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> Years ago, when detroit was in desparate throws, I thought that it was ripe for a new 'silicon valley' and they should have pushed a huge start-up market. The

> Years ago, when detroit was in desparate throws, I thought that it was ripe for a new 'silicon valley' and they should have pushed a huge start-up market. They didnt, but they should have. The #1 land-owner in downtown Detroit[0] (founder of Rock Financial and owner of Rocket Mortgage, Quicken Loans, and Cleveland Cavaliers) thought the same thing at the time and worked hard to make it happen[1, 1b]. It never "blew up" but the efforts did bring in some substantial amount of revitalization and additional business which perseveres through today. He also spearheaded attempts to win Amazon's bid for "HQ2" to bring amazon's new major headquarters to Detroit.[2] Dan Gilbert went to public high school outside of Detroit, and studied at relatively low-cost state schools (Michigan State University, Wayne State University). His son recently passed at 26 from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes tumors, that can affect the brain, spinal cord and various nerve signals.[3] His dad ran a small lounge / restaurant in Detroit which looked like this[4], and his mom was a realtor[5]. His grandfather, Manuel Feldstein, owned car washes in Detroit[5]. And no, I'm not part of a PR effort for the family, I just like looking into where various modern-day rich people came from. Detroit had a huge role in prohibition smuggling from Canada with plenty of people rising up the economic strata a la "Great Gatsby". It's claimed that 75% of the alcohol smuggled into the USA during prohibition came into Detroit. The backdrop for the culture of "Detroit muscle cars" were speed-running alcohol cargoes across the frozen Detroit river from Canada to USA. Smugglers even built a "beer pipeline" running from a brewery in Canada to the basement of an establishment in Detroit. The mafia were heavily involved in these profits. While it's possible that the car wash and restaurants were money-laundering fronts for such endeavors, the family's choice of neighborhoods and schooling are consistent with that of their public persona. Yes, they received plenty of benefit from being white during a time of great segregation, and benefitted from connections across the Jewish community which led to his founding of Rock Financial with Ron Berman. But it doesn't appear that he was born with any particularly different advantages than my father's Catholic family or many other (white) families in that area. My grandfather went from penniless after serving in WW2 to standard middle class as middle management at Ford Motor Company and my father came home from school one to a smoldering pile of ashes on the front lawn from a cross that was burnt in opposition to my grandparents vocal support for allowing black people to buy houses in Plymouth, MI around the time of the Detroit race riots. 0: https://www.michiganradio.org/economy/2013-06-20/gilbert-owns-downtown-detroit-but-who-owns-the-most-private-land-in-the-whole-city https://www.michiganradio.org/economy/2013-06-20/gilbert-own... 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/dan-gilberts-quest-to-remake-downtown-detroit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/dan-gilberts-que... 1b: Alternate: https://archive.ph/abzX7 https://archive.ph/abzX7 2: https://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20170914/news/135516/dan-gilbert-lead-detroits-super-bowl-type-bid-amazon-hq2 https://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20170914/news/135516... 3: https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/2023/05/cavs-owner-dan-gilberts-son-nick-gilbert-dies-at-26.html https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/2023/05/cavs-owner-dan-gilber... 4: https://www.ebay.com/itm/295323506705 https://www.ebay.com/itm/295323506705 5: https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.2010.08.19.001/38 https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.2010.08.19.001/...

ghaff 3y ago
Per the opening of the NYT article, the emptyness at night certainly contributed to feeling unsafe. It's not that there were gangs of shady looking characters out and about for the most part. It's that there were wide, empty streets with no apparent activity.
- reaperman 3y ago
  Yes. That is accurate. I lived in Ann Arbor during 2008 but partied in Detroit from time to time. We'd say that "Detroit is very dangerous...if you run into someone. But you won't, so in reality it's actually safer than anywhere else." It's truly impossible to overstate how empty Detroit was at the time. You could walk around aimlessly for 30-45 minutes in many areas and not see a single soul. That said, you really didn't want to run across strangers -- the reputation for violent crime was well-deserved. A friend of mine rented a room for $250/month in an enormous mansion with 25-foot wide marble staircases and a panic room/vault in the basement. I have no idea how many rooms the mansion had, it was far too big to fully explore in the time I had. Since no one else was renting a room there, my friend used the mansion to throw raves with 50-100 people and we mostly stuck to 2-3 rooms, with the majority of the house still being empty. Some of my friends from slightly wealthier families bought up entire neighborhoods in Detroit at $10,000/home and renovated them, they revitalized the neighborhoods by installing a fun neighborhood dive bar with cheap menus and some convenient commercial stores. Many of those neighborhoods are still "hot spots" today, retaining quirky/fun culture. Makerspaces bloomed as well[0] due to a truly insane amount of heavy industrial equipment which was being sold for fractions of a penny on the dollar. The aforementioned rave scene also laid a lot of the musical foundations for today's EDM music, though it was not as impactful as the Baby Boomer generation's "Motown Records" (The Supremes, Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Marvelettes, and the Miracles). Before the Detroit Race Riots, people were regularly moving from Chicago to Detroit because Detroit was far and away the "cooler" city to live in of the two. 0: https://www.i3detroit.org https://www.i3detroit.org
- jrgoff 3y ago
  About 10 years ago now I took the train out east and had to switch train stations in Buffalo (they have two stations there). I arrived in the suburbs which felt fairly normal to me and I took a bus into downtown. The buildings downtown looked fairly normal to me and in apparently reasonable repair, but the streets were remarkably empty of both cars and people. It kind of freaked me out and that was like 5 in the afternoon. I saw some people here and there and saw a wedding party which helped me feel safe. I never encountered anything directly scary there, but it was disconcerting.

ghaff 3y ago

Per the opening of the NYT article, the emptyness at night certainly contributed to feeling unsafe. It's not that there were gangs of shady looking characters out and about for the most part. It's that there were wide, empty streets with no apparent activity.

reaperman 3y ago
Yes. That is accurate. I lived in Ann Arbor during 2008 but partied in Detroit from time to time. We'd say that "Detroit is very dangerous...if you run into someone. But you won't, so in reality it's actually safer than anywhere else." It's truly impossible to overstate how empty Detroit was at the time. You could walk around aimlessly for 30-45 minutes in many areas and not see a single soul. That said, you really didn't want to run across strangers -- the reputation for violent crime was well-deserved. A friend of mine rented a room for $250/month in an enormous mansion with 25-foot wide marble staircases and a panic room/vault in the basement. I have no idea how many rooms the mansion had, it was far too big to fully explore in the time I had. Since no one else was renting a room there, my friend used the mansion to throw raves with 50-100 people and we mostly stuck to 2-3 rooms, with the majority of the house still being empty. Some of my friends from slightly wealthier families bought up entire neighborhoods in Detroit at $10,000/home and renovated them, they revitalized the neighborhoods by installing a fun neighborhood dive bar with cheap menus and some convenient commercial stores. Many of those neighborhoods are still "hot spots" today, retaining quirky/fun culture. Makerspaces bloomed as well[0] due to a truly insane amount of heavy industrial equipment which was being sold for fractions of a penny on the dollar. The aforementioned rave scene also laid a lot of the musical foundations for today's EDM music, though it was not as impactful as the Baby Boomer generation's "Motown Records" (The Supremes, Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Marvelettes, and the Miracles). Before the Detroit Race Riots, people were regularly moving from Chicago to Detroit because Detroit was far and away the "cooler" city to live in of the two. 0: https://www.i3detroit.org https://www.i3detroit.org
jrgoff 3y ago
About 10 years ago now I took the train out east and had to switch train stations in Buffalo (they have two stations there). I arrived in the suburbs which felt fairly normal to me and I took a bus into downtown. The buildings downtown looked fairly normal to me and in apparently reasonable repair, but the streets were remarkably empty of both cars and people. It kind of freaked me out and that was like 5 in the afternoon. I saw some people here and there and saw a wedding party which helped me feel safe. I never encountered anything directly scary there, but it was disconcerting.