COLUMN ONE : The Man Who May Save Detroit : Dennis Archer is bringing hope to a long-suffering city. Part of a new generation of moderate black mayors, he is trying to boost business and heal wounds left by bitter racial politics.

Even before moving into the mayor’s office a year ago, Dennis Archer made a point of crossing Eight Mile Road into what his predecessor, Coleman A. Young, once angrily dubbed the “hostile suburbs.”

Unlike the popular and controversial Young, who in his 20-year reign offended Detroit’s neighbors with his acid tongue and divisive racial politics, Archer came to preach a kinder, gentler sermon.

“If Detroit goes down any more than it has, it hurts all of us,” he told the nearly all-white crowd of 200 Oakland County business executives that November night in 1993. “We need to be pulling together in tandem.”

Today, Archer continues to deliver a bridge-building message from Grosse Point to Bloomfield Hills, from Lansing to Washington. This new Motown sound is soothing music to outsiders who have long felt unwelcome here and to city residents weary of years of decay, capital flight and despair.

So much so that Detroit, all but given up for dead after other failed revival efforts, is again showing a pulse. The credit largely goes to Archer, a former teacher, lawyer and Michigan Supreme Court justice whose coalition-building agenda has made him Detroit’s great black--and white--hope.

He has undertaken what amounts to a bold experiment in urban resuscitation, the outcome of which is being closely watched around the country. “Detroit is the most troubled city in the nation,” said urban expert Neal Peirce, who is also a nationally syndicated columnist. “If it can succeed, it gives hope to others.”

Along with Cleveland’s Mike White and Seattle’s Norman Rice, Archer, 53, represents a new generation of black leaders running U.S. cities. It is a group no less committed to the civil rights ideals of earlier black mayors but who seek their political goals with more moderate methods and styles.

For Archer, a former Young campaign manager, that means favoring accommodation over confrontation, partnership over polarization and inclusion over exclusion. A middle-of-the-road Democrat, he is not averse to endorsing some Republican ideas. He is adamantly pro-business, embraces self-help ideals and advocates regional solutions to urban problems.

“He doesn’t scare people,” said local political consultant Mario Morrow. “His appeal has crossed over the barriers.”

In Detroit, there is a palpable sense of optimism for the first time since Jimmy Carter was President. To hear some talk, the nation’s auto capital is on the move again and will become a model city early in the 21st Century.

That’s probably a stretch. This is the same Detroit that not long ago was the nation’s murder capital. The same Detroit that still engages in a perverse Halloween eve ritual of rampant arson. The same Detroit that has lost nearly half its population and jobs, and where a third of families live in poverty.

Still there are signs of progress. Detroit recently won a federal empowerment zone grant to rebuild areas near downtown. Proposals for a new baseball stadium and casino gaming could spur investment. Having so much vacant land that parts of the city resemble an urban prairie, Detroit is luring developers with a let’s-make-a-deal attitude.

The baldish, bearded Archer is applying the lessons learned by Baltimore, Cleveland and other one-time urban basket cases to revive his impoverished city. For instance, he has studied how White fostered racial and corporate cooperation to make Cleveland’s downtown a showcase. Although its social problems remain, Cleveland is seen as a turnaround city.

Archer’s efforts already are raising Detroit’s profile as well as his own political capital. Already he is regarded as a figure with statewide and national appeal.

“He is a visionary mayor,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.).

But it will take more than a powerful vision to overcome the problems that plague Detroit, whose landscape makes it an unflattering symbol of decades of failed urban policies.

Woodward Avenue, the city’s once flourishing north-south corridor, is blemished with boarded-up buildings. Hudson’s department store sits empty, a rotting relic of a better time.

On the east side, the picture is worse. A two-mile stretch of Chene Avenue is a sad tableau of abandoned homes, crumbling sidewalks and vacant lots. On the west side, where the 1967 riots rocked the city, stable and dilapidated neighborhoods exist side by side.

The city’s decline began in the 1950s and was exacerbated by white flight in the 1960s. The long fall from grace continued when recessions and global competition shook the Rust Belt.

The city had 1.8 million residents in the 1950s; today, it has about 1 million. Once more than 85% white, it is 76% black.

Detroit’s unemployment rate, mostly in double digits for years, recently fell to 7.1%, but is twice that for young black men. About 80,000 manufacturing jobs were lost since 1984. In the city whose name is synonymous with autos, a third of families do not own a vehicle.

About 61,000 houses were lost in the 1980s and few new ones built. The tax rate is seven times higher than the state average. Yet residents complain of crime, poor garbage pickup and unfilled potholes. Detroit has run budget deficits in 23 of the last 30 years.

“Unless the tax burden is reduced, nothing fundamental will change,” said David Littmann, chief economist for Comerica Bank. “Everything else is just flag waving. People and capital will continue to flow out of the city.”

Given this bleak backdrop, rebuilding Detroit would appear an impossible mission. But Archer sees solutions.

At his inaugural, he planted the seeds of renewal. While often a stiff speaker, he lit an emotional spark that brought the crowd to its feet: “For this great crusade to redeem our city to succeed, everybody must pitch in,” he said. “Sweep the sidewalk in front of your house! Clean the rubbish from the storm sewer on your street! Pick up the broken glass in your alley! Get a grip on your life and the lives of your children!”

Since then Archer has impressed everyone with his energetic pace. A daily jogger, he works 16-hour days. He seems to be everywhere. He answers his own mail.

Archer wasted little time fulfilling some campaign pledges. He moved 300 police officers from behind desks to the streets. Garbage pickup time was reduced from 14 to 10 days. Funds were found for street repairs.

Although he adopted a $55-million budget shortfall, Archer hopes to balance it without deficit reduction bonds--a financial gimmick used in the past. He predicts a small surplus this year, which could lower borrowing costs.

He immediately reached out to Oakland County Executive Brooks Patterson, long regarded by black Detroit as a racial antagonist. While Patterson never met one-on-one with Young, he meets regularly with Archer.

“He has reached across Eight Mile Road with a hand of friendship,” said Patterson, a former prosecutor.

The new chumminess with the suburbs allowed Archer to restart discussions of creating a regional transportation authority by merging the money-losing city and suburban bus systems.

The mayor also displayed a nonpartisan streak. To the dismay of state Democratic leaders, Archer last year endorsed Republican Gov. John Engler’s school reform initiative to partly replace a cut in the property tax with an increased sales tax.

Make no mistake, Archer is a Democrat and strong backer of President Clinton. He is a regular at the White House, thanks to his friendship with Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom he met when active in the American Bar Assn.

The close ties to the Clintons have borne fruit. In December, Detroit won designation as a federal empowerment zone. The city was granted $100 million over 10 years for job training, housing and business creation programs in a poverty-ridden 18-square-mile area near downtown.

Businesses are eligible for $200 million in tax credits for employing residents in the zone. More important, corporations pledged $1.9 billion for redevelopment projects in the district.

Still many in Detroit are skeptical. After all, the city has received more than $4 billion in federal grants since President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the War on Poverty about 30 years ago, but the tide of decline has not turned.

Even well-intentioned efforts by wealthy private interests have not helped much. In the 1970s, Henry Ford II built Renaissance Center to serve as a magnet for downtown redevelopment. But Ford and his backers lost millions on the hotel, retail and office project, while doing little to spur development.

Community and corporate officials agree that dollars alone cannot revive Detroit. Rather, they see initiatives to improve education and to curb crime, drug use and chronic joblessness as the key building blocks.

Others fear that federal grants will become a narcotic. Conservatives say Archer is avoiding tough steps needed to restore the city’s fiscal soundness. They advocate privatizing assets and services, a policy Archer has resisted.

There are also traditional political divisions in Detroit that may hamper progress. For instance, community and labor groups have a deep distrust of corporate interests. “If the economic power structure decides to come back to Detroit, it will be for their own benefit,” said Karen McLeod, head of the Cass Corridor Neighborhood Development Corp., a grass-roots group. “We hope Detroit doesn’t give away the store.”

Such sentiments present a political challenge to Archer, whose opponents paint him as a tool of rich suburban interests. Although he won 57% of the vote against a Young-backed candidate, he won most of the white vote and split the black vote, drawing best among the better-educated and affluent.

“He is aligned with the business community and suburbs--those that helped tear down the city for 20 years,” said Llenda Jackson-Leslie, who writes a local political newsletter.

As evidence of this bias, critics point to his ill-fated appointment of Marge Byington, a Grand Rapids Republican who worked for Engler, as his economic development czar. She resigned after less than a year, a victim of a power struggle with the planning department over development decisions.

Archer’s biggest gaffe, however, was failing to prepare for Devil’s Night. Since 1984, Detroit has suffered through arsons the night before Halloween. The fires had diminished in recent years because of strong volunteer patrols but doubled in 1994.

Community groups complained they were not asked to participate as volunteers. The mayor quickly admitted that planning went awry and promised to learn from his mistake.

Still Archer, the son of a farm laborer with a third-grade education, bristles at suggestions that he is not in tune with his downtrodden community. He reminds people that he wasn’t born with the expensive suits he now wears.

Raised in Cassopolis in the state’s southwest corner, he worked his way through Western Michigan University. Moving to Detroit, he taught children with learning disabilities while attending law school at night.

Behind the desk of his 11th-floor office with a view of Canada hangs a Norman Rockwell print that portrays a young black girl being escorted to school by federal marshals past a wall with a racial slur.

“That says everything about me,” said Archer, who was just two years away from a $50,000 pension when he stepped down from the state Supreme Court in 1990 to seek the mayor’s job, which pays $130,000 a year.

“I’ve a commitment to my community that is every bit as strong as my predecessor,” said Archer, who lives in Detroit with his wife, a state district court judge, and two children. “I don’t necessarily wear mine on my sleeve. I let my actions speak for themselves.”

Thus far, his actions have drawn approval. A Detroit News poll, taken a week after the Devil’s Night debacle, found 72% believed Archer was doing a good job.

The honeymoon is unlikely to last much longer, and the mayor’s supporters say he needs a development home run--or at least some solid base hits--soon to take advantage of the existing goodwill.

“The second year has to be the year of delivery,” said Robert Keller, president of Detroit Renaissance, a nonprofit business group that supports downtown redevelopment.

Ironically, the best immediate redevelopment prospect for Detroit is casino gambling, an issue that Archer campaigned against. He dropped his opposition in August after voters approved a non-binding referendum supporting Native American casinos and riverboat gambling.

One reason for the shift is that Windsor, just across the Detroit River, opened Canada’s first casino last year. It created 2,000 jobs and is expected to draw about $390 million in annual revenues from U.S. gamblers.

Another development focus is a new baseball stadium. Detroit Tigers owner Michael Ilitch wants to vacate aging Tiger Stadium and build a ballpark in Foxtown, an 80-acre redevelopment district north of downtown.

Ilitch, owner of Little Caesar’s Pizza, last spring asked the state to provide $200 million for stadium infrastructure. The proposal was tied up in Lansing, the state capital, and some blame Archer for being slow to back it.

The Tiger Stadium debate underlines a complaint that Archer lacks the political savvy to wheel and deal, and that his studied approach to issues is more appropriate for the courtroom than political cloakrooms.

“You got to act,” said Adolph Mongo, a local political consultant and longtime Young supporter. “You just can’t study and study and study.”

Archer dismisses such criticism as style over substance. He predicts state approval of casinos and a new stadium this year. He also expects major housing and industrial developments.

The main reason is the strong support of the business community. Besides the $2.2-billion empowerment zone pledges, corporations, downtown banks and even the city pension funds are putting up substantial funds for redevelopment.

Whatever dreams emerge, it seems clear the new Detroit cannot be what the old one was in its heyday. It will be difficult to attract a major corporation or retailer downtown.

Planners see an opportunity to remake Detroit with a friendlier face. They would like to demolish vacant towers downtown, replacing them with parks and housing. They see downtown emerging as an entertainment center.

“We are changing the image of Detroit,” Archer said. “It is not going to happen overnight and I recognize that. But we take it one step at a time, one day at a time. We are going to turn our city around.”