Page 900 – Model D

Whitney’s high-end dining experience now caters to vegetarians

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March 10, 2009

The Whitney, one of Detroit's high-end eateries, now offers vegetarian menu.Excerpt:Among them is the white-tablecloth Whitney in Detroit, where executive chef Michael Lutes last month began offering a five-course vegetarian tasting menu as one of the restaurant's special dining options.But first, he posted the menu on the restaurant's Web site to gauge interest. And even Lutes, 38, a former vegetarian, was surprised at the reaction: "Eleven percent of our guests ordered vegetarian the next week," he says.Read the entire article here.Read a list here of a few other high-end restaurants with veggie menus.

Woodward rail line gets M1-RAIL name and bidding begins

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Arts & Culture

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March 10, 2009

Woodward rail line gets a new name in M1-RAIL and bidding begins on contracts. The hope is that by late 2010 it will be up and running.Excerpt:Formerly known as TRAIL for the Regional Area Initial Link, the system is now called M1-RAIL after the state designation for Woodward Avenue -- M1.Paul Childs, a staffer at the nonprofit Downtown Detroit Partnership, now serves as project manager for M1-RAIL. He said Monday that bids for engineering design and pre-construction oversight were issued in late February and project staffers are now reviewing submissions from various firms.Contracts could be awarded for those tasks as early as late March. Planners hope to break ground by fall and have the rail system running by late 2010 if all goes well."That's pretty ambitious," Childs admitted. "Everything has to align to make that happen." But he added, "We have a goal, and we think the goal is doable."Read the entire article here.

Englishman in Detroit says the ‘Blowout is the best festival ever put on anywhere in the world’

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Arts & Culture

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March 10, 2009

New Detroiter, hailing from London, hits Hamtramck's Blowout and it blows his mind.Excerpt:Holy shit, I love the Blowout. I may have only just arrived home (at what I thought was 2 a.m. but what my computer clock is telling me is 3 a.m. – damn) and therefore still be enjoying the memories that are very fresh in my mind, but I think that this year’s Blowout is the best festival ever put on anywhere in the world. Ever. Frankly, you can stick your Woodstock up your ass.Having lived in London for 10 years and traveled extensively, I’m fairly sure that this is a festival that could only happen in Detroit. In London, New York or L.A., the venues wouldn’t pull together in this manner and there wouldn’t be enough decent local bands to make the thing work. As an Englishman who chose to live here 14 months ago, I truly believe that this is the greatest city in the world, and the Blowout highlights the fact.Read the entire blog post here.

Detroit’s film industry shows up in the UK’s Guardian

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Arts & Culture

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March 10, 2009

The UK's the Guardian picks up on Detroit's film tax incentives and brings out some numbers.Excerpt:Thanks to some lucrative tax breaks, Detroit, and much of the State of Michigan, has become the latest backlot of choice for film-makers.In the past 10 months alone, some 35 production companies have qualified for $48m in payments towards making movies in the state. In return, the movie studios have spent about $65.4m making movies in Michigan since the project began last year.Gran Torino, the latest film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, is by far the biggest project to benefit from the Michigan plan, while Hilary Swank's Betty Ann Walters started filming last Wednesday.Read the entire article here.

The Detroit News looks at the charms of living in Detroit’s Rosedale Park

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Arts & Culture

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March 10, 2009

The Detroit News' Living In The D blog visits Rosedale Park. Excerpt: Grand River bisects the neighborhood into Rosedale Park and North Rosedale, the latter being a remarkably handsome neighborhood of great brick homes and mansions, many of them Tudor Revival. Indeed, the area feels a lot like a corner of Palmer Woods over on Woodward Avenue. Rosedale Park south of Grand River, however, is a surprisingly good-looking district, even if many of its homes aren't that much different than what you'd see in, say, Harper Woods -- lots of little two-story brick Tudor cottages. Read the entire article here.

When $100 homes aren’t always a bad thing

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Arts & Culture

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March 10, 2009

Detroit writer Toby Barlow explains that Detroit's $100 homes aren't a bad thing, especially for artists.Excerpt:Now, three homes and a garden may not sound like much, but others have been quick to see the potential. A group of architects and city planners in Amsterdam started a project called the “Detroit Unreal Estate Agency” and, with Mitch’s help, found a property around the corner. The director of a Dutch museum, Van Abbemuseum, has called it “a new way of shaping the urban environment.” He’s particularly intrigued by the luxury of artists having little to no housing costs. Like the unemployed Chinese factory workers flowing en masse back to their villages, artists in today’s economy need somewhere to flee.But the city offers a much greater attraction for artists than $100 houses. Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished. From Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project (think of a neighborhood covered in shoes and stuffed animals and you’re close) to Matthew Barney’s “Ancient Evenings” project (think Egyptian gods reincarnated as Ford Mustangs and you’re kind of close), local and international artists are already leveraging Detroit’s complex textures and landscapes to their own surreal ends. Read the entire article here.

Foreclosed homes being bought up by outside buyers

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Arts & Culture

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March 10, 2009

Renters in Detroit may come out on top as home costs lower and outside landlords buy up property.Excerpt:Still, not all of Detroit's real estate market has bottomed out. Listings include a seven-bedroom, 11,580 square-foot Tudor in Detroit's historic Indian Village neighborhood for $849,900, and a $765,000 penthouse condo in the city's Albert Kahn Building.What's the effect on a city whose population has plummeted to half its size since the 1950s with no sign of return? The winners might be the renters lucky enough to live in a home that's been fixed up by a legitimate landlord. The losers might be those who end up in less reputable hands.The stakes could go either way for the landlords arriving in a market that may not have found its bottom. Same for the dwindling number of neighbors who still own their homes — they could benefit from having the vacant home fixed up and occupied but likely will find theirs will fetch a fraction of what they paid or owe.Read the entire article here.

Neighbors doing all they can in Detroit communities to protect vacant houses

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Arts & Culture

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March 10, 2009

Neighbors are trying to take care of their neighborhoods by helping out the vacant homes and plots of land.Excerpt:And in the city of Detroit, where the foreclosure crisis has worsened decades of decay, guarding foreclosed and vacant houses against blight and burglars has become the mission of thousands of volunteers."A very big issue is how homes look from the street," said Steve Wasko, an Indian Village resident and spokesman for Detroit Public Schools who routinely patrols his neighborhood making minor repairs to vacant homes.In Detroit neighborhoods such as Boston-Edison and Indian Village, citizen volunteers plant flowers at vacant houses, mow the lawns and take turns parking their cars in the driveways to make the vacant homes appear occupied.Volunteers hang curtains in vacant windows and install motion detectors in empty houses to catch burglars in the act, with several arrests recorded in Indian Village alone.Read the entire article here.

The Blowout gets a nod from NPR

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March 10, 2009

National Public Radio looks in on the Blowout in Hamtramck.Listen to the audio here.

Travel blog asks thumbs up or thumbs down to Detroit travel

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March 10, 2009

The travel blog at World Hum, a travel website, asks a question about visiting or not visiting Detroit. Some points are made, not always glowing. And don't forget to read the comments, which are fairly glowing.Excerpt: A number of years ago, I worked with a woman who was originally from Detroit. She loved her hometown and missed it terribly. I can’t remember her name, but I vividly remember the glow on her face when she talked about the city she’d left behind and to which she vowed to return someday. I know, right? Hard to believe. Yet Detroit has a draw, even if it’s a sort of pity vote. Friend and fellow writer Margaret Littman, also has a passion for the city. She says, “I love Detroit’s architecture and public art and wide boulevards. But more than that, I love that Detroit is such a microcosm of America: boomed thanks to ingenuity and innovative and now struggling with what to do next. Plus, I’m a sucker for an underdog.”Read the entire article here.