New Center : Buzz

A new regional transit authority would coordinate all transit service in southeast Michigan, including a number of transit initiatives and agencies, the Detroit Free Press says in an opinion piece this week.

That includes high speed bus transit, light rail on Woodward from downtown to New Center and commuter train service from Detroit to Ann Arbor.

Let's get it done. That's our opinion. Get all the details here.

The pictures say it all. Well, no: Data Driven Detroit's Kurt Metzger and his charts say it all during episode 11 of DetroitUnspunTV. Plan to spend a good half hour getting an education on proper council re-districting that manages to keep the integrity of neighborhoods intact. Metzger knows his stuff.

Watch the video, commercial free, here.

The Speakers Bureau is an initiative by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center to help establish a voice for Detroit’s creative community. This collective voice is that of many people and businesses who demonstrate forward progress in the city.

All of these individual entities have worked with or work alongside the DC3 in Detroit. Maybe they’ve participated in the Creative Ventures Program or consulted with the DC3 staff on a location for their business. Whatever the case, this is the story of Detroit’s forward movements through our lens. Read all about it here.

"Starting Over," a new exhibition from the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, requests submissions for a gallery show to open in January.

Artists over the age of 18 from Metro Detroit are encouraged to submit no more than two two-dimensional pieces to the DC3 Accelerator Gallery by Nov. 25. The gallery is housed at the Taubman Center for Design Education building at CCS's New Center campus, located at 460 W. Baltimore. There is a $10 fee for entry.

"The concept for our first open-call exhibition is about the idea that, sometimes, you have to start anew," said Katherine Maurer, curator, DC3 Accelerator Gallery. "We want to receive submissions related to starting over, work that does reinvent the wheel. A product redesign, fine art, and anything in between will be considered as long as it relates to the concept of starting over."

Find out more here.

There's just no stopping Detroit Restaurant Week.

Event producers Paxahau reported that the 10-evening dining promotion lured 36,046 gourmands to 21 restaurants across the city of Detroit, an 18.4 percent increase over 2010. It's the second-largest tally ever for the $28 prix fixe dining bonanza, which has counted 150,000 customers since launching five years ago.


"We are pleased the enthusiasm Metro Detroiters have for Detroit Restaurant Week has continued to grow over the years," said Jason Huvaere, Director of Detroit Restaurant Week. "It has been a terrific way for our community to experience the tremendous fine dining restaurants Detroit has to offer. With each campaign we hope we’re developing a new crop of customers who will frequent the restaurants all year long."

Stay tuned for the announcement for a Spring 2012 Detroit Restaurant Week date and more here.

Most every city newspaper has taken a crack at the "Detroit travelogue" this year -- a Lonely Planet-esque tour though the city, combining the D's often mercurial history with present rebuilding efforts. In Detroit, writes the Irish Times, we're successfully re-inventing 200 years of history into a tour for every traveler -- be it the Motown music-seeker, the Underground Railroad tracer or the merry Prohibition buster. Rather than dwell on ancient memories, IT also lauds Detroit's thriving downtown as a cosmopolitan attraction all its own.

Excerpt:

Take a trip up to the restaurant on the roof of the Detroit Marriott hotel, officially the tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the western hemisphere, and have a drink. It’s pretty jaw-dropping, on a par with my favourite, the rooftop restaurant in the San Francisco Hilton. Back on the streets – as they say in the cop shows – head to Midtown and the Detroit Institute of Arts, which, despite its prosaic name, houses one of the finest art collections in the US. Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry cycle of 27 fresco panels – gifted by another Ford, this time Edsel – is considered the best work of his career.

Keep traveling here.

Sister to Berry Gordy, founder of the Motown Museum, and described as the record label's "founding mother," Esther Gordy Edwards passed away last week at age 91. Edwards, who kept the books and lights on while Gordy chased talent and limelight, stayed in Detroit to build the Motown Museum after Gordy moved to L.A. And, as Motown chronicler Mark Ribowsky notes, it was Edwards who brought polish and sophistication to the burgeoning business.

Excerpt:

Ribowsky says Esther Gordy wanted to make sure the Motown artists had what few black performers had before: dignity. "She wanted to turn these ghetto teenagers into polished young men and women, you know, walk around with a book on their head so to speak," he says. "To teach them poise and sophistication, and hired choreographers to teach them how to dance on stage. And she'd go out on tour and lay the law down about being proper men and women, and not sullying the name of Motown, even though at the time Motown really had no name."

Read more (and remember) here.

Call this year's Live Midtown incentive program a roaring success -- after just eight months, roughly $1 million put up by three anchor institutions (Wayne State, the DMC and Henry Ford Health System) is committed, and new applications are on hold.

The fifth Detroit Restaurant Week will return from Friday, Sept. 23 to Sunday, Oct. 2, for the fall edition of the city's popular dining promotion, which offers restaurant-goers a prix fixe three-course meal for only $28. 

The Discovery Channel's new miniseries, Detroit in Overdrive, appearing on Planet Green, digs in deep. While familiar faces like Motor City Denim's Joe Faris and Kid Rock get their due, this vid searches out the "tangible faces behind those big buildings" for the three-part special, which originally aired Aug. 4. That means Maria's Comida, the Sphinx Organization and CCS student and designer Veronika Scott are among the long list of the city's community members and do-gooders sharing the spotlight with Detroit's superstars. We like it.

Excerpt:

The Russell Industrial center functions as a community space for artists, craftspeople, and small businesses. Edith Floyd stands up for what she believes in by building an urban garden where abandoned houses once stood. Last, Kristyn Koth and Malik Muqaribu feed Detroiters in their 1956 Airstream, the Pink Flamingo, bringing fresh organic food to Detroiters in a unique mobile food truck, spearheading a local food movement.

Find out more about Detroit in Overdrive here.

Dan Gilbert's Quicken Loans will join several other major firms in the city to offer incentives urging their employees to live in Detroit, following the success of this year's Live Midtown program. The program will be announced later this summer.

Midtown Detroit Inc. reports 178 employees from the Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Hospital and Wayne State University have used the Live Midtown program to rent, buy or fund home improvements in the district since the program launched five months ago.

Gilbert says he plans to move at least 2,000 of his employees to downtown beginning this fall.

Excerpt:

Speaking Wednesday to the visiting news media, Gilbert quipped, "Building anything great is messy. A construction site is messy, but when it's done, it's usually something people can be proud of." His often-stated goal is to make downtown the lively core of a revitalized city, or what he calls Detroit 2.0.

"There is just a certain feel" to downtown, he said Wednesday. "There's a certain energy, a certain buzz, a certain closeness to everything, and people really, really are enjoying it."

Read the rest of the story here -- and look for more info on these new residential initiatives in Model D this summer.

While much news has been made of Detroit Public Schools shuttering schools across the district, new partnerships with entities like Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center will give students specialized training and attention at two new public high schools in the 2011-2012 academic year.

Incoming freshmen at the Benjamin Carson School of Science and Medicine will embark on a curriculum heavily focused on math and sciences to prepare for careers in the health care industry. And their learning isn't limited to the classroom -- students will access the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, the Kresge Eye Institute, the DMC and Wayne State for real world education.

Another school, Detroit Collegiate Prep, targets keeping at-risk students on track for college through 8:1 student-to-teacher ratios and block scheduling.

Excerpt:

"We know that there is a huge parent demand for high-performing schools," said Jennifer Mrozowski, spokeswoman for DPS. "These two new schools are part of our commitment to create a portfolio of successful school options that attract parents. The schools are funded by the state and Michigan Future Inc., through its Michigan Future Schools program, as part of a $2.8 million plan to open four new high schools in the city.

Read more here.

40 years ago, Motown Records, the sonic factory of lighthearted love songs and spirited soul, released Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," a departure for both the label and the singer. The album, a song cycle that tells the story of a Vietnam vet returning home to a nation in chaos, brought social consciousness to soul -- and the airwaves.

Motown Museum CEO Audley Smith, interviewed for the piece, said Marvin's musical transformation was an inspiration to him and a generation of young Detroiters.

Excerpt:
He says the song "What's Going On" served as an anthem of social awareness. "It was important to be a part of what was happening in terms of social activism in the city of Detroit," Smith says. "And to have Marvin Gaye come out with a song that reinforced that necessity to be conscious, to be active, was a wonderful thing."

Mercy, mercy me. Listen to the story here.

We heard it through the grapevine. A new exhibit at the Motown Museum will take visitors through artifacts like sheet music, album covers and costumes spanning the 20-year Motown Records career of Marvin Gaye. In an interview with Marvin's ex-wife Janis Gaye, she says she's in talks to loan some of his personal effects to the museum, which will host the exhibit through at least September.

Excerpt:

She said she hopes museum visitors see the depth of his creativity and recognize his enduring legacy, which includes a performance next May of the "What's Going On" album by John Legend and The Roots with the National Symphony Orchestra. It marks the 40th anniversary of Gaye performing the album at the same venue.

"I would just like for people to see his whole body of work," Janis Gaye said. "Socially conscious, sexually conscious, whatever it happens to be. It's all Marvin. It all came from that one mind."

Let's get it on. Read more here.

Well, maybe it was naive to assume we'd have light rail by now. But a working plan? Construction? According to the Detroit Free Press, plans for the M-1 light rail line, which would connect New Center and Downtown by way of Woodward Ave., are currently stymied by disputes between private backers, transit advocacy groups and city government.

The major disputes? Whether to run the light rail line down the middle, which transit experts say benefits pedestrians and riders, or down the sides, which private backers claim will stimulate commerce and tourism. Whether the trains will run down to Jefferson or circle downtown to connect with the Rosa Parks Transit Center has also stimulated much debate between private funders and city planners.

Excerpt:

But the project ultimately required cooperation between public and private interests, said Megan Owens, executive director of Transportation Riders United, a group that advocates for public transit. "That's really where M-1 came from," she said, "this desire to get it done faster and to make sure it got done. But you can't really do a transportation project of this magnitude without working with the government. That's the reality."

Read the rest of the story here. And, if you missed this video, bring those trains down the middle, yo.