A Still-Struggling Detroit Puts On Its Game Face

As thousands of visitors arrive in downtown Detroit for this weekend’s Super Bowl, they are greeted by a city that appears to be booming with promise.

In the shadow of glass and steel skyscrapers, crowds of customers salivate over rich platters of smoked salmon Benedict and baskets stacked high with freshly baked fruit breads inside Detroit’s Breakfast House & Grill. Down the street, couples in chic dark suits wait more than an hour to squeeze into the Oslo sushi bar, eager to sample spicy crawfish rolls and nibble on plates of river eel sashimi.

But critics say much of this busy urban landscape is simply a facade designed to fool the more than 100,000 visitors who are expected to come here and generate an estimated $300 million in revenue in celebration of Sunday’s kickoff at Ford Field.

Painted murals of football scenes cover the street-level entrances of one building, camouflaging a burned-out doorway of an abandoned structure.

Along Woodward Avenue, visitors and locals can gaze at dozens of new window displays. But less than a third of the buildings have tenants. Ornate architectural renderings and brightly colored shutters that hang as art cover up forgotten lobbies and empty shops.

“Everyone is wondering whether all this hoopla is going to fade on Monday,” said Moesha Williams, a 38-year-old from suburban Detroit who regularly meets friends for lunch downtown. “God, I hope not. If any city in the country needs a break, it’s Detroit.”

Since Detroit landed its bid with the NFL in 2000 to host the Super Bowl, city officials have been focused on one goal -- putting a new face on the city’s blight.

“We’re trying to finish as much as we can in downtown to reintroduce Detroit as a city everyone can be proud of,” said Albert Fields, director of the city’s Fusion Center, an emergency preparedness center, and Detroit’s former chief operating officer. “We’re never going to have a bigger platform to show off our successes.”

For decades, city officials have been banking on Detroit’s downtown area to help turn around one of America’s most troubled urban hubs, which has been scarred by riots, crime and the flight of both its upper and middle classes.

The plan, say economists, has been to leverage a revival of this 7-square-mile stretch along the Detroit riverfront and expand it outward.

The city itself is divided into three general regions: downtown; the outer suburbs, where Detroit’s upper and middle classes steadily fled after the end of World War II; and the estimated 133 square miles that sit in between.

Though money has been poured into the city’s center before, downtown started shifting toward a more prosperous look in 1999, after state voters allowed urban gambling. Three casinos were opened, bringing with them more than 6,000 jobs and thousands of visitors.

In the years that followed, public-private ventures helped build adjacent baseball and football stadiums, as well as revitalize three playhouses. In 2003, the software firm Compuware moved its headquarters and more than 4,200 employees to a new high-rise here. Other urban pioneers slowly followed, moving into pricey downtown lofts and condominium complexes.

Dozens of smaller businesses came to tap into the new population. In the last 36 months, say city officials, more than 60 new businesses have set up shop.

Restaurants make up at least a third of the new arrivals. There’s also a new Borders bookstore. And a CVS drugstore -- the area’s only pharmacy -- officially opened last weekend.

“When I first moved into downtown, there was one sandwich shop, a couple decent restaurants and that was it,” said Peter Zeiler, 38, a technology program manager with the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., a nonprofit organization that helps to link private developers with the city. “Now, I have to wait in line at my favorite deli. It’s a problem I’m happy to live with.”

But go only a block or two outside of the core of downtown, and the streets are lined with mile after mile of burned-out and ramshackle homes and empty lots. Detroit’s overall population has shrunk by half -- to under 1 million residents -- during the last half-century. An average of 1,000 residents still move out of the city each month.

“You have population density that’s almost rural in spots, because there are some areas of the city that are almost totally vacant,” said John Mogk, a law professor at Wayne State University who specializes in urban development and land use. “In places, the prairie is taking over the land. It’s not unusual to drive around the city and see pheasants running down the road.”

As the population falls, the city’s financial outlook continues to grow grimmer.

Economists have dubbed Detroit the country’s poorest urban center, with about 1 in 3 residents living below the federal poverty line. In November, it had the nation’s second-highest rate of unemployment -- behind New Orleans, struggling after Hurricane Katrina.

The city government is wrestling with how to balance a budget with a $140-million deficit by the end of this fiscal year. Last year, the city auditor warned that unless drastic measures were taken, a state or federal receivership would be unavoidable.

The idea of an outside agency taking over the city’s wallet has become a fear cited by Detroit’s elected leaders, particularly whenever they’ve made unpopular budget cuts in city departments.

Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick warned of such a scenario in January 2005, when he trimmed 700 city jobs. He again cited the potential of a receivership in the fall, when he cut 150 officers from the Police Department. It now has a staff of 3,300.

For the Super Bowl, the Police Department has partnered with 100 local and federal agencies to augment its staff. It’s also ordered all available officers to work 12-hour-on, 12-hour-off shifts through Sunday.

But the city can’t afford to pay them overtime, said police spokesman James Tate. So “the majority [of the overtime] is going to be paid for by the federal government,” thanks in part to grants from the Department of Homeland Security, said Tate.

As tourists began to arrive earlier this week, Fields and other city staffers spent their days combing downtown streets to make sure their town looked as prosperous as possible.

Fields’ to-do list included checking the state of the sidewalks and wrought-iron streetlights along Woodward Avenue. “There’s nothing that says there’s a problem like crumbling concrete,” Fields said.

As Fields peered at smooth slabs of new sidewalks, construction workers nearby finished the final touches of massive white tents to house the city’s Winter Blast carnival, which started Thursday.

The plan had been to celebrate the Motor City’s traditionally bitterly cold winters with a 200-foot snow slide, dog sled races and an ice sculpture garden.

Nature, however, has refused to cooperate: Recent temperatures in the city have ranged from the mid-30s to the 50s.

“We’re renting snowmakers. All we can hope is that it doesn’t get too warm and melt all the snow,” said George W. Jackson Jr., president of city’s economic growth corporation. “Only in Detroit, huh?”

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Urban snapshot

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Ethnic breakdown

Black: 84.2%

White: 8.0%

Latino: 5.4%

Other: 2.4%

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Population (2004): 840,006

Median age: 32.4 years

Education: 10.6% of adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher

Families below poverty

level: 29.1%

Median household

income: $27,871

Unemployment: 6.8%

Median home value: $89,759

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Sources: U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics