Sven Gustafson - Daily Detroit (Page 8)

Your Chance To Rename The Golden Butthole Plus 9 Things To Know

It’s Monday, and your weekend warrior dreams have been dashed. Back to work, automatons! <cracks whip> Oh, and the city of Sterling Heights would like the public to help rename name the sculpture it calls the Golden Corridor Icon in the median of Hall Road. There are a ton of prizes on offer for first-, second- and third-place entries, so find more information here. In other news of the absurd, Little Caesars is unveiling a bacon-wrapped deep-dish pizza, ringed with three an...

Residential Recycling Is Being Dumped In Landfills, Faces A Crisis

On a recent episode of this podcast, I went on a brief side rant praising my local Meijer store for accepting plastic bags for recycling and had a minor freak-out over the looming global environmental crisis over our increasingly all-plastic everything. That caught the attention of Joe Munem, a Daily Detroit podcast listener who works as director of government affairs and public relations with GFL Environmental USA, a trash hauler and recycling service. He wrote us to say th...

A Shipping Container Home In Ferndale Lists For $450,000 Plus The Measles Are Back

There’s a new house in a modest neighborhood of northeast Ferndale, made of shipping containers, that is listing for $450,000. Is Ferndale about to become like Midtown Detroit? Oh, SNAP! Also on today’s show, we discuss the new measles case identified in Oakland County, and we speak with Dr. Nicholas Gilpin, an infectious disease specialist and chief medical officer at Beaumont Hospital in Grosse Pointe, for more about the virus. Elsewhere: Michael Bloomberg joi...

How We Could Do Better With #313Day Plus 7 Things To Know Around Detroit

It’s March 13, or written another way, 3/13, or #313Day. It’s become quite a thing locally on social media. And it’s become, in Jer’s words, “a meme holiday.” Although it’s great to spread positivity, it could be a lot better. He’s got a different proposal to try and infuse some more action into it. We talk about it on the podcast. There’s lots of real news we cover on today’s show, as well: * Ford is issuing pink slip to salaried workers in Dearborn * Fiat Chrysler i...

Detroit Is Apparently Too Boring For NFL Free Agents, Plus 6 Things To Know Around Detroit

“Weather and sex are huge factors.” That’s the, uh, money quote from a Sports Illustrated piece about the best and worst NFL cities as perceived by free agents. Detroit fares poorly, ranking in the bottom five for NFL cities, dinged for its dysfunctional locker room but also because we’re seen as having boring nightlife. We discuss. A second white Detroit police officer has lost his job in the wake of the release of a Snapchat video mocking a black motorist. The video showed...

Meet Detroit's New Exploration & Nature Center At Palmer Park

It’s been a looooooooooonnnnnng winter, comrades. So your intrepid Daily Detroit team was intrigued to see a new sign outside the former Palmer Park Golf Course HQ announcing that something called the Detroit Exploration and Nature Center was coming to our favorite local park. On this episode, we stop by the still-nascent nature center and walk deep into the heart of the Detroit wilderness with naturalist Jac Kyle, a recreation instructor with the city of Detroit’s Parks and Recr...

Spring Restaurant Forecast Features Plenty Of Detroit-Style Pizza

Though it’s still technically winter, it’s never too early to look ahead to springtime. And in Detroit, the pace of restaurant openings is continuing apace. On this episode, Daily Detroit’s Man About Town, Devon O’Reilly, joins us to rap about all the latest restaurant news in town. For starters, there’s a lot of Detroit-style pizza coming, with Shield’s Pizza coming to the Maccabees Building in the Cultural Center, Buddy’s headed downtown and newcomer Michigan & Trumbull headed...

Eastern Market

H&M Coming To Detroit And We'll Serve You Soup At The Empty Bowls Fundraiser

Happy Hump Day, errrrybody. Today’s episode features a series of conversations. There’s big news for downtown Detroit’s emerging retail shopping scene, as fashionable Swedish retailer H&M is planning to open a store on Woodward Avenue this fall. Daily Detroit’s retail maven, Shianne Nocerini, joins Jer to talk about it. Jer then talks with me all about Mayor Mike Duggan’s State of the City address last night. I update you on medical marijuana. Dispensaries operatin...

Whitmer Unveils Plan To 'Fix The Damn Roads,' Plus A Local Makes 'The Voice'

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer today released her first proposed budget before a joint meeting of House and Senate appropriations committee members, and she’s targeting investments to three problem areas for Michigan: roads, K-12 schools and contamination threats to drinking water resources. In a nutshell, the governor proposes to raise gasoline taxes in three installments of 15 cents to an extra 45 cents by October 2020. To pay for it, she’d undo some of the tax reforms championed by Gov...

The Return Of WLLZ, And District Detroit WTF?

On today’s show, we have some fun discussing the return of the WLLZ call letters to Detroit’s FM airwaves, and by listener request we talk about the elephant in the room, the so-called District Detroit, in the wake of the big story that ran over the weekend in Crain’s. First up is a new Patronicity campaign to help restore Hamtramck Stadium, which hosted Detroit’s various Negro Leagues baseball teams during the 1930s. Hometown rock star Jack White ponied up $10,000 to jump-start...

5 Things To Know In Detroit Plus Dinner & A Chat At The Rattlesnake

We recorded today’s episode at The Rattlesnake, which is joining as a sponsor of your Daily Detroit. We have some more tasty more details on the new Buddy’s location in downtown Detroit. Elsewhere, we discuss Campbell Soup Company’s planned sale of Ferndale’s Garden Fresh to a company based in Quebec, Canada. Co-founder Jack Aronson had bid to buy back his old company, but couldn’t seal the deal. We also cover the Big News out of Sterling Heights, that a Target is closi...

New Jeep Plant And Buddy's Pizza In Detroit, Plus 7 Other Things To Know

Another day, another truckbed-full of news in Detroit. Fiat Chrysler made arguably the biggest splash with its announcement that it plans to invest $4.5 billion in five Detroit-area plants and create nearly 6,500 jobs. Central to that is plans to convert the Mack Avenue Engine Complex on Detroit’s east side to an assembly plant to build the next-generation Jeep Grand Cherokee and a yet-to-be-named three-row Jeep SUV. If all goes according to plan, construction could begin by mid-year....

Russell WoodsSouthwest Detroit

Shinola At The Oscars, A New Detroit Bodega And 7 Things To Know

A Hollywood film director makes a giant splash at the Oscar Awards when he says Shinola is “saving Detroit” and the interweb asplodes. We talk about what that ridiculous, off-the-cuff comment means about the city and its nascent comeback. There’s a lot more news to be had on today’s episode. We also discuss that Medium blog post announcing a new bodega — that’s essentially New York City parlance for “party store” — for the hard-hit Russell Woods neighborhood on Detroit’s west sid...

$15 Million For Detroit Neighborhood Development, Michigan's Standing In Trump Suit, Verbal Defense Workshop

On today’s show, Chase Bank makes a $15 million commitment to neighborhood redevelopment efforts in Detroit. The money — $10 million in long-term, low-cost loans, and $5 million in philanthropy — will go through the city’s Strategic Neighborhood Fund. Elsewhere, Sven speaks with Wayne State University constitutional law professor Robert Sedler about the lawsuit Michigan and 15 other states filed this week against President Trump. The states argue the president’s national emergenc...

Why Albert Cobo's Legacy Is A Racist One, With Detroit Historian Ken Coleman

Detroit’s Q*Bert-esque convention center has been named after former Mayor Albert Cobo since it opened in 1960. That’s set to change, with today’s announcement that the authority that runs Cobo awarded naming rights to Chemical Bank for $1.5 million per year for 22 years. Mayor Mike Duggan has said for years that he thinks the convention center should be renamed, and on today’s show, we fill in the why. Jer speaks with local historian and writer Ken Coleman about Cobo’s comp...

Dick Purtan Returns To The Airwaves To Raise Money To Feed The Hungry Plus 6 Things To Know

On today’s podcast, Jer tags along with the Salvation Army’s Bed and Bread truck, which delivers 3,800 meals each day to hungry Detroiters. He also speaks with former Detroit radio legend, Dick Purtan, about the upcoming Bed and Bread Club Radiothon, which runs Thursday through Friday on WJR-AM 760. Here’s what else is happening around town: * A federal corruption probe could be expanding to Taylor, as FBI agents raided the City Hall and homes of Mayor Rick Sollars. There’s...

OpenTable's Top 10 Southeast Michigan Restaurants, Plus 5 Stories Around Detroit

On today’s show, we break down the top 10 restaurants in Southeast Michigan as determined by users of Open Table for February. Of note: None of them are in the city proper, while one’s in Flint and another is in Ann Arbor. Elsewhere, we catch up on the news that Amazon has agreed to invest $700 million in startup electric vehicle company Rivian. We talked about the possibility this would happen on an episode last week, and Jer has some more thoughts about what Amazon’s equity sta...

Hope For Abandoned Lee Plaza, Plus 7 Other Things Around Detroit

The city of Detroit has announced plans to sell Lee Plaza, the hulking and abandoned former apartment tower on West Grand Boulevard near Linden, to a pair of developers for a cool $350,000. The Roxbury Group and Ethos Development Partners plan to convert it to 180 apartments and retail as part of a $50 million redevelopment. It’s good news for an ailing but iconic building in a part of town that could use some love. Also on today’s show, we run down the first partisan fight of Go...