This is a collection of recent magazine and newspaper articles describing Detroit as "One of the Hottest Cities to Visit."
AFAR Magazine
Where to Go in 2024
The 25 most exciting places around the world to visit next
BY TIM CHESTER, SARIKA BANSAL, BILLIE COHEN
November 28, 2023
From a British city reimagining its industrial past and a laid-back Kenyan island free of cars to the best place in North America to see the total solar eclipse, our 25 picks for where to go next year have several traits in common: Each is an awe-inspiring, joy-inducing destination where human connection and creativity define the travel experience. These 25 places (listed in no particular order) offer ample opportunities for conscientious, sustainable exploration—exactly what AFAR’s travelers who care are seeking right now. Cheers to a year of getting out there.—The Editors
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit’s Michigan Central, a Beaux-Arts former train station, has been reimagined as a transportation R&D lab with retail, dining, and community spaces—just one example of how everything old is new again in this city. The Motown Museum will roll out a $65 million upgrade throughout 2024 that includes performance spaces, interactive exhibits, and a music education center. The hip Cambria Hotel (in a 1936 radio broadcasting building by Albert Kahn, one of Detroit’s great architects) is the latest in a string of landmarks refashioned as boutique hotels. And a new glass-and-steel tower on the site of the 1927 Hudson’s store will open a 48th-floor observation deck in 2024. —Amy S. Eckert
AFAR Magazine
7 Midwestern Towns for Modern Architecture Lovers
To experience some of America’s most exciting building designs, head to the heartland.
• March 25, 2024
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit's skyline is rife with art deco skyscrapers that show off its status as an economic powerhouse in the early 20th century. The Motor City is also one of the top places to take in the works of Japanese American architect Minoru Yamasaki, best known for designing the Twin Towers. For the best introduction to his works, check out the campus of Wayne State University, home to four of his buildings: the 1958 McGregor Memorial Conference Center, known for its serene reflecting pool and geometric skylight; the 1960 College of Education building, which is lined with 120 precast concrete "trees"; the 1964 Prentis Building, designed in the international style; and the 1964 Helen L. DeRoy Auditorium, which features Gothic-inspired arches. Elsewhere around the metro area, Yamasaki's works include One Woodward Avenue (his first skyscraper), the Federal Reserve Bank Annex, and the Temple Beth El, which features a unique shape that calls to mind the biblical Tent of Meeting.
Time Magazine, July 2022
Detroit
Newfound glory
The city made Time Magazine’s “World’s 50 Greatest Places” list, which ranked the top 50 international destinations to explore. In the United States, time is recommending the hip west coast centers of Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, the Florida coastal cool of Miami, and Michigan’s “Comeback City” Detroit.
The United Business Journal, May 2024
Detroit’s Unique Path: From ‘Doom Loop’ to Urban Revival Model
Story by Rahul Kuma
The recent resurgence of downtown Detroit represents a remarkable turnaround for a city that once grappled with economic decline and urban decay. Transforming from a symbol of urban blight to a model for urban revitalization, Detroit’s downtown has emerged as a vibrant hub of activity and growth, drawing accolades for its stunning reinvention.
The city’s journey towards revitalization can be traced back to the tumultuous decades of the 1980s and 1990s when downtown Detroit served as a stark reminder of urban decline. The closure of iconic landmarks like the Hudson’s department store and widespread layoffs in the automobile industry contributed to a downward spiral marked by population loss and economic stagnation. The city’s filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2013, the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, further underscored the extent of its challenges.
However, Detroit’s resilience and determination to rebound have been evident in its recent transformation. Strategic investments by local stakeholders, including business magnate Dan Gilbert, have played a pivotal role in revitalizing downtown Detroit. Gilbert’s commitment to the city, exemplified by his multi-billion-dollar investments through Bedrock Detroit, has spurred a wave of redevelopment projects and catalyzed economic growth.
Central to Detroit’s resurgence is its appeal to a diverse demographic, including millennials, Gen Zs, and retiring boomers, seeking walkable neighborhoods, green spaces, and vibrant cultural amenities. The city’s historic architecture, repurposed for modern uses such as residential conversions and office renovations, has contributed to its charm and desirability as a place to live, work, and play.
Notably, the relocation of General Motors’ headquarters to downtown Detroit symbolizes the city’s revitalization efforts and underscores its status as a thriving business and innovation hub. The redevelopment of the Hudson’s site into a mixed-use skyscraper, set to house GM’s new global headquarters alongside upscale residences and a luxury hotel, represents a significant milestone in Detroit’s revitalization journey.
As Detroit continues to attract new residents, businesses, and investment, its downtown stands as a testament to the power of perseverance, innovation, and community collaboration in revitalizing urban centers. The city’s resurgence serves as an inspiration for other municipalities grappling with similar challenges, offering a blueprint for achieving sustainable economic growth and revitalizing urban landscapes.
Wall Street Journal Detroit Is Reversing Property Doom Loop
BY KONRAD PUTZIER April 22, 2024
Barely a decade after Detroit declared bankruptcy, the city is emerging as America’s most unlikely real-estate boomtown.
A development frenzy has gripped Detroit’s central business district. Big companies, including Ford and developer Related Cos., are spending billions of dollars on office buildings and other properties. Dan Gilbert, a Detroit native and the billionaire co-founder of home lender Rocket Mortgage, is leading the city’s revitalization. His new skyscraper, still under construction, recently topped out at 681 feet, making it the city’s second-tallest tower. It sits across the street from downtown Detroit’s first Gucci store.
The city's residential market is also taking off. Home prices in the area are up 40% since 2020. The number of apartments downtown has more than doubled to 5,903 since 2010, according to the Downtown Detroit Partnership. Detroit's business district transformation offers lessons to other cities that are struggling to revive their empty downtowns and avoid being sucked into a debilitating doom loop.
Detroit's downtown recovery is already ahead of schedule. Its abundance of once - empty buildings offered opportunity. Many are nearly a century old, with small floors and beautiful architecture, said Eric Larson, CEO of the Downtown Detroit Partnership. These are exactly the types of buildings that work well as apartment conversions. In more robust markets, such as Midtown Manhattan, these buildings would have been torn down and replaced by characterless glass office towers with cavernous floors. But in Detroit, they remained as ruins, waiting for someone with money and local pride to come and convert them.
That turned out to be Gilbert, who moved his mortgage company's headquarters downtown from the suburbs in 2010. Safety was an initial concern. The company built its own security apparatus with guards and cameras to make employees feel safe, but soon found that they needed little convincing to go downtown, Gilbert said. He began buying up nearby buildings in part to make sure they wouldn't fall to speculators and decay.
He calls his real-estate development strategy the "big bang approach." Downtown needed apartments, retail and modern office space. "Well, what do you do first?" he asked. "We thought, you really have to do it all at the same time to make it work."
Gilbert's companies bought more than 130 properties downtown, spending billions. His real-estate venture, Bedrock Detroit, converted the Book Tower, a century-old, 38- story Italian Renaissance Style skyscraper, into apartments, a hotel, offices, retail, event space, bars and restaurants. The $400 million project opened last year.
Bedrock is building its 681-foot skyscraper on the site of the former Hudson's department store, It will include luxury condominiums and a hotel, And the neighboring office building that GM is moving into is part of the project.
The hulking ruin of Michigan Central, Detroit's former train station, became a symbol of urban decay. Dwindling tax revenue helped bankrupt the city in 2013.
Ford reinvests
But spurred by Gilbert's commitment, others began pouring money into downtown real-estate projects. Carmaker Ford is spending more than $900 million to redevelop Michigan Central and surrounding properties. The train-station building is scheduled to open in June. Related chairman and Detroit native Stephen Ross is partnering with the local Ilitch family, owners of Little Caesars Pizza, on a $1.5 billion development at the northern edge of downtown that will include apartments, a hotel, offices and retail.
"One thing people forget is Detroit has a lot of old and new money," said Richard Florida, an urban studies professor at the University of Toronto. Rock-bottom office rents long ago forced developers to come up with other things to build. They added casinos and sports venues and restored aging theaters. That made downtown less office-dependent, an advantage in the age of remote work. "An allegedly smart urbanist would have probably said don't do that-billions of dollars on stadiums and casinos," Florida said. "It sounds odd to say this, but in a way their downtown looks more like a Miami or Las Vegas."
The bankruptcy and headlines of Detroit's decay also created more urgency in the city and state to shower developers with tax breaks. These are often controversial but are important because rents in Detroit are too low for projects to pay off otherwise. The Michigan Central project, for example, is set to receive more than $200 million in tax incentives.
Downtown still has challenges. Foot traffic is down from 2019, largely because of remote work. That means fewer customers for local businesses. Rising interest rates and skittish banks have made it harder to pay for development. The joint venture between Related and the Ilitch family's Olympia Development was scheduled to start building the first offices at their $1.5 billion project last year, but pushed that back.
Still, there is little doubt that downtown Detroit is turning around when many other office districts are heading in the opposite direction. "If somebody would have told you there was going to be a Gucci store in Detroit 10 years ago, I mean, I would have laughed at them," Gilbert said.
Wall Street Journal Your Next Vacation Destination: Detroit, Ben Cohen
April 27-28 2024
When the hip travel magazine Afar selected the most exciting places to visit this year, the list was packed with "awe-inspiring, joy-inducing" spots like Paris, Rome, Fiji, Bhutan, Machu Picchu and Detroit.
Wait. Detroit?
Yes, only a decade after the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, Detroit has something else to declare: We're a tourist destination.
This week, hundreds of thousands of fans invaded the city for the NFL draft, and they began to understand why the bustling downtown area has urban theorists comparing Detroit to Las Vegas and Miami. So much has changed about Detroit in recent years that even the Lions are good these days.
You don't have to be anywhere near the Motor City to be struck by its transformation. In fact, I recently walked past a bus stop in New York and noticed an advertisement with three words that I had never seen before: COME TO DETROIT.
To make sure I wasn't hallucinating, I reached out to Claude Molinari, the chief executive of the nonprofit Visit Detroit and one of the driving forces behind this marketing blitz.
"Come here, stay in our hotels, eat in our restaurants, visit our attractions and find everything there is to do and see in Detroit," Molinari says.
He thinks your next convention should be in Detroit. Also, your next vacation.
It's all part of his mission to change the very way you think about the city. Forget the reputation. He wants you thinking about music, theater and world-class museums, cool architecture, parks and public squares, three casinos, four professional sports teams, a rich history of innovation and the deep blue water of the Detroit River.
"People come here and think it's the Caribbean," he says.
In any business it is easy to see problems. It's harder to look for hidden promise. But success often requires the unwavering persistence to will even the most improbable outcomes into existence.
Last year, Detroit welcomed 17 million visitors, more than any year since the pandemic and not nearly enough for Molinari. He's set a goal of 25 million visitors by 2030.
Which explains why posters for Detroit are suddenly popping up in New York.
As it turns out, that bus stop display was part of a campaign rolling out across the country and around the world. Visit Detroit is strategically targeting specific markets where people are more inclined to, well, visit Detroit: East Coast and Midwest cities that are short flights or longer drives away, Texas during the spring and summer, European countries with non- stop service to this Delta Air Lines hub.
Some will come because they have to, but most will come because they want to: 17% of Detroit's visitors come for meetings and conventions, 24% for other business and 58% for leisure, according to the organization. No matter why they come, Molinari is convinced they will want to come back. They might even decide to stay forever. "If we can get 'em here," he says, "we'll get ’em here."
But the only thing that might take longer than revitalizing a city is rebranding it.
Visit Detroit is America's oldest visitors' bureau and has been in the business of selling the city for more than a century. But not since it was one of the wealthiest places in the world has someone in Molinari's position been able to sell what he feels when he walks around downtown on a perfect spring day: hope.
For too long, Detroit was caught in a "doom loop," which is not a description of Lions fandom but something even more dismal. A doom loop is what happens when a city spirals out of control.
"Tax revenue falls, services suffer, businesses close and disorder moves in. Residents leave, commuters and shoppers stay away and the cycle is self-reinforcing," as The Wall Street Journal explained.
But this week brought a fascinating article by my colleague Konrad Putzier about how Detroit liberated itself from the dreaded urban doom loop with billions of dollars in real-estate investments. These days, America's most beleaguered city is remaking itself as "America's most unlikely real-estate boomtown," as he wrote.
It won't happen overnight, if it ever happens. His organization has studied why groups don't visit Detroit and found that not having enough hotel rooms is the primary reason they choose to go else- where. To compete for blockbuster concerts, sporting events and industry conference the city will have to double its 6,000 hotel rooms, Molinari says.
But the doom loop is over. Now he's betting on a boom loop: The more Detroit builds, the more people will come to Detroit.
Who needs Machu Picchu?
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