Excerpts from the article:
The River Store, to be in the Wintergarden of General Motors Corp.'s Renaissance Center headquarters facing the river, will probably open sometime next week. It will sell river-related commemorative merchandise ranging from peppermint-flavored lip balm ($4) to artsy matted photos of the Ambassador Bridge ($40 and $60).
Not coincidentally, the Wintergarden is also the location of the media center for journalists converging on Detroit during the next two weeks to cover the Super Bowl.
The store's opening is timed to tease out-of-town journalists with a vision of what the city's waterfront may look like two or three years from now. By that time a new 31-acre state park will be well under way and a three-mile stretch of the RiverWalk, where people can walk, jog or bike alongside the river's edge from Cobo Center to Belle Isle, should be complete.
"We have an exciting story to tell," says Faye Alexander Nelson, president and CEO of the conservancy, the group formed to spearhead the RiverWalk project that will anchor $500 million in housing, retail and commercial development. The riverfront transformation was kick-started by a $50-million series of challenge grants launched by the Kresge Foundation in 2002.
Merchandise will also be available for purchase via the conservancy's Web site, www.detroitriverfront.org, once the store opens. Nelson says the store will definitely be open by Jan. 30 and perhaps by the middle of next week.
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