Daily Detroit

Today on the podcast, an eight-and-a-half-mile section of I-75 that has been falling into third-world disrepair lately is set to see reconstruction soon. The Michigan Department of Transportation has announced details of the reconstruction project, which will zero in on the stretch between 13 Mile and Coolidge, including 18 bridges. There's no word on when exactly work will start, but it will like...

On today's show, we cover the funeral arrangements for former U.S. Rep. John Dingell, who died Friday at age 92. Dingell, a Dearborn Democrat, was the longest-serving member of the U.S. House, having served for 59 years when he stepped down at the end of 2014. And he left a huge impression on generations of Detroiters. Elsewhere, we delve into sportsball. Forbes says the Detroit Pistons fall one r...

Paul Riser has played trombone, wrote songs and arranged music with some of the biggest names in popular music. As a member of the fabled "Funk Brothers," the mostly anonymous house band for Motown Records during its heyday, he worked with the likes of Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, The Supremes and Smokey Robinson. Riser will appear at the Detroit Institute of Music Education on Friday, Feb. 8 from...

Paul Ajegba, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's nominee to head the Michigan Department of Transportation, faced a grilling in a state Senate committee on Tuesday. And he let slip a rather interesting tidbit, saying that MDOT likely needs another $1.5 billion in funding just to fix state roads. And that doesn't account for the needs of counties, cities and villages. On today's show, we break down the particu...

Busy show for you podcast listeners today. Ford is laying off 1,000 employees at the Flat Rock Assembly Plant, but offering them positions in other Ford plants, with about half expected to take jobs at the Livonia Transmission plant. Meanwhile, GM is adding 1,000 jobs at Flint Assembly to make heavy-duty Chevy and GMC trucks. Those jobs will be offered first to workers affected by the looming clos...

It was an especially bad start to the week for many salaried employees at General Motors, as the automaker started handing out pink slip in a bid to eliminate 4,000 white-collar employees over the next two weeks. It's part of  plans GM announced in November and discussed on our podcast  to slash 14,000 jobs and save $6 billion by 2020. In other news, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer shakes up state governmen...

Well, it's cold out. Anyone noticed? If you're like us, you no doubt noticed the emergency push alert sent to your mobile device Wednesday night, asking you to dial back your thermostats as the temperatures outside were heading to record subzero lows. On today's show, we talk about what happened to precipitate that push alert — a fire at a Consumers Energy natural gas storage and compression plant...

You may have seen that Daily Detroit recently  made its Detroit Public Television debut with a profile of Rivian , the electric vehicle maker that caught the automotive world by surprise last fall when it unveiled its high-powered, battery-electric pickup truck and SUV. For today's episode, we're following up on our promise to give you more from our visit to Rivian's Plymouth Township headquarters...

A new polar vortex is bearing down on Michigan and the upper Midwest, forcing widespread school closures, forcing Wayne State University and Michigan State University to cancel classes and the Detroit Zoo to close. On today's episode, we run down some of the knock-on effects of the dangerously cold weather, which is expected to produce subzero temperatures and dangerously cold wind chills. Jer spe...

Greetings, fellow snow-bound Detroiters. We didn't let the weather interfere with our podcast plans today and delivered this show from the Royal Oak studio of  Podcast Detroit . On today's show, newly Detroit-based Chemical Bank is merging with Minnesota-based TCF Bank in an all-stock merger of equals. The deal will see TCF vacate its suburban Minneapolis headquarters and join Chemical in being ba...

A bonus pod this Friday, January 25, 2018. Despite its new owner's promises to build a brewery, office space, a hotel and more, Detroit's infamous Packard Plant is once again  subject to foreclosure by Wayne County in 2019 , according to notices published in the Detroit Legal News last month. That's due, at least in part, to unpaid bills to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. But the amount...

On Wednesday, the Packard Plant's bridge collapsed onto East Grand Boulevard. On today's show, we talk about that and what we know about why it happened. And we use it as a jumping-off point to discuss the plant's colorful past and ambitious — some might say quixotic — future plans. In its heyday, the Packard Plant was the largest automotive factory in the world, built for an automobile company kn...

Greetings from Detroit, which today looks like a snowglobe-turned-dismal outdoor slushie amid a brief thaw. On today's show, we discuss a new report from the Michigan State University College of Education that finds tht funding for Michigan's public schools has dropped more severely than in any other state over the past quarter-century. We're now dead last among states for total education revenue...

On today's episode, we speak with Diane Cross, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Transportation, about the still-unfolding transportation apocalypse on northbound I-75 in Oakland County. There, potholes have proliferated since Monday, damaging cars, forcing the closure of the freeway and creating massive traffic snarls. Cross says it's a textbook example of Michigan's chronic under-inve...

We thought when we went into the office today, it'd be a short day. We were wrong. Here's what to know around town: I-75 is crumbling. Both the Northbound and Southbound lanes have major emergency repairs underway. A highly dispiriting for Martin Luther King Jr. Day - The Detroit News reports that a former political aide to Warren Mayor Jim Fouts says the mayor called former Detroit Mayor Kwame Ki...

Questions? Comments? Email us at dailydetroit@gmail.com   Former Governor John Engler is indeed out as interim president of Michigan State University. Replacing him will be Satish Udpa. The United Auto Workers says it plans to stage a candlelight vigil outside the North American International Auto Show tomorrow night during the Charity Preview event. A giant golden ring has been installed in Sterl...

First, huge news from East Lansing, where former Gov. John Engler is expected to resign as interim president of Michigan State University in the wake of comments he made about victims of the Larry Nassar sexual-assault scandal. Engler, you'll recall, was brought in to clean up the mess after former President Lou Ann Simon resigned over her handling of the Nassar affair. But Engler last week told ...

For today's Daily Detroit, we talk everything North American International Auto Show with our Sven Gustafson who spent a couple days on the floor at Cobo Center. Topics covered include the general feel of the show, plans for next year's show that will be held in June, the Toyota Supra reveal, the new Ford Explorer, the power of the Mustang brand, the Kia Telluride, a new Ram Heavy Duty pickup with...

A major water main break in Detroit is causing havoc for residents, nearly a hundred thousand downtown Detroit office workers…. and auto show attendees staying at hotels. Then, a local ice cream shop is getting a new flavor when it comes to their decor. Hopcat has a new name for their fries. And finally, I went out to Dearborn to check out historic artifacts from Michigan Central Station and give...

On today's show we focus on everyone's favorite suburb, Funky/Fabulous/Fashionable Ferndale. There, the city is preparing to break ground on a $28 million mixed-use parking structure adorably named "the dot" — short for "development on Troy" Street. It's a major development for the city, nearly tripling parking capacity on the site, adding four stories plus one underground level of parking, adding...

A single-family home, leaning to the one side, swallowed up by the ground on Christmas Eve.  It's a visual people won't forget. And it made national news. Today on Daily Detroit, we're digging into what officials now believe caused a major sinkhole in the Macomb County suburb of Fraser back in 2016.  Then we look into the wider topic of Southeast Michigan's infrastructure, both above and below gro...

Happy Tuesday, automatons! Today your Daily Detroit gets wonky and talks all about bike lanes and trail projects with Todd Scott of the Detroit Greenways Coalition. He put together an interesting (and lengthy!)  list of bike and trail projects due to see action in 2019 . They include groundbreaking at the long-delayed Uniroyal site near the bridge to Belle Isle, movement on the long-planned Joe Lo...

On today's episode, we check in with soccer correspondent Fletcher Sharpe about Detroit City FC's  new coach, Trevor James , and what it means for the club as it prepares for its first (semi) season of professional soccer. Elsewhere, I-696 has now been almost fully reopened after the long delay following a labor dispute and problems encountered by cold and wet winter weather. In Warren, constructi...

A ritual of regional togetherness is no more. The annual "Big Four" gathering of the Detroit Mayor and the three county executives from Wayne, Oakland and Macomb will not happen this year around the North American International Auto Show. (Oakland Press) The Seller-Lehrer Family Foundation, founded by Detroit native and Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller and his partner Josh Lehrer, has given the Mo...

Happy New Year! We've made it to season 2! On to the stories: Detroit Police James Craig told the Detroit News on Tuesday there were 261 criminal homicides in 2018 . That's down six from last year and the lowest number since 1966. But for now, we're going to put an asterisk on this statistic. We talk about why. We don't often wade into U.S.-Russia relations on Daily Detroit, but we are today. That...