Your Sunday night news from Detroit (10/11)
Crossposted to the_recession.
First, a word from His Honor, The Mayor.
Detroit Free Press: The delusions that Detroiters can no longer afford to indulge
BY DAVE BING
It is both amazing and unfortunate that many fail or refuse to understand a reality that is staring us all in the face. We are in a modern day recession. The lines at resource and assistance initiatives mirror those of soup lines of days we thought were long gone. Businesses that we thought would be around forever have shuttered their doors and windows, and our bad numbers -- unemployment, illiteracy -- continue to rise as our good numbers -- population, graduation and revenue -- plummet.
A city whose numbers once danced near 2 million now hangs by a thread of 900,000. This is a major contributor to our declining tax base and revenue sharing appropriation. This means that doing what we did then no longer works -- or is affordable.
We must make the tough but necessary changes. We can't operate an entire bus line for a couple of riders; we can't employ every resident, and we can no longer afford the perks once demanded by the unions. Times have changed. And now, we must do the same.
Michigan News
Detroit Free Press: State insurance czar on the spot over Blue Cross rates
BY PATRICIA ANSTETT
FREE PRESS MEDICAL WRITER
Ken Ross has been hearing a lot lately from senior citizens upset over increases in their Medicare premiums.
As commissioner of Michigan's Office of Financial and Insurance Regulation, Ross will make the final decision by Dec. 4 on whether to grant Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan a 31.2% rate increase that affects 210,000 seniors with supplemental Medicare policies through the Blues.
...
Ross and his agency also are likely to play a significant role creating and regulating the health insurance exchanges through which people would purchase coverage, some with federal subsidies, under several bills pending before Congress.
"There's a real opportunity to get some good stuff done," said Ross, who sees in federal health care reform a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to craft a "comprehensive solution to some of the problems that have really dogged American families for generations now."
Detroit Free Press: Michigan school aid cuts
Mike Thompson
Free Press Editorial Cartoonist
On top of a whopping national debt, a poisoned planet and financial system in ruins, the powers that be have also seen fit to gift their children with an inferior education.
According to Freep.com, Michigan lawmakers have agreed on a plan to cut state aid to schools by around 2.2%, which comes out to $165 per pupil.
Michigan Business
Detroit Free Press: 'Green is the new gold' in Michigan
BY RON DZWONKOWSKI and BARBARA ARRIGO
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
In its heyday a generation ago, the Ford Motor Co. assembly plant at the Wixom Road exit off I-96 employed 5,000 people. About two years after it shut down, the 320-acre site is coming back to life as the home of several government-subsidized manufacturers of alternative-energy products, such as solar panels and the batteries to store the sun power that such panels capture.
That doesn't mean 5,000 people will ever be working there again. But 3,000 is within the realm of possibility if the alternative-energy center grows as projected over the next several years. More important, though, the developments at Wixom and other projects now sprouting up around the state signal that Michigan is earnest about becoming a hub of alt-energy and related technology -- a field with a future.
It won't be the next auto industry. But it will be around -- and it's growing. Michigan cannot afford to be left back as global demand grows for energy from sources other than oil, driven by costs, conservation and concern about climate change. China, for example, is aggressively pursuing a plan to get 15% of its electricity from renewable sources, mostly wind, by 2020, and expects to spend $190 billion to do it.
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm spoke about this story in her address to the State Granholm Says Solar Energy Developments Make Michigan Shine.
Detroit Free Press: Chevy celebrates Volt's final pre-production run
By MARK PHELAN
FREE PRESS AUTO CRITIC
The Chevrolet Volt moved significantly closer to America’s driveways as the last pre-production version of the extended-range electric vehicle rolled out of General Motors’ test-assembly facility in Warren Friday.
Gliding so silently through the factory aisles that quality auditor Shelia Asunto beeped a discreet pedestrian-alert horn to let workers know it was coming, the Volt’s next stop is GM’s Milford proving ground and a career in hostile environments to make sure its electric drivetrain functions in extreme temperatures.
After more than a year of testing cobbled-together car bodies that made the revolutionary Volt look like any other development vehicle, the Volt’s advanced and aerodynamic body gives a hint of why GM thinks it will reshape the automaker’s image and establish Chevrolet as a world leader for advanced technology and environmentally friendly vehicles.
Detroit Free Press: New Volvos are in the works
By MARK PHELAN
FREE PRESS AUTO CRITIC
Volvo's for sale, but that hasn't slowed development of new vehicles and technologies, the Swedish automaker's North American boss told me last week.
The product pipeline is vital to whoever buys Volvo, so Ford has underwritten continuing development during the sale process, which has been going on for about a year.
The plug-in hybrid vehicle Volvo plans to sell in 2012 is just one of the new vehicles and technologies coming from Volvo, said Doug Speck, president and CEO of Volvo Cars North America.
Detroit Free Press: In Ford's career, firm always comes first
BY TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
A year after Henry Ford II famously fired Lee Iacocca as president of Ford Motor Co., a 22-year-old Princeton University graduate joined a product planning team on Oct. 15, 1979, at Ford's design center. He was working under Lew Veraldi, who would later become known as the father of the Ford Taurus. William Clay Ford Jr. -- many called him Billy back then -- wore his blondish hair a bit long in the fashion of the day. He was eager to impress, showing up early for what he'd been told was an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday, only to discover that Veraldi's other young charges came in way before dawn, worked until 7 or 8 p.m. when they brought in pizza, and then worked later into the evening. Saturdays and Sundays, too.
"They told me it was like a badge of honor," Ford recalled in an interview Friday. "No one wanted to be the first to leave."
Ford is expected to mark his 30-year anniversary with the automaker along with some other longtime employees at a low-key event Thursday in Dearborn.
Detroit Free Press: Detroit 3 headlines: Minority suppliers added to Ford Co. program
STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES
Ford Motor Co. said Friday that it has added two suppliers to its joint-technology framework, a special program aimed at improving the technical expertise of minority-owned suppliers.
...
Chrysler captured 11.8% of new car sales in Mexico in September -- its largest market share in the past 18 months, and up from 11.3% in August.
...
A General Motors employee group was honored last week for its work to advance equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees in the workplace.
Detroit News
Detroit Free Press: Cobo a scene of desperation
BY TAMMY STABLES BATTAGLIA and MATT HELMS
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
The economic tsunami washing over metro Detroit swept its casualties to the doors of Cobo Center on Wednesday in the form of 35,000 people so desperate for help with mortgage and utility bills that threats were made, fights broke out and people were nearly trampled.
Some were treated by emergency medical workers on site.
It was one of the most dramatic signs to date of how deeply joblessness and the home foreclosure crisis have pushed people from the lower and middle ends of the economic scale to seek help wherever they can.
Detroit Free Press: Metro Detroit Muslims applaud award to Obama
By Niraj Warikoo
Free Press Staff Writer
One of the main reasons the Nobel committee gave for awarding President Barack Obama its Peace Prize award today was his outreach to the Muslim world - an outreach that has been seen in metro Detroit in recent months because of its sizable Muslim population.
Several department leaders in the Obama administration have met with Muslims and Arab Americans in Dearborn, most recently U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, who met metro Detroiters Wednesday at the Lebanese-American Heritage Club in Dearborn.
And last month, CIA Director Leon Panetta met with Muslims and Arab Americans in Dearborn for a Ramadan dinner. Panetta and Locke said in their talks that Muslims and Arab Americans are vital parts of the United States. Other visits were made to Dearborn in recent months by the leaders of the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Agriculture.
Detroit Free Press: Bobb set to spend $40M on advisers for Detroit Public Schools
BY CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Robert Bobb, the state appointee overseeing the Detroit Public Schools, has set aside nearly $40 million to pay for consulting fees and perks for a turnaround team he assembled to strengthen the district's financial management, angering unions that have suffered 2,500 layoffs since summer.
The deficit-ridden district has leased riverfront apartments for consultants, as well as paid $400 a week per person for food in addition to airfare to fly some out of town for weekends, according to invoices and school officials. Some of the consultants come from Washington, D.C., and Cleveland -- cities where Bobb and his top academic consultant previously worked.
DPS officials said Friday the consultants will save more money than they cost in the long run and have saved about $20 million so far.
The sidebar A closer look at some key consultants hired by DPS accompanies the story above.
Detroit Free Press: 2 teacher prep programs at risk of flunking
BY LORI HIGGINS
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
In the last three years, ending up near the bottom of the list of Michigan's 31 teacher preparation programs may have simply been a public relations issue.
But now there is more on the line for Marygrove College and the University of Detroit Mercy. The Detroit programs, which enroll hundreds of students, face termination if their state issued performance scores don't improve.
The State Board of Education will get a final look this week at an updated version of the policy that will penalize schools with consistent low scores.
Detroit Free Press: Focus: HOPE walk brings metro Detroiters together
By KORIE WILKINS
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
More than a thousand people from all over metro Detroit turned out this afternoon to participate in the 35th annual walk for Focus: HOPE.
The 4-mile walk was expected to raise about $100,000 for the nonprofit civil and human rights organization in Detroit.
The walk, which began at the organization’s headquarters on Oakman, also served to launch a new neighborhood initiative. The new HOPE Village Initiative is aimed at providing services to children and their families in the surrounding neighborhood.
Detroit Free Press: Ex-journalists have fill of politics
BY CAROL CAIN
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Two former journalists who have been working in politics have decided to call it quits.
Bob Dustman, former radio and TV reporter, hung it up last week after 17 years as spokesman for Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson.
And Pete Waldmeir, the retired Detroit News columnist who never met a politician he was afraid to challenge via the mighty pen, decided that his first term as a Grosse Pointe Woods councilman would be his last.
Time: Jazz fills the soul, but not the pocketbook
by Karen Dybis
Did you know…Detroit has the oldest continuously operating jazz club in the world?
And did you know it is in danger of closing?
Thanks a lot, economy. What jazz greats like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Nina Simone helped to build, you are dragging down, slowly and surely.
News from Elsewhere
Newsday via Detroit Free Press: Jobless college grads struggle with 'quarter-life crisis' under parents' roofs
BY DAVE MARCUS
NEWSDAY
Many recent college graduates have returned to their families as they struggle to find jobs, taking up residence in their teenage bedrooms after four years away from home.
With almost 2 million college grads unemployed and businesses estimating they are hiring 22% fewer recent grads, the recession has taken a cruel toll on the class of 2009.
And as the new semester starts and the grads aren't returning to college, families wrestle with the changes in home life. Everything from curfews to remote-control rights can become the subject of negotiation and stress.
Detroit Free Press: No letup in truck driver demand
BY JOHN GALLAGHER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
Even in a deep recession like the United States has been suffering through, big-rig drivers remain in demand.
"It's never a bad time to become a truck driver," said Angela Horowitz, vice president of driver resources for Dallas-based Stevens Transport. "There will always be goods moving across our nation, and 80% of all the volume goes over the road."
State and federal government economists predict a steady growth in demand for truck drivers. Detroit Free Press: Flint native avoiding media over scandal
BY CHRISTINA HALL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Australian news media have not seen Michelle Chantelois since her estranged husband was charged with hitting South Australia Premier Mike Rann with a rolled-up magazine last week, and the Flint native is trying to keep it that way.
Her sister, Lisa DeGuzman, said Thursday that Chantelois, 39, who lives in Australia, is trying to stay away from the news media, which reported the attack and a friendship Chantelois had with Rann years ago.
...
Chantelois' estranged husband, businessman Richard Wayne Phillips, 55, is accused of striking Rann at a Labor Party fund-raiser.
Photo Galleries
Detroit Free Press: Miles of Detroit vacant land
Detroit Free Press: The last pre-production Volt comes off the line
Detroit Free Press: Car & Truck of the Year Nominees
On The Lighter Side
Detroit Moxie: 40 Things to do in Detroit before You're dead
For my 40th birthday, I give you this. 40 fabulous places to check out in Detroit. This list is not exhaustive but if nothing else, check out these places. Some are kind of obvious, but have you been to them recently? Others, I hope, are new to you. I haven't been to all of them but they are all on my list. Get out there and see Detroit before you die.
First, a word from His Honor, The Mayor.
Detroit Free Press: The delusions that Detroiters can no longer afford to indulge
BY DAVE BING
It is both amazing and unfortunate that many fail or refuse to understand a reality that is staring us all in the face. We are in a modern day recession. The lines at resource and assistance initiatives mirror those of soup lines of days we thought were long gone. Businesses that we thought would be around forever have shuttered their doors and windows, and our bad numbers -- unemployment, illiteracy -- continue to rise as our good numbers -- population, graduation and revenue -- plummet.
A city whose numbers once danced near 2 million now hangs by a thread of 900,000. This is a major contributor to our declining tax base and revenue sharing appropriation. This means that doing what we did then no longer works -- or is affordable.
We must make the tough but necessary changes. We can't operate an entire bus line for a couple of riders; we can't employ every resident, and we can no longer afford the perks once demanded by the unions. Times have changed. And now, we must do the same.
Michigan News
Detroit Free Press: State insurance czar on the spot over Blue Cross rates
BY PATRICIA ANSTETT
FREE PRESS MEDICAL WRITER
Ken Ross has been hearing a lot lately from senior citizens upset over increases in their Medicare premiums.
As commissioner of Michigan's Office of Financial and Insurance Regulation, Ross will make the final decision by Dec. 4 on whether to grant Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan a 31.2% rate increase that affects 210,000 seniors with supplemental Medicare policies through the Blues.
...
Ross and his agency also are likely to play a significant role creating and regulating the health insurance exchanges through which people would purchase coverage, some with federal subsidies, under several bills pending before Congress.
"There's a real opportunity to get some good stuff done," said Ross, who sees in federal health care reform a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to craft a "comprehensive solution to some of the problems that have really dogged American families for generations now."
Detroit Free Press: Michigan school aid cuts
Mike Thompson
Free Press Editorial Cartoonist
On top of a whopping national debt, a poisoned planet and financial system in ruins, the powers that be have also seen fit to gift their children with an inferior education.
According to Freep.com, Michigan lawmakers have agreed on a plan to cut state aid to schools by around 2.2%, which comes out to $165 per pupil.
Michigan Business
Detroit Free Press: 'Green is the new gold' in Michigan
BY RON DZWONKOWSKI and BARBARA ARRIGO
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
In its heyday a generation ago, the Ford Motor Co. assembly plant at the Wixom Road exit off I-96 employed 5,000 people. About two years after it shut down, the 320-acre site is coming back to life as the home of several government-subsidized manufacturers of alternative-energy products, such as solar panels and the batteries to store the sun power that such panels capture.
That doesn't mean 5,000 people will ever be working there again. But 3,000 is within the realm of possibility if the alternative-energy center grows as projected over the next several years. More important, though, the developments at Wixom and other projects now sprouting up around the state signal that Michigan is earnest about becoming a hub of alt-energy and related technology -- a field with a future.
It won't be the next auto industry. But it will be around -- and it's growing. Michigan cannot afford to be left back as global demand grows for energy from sources other than oil, driven by costs, conservation and concern about climate change. China, for example, is aggressively pursuing a plan to get 15% of its electricity from renewable sources, mostly wind, by 2020, and expects to spend $190 billion to do it.
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm spoke about this story in her address to the State Granholm Says Solar Energy Developments Make Michigan Shine.
Detroit Free Press: Chevy celebrates Volt's final pre-production run
By MARK PHELAN
FREE PRESS AUTO CRITIC
The Chevrolet Volt moved significantly closer to America’s driveways as the last pre-production version of the extended-range electric vehicle rolled out of General Motors’ test-assembly facility in Warren Friday.
Gliding so silently through the factory aisles that quality auditor Shelia Asunto beeped a discreet pedestrian-alert horn to let workers know it was coming, the Volt’s next stop is GM’s Milford proving ground and a career in hostile environments to make sure its electric drivetrain functions in extreme temperatures.
After more than a year of testing cobbled-together car bodies that made the revolutionary Volt look like any other development vehicle, the Volt’s advanced and aerodynamic body gives a hint of why GM thinks it will reshape the automaker’s image and establish Chevrolet as a world leader for advanced technology and environmentally friendly vehicles.
Detroit Free Press: New Volvos are in the works
By MARK PHELAN
FREE PRESS AUTO CRITIC
Volvo's for sale, but that hasn't slowed development of new vehicles and technologies, the Swedish automaker's North American boss told me last week.
The product pipeline is vital to whoever buys Volvo, so Ford has underwritten continuing development during the sale process, which has been going on for about a year.
The plug-in hybrid vehicle Volvo plans to sell in 2012 is just one of the new vehicles and technologies coming from Volvo, said Doug Speck, president and CEO of Volvo Cars North America.
Detroit Free Press: In Ford's career, firm always comes first
BY TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
A year after Henry Ford II famously fired Lee Iacocca as president of Ford Motor Co., a 22-year-old Princeton University graduate joined a product planning team on Oct. 15, 1979, at Ford's design center. He was working under Lew Veraldi, who would later become known as the father of the Ford Taurus. William Clay Ford Jr. -- many called him Billy back then -- wore his blondish hair a bit long in the fashion of the day. He was eager to impress, showing up early for what he'd been told was an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday, only to discover that Veraldi's other young charges came in way before dawn, worked until 7 or 8 p.m. when they brought in pizza, and then worked later into the evening. Saturdays and Sundays, too.
"They told me it was like a badge of honor," Ford recalled in an interview Friday. "No one wanted to be the first to leave."
Ford is expected to mark his 30-year anniversary with the automaker along with some other longtime employees at a low-key event Thursday in Dearborn.
Detroit Free Press: Detroit 3 headlines: Minority suppliers added to Ford Co. program
STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES
Ford Motor Co. said Friday that it has added two suppliers to its joint-technology framework, a special program aimed at improving the technical expertise of minority-owned suppliers.
...
Chrysler captured 11.8% of new car sales in Mexico in September -- its largest market share in the past 18 months, and up from 11.3% in August.
...
A General Motors employee group was honored last week for its work to advance equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees in the workplace.
Detroit News
Detroit Free Press: Cobo a scene of desperation
BY TAMMY STABLES BATTAGLIA and MATT HELMS
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
The economic tsunami washing over metro Detroit swept its casualties to the doors of Cobo Center on Wednesday in the form of 35,000 people so desperate for help with mortgage and utility bills that threats were made, fights broke out and people were nearly trampled.
Some were treated by emergency medical workers on site.
It was one of the most dramatic signs to date of how deeply joblessness and the home foreclosure crisis have pushed people from the lower and middle ends of the economic scale to seek help wherever they can.
Detroit Free Press: Metro Detroit Muslims applaud award to Obama
By Niraj Warikoo
Free Press Staff Writer
One of the main reasons the Nobel committee gave for awarding President Barack Obama its Peace Prize award today was his outreach to the Muslim world - an outreach that has been seen in metro Detroit in recent months because of its sizable Muslim population.
Several department leaders in the Obama administration have met with Muslims and Arab Americans in Dearborn, most recently U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, who met metro Detroiters Wednesday at the Lebanese-American Heritage Club in Dearborn.
And last month, CIA Director Leon Panetta met with Muslims and Arab Americans in Dearborn for a Ramadan dinner. Panetta and Locke said in their talks that Muslims and Arab Americans are vital parts of the United States. Other visits were made to Dearborn in recent months by the leaders of the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Agriculture.
Detroit Free Press: Bobb set to spend $40M on advisers for Detroit Public Schools
BY CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Robert Bobb, the state appointee overseeing the Detroit Public Schools, has set aside nearly $40 million to pay for consulting fees and perks for a turnaround team he assembled to strengthen the district's financial management, angering unions that have suffered 2,500 layoffs since summer.
The deficit-ridden district has leased riverfront apartments for consultants, as well as paid $400 a week per person for food in addition to airfare to fly some out of town for weekends, according to invoices and school officials. Some of the consultants come from Washington, D.C., and Cleveland -- cities where Bobb and his top academic consultant previously worked.
DPS officials said Friday the consultants will save more money than they cost in the long run and have saved about $20 million so far.
The sidebar A closer look at some key consultants hired by DPS accompanies the story above.
Detroit Free Press: 2 teacher prep programs at risk of flunking
BY LORI HIGGINS
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
In the last three years, ending up near the bottom of the list of Michigan's 31 teacher preparation programs may have simply been a public relations issue.
But now there is more on the line for Marygrove College and the University of Detroit Mercy. The Detroit programs, which enroll hundreds of students, face termination if their state issued performance scores don't improve.
The State Board of Education will get a final look this week at an updated version of the policy that will penalize schools with consistent low scores.
Detroit Free Press: Focus: HOPE walk brings metro Detroiters together
By KORIE WILKINS
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
More than a thousand people from all over metro Detroit turned out this afternoon to participate in the 35th annual walk for Focus: HOPE.
The 4-mile walk was expected to raise about $100,000 for the nonprofit civil and human rights organization in Detroit.
The walk, which began at the organization’s headquarters on Oakman, also served to launch a new neighborhood initiative. The new HOPE Village Initiative is aimed at providing services to children and their families in the surrounding neighborhood.
Detroit Free Press: Ex-journalists have fill of politics
BY CAROL CAIN
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Two former journalists who have been working in politics have decided to call it quits.
Bob Dustman, former radio and TV reporter, hung it up last week after 17 years as spokesman for Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson.
And Pete Waldmeir, the retired Detroit News columnist who never met a politician he was afraid to challenge via the mighty pen, decided that his first term as a Grosse Pointe Woods councilman would be his last.
Time: Jazz fills the soul, but not the pocketbook
by Karen Dybis
Did you know…Detroit has the oldest continuously operating jazz club in the world?
And did you know it is in danger of closing?
Thanks a lot, economy. What jazz greats like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Nina Simone helped to build, you are dragging down, slowly and surely.
News from Elsewhere
Newsday via Detroit Free Press: Jobless college grads struggle with 'quarter-life crisis' under parents' roofs
BY DAVE MARCUS
NEWSDAY
Many recent college graduates have returned to their families as they struggle to find jobs, taking up residence in their teenage bedrooms after four years away from home.
With almost 2 million college grads unemployed and businesses estimating they are hiring 22% fewer recent grads, the recession has taken a cruel toll on the class of 2009.
And as the new semester starts and the grads aren't returning to college, families wrestle with the changes in home life. Everything from curfews to remote-control rights can become the subject of negotiation and stress.
Detroit Free Press: No letup in truck driver demand
BY JOHN GALLAGHER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
Even in a deep recession like the United States has been suffering through, big-rig drivers remain in demand.
"It's never a bad time to become a truck driver," said Angela Horowitz, vice president of driver resources for Dallas-based Stevens Transport. "There will always be goods moving across our nation, and 80% of all the volume goes over the road."
State and federal government economists predict a steady growth in demand for truck drivers. Detroit Free Press: Flint native avoiding media over scandal
BY CHRISTINA HALL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Australian news media have not seen Michelle Chantelois since her estranged husband was charged with hitting South Australia Premier Mike Rann with a rolled-up magazine last week, and the Flint native is trying to keep it that way.
Her sister, Lisa DeGuzman, said Thursday that Chantelois, 39, who lives in Australia, is trying to stay away from the news media, which reported the attack and a friendship Chantelois had with Rann years ago.
...
Chantelois' estranged husband, businessman Richard Wayne Phillips, 55, is accused of striking Rann at a Labor Party fund-raiser.
Photo Galleries
Detroit Free Press: Miles of Detroit vacant land
Detroit Free Press: The last pre-production Volt comes off the line
Detroit Free Press: Car & Truck of the Year Nominees
On The Lighter Side
Detroit Moxie: 40 Things to do in Detroit before You're dead
For my 40th birthday, I give you this. 40 fabulous places to check out in Detroit. This list is not exhaustive but if nothing else, check out these places. Some are kind of obvious, but have you been to them recently? Others, I hope, are new to you. I haven't been to all of them but they are all on my list. Get out there and see Detroit before you die.