News

"The idea of pop-up stores is now so firmly rooted in Detroit at the moment, that a pair of entrepreneurs is launching a mini-chain of temporary sites called Pop Up Yoga.

'It's the latest sign that fleeting retails sites have become embedded in the area, mirroring a national trend."

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"They call themselves hookers, but it’s not what you think. 

'On Saturday, a group of about a dozen metro Detroit women who have been crocheting together for about seven years as the Happy Hookers gathered to drape a 150-foot handmade scarf around Passo di Danza, the statue that graces the entrance of One Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit."

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"Many people can't see past this city's abandoned buildings and overgrown lots, but that's sort of fair. A city once boasting 2 million people and an unbreakable auto industry is down to 700,000 and apocalyptic decay in every direction. The only time I've had to pass through a metal detector when entering a bank was in Detroit.

'But look past the blocks of broken windows, sunken roofs and graffiti, and there is a Detroit stirring back to life. As low as the city has sunk, its subtle energy and excitement put it at a fascinating crossroad: bruised old times, meet scrappy invention."

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"An ambitious plan to transform a derelict railway yard in Detroit into a boutique 36 room hotel using old shipping containers is close to being realised.

'The $4 million project is planned for a part of the Dequindre Cut, an old rail line in the decaying city that was has already been renovated into a bike and walking path."

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"Brick by brick, project by project, Detroit is being quietly rejuvenated by a movement funded by strangers helping residents launch unique ideas to improve overlooked areas of the city.

'From a community dog park to a miniature golf course to a statue of 1980s film action hero RoboCop, thousands of dollars have been raised through microgrant projects to make small ideas big deals."

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"Jamie Kaye Walters is joining WDIV, the NBC affiliate in Detroit, as creative services and programming director.

'In her new role, Walters will oversee branding, community engagement and programming initiatives for WDIV. She worked at the station from 1998-2007 as a producer in the entertainment and promotion departments. Since then, she has been the co-founder and executive producer of a creative production agency in Detroit."

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"Some of Detroit’s most vibrant areas would get an infusion of cash and other new services, such as transit and work force training, and other districts now mostly vacant and abandoned would be turned into farms, forests and other landscape uses under the long-awaited Detroit Future City strategy document."

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"This video from Juxtapoz Magazine has pretty much everything that we love: Art, sport and community converge in a way that feels utterly Detroit.

'The urban arts mag, which has previously supported the local nonprofit Power House Productions, has trained its lens on recent ephemeral installation at Ride It Sculpture Park."

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"The raucous scene inside the M@?dison building is not one usually associated with inner-city Detroit.

'It appears as though a wacky slice of California's Silicon Valley has landed smack in the middle of a city now just as famous for catastrophic urban blight as for being the spiritual home of America's car industry."

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"In September, a group of nearly 40 journalists and bloggers, some from well-known news organizations like Forbes, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, boarded a bus in downtown Detroit and headed for one of the most run-down neighborhoods in the city. As they peered through the windows at block after block of dilapidated, abandoned homes, a young community organizer spoke eloquently about the area’s revitalization efforts.

'The bus tour was part of a day-and-a-half press event organized by the Detroit Regional News Hub, a media organization that has been working closely with journalists since its founding in 2008. Its aim is to present a more balanced view of the city’s challenges."

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"The founders of Stik needed a change. Silicon Valley wasn’t working. Something was missing. And, as I learned during our chats, they needed access to a new pool of talent. They found all that in Detroit.

'Stik launched two years ago from the Bay Area. As Leena wrote at their launch, Stik attempts to create a recommended list of service professionals online through a user’s social graph. Stik now lists 175k small businesses with 2.7 million recommendations and reviews. But as the founders discovered, Silicon Valley is not an easy place to grow a long-term business. After two years of trudging through the Valley, the four person company packed its bags this summer and headed back to the founders’ hometown of Detroit."

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Devita Davison lost everything when Hurricane Sandy swept through her home in Long Island, so she chose to return to her real ?home, Detroit, where she will take her experiences of running her Brooklyn store the Southern Pantry Company to rebuild her life and business.

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From the Google Official Blog: "From time to time we invite guests to post about items of interest and are pleased to have Linzie Venegas join us today. Linzie is head of sales and marketing for Ideal Shield, a manufacturing company in Detroit, Mich. that specializes in bumper post sleeves. Based in a city forged in tradition and steel, Ideal Shield has seen great success on the web—a story Linzie tells us in this post."

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“After the Factory,” a film by UIX partners DETROIT LIVES!, came out a winner at two recent film festivals: the Ann Arbor Polish Film Festival and the East Lansing Film Festival. ATF took the Jury Prize in Ann Arbor and Best Documentary at the East Lansing Film Festival.

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