Nike store opening downtown in May.
Nike store opening downtown in May.
Detroit's turnaround really began before the city of Detroit dealt with the painful bankruptcy, John Gallagher of the Detroit Free Press writes.
Gallagher writes:
Many no doubt will point to the city’s 2013-2014 trip through municipal bankruptcy.. But choosing the bankruptcy as the turnaround point underestimates groundwork laid earlier, in some cases many years before.
The year 2007, for example, may seem like a random — even silly — time to pinpoint, with the city sliding toward insolvency and the foreclosure crisis beginning to devastate Detroit neighborhoods.
Yet in 2007 so many good things were already happening. That year, a big section of the RiverWalk opened, Dan Gilbert announced he would move his Quicken Loans headquarters to downtown, the New Economy Initiative launched to encourage entrepreneurship, and D-Town Farm, one of the city’s premier urban agriculture sites, was expanding.
Or go even earlier, to 2000, when the National Football League awarded Detroit its 2006 Super Bowl, civic and business leaders joined in unprecedented cooperation to clean up downtown, enhance the streetscape with wider sidewalks and street lighting and to market the city’s highlights.
We also can't overlook the powerful Chrysler 200 commercial with Eminem that first aired during Super Bowl 2011. The commercial featured the grit and determination of an unpretentious city, and it was the first time in a long long time, perhaps since the rise of the Motown sound, that someone had captured the hipness of Detroit.
It helped recast the narrative of Detroit for the country. The commercial really got it.
Another factor to be considered is the construction of the One Campus Martius building in a desolate, but central part of downtown. It was completed in 2003. Compuware moved 4,000 of its employees to Detroit that year.
Additionally, it certainly helped the city when Lions moved back to Detroit to Ford Field in 2002 and Comerica Park opened in 2000.
