Ron Scott, the Detroit community activist, visited the Cobo Convention Center recently and had a disturbing experience.
He noticed the famous portrait of longtime Mayor Coleman Young was missing. For years it occupied a spot on the wall separating Cobo Hall and Cobo Arena.
Scott raised the issue Monday on the Detroit News opinion blog:
"I ask the new Cobo Hall Regional Authority: Where is Coleman?" Scott wrote. He hinted at the possibility of skullduggery.
Surely Coleman has not disappeared because there may be some who wish to vilify him and destroy his legacy and image…they wouldn’t do that, would they?
Wherever he is, whether he is just being dusted to take once again his rightful spot at Cobo Hall…we want him back.
Mystery solved. No skullduggery.
Phil Frame, spokesman for the Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority, says officials at the Cobo Center and the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center -- Detroit City Hall -- have swapped portraits. The painting of Young will hang in the Young building's atrium once it is refurbished, and that of Cobo will grace a wall at Cobo eventually.
"Because our building is in the middle of a renovation project and the wall space is fluid, the intention was to put the Cobo portrait safely in the board room, at least for now," Frame said. He adds: "We also have a bust of Mayor Cobo in the main concourse near the new atrium."
A bust of Youngs sits inside the Woodward Avenue entrance of city hall.
Cobo, a Republican, died in office in 1957. Young died in 1997.
