Detroit

Detroit is having an incredible year. A few highlights include the new Hudson tower opening soon, the abandoned Michigan Central Train station has been restored, and the Lions are having their best season in the history of the franchise.

It's been a long road back since the city slipped into bankruptcy and the appointed emergency manager threatened to sell off all of the art in the DIA.

The city's comeback was built on the back of Dan Gilbert's mortgage empire and his audacious vision to move his company from the suburbs to a desolate downtown. Obviously, it wasn't a single person effort. The mayor, Mike Duggan, has shown incredible leadership during his 10 year tenure. The Ilitch and Ford families have made major contributions much of it being centered around the Tigers, Red Wings, and Lions.

However, it cannot be overstated the impact that Dan Gilbert has had on the city. He owns 100+ properties across the city totaling over 18M sq/ft. Back in the day, I interned at Rocket and there's a model of Detroit in the office -- buildings owned by Bedrock have little lights turned on -- the entire model is lit up.

Personally, I'm interested in what's next for Detroit. How does the narrative shift from the revival, efforts to bring the city back from the brink, to growth? The population increased for the first time since 1957, but only by 0.3% to 633K. For comparison, in 1950 the population was 1.85M. What does the city look like with 1M+ people? How does that happen?

I may live in New York and only employee two people in Detroit, but on behalf of the city, I officially declare we're kicking off the Project Million campaign to grow the population to over a million before 2050. It's possible, there's precedent. Take a look at a way more boring city like Columbus, they've added over 300K people in the last 30 years.

Who's going to employee 400K extra people in the city?‍

• Buzzy names like Google, Microsoft, and others have started satellite offices, but at a very, very small scale.
• Ford is moving ~1,000 employees in their renovated Michigan Central, but the vast majority will still be based in Dearborn.
• Funds like Invest Detroit and Detroit Venture Partners are investing in startups based in Detroit -- the largest of which was StockX which before going into the sneaker recession had ~800 employees in the city. Support for startups and small businesses should be 10x'd, but it's not the same driver of jobs as a large corporate moving into the city. Additionally, the allure of starting a company in Silicon Valley is fully back.
• The "lowest" hanging fruit seems to be hammering other Fortune 500 companies based in Michigan or in Chicago.
  

What pushes livability in favor of the city vs. suburbs?

• If your job is based in Detroit will you live there? If you work remotely would you live in the city? The answer continues to be "no" for a vast majority of people. It's incredibly easy to commute into the city or drive in for a game.
• Detroit isn't very walkable, neighborhoods are all separated by highways.
• Safety and schools are still a major factor that prevent people from raising their children in the city.
• There's been an array of exciting restaurant openings, new art centers, bike paths, riverwalks. Detroit is getting a lot more interesting to live in vs. a sleepy suburb.
• There's plenty of opportunity to build. Space is not an issue. Neighborhoods are full of empty lots, there's so much whitespace to create incredibly interesting developments.

What's the wow factor that attracts out of state people to Detroit?‍

• The city that's known for grit doesn't scream livability. It's an incredible culture, but not one that people necessarily pick when they're evaluating destinations to relocate. It's much easier to move to Miami with the beautiful weather or Austin for the combination of outdoors, city, and UT.
• Detroit is the only town where you can walk to the 4 major sports stadiums. Detroit's also getting a new park along the water by the same firm that did Brooklyn Bridge Park (a scumbag did embezzle $40M+ from the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy).
• Cost of living is going to be a major factor here, if Detroit can continue to build fun, interesting things, attract jobs, while being cheaper compared to major metros, it's going to draw people in.

If we execute on answering these three questions, I think we'll be in a good spot. Clocks ticking.