim that this is not impressive because one businessman in California donated half of the money. In response, I would say that it's almost equally amazing to raise $25,000 in less than a week. So, it seems like this is a challenge. If you think you could spend that money on something better or more creative, start your own fundraiser or present your own plan, because the possibility is clearly out there.

A Hamtramck artist may have just proven this point without even realizing it. The Detroit News writes that “Marianne Burrows was irritated with the recent online fundraising campaign to create a statue of the sci-fi movie icon and launched her own $50,000 drive for something she thinks is more useful: an art park.” The goal is to provide $2,000 and some empty land to 25 artists.

The irony is that Burrows apparently would not have come up with the idea of raising money for this project if she had not been pissed off about the Robocop statue.

And, in defense of Robocop, when I was thinking of ways this $50,000 could be better spent in Detroit, I was thinking of maybe feeding malnourished children or buying new textbooks and supplies for DPS students. But again, I’m not personally making the effort to raise money, so more power to Marianne Burrows for pursuing her own idea.

I don't think the Robocop statue will make or break Corktown, and if it ends up convincing a lot of people to visit Detroit for the first time so that they can discover that it's much more than a place with a Robocop statue, I think that's a good thing.

It is definitely possible that this only happened because the idea of a Robocop statue is kind of stupid and therefore spread quickly on the internet. In the end, if it turns out that people are more willing to donate money to a statue of Robocop than to more useful things, I think that says more about humanity than about this statue.

Mick Vranich, "Radnik Pisar"

Last year, I was at a used book sale in Livonia and came across a copy of Radnik Pisar by Mick Vranich. Although I was not familiar with Vranich, I was in the middle of a poetry/small press phase (it happens), so I was pretty excited to find a book by a Detroit poet.

The book was published in 1983 by 2x4 Press in Detroit. The author bio on the last page reads, "Mick Vranich was born in 1946 downriver from Detroit. At eighteen, he was a general laborer at Zug Island; at twenty, a scrapballer and hooker at Great Lakes Steel; later, a squaring shear operator at Ford Stamping Plant. Other jobs include driving 130,000 miles delivering car parts in San Francisco, where he wore out three trucks. His first book, Salad Surreal: Discernible by Distortion, appeared in 1971. Vranich presently lives in Detroit and makes his living as a carpenter."

A note on the first page says that "Radnik Pisar" is Serbian for "Worker Writer," and Vranich definitely seems to embody the persona of the introspective laborer, alone with his thoughts. In "Scrapballer," he describes the beginning of the night shift at the steel mill, when he cleared his mind of thoughts of home and "poured a cup of coffee from my thermos and lit a cigarette and watched the steel spooling."

Vranich's writing style is some mixture of vague abstraction and the intense straightforwardness of Charles Bukowski, and it's usually very visual and chaotic. I don't want to try to speak for Vranich or make some grand statement about what he's trying to communicate, but I can say that the world often seems very hostile, lonely, and paranoid in these poems. Some take place from inside the home, sensing an unwelcoming world outside, and in others, the conflict and confusion seems to come from inside the poet's own head. That working class Detroit imagery permeates many of them, as in "Invade the Will," when Vranich is "walking on ice to the beer store / with a bag full of cans."

My favorite is a very brief poem called "Saxaphones in the Sunlight" --

"i think i'll take a walk
it's very bright outside
i know i have the ability
to walk in the streets
i have seen me there
i hear saxaphones in the sunlight
i hear warnings outside the door."

***

Vranich worked as a carpenter until February 2010, when he was seriously injured in a fall at a construction site. He died on March 29. Photos from the April 4 memorial can be seen at Tribes of the Cass Corridor, and the Metro Times printed some remembrances on March 30.

Streetlight Giraffe

2nd Ave and Canfield

Grand Circus Park Revival

Grand Circus Park is experiencing a bit of a rebirth with news over the last couple months that three buildings on its south end are undergoing major redevelopment.




2007 photo of Grand Circus Park. The Broderick Tower is the taller building with the Verizon ad, which covers up the much more visually pleasing whale mural. To the immediate right is the David Whitney Building, and to its left is the Madison Building. Photo by Mike Russell, available under a Creative Commons license.


1. The Broderick Tower is being renovated by Motown Construction Partners and will have 127 apartments with a restaurant and lounge on the first few floors. Construction is expected to be done by September 2012. Although there have been attempts to rehab the Broderick in the past, this time the developers have more solid funding sources, including historic tax credits, according to Buildings of Detroit.

2. Across the street, the David Whitney Building is being purchased by a group of investors called the Whitney Partners on a loan from the Detroit Development Authority. There will be retail space on the first few floors along with some mixture of commercial and residential units. The building was constructed in 1915 and designed by Daniel Burnham, the architect/urban planner who did such minor things as creating the master plan for Chicago. According to the Free Press, "plans include restoring the Whitney's original classical architectural ornament that was stripped away a half-century ago." (Detroit Free Press)

3. The Madison Building was purchased by Quicken Loans, who will "rehab its upper floors into a hub for high-tech start-ups" (Model D Media). Quicken Loans has been pushing for development in Detroit for a while and moved its headquarters downtown last year.

Woodward Light Rail construction could begin by the end of the year

The Draft Environmental Impact Study for the Woodward Light Rail project was just released and can be downloaded at the project's website. This is the first draft of the federal environmental impact study, which needs to be completed before federal funds can be used for the project. The report is broken up into several sections and provides an extremely detailed analysis of the possible impact of a list of factors, such as noise and vibrations, on buildings and neighborhoods along the route. Also, if you go to the "Public Documents" section of the website, you can download maps of the proposed route, including three potential Downtown routes for the south end of the track.

According to Model D, the final version of the report is expected to be submitted in May after the public presentation and review of the first draft. Hopefully, construction will begin at the end of 2011. The public comment period goes until March 14, according to the project website, and formal presentations are being given on February 12 at 11am and 4pm at the main branch of the Detroit Public Library.

Like I said, this is actually happening.

Robocop at the Imagination Station

A few days ago, someone in Massachusetts sent a Twitter message to Mayor Bing suggesting that Detroit build a Robocop statue. Bing responded with a polite "no, thank you." Amazingly, a debate is now raging over the merits of a Robocop statue, and it kind of seems like this is actually going to happen. Some people have taken up the cause and are attempting to raise money and find a suitable location for the proposed seven-foot monument. The project's website is http://detroitneedsrobocop.com/, and as I write this, over $5,200 has been donated, which is 10% of the goal amount.

At the moment, the Imagination Station has offered a piece of their property as a home for the statue. The Imagination Station is a non-profit that recently purchased two abandoned homes and some other land on the edge of Roosevelt Park in Corktown. The group's mission is to renovate these two structures and eventually turn the property into a combination public art space/media center/artist residency program.




One of two abandoned homes being re-purposed by the Imagination Station. Photo by Margaret O'Leary.





Looking down 14th Street towards Michigan Avenue. The photocopies on the facade of the abandoned Roosevelt Hotel, which stands on the lot next to the Imagination Station, spell out "Face the Station." This block has been seeing a lot of activity in the past several months. Photo by Margaret O'Leary.


This whole Robocop statue idea is very surreal. Honestly, I'm having a hard time deciding whether it's a good idea or not. It's hard to tell whether a statue of Robocop would be a quirky addition to Corktown or just a joke that's been allowed to go way too far. Still, I think this is a testament to Detroit's uniqueness and endless possibilities at this point in time. I can't think of another city in which you can say, "You need a spot to build your Robocop statue? How about you put it in front of the two houses I'm converting into a community media and art center?"