How Motown Got Its Groove Back
Jamie Nesbitt explores the Motor City’s new look, 40 years after the riots.

Detroit may very well be the true Rocky Balboa of American cities. Just when you think it’s down for the count, the battered metropolis stumbles to its feet from the bloodstained canvas, fearless and focused and ready for another round. Drive through certain parts of town and you’ll see it fully engaged in battle: vacant lots and buildings spar with pricey new developments; abandoned industrial sites shadowbox with memories of glories past.

On average, the Motor City loses nearly 12,000 residents a year to urban flight. Ask a native why, and he’ll point to high crime statistics, mismanaged city government and an economy not quite ready for prime time.

Sure, the city has heart. But nobody, not even those who reside within its limits, believes it can be a real contender. Others argue that it has yet to recover from that hot, turbulent summer night in 1967. The evening was July 23. The Detroit vice squad raided an after-hours drinking club in search of a few drunken patrons. When they stumbled upon a party-in-progress for two black soldiers recently returned from Vietnam, the officers decided to place all 82 attendees under arrest, an act that would turn the city on its head for five terrifying days. What would later be known as the 12th Street Riots resulted in 43 deaths, 1,200 injuries and the burning of 2,000 homes and businesses.

In the years leading up to the riots, the city had suffered the relocation of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors—better known as The Big Three—to the outlying suburbs, followed by the closing of dozens of mom and pop stores and restaurants that had come to rely on the auto plants for income, a housing shortage.

With the final nail hammered into the coffin, residents left in droves. Those rooted there for generations fled to the suburbs and took what was left of Motown’s economy with them.

Detroit lost nearly 200,000 residents within a three-year span.

Coleman Young, who took office as the city’s first black mayor in 1972, wrote that the riots had “put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earning taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money.”

The mess was overwhelming. While there was a push for the redevelopment of the manufacturing plants left behind, decades of waste and contamination made it difficult and the city lacked the money to pursue it.

Detroit lapsed into a state of disrepair spanning 20 years. It would not be until the last decade of the 20th century that the Motor City would begin to show signs of life. Comerica Bank brought its head-quarters downtown in 1992, leasing space in the city’s tallest skyscraper, One Detroit Center. Several casinos opened, including the MGM Grand Detroit and the Greektown Casino; both are currently building resorts in the area. Sports stadiums soon followed for the Tigers and Lions. Even Chrysler came back, though with only one-tenth of the workforce it employed during its heyday.

The crown jewel of Motown’s rebirth, however, remains its riverfront. Once populated with steel mills, transportation companies, chemical plants, and ship building facilities, a five-and-a-half mile stretch of redeveloped brownfields now includes Detroit’s more expensive real estate, an amalgam of residential and commercial development with an abundance of greenspace.

With fundraising assistance by the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy (DRC), 75 percent of the project has been completed. Public officials like John Kerr, director of the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority, believe that the downtown residential boom will draw even more  people to the area.

Plans for several market-rate condo developments are in various stages of completion, including Atwater Lofts, which is being built on land formerly occupied by General Motors. Remediation is ongoing and, according to Kerr, Belmar Development—the firm in charge—could break ground early next year.

“There were traces of various chemicals and metals mixed in with the soil, and several underground storage tanks,” Kerr says. “All that was necessary was a good mitigation plan.”

Kerr’s office assisted Belmar in receiving brownfield tax credits for the cleanup. Since it was within a designated Neighborhood Enterprise Zone, Belmar received tax abatements as well. In three months, all historical data on the site had been collected and the necessary documents had been filed. Interested parties believe that this type of governmental cooperation makes the city ripe for brownfield redevelopment.

Further down the waterfront, former Pittsburgh Steeler-turned-developer Jerome Bettis and partner Chuck Betters are behind two projects still in the beginning stages: the Uniroyal tire plant and Chene East/West sites that were once home to two of the city’s cement factories. Though the development team signed onto the project three years ago, the cleanup of the 435-acre Uniroyal site has been an arduous and expensive task, with a final estimate of $20 million. Considered a toxic nightmare by some locals, the land is a veritable cornucopia of contamination; several investigations uncovered barium, mercury, selenium, silver, and cyanide in the soil and groundwater.

Last November, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) sent letters to four companies—DTE Energy Inc., Michelin, DuPont, and Enodis—informing them that they would be responsible for footing the bill. Dr. Vincent Nathan, director of the city’s environmental affairs office, says negotiations between all parties are near completion.

About 12 miles and two zip codes away is the historic Fort Shelby Hotel, built in 1916 by a group of enterprising investors with a $600,000 loan. Marketing itself as an affordable first-class hotel, it featured modern amenities like heat, indoor plumbing and a state of the art restaurant. Though the Fort Shelby Hotel would survive the Great Depression, World War II and a corporate takeover, it wouldn’t survive the continuing fallout from the 12th Street Riots. The growing number of suburban motels, coupled with the closing of Union Station, forced the hotel to close in 1973.

As more tenants left, other parts of the building were shut down and left untouched. By 1993, the building was completely empty.

Emmett Moten, Jr., president of The Moten Group real estate firm, is the very definition of old-school Detroit. He spent 10 years as director of the city’s community and economic development department under Mayor Coleman Young before striking out on his own. He has seen the best and worst of the Motor City, but still believes that the town has infinite possibilities.

If Detroit is Rocky, Moten is Mickey, the affable trainer encouraging the champ to fight the good fight. Moten is one of four developers working to restore the Fort Shelby to its former glory. He sees the restoration as another milestone in the city’s renaissance.

“We’re lucky to have advocates,” says Moten, who credits Detroit’s Brownfield Redevelopment Authority with helping them get the project off the ground. “We’ve been able to use brownfield tax credits to clean up the asbestos and other pollutants, and hopefully we’ll be able to start construction this December.”

The Moten Group—in collaboration with Eugene M. Curtis and Associates, Leo D. Phillips and Co., and RSC & Associates—is giving the hotel a 21st century makeover. The new hotel, now the Doubletree Suites, will boast 204 suites, 60 apartments (plans to sell some units as condos are underway), 40,000 square feet of conference space and a four-star restaurant. The price tag? Seventy-three million dollars. Barring any complications, the new hotel will open in 2008.

The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) and the city’s Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) have been an integral part of the city’s comeback. A quasipublic arm of the mayor’s office, the DEGC is a clearinghouse for business owners and developers. It and the DEA are part of a federation of various local organizations. Whether it’s finding new digs for radio stations or providing auto parts manufacturers with technical assistance, the DEGC is the go-to office to get things done.

Currently, DEGC is turning its attention to the dwindling number of supermarkets in the area. So far, metro Detroit has lost a troubling number of markets in the last decade. In pursuing a data-driven attraction strategy for city neighborhoods, they’ll be able to prioritize the attraction of quality grocery stores, says DEGC’s vice president, Art Papapanos. “Specifically, we’re exploring the creation of a grocery store attraction fund, modeled after the innovative Fresh Food Financing Initiative in Pennsylvania, to help us address the reasons why this retail sector is sometimes reluctant to invest in urban areas,” he says.

Meanwhile, the DEA will concentrate on using an $800,000 EPA grant to tackle four sites scattered across the city.

One is the old Sears site, a troublesome piece of land for previous developers who had tried and failed to redevelop it several years ago. Now, with a concerted effort between a number of public and private entities—including nonprofit development firm HP Devco and Michigan’s Cities of Promise (an interagency initiative)—the old department store will become Shops at Woodward Place, a multimillion dollar plaza.

While Michigan’s brownfields program is strapped for cash, the impact on Detroit will be minimal since many of its brownfield sites are handled by private developers with or without tax credits, says Papapanos.

“MDEQ brownfields program does have loan funds available; it was the grant money that was reduced,” he adds.

At the end of “Rocky 6,” the final installment of the series, the hero suffers defeat at the hands of the younger, flashier champion. Bloodied and bruised, he rises to his feet and walks out of the ring, head high and closed fist punching the air. He realizes that the battle was with himself all along.

Perhaps with the continued collaboration of dedicated individuals, Motown too, will once again emerge victorious.