Drive along Woodward Avenue toward Campus Martius and the signs
of change are all around you. Literally. Sleek signs have gone
up with maps of the downtown area and arrows pointing the way to major
points of interest — Campus Martius, the Ren Cen, the stadiums.
So
what. It’s a few signs. Probably just for the Super Bowl. Whatever. But
then, last Friday at dusk, as the Compuware crowd was filing out for
the weekend, a couple of guys in suits with briefcases and trench coats
approached one of the signs and leaned in to consult the map. And then
it hits: Detroit just got a little friendlier.
Touches like
these, made in advance of the 100,000-plus party people and thousands
of press about to descend on the city, combined with major changes to
the face of downtown, have boosters beaming. Critics liken the efforts
to putting lipstick on a pig, but Detroit leaders say what the critics
fail to see is the bigger picture — that the city, in fact the region,
has come together like never before, and that what’s been started here
in the name of a football game can’t be wiped away that easily.
As
the excitement builds for the biggest party the 313’s seen in some time
(and this is a city that knows how to throw a party), the nagging
question is what do we do once the clock ticks down, the fourth quarter
comes to a close and the VIPs pack up their jets and head back to
wherever it is they came from.
“Everything we’ve done is permanent,” says George Jackson, president of the quasi-public development agency, the Detroit Economic Growth Corp.
“The things we’re doing are essentially laying a foundation for this
city for the rest of the century. Nothing that we’ve done is going to
be put on a semi truck and rolled out of here after the last touchdown.”
In the name of SBXL
Yes,
it’s just a game, after all. Just one football game. But for Detroit,
the Super Bowl’s been more than that. In a time when Detroit’s economy
has been less than stellar, when its auto industry has taken some sharp
blows, downtown has put its best foot forward.
To see what’s
happened downtown, “take a drive down Woodward Avenue. That’s all you
need to do,” says Dave Blaszkiewicz, president of the Detroit Investment Fund.
“There are buildings that are re-employed, if you will. We’ve got new
retail, new restaurants, new businesses. It’s a different block than it
was even two or three years ago.”
Jackson says the national spotlight of the Super Bowl has directly led
to or at least strongly impacted some of the grand, glaringly obvious
and lasting changes downtown. They include:
• At least 63 new businesses that have opened downtown in the past 36 months, including more than 20 new restaurants.
•
A $12 million façade improvement program, which matched as much as
$150,000 for property owners to spend on fixing up their downtown
storefronts and $30,000 for lots. “Our money spurred three times more
money. We asked for $150,000, and some people put in $500,000,” Jackson
says.
• Major thoroughfares, some that looked ramshackle and
dated a few years ago (i.e. those weird red tubes that formerly
sprouted out of Washington Boulevard), now look shiny and new, with new
pavement, lighting, landscaping and sidewalks.
• People living along lower Woodward, including the Lofts of Merchants Row.
“Washington
Boulevard. Woodward. Broadway. The façade program. These things are
real. They’re not ceremonial,” says Jackson, who soon also will be the
city’s interim chief development officer.
A stronger downtown makes …
City
leaders say none of the physical changes could have happened without a
renewed spirit of cooperation among leaders and residents from the city
and metro area, who’ve come together in ways unheard of in Detroit.
And those same leaders say that kind of cooperative spirit is what they hope to build upon after the NFL names its champion.
“The
Super Bowl gave us a sense of urgency, and that sense of urgency has
led to facilitating the creation of effective partnerships,” says
Jackson.
Those directional signs downtown, for instance, took a coordinated
effort from public and private groups, including the DEGC, the Michigan
Department of Transportation, the Downtown Development Authority and
the Downtown Detroit Partnership.
“What Super Bowl did is it
brought organizations together to get them to work together, which in
many cases hasn’t happened before,” says Ken Kettenbeil, vice president
of communications for the Super Bowl XL Host Committee.
“To have organizations like the Detroit Regional Chamber, the Metro
Detroit Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Detroit Economic Growth
Corp., the city — to have all those organizations come together and be
sitting at a table, not only is Super Bowl more successful and
relationships and ideas are shared for the Super Bowl, but for projects
to come afterward, too.”
… a stronger region
And
while the relationships inside Detroit are important, there’s a
regional strength and identity that’s growing and is equally as
significant, leaders say.
“The real test of the Super Bowl is
what we do afterwards to build on the pride we engender in the region,”
says Jim Townsend, executive director of the Tourism Economic
Development Council, part of the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The
biggest challenge we have in metro Detroit is our self-image, he says,
and Super Bowl could “prove to ourselves that metro Detroit can match
any region in the country and can put on a world-class event.”
Thinking
regionally and getting the region to value the city as much as it does
the suburbs are keys to southeast Michigan’s success, says Matt Cullen,
General Motors’ general manager of economic development and enterprise
services. “People have the opportunity to invest in any area of the
world. People are drawn to compelling urban areas as part of that.
Urban areas are critical areas, where a lot of new thoughts are created
and people come together in a density that allows for a lot of human
interaction.”
The Super Bowl will also reintroduce a lot of metro Detroiters to the
city. The Host Committee has built a cadre of 8,000 volunteers — drawn
from 11,000 people who signed up, many from the suburbs or the suburbs
of the suburbs. Armed with red and blue jackets, they are set to hit
the city streets, hotel lobbies, airports and special events to guide
visitors during the festivities.
“There’s some suburbs that don’t even have 8,000 people living in them,” Kettenbeil says. “That’s a small city.”
The
database of volunteers, people proven to be excited about the region,
will be turned over to the United Way and Convention and Visitors
Bureau, and could be called upon for future events and volunteer
opportunities.
Add in the 1,400 people who worked during
downtown cleanup events, and you have an even larger pool of dedicated
people, says Ann Lang, president and CEO of the Downtown Detroit Partnership. “We want to keep in touch with those people. There’s a group of potential ambassadors who could be with us for perpetuity.”
Surely
some of those people are excited about the game, but more are just
proud of their city and want to show it off, Townsend says. Training
those volunteers to be ambassadors to the city and getting them out to
explore what Detroit has to offer will have a lasting, immeasurable
impact on the region’s strength.
“When we think about what
happens next and how do we use the Super Bowl as a springboard of
progress, those volunteers and their relationships, and that kind of
viral marketing, and that kind of six-degrees-of-separation word of
mouth, you can’t top it,” he says.
It ain’t over
To
those who are sick of hearing about the Super Bowl, just wait. It’ll be
over soon. But leaders say the energy infused into downtown is hardly
over.
Cullen of GM says Detroiters should be cautious not to ascribe all of
the beautification, investment and development downtown to the game.
“One event isn’t causal. Otherwise it makes the whole thing seem so
transitory,” he says, pointing out that General Motors’ investment
along the riverfront and $500 million investment in the Renaissance
Center, as well as much of the other development activity downtown was
in the works well before the game was announced in November 2000. “I
think what’s interesting is that when you have an event like the Super
Bowl, you tend to see everything through the prism of the Super Bowl.
We need to have a broader perspective.”
Jackson says the Super
Bowl was a tool to spark new development, a reason to speed up things
that needed to be done anyway. The game is a couple weeks away, but new
development projects are still breaking ground. For example, he says,
the DEGC is on the cusp of announcing its plans to redevelop the old
cement silo sites on the riverfront east of downtown.
“I don’t
think I did a damn thing for the Super Bowl, but did I use the Super
Bowl? Yes, I did,” Jackson says. “Nothing we’ve done is for the Super
Bowl. We’re going to continue doing what we’re doing, which is making
sure we’ve got some tools and resources to rebuild the city. The plan
is to continue what’s worked, continue doing what’s working.
“We’ve
proven that there’s a demand for downtown and urban living. There’s a
pent-up demand. … When people see investment of that magnitude, that
creates excitement. That creates belief in something that wasn’t there
before.”
Townsend says the region needs to work together to keep
the momentum going. “There would be no Super Bowl without Ford Field.
There would be no All-Star Game without Comerica Park. Those were
funded by the region. It was a partnership of city and suburbs to make
that possible. We should be looking at the Super Bowl as a start. This
is what you get if you cooperate regionally.
“Think of what we
could get if we built a world-class transit system regionally that
served the city and suburbs. Think of what we could do if we built a
world-class system of regional greenways. The city’s waterfront is an
incredible resource. It’s something that could be a resource for people
across the region. I think the evidence is on the ground.”
The
Super Bowl may have been the kick in the pants, the prom night you rent
a tux for, the family reunion that gets you to dust under the sofa.
Yet, Blaszkiewicz says, just wait. Detroit’s best is yet to come.
“Just
wait a few more years. The stuff that’s in the pipeline now is really
going to continue to change the face of Detroit,” Blaszkiewicz says. “I
have been working downtown since the mid-’80s, and I’ve never been as
excited as I am now about the prospects downtown.”
The Lofts at Merchant Row on Woodward
Vincente's Cuban Restaurant
Downtown Map and Sign Kiosk
Super Bowl Volunteers at a Pep Rally at Ford Field
Renaissance Center
All Photographs Copyright Dave Krieger
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