By Peter M. DeLorenzo
Detroit. I’ve tried over the years to convey what it’s like to live around here, but unless you’re immersed in the day-to-day of it, it’s understandable that you’d have no idea what it’s really like.
That this is truly a “company” town doesn’t even begin to describe it. Executive moves in the auto industry get front-page treatment. In fact, utterances by the company CEOs are parsed for meaning and impact to the last excruciating detail. (That you have to sift through the spin generated by the PR minions goes without saying. It’s standard operating procedure, after all.) The same goes for the UAW. Each and every move of the labor organization is documented on our front pages. That’s just the more visible coverage. The business pages are dominated by industry coverage as well, from lesser executive moves to industry sales reports. The only “company” town that rivals Detroit for total immersion is Hollywood, but I give the nod to that star-fueled enclave simply because of its power over all media. After all, Detroit and the U.S. auto industry are still considered to be one with the vast middle of the country, aka the “flyover” states.
Why am I bringing this up? Well, we’re in the midst of another “Please take Detroit seriously!” media push, conducted by none other than Ford Motor Company operatives. On the one hand, the four-year, $950 million plus restoration of the Michigan Central Station – personally spearheaded by Chairman Bill Ford Jr. – is a very good thing. The former showpiece train station had been allowed to deteriorate to an almost non-repairable state over decades (it closed for good in 1988), and Bill Ford’s leadership to bring it back to life is to be commended, because the pictures of the finished project before the grand re-opening this week are indeed spectacular. (The stunning Beaux-Arts structure was designed by the architects who worked together on New York’s Grand Central Station, and it was the tallest rail station in the world at the time of its construction in 1913. -WG)
(Images by the Detroit Free Press, Kimberly P. Mitchell)
But this is where things begin to go sideways, because certain individuals are trying to inject overinflated meaning that goes beyond the mere restoration of this now showpiece building.
“For Jim Farley, the resurrection of Michigan Central Station in Detroit feels like sweet revenge.
People used to question Ford Motor Co. executives and others who lived in Detroit about the city’s reputation and perceived hopelessness, and it was frustrating, said Farley, who joined Ford from Toyota in 2007. ‘The whole global media, and especially Time magazine: ‘The tragedy of Detroit’? All this bullshit that I just felt we were all being gang tackled by the national media without them really doing their homework. They didn’t know the spirit of Detroit.'”
I daresay that Farley wouldn’t know the spirit of Detroit if it bit him in the ass, either, but that’s grist for another column. The reality is that infamous Time magazine article was dead right. Detroit perpetually has its back against the wall, for countless reasons, and Time was just stating the obvious.
And even though the renaissance of the Michigan Central Station is genuinely a very good thing as I previously stated, the fact that Ford executives – led by Farley – are insisting that this is yet another example of the city finally turning the corner, and that this edifice alone will draw new young talent to the Motor City like flies to honey, is wildly exaggerating the prospects brought on by this development. If young up-and-coming people were that easily led by shiny objects, this town would be swimming in optimism, but I beg to differ, because the reality is decidedly different.
I need to point out that this town has been plagued by corruption and bad actors for decades. Just this past week it was discovered that the CEO of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy – a non-profit focused on improving things along the Detroit River – was forced to resign and its chief financial officer was fired amid a criminal investigation into the fact that $40 million was missing. Remember, this is a non-profit. Another case of a rarefied incident that doesn’t represent the “spirit” of Detroit? Hardly. As I said before, this town is haunted by a crumbling educational system, abject poverty and a real sense of hopelessness for far too large a segment of the population.
As much as I applaud Bill Ford for his endeavor to rejuvenate the Michigan Central Station, Farley and his PR minions should cool it with the overpromising on what this facility means. Farley isn’t exactly a credible arbiter of taste around here to begin with, and his bleating doesn’t exactly ring true. In fact, it has an odor of vacuousness about it that achieves just the opposite.
Does the Michigan Central Station fundamentally alter the national perception of this city? No, it does not. Just like the Detroit INDYCAR Grand Prix run downtown last week didn’t either, despite the gushing coverage by NBC Sports. For the record, the track is way too short and tight, and it invites constant bumping and bashing. Frankly, the event was an embarrassment, and it needs a serious re-think, because just having it isn’t close to being enough. But then again, I don’t expect that to happen. After all, the powers that be are too busy patting themselves on the back that the event happened in the first place. But I digress.
Is the Michigan Central Station a huge improvement that minimizes a previous area of tragic blight? Yes, it is. But that’s as far as it goes. The reality is that if the Detroit Lions went to the Super Bowl – and won – it would do more for the city in terms of local feels and national image enhancement than the Michigan Central Station could ever do. That’s just the nature of the game and the reality of the situation.
So that’s the Deal on Detroit on this 12th day of June 2024. Is this a tough town? Unquestionably. Are things on an upward trajectory? If you’re purely looking at the auto industry that lives here, sort of, but then again not really. Until the EV “thing” is sorted out, it’s still a giant “we’ll see.” The same can be said for the new physical property developments going on around town, in terms of optimism. They remain a giant “we’ll see” as well.
But when looking at the health of the city and its environs, and the deep-rooted problems that plague this city and its educational system, the ones that are preventing this city from doing anything but a dismal two-steps forward, five-back self-defeating dance of “progress,” then we indeed have a long, long, long way to go.
Yes, as a town and as a region, we do have a long way to go. But this is who we are and this auto thing is what really matters to us. We don’t need sympathy, and the glossy stories of late are nice, but they will never define us, or what it’s really like to be here and be from around here.
We’re a state of mind that’s filled with countless contradictions, and our great history is offset by some lurid realities.
We’ve contributed much to the American fabric, yet we have a historical propensity to make things brutally tough on our day-to-day well-being.
We’ve brought this country a sound like no other and a gritty, gutty context that’s second to none, yet we’ve created countless problems for ourselves, most all of them self-inflicted.
We created the “Arsenal of Democracy” when our country needed it most, yet we allowed a movement based on fairness to become a disease based on entitlement and rancor.
We’ve contributed much to this nation’s progress and standing, yet we can’t seem to get out of our own way at times, which is infuriating and debilitating.
But thankfully, the story never really ends for Detroit. At least not yet anyway. We’re still standing, warts and glaring faults and all. And you can forget the recent glory stories about our renaissance because we don’t really need ‘em to validate us.
We know who we are. And we know that the perception isn’t often favorable. And we get that. But still there’s an exuberance and spirit here that no interloper of a CEO can ever capture.
It’s a Detroit thing, or if you must, a Dee-troit thing, as Bob Seger so aptly put it. And we’re proud of what that means.
And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.
Editor’s Note: Click on “Next 1 Entries” at the bottom of this page to see previous issues. – WG
