Sven Gustafson - Daily Detroit (Page 6)

Parking Ticket Discounts For City Residents Plus 6 Things To Know Around Detroit

Happy Monday, and welcome to a new week of your Daily Detroit. Today, Jer talks about an eventful past week spent at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island, filling us in on some of the things he came away with beyond just the headlines about no-fault auto insurance reform. Specifically, it’s becoming clear that Detroit’s comeback needs a lot more juice (read: money — and residents) just to come up to par with the competition. He also does the math on the so-called 7.2...

Everyone Wants To 'Fix The Damn Roads' But We Don't Really Want To Pay For It

Just in time for the Mackinac Policy Conference, the Center for Michigan and its Bridge Magazine have a new report out all about Michigan’s abysmal roads. It’s titled Fixing Michigan’s Road Mess: The Unclear Path Ahead. The report is the result of talking to more than 3,200 residents across the state to talk about the state of our roads. It found broad agreement, unsurprisingly, that our roads are in terrible shape. But it found no consensus whatsoever on the issue of how to...

Should The Grand Prix Race On Belle Isle? This Group Says No

The Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear (a mouthful, for sure) marks its 30th anniversary and kicks off three days of racing starting May 31. The annual event attracts nearly 100,000 visitors to Belle Isle, is televised nationwide and says it has helped raise more than $13 million for improvements since the race returned to Belle Isle in 2007. But the race also renders a big chunk of the island inaccessible for more than two months each spring, just as Detroiters are eme...

Jefferson-ChalmersSouthwest Detroit

Jefferson Chalmers Gets $5 Million From Penske, Scoop Comes To Detroit And More

Welcome to the Hump Day edition of your Daily Detroit, in which we run down the news that businessman Roger Penske is pouring $5 million into the Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood on Detroit’s east side. It’s part of the city’s Strategic Neighborhood Fund. Here are a couple pictures from the event: Jer also has an interview today with Rob Sadow, the Co-Founder and head of Scoop Technologies. Scoop is a carpooling app that connects drivers, riders and designs routes....

Behind The Effort To Save Legendary Detroit Jazz Hot Spot The Blue Bird Inn

Baker’s Keyboard Lounge and, more recently, the Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe in Grosse Pointe Farms are famed venues for jazz in Detroit. But another venue played a huge role in that scene for decades: the Blue Bird Inn. Located at 5021 Tireman on the city’s west side, the Blue Bird Inn was a major nexus of Detroit’s swinging post-war, pre-Motown jazz scene, a black-owned business that hosted the likes of Charlie Parker, Donald Byrd, John Coltrane and Miles Davis and playing a role in dev...

New Order Coffee Plans New Locations As Part Of Expanded Expansion

New Order Coffee is in the midst of building out their second location on Woodward in Royal Oak, and the custom roaster and retailer said Monday it plans a larger expansion that includes locations in Birmingham, Ferndale and Troy. New Order’s second coffee shop location will open later this year in the Woodward Corners project near the corner of Woodward and 13 Mile, where Beaumont Health has been redeveloping the former Northwood Shopping Center as a lifestyle center. Other tenants con...

Could Dan Gilbert Be The One Who Reforms No-Fault Auto Insurance in Michigan?

Welcome to a Car-a-Palooza edition of your Daily Detroit. Today, we dive into the news that Dan “Dantroit” Gilbert is lining up a petition drive effort to force the issue of reforming Michigan’s no-fault auto insurance system. If successful, it could allow Republican lawmakers, who already have passed essentially the same proposal, to approve it with simple majority votes. Will this ratchet up pressure on Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and lawmakers to cut a deal? Sta...

This Abandoned House Is Transforming Into A Model Of Affordable Green Sustainability In The City

On today’s episode, we speak with Casper van Alfen and Joanna van der Leun of the Motown Movement. That’s the organization founded by architecture students from the Netherlands that bought an abandoned home in Detroit for $1,000 and have been fixing it up with the help of local nonprofits and with the goal of making it into a model of accessible and affordable environmental sustainability. Van Alfen and Van der Leun are students at Delft University of Technology in Delft, wh...

Macomb Township

7 Things To Know Around Metro Detroit

Gerrymandering — the practice of drawing state legislative and congressional districts to favor one political party over another — is back in the news. Republican state lawmakers are proposing measures to weaken efforts to overhaul the process by which these maps are drawn. That’s despite a recent judicial order to design new district maps for 2020 and voters’ approval last fall of Proposal 2, which transfers the process to a redistricting commission. But old habits die hard, as...

Get On Your Bikes And Ride: Bike To Work Day Is Friday, May 17

Whether you’re a seasoned bike commuter, want to support the city’s efforts to encourage more bicycling or are merely curious, take note: Detroit will celebrate Bike to Work Day this Friday, May 17 with three morning gathering spots, free coffee and snacks, giveaways and a commemorative tech shirt. The format of this year’s event is the same as in previous years, with the main event downtown at the Spirit of Detroit plaza on Woodward at Jefferson, plus two pit stops: one at New Center Pa...

Here's How You Can Help Clean Up The Rouge River

The nonprofit group Friends of the Rouge needs volunteers to help with the annual cleanup of the Rouge River. This year’s Rouge Rescue event takes place Saturday, May 18. Volunteers are needed to help remove trash and invasive plants, maintain land and water trails and plant native wildflowers. Volunteers at last year’s event cleared the equivalent of 24 pickup trucks worth of debris and about 78 pickup trucks full of invasive plants. They also planted some 2,000 native plants and...

Farewell, Hated Livernois Median: One Of 7 Things To Know

Good Wednesday afternoon, and welcome to a super Detroit-y edition of your Daily Detroit. Today, we walked over to the Avenue of Fashion, where Mayor Mike Duggan came to speak about the streetscape redevelopment of a roughly 1-mile section of Livernois to calm traffic and make the commercial district more attractive to pedestrians and, hopefully, prosperous to business owners. Construction crews were already at work demolishing the 13-year-old median added by now-imprisoned...

Detroit Bike City? This Ranking Says No, Plus 3 Things To Know Around Town

Detroit: A great bike city, or the best bike city? We dive into that superwonky argument in the wake of Detroit’s abysmal showing in PeopleForBike’s annual rankings of the Best Cities For Bikes in 2019. Detroit scored a lowly 1.6 out of 5 stars, the same as 2018, despite all the work that’s been done to install protected bike lanes, bike traffic counters and other bike-friendly infrastructure improvements. Ferndale and Ann Arbor both scored higher, at 3.0 stars each. But the...

5 Ideas For Mother's Day 2019 Around Metro Detroit

Moms, ammirite? They’re the best. With Mother’s Day coming up this Sunday, May 12, we’re offering a hand-picked, artisanal, fair-trade organic list of ideas for how to show your favorite mom that you love her. Pies And Mead Our first suggestion is a slightly unconventional one. Ackroyd’s Scottish Bakery, the Redford Township business responsible for those coney pasties we tasted recently, is teaming up with Schramm’s Mead for a series of three-course brunches featuring far...

Another Greektown Shooting Plus 9 Things To Know Around Detroit

What is it with Greektown and the rise in shootings lately? We talk about that in the wake of another shooting late Sunday that injured two, though not critically. For years, the retail district was an example of safety and vibrancy in an otherwise dead downtown, but even though it’s still technically a vibrant neighborhood — albeit much less Greek than it used to be — it’s increasingly a scene of violent crime. Here’s what else we’re talking about on today’s show: * Longti...

Previewing Detroit City FC's Big 2019 Season With Fletcher Sharpe

Between hiring a new head coach to replacing the turf surface at Keyworth, and preparing to embark on its first-ever season of professional soccer, 2019 promises to be the biggest, most important season yet for Detroit City FC, which plays its final preseason friendly on Saturday at the Flint City Bucks. On today’s episode, we talk with soccer journalist, Outer Drive podcast co-host and Daily Detroit contributor Fletcher Sharpe about the Rouge’s roster moves to date, the new coac...

Lost River, Detroit City FC To Open Tiki Concession Bar At Keyworth Stadium

Halftimes at Detroit City FC home matches are about to get … pretty interesting. The club announced that it’s partnering with eastside tiki bar Lost River to open a tropical-themed bar behind the east grandstand at Keyworth Stadium for the upcoming 2019 season. That’s the side where the Northern Guard Supporters group sits and stages its raucous chants, songs, smoke bombs and dances. So now, soccer fans can add rum-based tiki drinks — along with free leis — to the list of locally m...

Breaking down HBO's takedown of District Detroit plus the legacy of Judge Damon J. Keith

The HBO show “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” last week turned its lens on the District Detroit, the Ilitch family’s mostly unrealized plan to redevelop 50 blocks as a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood between downtown and Midtown. Predictably, it did not go well for the Ilitches, who received $324 million in taxpayer assistance in exchange for what so far is the Little Caesars Arena, a Kid Rock restaurant and a couple dozen parking lots. Being opinionated on the subject,...