Daily Detroit

A den of coyotes has taken up residence near downtown Detroit — specifically, in that weird no-man's-land site of the old Brewster housing projects where I-75, I-375 and the spur to Gratiot Avenue converge. The Michigan DNR says not to worry. But if you live nearby in, say, Brush Park, you might want to keep a much closer eye on your pets. Also: Yes, we inaccurately datelined yesterday's episode a...

Welcome to Tuesday, March 19 and the final day of winter, YAY! On the show today, we run down the news that not only does Detroit have a homegrown winery, but  Detroit Vineyards  aims to open a tasting room in the Stroh's Ice Cream building on Gratiot near Eastern Market this spring. Will wonders never cease? Elsewhere, Beaumont Health is proposing to open a $140 million, 117-bed hospital in Oxfor...

It's Monday, and your weekend warrior dreams have been dashed. Back to work, automatons!  Oh, and the city of Sterling Heights would like the public to help rename (or 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...

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...

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 Gross...

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 good 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 i...

"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 w...

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 na...

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 t...

Today we're talking about the skills gap in Metro Detroit when it comes to coding and development.  Our conversation today is with TechElevator's CEO Anthony Hughes . His company has job training centers in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and are opening up right here.  We go over what skillsets are actually in demand (like Java and .NET), what it takes to get a job in these fields, an...

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...

Governor 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 ce...

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 basebal...

Yes, there's a "beach" you'll be able to visit in Detroit through the middle of April. The Beach Detroit is located in 1001 Woodward, and it's a fanciful experience.  Sven and Jer chat with Alex Mustonen of Snarkitecture, the creative group brought in to create the beach.  Snarkitecture is a New York-based collaborative design practice established to investigate the boundaries between disciplines....

We spent the day at the Detroit Regional Chamber's Detroit Policy Conference. Though we'll be sharing more of the interviews in their entirety in future episodes of the podcast, we asked six different leaders of different kinds what their vision for Detroit is for 2030. Our guests include: Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II IT in the D's Bob Waltenspiel Rush Hasan, Business Development for Th...

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....

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...

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...

On a bonus interview episode of Daily Detroit, our guest is Dennis Archer, Jr. He's the owner of Ignition Media, proprietor of the successful Central Kitchen and Bar, and chair of the upcoming Detroit Policy Conference. We talk on a variety of topics around Detroit's comeback and a vision for 2030 for the city and region.  The Daily Detroit team will be at the Detroit Policy Conference on Thursday...

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 t...

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 th...

On today's show, 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...

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...

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 c...

On today's pod, we cover a bunch of transportation-related news. First up: Rivian, the electric vehicle startup we've covered in  a Detroit Public Television segment  and  on this pod , may get a big investment from Amazon and General Motors. We discuss how that could be a huge boost for the company as it eyes the launch of its first vehicle in fall 2020. But what does it say about GM and Amazon?...