The world’s eyes are on Detroit in a big way starting today, as festivities around the National Football League draft kick off in the downtown city center. It’s the first time the draft has been hosted by Detroit.
Thousands of NFL fans will descend on the city from around the country, and millions more will get glimpses of The D via television and social media channels.
“I’m so excited about the draft being in Detroit – just for the world to migrate to downtown Detroit,” said Lions General Manager Brad Holmes. “It’s just another opportunity for our franchise, our city. I expect it to be pretty packed. I’m excited for the local businesses.”
What visitors will see is a city that is shedding old skin and evolving into something shinier and surer of where it’s going – all while keeping the spirit that has long defined the Detroit and its people.
Lions head coach Dan Campbell identified it as “grit” as he took the helm three years ago and began rebuilding an organizational culture that had its best days in the rear-view mirror and its present stuck in a losing mentality.
Campbell was able to reach the upper tier of the NFL in fairly short order; the city of Detroit’s climb out of its spiral took much longer and often had the feel of a step forward, a step back.
Comerica Park replaced Tiger Stadium in April 2000, and Ford Field, home of the Lions, opened next door in 2002. In the years after that, billionaire businessman Dan Gilbert moved Quicken Loans and its thousands of employees downtown, and he began buying and renovating vacant, underutilized and dilapidated properties.
Residential stock was built and downtown employees and their families began moving in. Retail and restaurants and hotels opened, as well as Little Caesars Arena and a surrounding entertainment district in 2017. People from the sprawling suburbs started becoming urban tourists once again.
There’s a saying that facts are stubborn things, but so is a bad reputation. Yes, Detroit has its problems – a violent crime rate that ranks in the Top 5 in the U.S., whole neighborhoods of blighted housing, legacy pollution, etc. – but so do many other major cities in America. California’s largest cities are beset by homelessness and exorbitant prices; Portland’s downtown is a social mess; whole blocks of downtown St. Louis are deserted.
Yet Detroit’s image may be the one most out of step with its reality in present-day America. In 2013, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain brought his show “Parts Unknown” to Detroit and, while celebrating the resilience of Detroiters, spent a great deal of the show highlighting decay. Of course, a segment was filmed at the abandoned Packard Plant, the avatar for “ruin porn” in America.
Even then, I saw a different Detroit. Maybe that’s because I was born in Dearborn and have spent my life going downtown, even when there wasn’t much new or shiny.
The Detroit Institute of Arts isn’t new, but it’s fantastic (recently named the top art museum in the U.S.). Belle Isle is a treasure. Greektown, even before its casino, was a great place to hang out; same with Mexicantown. As a music lover, I find LCA to be just a high-profile addition to a vibrant scene that includes the historic Fox Theatre, the Fillmore, the Masonic Temple, Saint Andrews Hall and more.
How about a downtown city park space where you can skate in the winter and sit on beach sand in the summer? That’s Campus Martius – itself recently named the top-ranked public square in the country. It’s not new, either, but like the other gems I mentioned it’s about to get noticed and appreciated by a lot more people.
Draft visitors also will see a gleaming new skyscraper nearly finished on the site of the old Hudson Building. That Gilbert project, due to open next year, will feature residential, commercial and office space, along with Detroit’s first 5-star hotel.
General Motors has announced it will move from the Renaissance Center it owns into a 12-story office building in the Hudson site.
That creates the challenge for envisioning a future for the most iconic buildings on Detroit’s skyline, but that’s emblematic of Detroit’s arc of progress – it’s not easy, and sometimes you need to leave something behind to go forward.
Thursday through Saturday, the world will see what the process looks like, and I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised.
For those who want to attend draft festivities in Detroit, read MLive’s “A to Z guide for the 2024 NFL draft.” To follow up-to-the-minute draft coverage, click here.
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John Hiner is president of MLive Media Group. If you have questions you’d like him to answer, or topics to explore, share your thoughts at editor@mlive.com.