There’s actually a housing shortage in Midtown right now (not what you expect in Detroit), as burgeoning numbers of young people along with employees of Wayne State and the nearby Henry Ford Health System and Detroit Medical Center seek to move into the neighborhood. This is welcome evidence that the “Eds & Meds” revitalization strategy promoted by local boosters is working, and that Midtown’s renaissance will spread to surrounding districts.



Walking on the Woodward Side

The streetlife on Woodward displays Detroit life in all varieties—an Anime-themed café, social service agencies, a swank restaurant in a refurbished old mansion, old people watching the world go by, a Whole Foods store opening next year, the Majestic bowling alley/rock club, and one of the city’s ubiquitous Coney Island hot dog stands (which is a traditional street food of Detroit). 

Coming into downtown, you’re greeted by the Tigers' brick ballpark and the lavish Fox Theater, home to touring shows, musicians and comedians. Ahead you’ll pass Grand Circus Park, one of several landscaped squares downtown laid out 300 years ago as part of the city’s European-style street plan.  Handsome mid-rise buildings line Woodward and surrounding avenues, a number of them empty but not detracting too much from the overall sense of vitality. Compuware and Quicken Loans helped this downtown boom by moving their headquarters and more than 6500 employees from the suburbs.

“Downtown has really had a turning point since I moved here. There’s been a lot of work to make the area feel safe and clean,” notes Fellow Thomas Habitz, an urban planner who is now part of the team designing a  $500 million expansion of the Henry Ford Health System’s Detroit campus, which will include new housing and commercial space.

Campus Martius—an inviting square renovated in 2004 to include a café, music stage, ice rink and mesmerizing fountain—lured $500 million in new development to adjacent blocks.  Nearby stands the 1928 Guardian Building—an Art Deco masterpiece that for my money is the most strikingly gorgeous building ever built in America.  A riot of color and ziggurat styling, it looks like a co-production by ancient Egyptians and Mayans with Louis Comfort Tiffany as a design consultant.



Wandering off Woodward leads to some singularly fascinating spots such as 1515, a coffeeshop and experimental theater with a Left Bank ambience; Cliff Bell’s, an art deco jazz club with a Prohibition ambience; the London Chop House, a recently reopened  steakhouse with a Rat Pack ambience; and Café D’Mongo’s, a nightspot with an eclectic ambience all its own.

Woodward Avenue meets the Detroit River at Hart Plaza, the social focal point of downtown and site of many festivals throughout the summer. Check out the iconic sculpture of boxer Joe Louis’s arm and the deeply moving Underground Railroad Memorial showing escaped slaves looking across the river toward Canada.

Rolling Along the River

To see more of Detroit on foot, follow the River Walk, which edges the turquoise Detroit River five miles from downtown to Belle Isle, a Frederick Law Olmstead park with sweeping lawns and landscaped lagoons occupying a 982-acre island. Or see the sights on bike by renting from Wheelhouse Detroit.

You’ll pass Renaissance Center, GM headquarters and showpiece of the outdated 1970s strategy to renew downtowns by concentrating new development in fortresses set apart from everything else. A little over a mile up the  the path, you can enjoy a picnic or just kick back in the shadow of a lighthouse in William A. Milliken State Park, Michigan’s first urban state park. It’s the trailhead for the DeQuindre Cut Greenway, a rail line fashioned into an oasis-like biking and hiking trail, which will lead you one mile to the edge of the Eastern Market—which features 250 vendors from the region, plus surrounding blocks filled with bountiful bakeries, meat markets and specialty gourmet shops.

If you want to wander along the water a bit longer head onward to Riverplace, luxuriously reconditioned apartments in red-brick factory buildings. Nearby stands the Atwater Brewery —an actual microbrewery where you can cozy up to the bar in the shadow 15-foot towers of empty beer bottles awaiting filling.  If hunger strikes before you make it to Eastern Market, head to Steve’s Soul Food, a tidy buffet in an old warehouse on Franklin Street close to downtown where you choose from a tempting spread of ribs, reds beans and rice or collard greens. Save room for the sweet potato pie, which might displace pumpkin pie on your list of beloved desserts.  

Eastern Market is open Saturdays April through December and Tuesdays June through September, although the many of the surrounding businesses are open every day.   After exploring the cornucopia of fresh and prepared foods, walk west for about a mile on uneventful Mack Avenue (at the North side of the market), which will take you under the Chrysler Freeway and back to Woodward Avenue.  From there it's a half-mile north on Woodward to the heart of Midtown.