Former Piston has vision to help revive Detroit, one step at a time

Highlights from the story:

.  Bing, the eight-time All-Star Detroit Piston whose auto supply company employs 1,400 and expects to have $550 million in annual sales this year, is independently building 40 middle-income, brick homes from $170,000 to $200,000.

.  Bing joined the Thompson Foundation and the Skillman Foundation on Monday to seek to charter 15 high schools for a second school district, New Schools of Detroit.

.  While Bing supports 15 charter high schools, he’s focused mostly on one — a technical high school near his steel company — that is part of his larger plan to transform a dying community into the working and middle-class haven it once was.

.  The Bing Group sits at the top of the North End, which stretches from the Hamtramck and Highland Park borders south to East Grand Boulevard and from I-75 west to Woodward. Bing has adopted the elementary and middle schools. And he’s working with area leaders and clergy to bring shopping back to Oakland Avenue.

.  If he is successful, his plan could be a blueprint for corporate and community leaders to rebuild their own little pieces of Detroit. Dick Dauch, cofounder, chairman and chief executive officer of American Axle & Manufacturing, is behind him.

– Read the full story at the Detroit Free Press