Buzz

We don't care what anyone says we love seeing Curbed Detroit breaking stories no one else does, like this piece that includes a few juicy teasers about what is happening and when in Corktown (or is that Corktown Shores?):

Take a look here.

May the best women and men win Hatch Detroit's $50,000 in seed money to support business startups in Detroit. And read all about how four finalists will be selected this Wednesday in Jon Zemke's news story here.

HuffPost Detroit has a tasty profile on one of the contenders, Vegan Soul. Read about them here.

One of the things we love about Josh Linkner is he's never afraid to punctuate his thoughts in a way everyone can understand -- like comparing Detroit real estate to precious metals, gold in particular.

It's all here in a piece Linkner penned for Forbes, no less.

An excerpt:

Within a five-block radius from the downtown Detroit epicenter, you can buy a vacant building. Yes, building. My business partner Dan Gilbert has purchased approximately 3 million square feet of commercial property in the heart of downtown Detroit over the last few years through his firm, Bedrock Real Estate Services.

Read on here.

If you haven't had a chance to check out some of the colorful, edgy street art popping up around Detroit and Hamtramck, then get out there and see it now. It's splendid.

Curbed Detroit knows what it's all about. Go here and enjoy.

We have absolutely no problem admitting we love the work of former Detroiter, the notable Japanese-American architect Minoru Yamasaki, who among other gems, designed what is now known as One Woodward. Crain's Detroit Business is reporting this tantalizing rumor. What rumor?

Read more here,

We take the business of Detroit music seriously here and devoted much of our July speaker series to that topic. This series of stories in Crains Detroit simply nails many of our concerns. Our kudos. Highly recommended reading.

Start here.

Hatch Detroit has announced the top 10 semi-finalists for the 2012 Comerica Hatch Detroit contest.

This year’s competition brought in more than 250 business plan submissions, representing a 25 percent increase over last year’s contest.

Drum roll, please. Here they are:

Detroit River Sports – Kayak rentals to city-goers, offering tours through the canal districts of Belle Isle, Downtown and other parts of the city. 

Detroit Vegan Soul Café – Vegan food with a soul twist, currently operating as a catering and food delivery business, looking to open a store in Midtown.

La Feria – A wine bar featuring authentic Spanish tapas in a relaxed yet upbeat setting, looking to open in Midtown.

Motor City Design – A custom denim specialty retail store featuring Made in Michigan products where customers can watch garments be made right in the store, looking to open Downtown.

Pho da Nang – A Vietnamese restaurant based in Clawson looking to open another location in Midtown.

Rock City Pies – A handmade pie company specializing in unique combinations such as Salty Apple Carmel Pie and Blueberry-Custard Pie, looking to open in Midtown.

Tashmoo Biergarten – Based on the biergartens in Germany, operating as a pop-up in West Village, looking to open a permanent space in the neighborhood.

The Collective Tap – High-end beer retailer offering classes and food parings, looking to open Downtown. 

Vividbraille Studio Boutique – Fuses high-end fashion and design with USA manufacturing in a retail setting, offering customers some of the finest Made in the USA fashion goods, currently operating in Chicago and looking to expand to Detroit.  

Whip Hand Cosmetics – A cosmetic company, currently operating online, looking to open its manufacturing and retail facility Downtown.

HuffPost Detroit's Kate Abbey-Lambertz wraps some good narrative around this announcement here.

We've always believed a little competition for architects in Detroit could be a beautiful thing -- and end with the creation of many beautiful things.

So, right on cue, comes a design competition focusing on the redeveloping the riverfront.

An excerpt:

The competition will focus on the area between Cobo Hall and the Renaissance Center and between Jefferson Avenue and the Detroit River. This section of Riverfront which includes Hart Plaza is at the heart of the city. The major streets from the radial street plan created by Augustus Woodward intersect just north of this site.

Read the rest of the story here.

We spotted this item trolling, as we are prone to do, on GOOD. It's about a project that redesigns and remakes a city block.

An excerpt:

The organization's next stop: Detroit, where the city's first-ever Better Block project will take place from Sept. 22 to 23 as part of the Detroit Design Festival. Headed by volunteers from the US Green Building Council and Wayne State University, the project aims to reshape a location with plenty of vacant commercial space -- the North End.

Great stuff. Read more here.

Full disclosure: we've loved Matthew Dear since we first started hearing his music and going out to see him DJ in the early '00s. Our gophers even dug up this feature penned by managing editor Walter Wasacz in 2004: here. 

Now living in upstate New York, Dear still holds Detroit, well, dear. An excerpt from Cool Hunting:

That's Detroit--it always makes you feel like it's on the verge of tipping toward being successful and booming. And that's what keeps people there. And when you're in Detroit, you feel like you own it. It's your city, you're there, you're the one bringing in art and events and doing shows. You're meeting people who are also doing their version of what their creative interest is. So there's this little buzz that's always in Detroit and no matter how big that buzz gets on the world scale--like right now a lot of people are talking about it--you hope that it does finally explode.

Read more here.

Take a look at our News item today on developments in the M1 story and also take a peek at this, another report from the Detroit Free Press. An excerpt:

Project supporters were given 60 days to address concerns about the cost of building and operating the $137-million M-1 Rail line from downtown to the New Center area of Detroit -- a 15-minute route with 11 stops. It is a scaled-down version of the original plan to run light rail north to the city limits at 8 Mile.

Read on here.

Despite a snarky lead-in by writer Jude Stewart ("Detroit the Dinosaur hardly feels like the right place to investigate pockets of American innovation") - Hey Jude, don't make it (sound so) bad - this was still nice to see last week in Fast Company:

In a converted theater in downtown Detroit, Detroit Labs is a testament to the city’s resilient spirit of invention. The one-year-old startup designs and builds mobile applications, including Domino’s ordering app, which accounts for $150 million in annualized revenue, and the Chevy Game Time app, which dominated the Super Bowl last January, outranking Angry Birds for a time in the iTunes app store. Since turning a profit (in year one), Detroit Labs has activated phase two of its business plan: letting its developers work one day a week on totally independent projects. That’s right. Employees get paid to futz around.

Read on here.

Hoo-ray, we say. A summer bikes for kids program organized locally by the Detroit Eastside Community Collaborative (DECC) made possible by a $12,500 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy grant sponsored by Coca-Cola is paying dividends in one East Side neighborhood.

HuffPost Detroit has the rest of the story here.