Downtown Detroit : Buzz

Co-owners Karen Gage and Kelli Kavanaugh say they have always wanted to operate their Wheelhouse Detroit bike shop year round. The next best thing is a pop up shop in a great location. And it doesn't come much better than the Compuware Building, across from downtown's Campus Martius.

It's now open through Christmas Eve. Get all the info you need to go shopping here.

It was a lazy month for London ad agency owners Davey and Erin Spens. The pair, fascinated by magazines and travel, took an unusual vacation -- renting an office in Sarajevo, bringing their two coworkers along to pen a magazine offering readers a true glimpse of the formerly war-torn city.

After some help from writer Dave Eggers, who introduced the first issue of Boat Magazine with one of his short stories, the pair are at it again. They came to Detroit to produce their second issue -- a $12 "antidote to lazy journalism," printed on beautiful matte paper, with an article from Jeffrey Eugenides and interviews with Ben Wallace, Alex Winston and Jessica Hernandez.

We found one excerpt, a photo essay on Detroit food, in The Guardian:

We headed down there on a Saturday morning to find a bustling area filled with vegetable stalls, and thousands of people from all over Detroit and the surrounding states shopping for produce for home or business. The must-haves are the ribs from Berts, but we were as taken by the market across the freeway, with its walls painted in murals of meat, fish and cheese, which are sold inside.

Buy it here.

Locally-based social entrepreneurs are repositioning the nation's geographic emphasis on Silicon Valley, attracting a business incubator at Wayne State, a venture capital fund based out of U of M, and the attention of tech wizards and venture capitalists on the West Coast.

At the Blackstone LaunchPad incubator at Wayne State, a diverse group of student entrepreneurs are being trained in running a business -- but locating those future companies in Metro Detroit is part of the program. And they're inspired by young social entrepreneurs like EnGarde Detroit's Bobby Smith and Veronika Scott of the Empowerment Plan to do more than just pay the bills.

Smith says his long-term goal is to help transform Detroit into the "Silicon Valley of social entrepreneurship. Detroit is the perfect place for it -- Detroit created the middle class. People here are not afraid of hard work," he says.

Read 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.

Some skeptics questioned the logic of Detroit's new Public Dock and Terminal, which opened at a $21.5 million cost this summer on the banks of the Detroit River. According to this new story in the Freep, the new dock is already paying off in an influx of well-heeled tourists. The number of cruise ships planning stops at the Dock in 2012 is 13 -- a massive increase from the two ships who anchored in Detroit in 2011. At least 2,500 luxury tourists bound for the Great Lakes will set foot in the city next year.

Excerpt:

"What's terrific about the new dock and Detroit is the proximity to the upper part of the Great Lakes," said Chris Conlin, president of Great Lakes Cruise Company in Ann Arbor, which markets the cruises. "I believe the new port in Detroit is the reason the Yorktown is sailing out of Detroit and not Windsor or Toronto."

Anchors away here!

Selling real estate in Detroit has been a uniquely difficult challenge since the 2008 recession; the city is now prime territory for reinvestment and development.

On Nov. 8 and 9, real estate professionals, developers and students of land-use topics will convene at Cobo for "Detroit: Forged By Innovation," a two-day conference sponsored by the University of Michigan and the Urban Land Institute. Manhattan-based creative developer Tony Goldman and Peter D. Cummings will headline the speakers' list -- workshops, walking tours and bus trips around the city are on the list for the conference, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Click here for registration information and more.

Downtown Detroit's castle, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Hall at Cass and Grand River Avenue, will be renovated into creative offices for Mindfield, according to the Freep.

After purchasing the GAR building from the City of Detroit for $220,000, developers Tom and David Carleton and Sean Emery said they hope to open in 2013 after a $2 to $3 million renovation. In addition to offices for Mindfield, a boutique media production firm with offices on Library St., the building will include retail and restaurant space, as well as a Civil War memorial to honor the building's history.

Excerpt:

Designed by architect Julius Hess in the castle-like Romanesque style popular in the day, the GAR Building was built in 1899 as a meeting hall for Union Army veterans. As those veterans died off, the building took on other uses, but closed more than 30 years ago.

Find out more here.

There was so much to see at our Oct. 21 event, The Next Big Thing, that we didn't even see the photographers grabbing shots. Between the Detroit-themed expo, tasty food, music, Hatch-off and video, it was pretty hard to focus.

So we're loving this slideshow of the event, posted by WDIV. The David Whitney building is the star of the show, and these images really convey the excitement and Detroit love we felt that evening.

Click here to see if you made the cut.

Pop-up retail is spreading throughout Metro Detroit (other than the annual Halloween shops, we're going to give the credit to Joe Posch's Hugh for this one). The Somerset Collection's CityLoft luxury shopping experience downtown will extend weekend shopping hours through December for the holiday shopping season. The article also caught up with 71 Pop's Margarita Barry, who offered a convincing argument for many entrepreneurs to scout the market by opening temporary retail.

Excerpt:

"It's a good chance for me to learn whether I really want to run a brick-and-mortar business," Barry said. "What are the price points that work? What does the community want? The pop up idea is offering me a great chance to learn."

Find out more here.

Hotels that banked on Detroit's future as a travel destination are reaping their just rewards.

Based on increases in occupancy rates over the next 12 months, the website travelclick.com predicts the city and surrounding areas will experience a 2 percent increase in travel to the city in 2012.

Excerpt:

Finally, Conran says, the Detroit area is seeing "significant" year-over-year gains in business travel thanks to the recovering auto industry."We can't underestimate the fact that the health of the auto industry has improved dramatically," Conran says.

Let's not forget that worldwide media acclaim of Detroit as a paradise for an off-the-beaten-path vacation.

More here.

While the dine-and-dash is the ultimate gastronomic faux pas, a new event from our friends at MOVE Detroit will bring some class to the act. MOVE Detroit, a group of city-dwellers working to bring more young professionals to the D this year through fun networking events designed to show suburbanites what fun we have living down here.

They have quite an evening planned, teaming with GM for the Dine & Dash Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 4:30 p.m. Head to the Jefferson entrance of the RenCen for the chance to test-drive GM's newest vehicles (like the Volt, Cadillac CTS V Coupe and Camaro) on a short jaunt through the city. Attendees will then discover the newly-opened Joe Muer's Seafood Restaurant inside the RenCen for a networking tasting, featuring a Detroit trivia game with prizes provided by Somerset Collection's Detroit Shoppe.

Are you moving to Detroit? Of course, you are. Plan your move and more at movedetroit.org.

In a widely-circulated article from Yahoo! Sports on the Detroit Lions' improbable start, Kid Rock and Ford Field's new reputation as a stadium to fear around the NFL, we found a few thoughts on urban land use and downtown space that fit pretty well in Model D.

Author Dan Wetzel contends that there's more for opposing teams to fear when visiting Detroit than the defensive line. Ford Field bucks the nationwide trend of cocooning stadiums -- that is, placing them far from city life and downtown chaos. The stadium's defiant location creates a crowd boiling over with enthusiasm before streaming through its doors -- and the crowd factor, no doubt, that contributed to the Bears' nine false starts against the Lions during Monday night's game. Wetzel's logic? Smart planning and cooperation between the Lions and city officials have re-defined the notion of the home field advantage in sports. And visiting teams should beware.

Excerpt:

It brought a hot team and the first Monday night game in a decade. So the people were everywhere, drinking in parking garages and cooking on dirty sidewalks and even tapping kegs right by the police headquarters. They wouldn’t have it any other way. It produced a throng of fans who would later bring the soul of the city inside and rain it right down on the Bears.

Read more here.

Close to 4,500 bikers made the Motor City a two-wheeled adventure course for a day on Sept. 24; choosing a police-escorted 30-mile jaunt through Detroit's streets or a whopping 62-mile slog from the tour's home base at Roosevelt Park (check out Tour De Troit wrap-ups from the News, Freep and MLive).

Tour De Troit's explosive growth (it drew less than 50 cyclists for its first outing in 2002) mirrors the bicycle's increasing popularity as an accepted form of transportation in the D. A growing network of greenways and bike lanes, wide avenues and more tours have helped grow cycling by 192 percent in the past ten years.

Excerpt:

"(Riding a bike) shows the city on a human scale, and you see a lot of detail that you wouldn't see when you were in an automobile," said Bill Lusa, 37, director for the tour. Lusa, who lives in Woodbridge, uses his bike to commute to places around the city. "It's not always about smashing the system and ending the automotive hegemony," he said. "It's about having fun and being in slightly better shape."

More available here.

A Midtown wine bar, a Woodbridge "gypsy den" serving fine teas and a bakeshop with a big heart -- these are just three of the 10 semi-finalist businesses announced in the Hatch Detroit entrepreneurial contest, which will award $50,000 and mentoring to Detroit's favorite idea for new retail.

Voting's now open to the public -- two rounds will narrow down the pool of semi-finalists to the "Hatch Off" finale, where the budding entrepreneurs will be given five minutes to make their best pitches to a team of judges.

Head to the Hatch Detroit page to cast your votes for the top four -- and come back the next day (you can vote once every 24 hours). Best of luck to all! Detroit could use all 10 of these these fresh ideas for local biz -- and 10 more after that.

Local social entrepreneur Tunde Wey's website, DetroitBigFDeal.com, operates like a Motor City blend of Kickstarter and Groupon. Similar to Kickstarter, DetroitBigFDeal highlights local projects in need of support, using social media to fund the drive for contributions. Like Groupon, anyone who buys gets discounts and gift certificates to neighboring businesses (among them Thistle Coffee Shop, Union Street and Cliff Bell's). While giving is its own reward, it need not be the only one.

The website's newest project, Neighborhood Mother, will try to raise $3000 to renovate a recently-abandoned home near Spaulding Court in North Corktown. Longtime resident Angie Johnson, now 70 years old, single-handedly took care of her block while working two jobs and raising kids alone. Laid off, she can no longer afford to keep up her home. The project, led by Steve Schmidt, Jon Koller and Jeff DeBruyn, will use the money to get Johnson's residence market-ready and rented.

Excerpt:

"This provides Angie much needed (rental) income, allowing her to live with some measure of financial security and the dignity befitting her contribution to the community. A new tenant also increases neighborhood density, growing a community where even one more person means an added layer of support and safety. This is a community-initiated response to the severe challenges of blight, population decline and social care for the elderly ..."

Check out the video and give what you got here.