- [Narrator 1] Coming up on "One Detroit," contributor, Steven Henderson, Nolan Finley, and Zoe Clark discussed the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy Fraud scandal.

Plus it's pride month.

And we'll take you to Gigi's, Detroit's oldest gay owned gay bar.

Also ahead, Newlab at Michigan Central is raising Detroit's profile as a technology hub, and we'll have some suggestions on how you can welcome the first weekend of summer.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

- [Narrator 2] From Delta faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator 3] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator 2] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] Just ahead on "One Detroit," in recognition of Pride month, we're looking at the history behind one of Detroit's most popular gay bars.

Plus we'll take you to a state of the art facility that's helping to grow the city's high tech industry.

And Peter Whorf from 90.9 WRCJ tells us about some of the activities you can enjoy in metro Detroit for the first weekend of summer.

But first up, we're examining the fallout from a major embezzlement investigation surrounding the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy.

Its former Chief financial officer has been accused of stealing about $40 million from the nonprofit.

"One Detroit" contributor, Steven Henderson of American Black Journal, Nolan Finley from the Detroit News and Zoe Clark from Michigan Public discussed the scandal and its potential ramifications.

(mellow music) - Well, sort of broaden out a little bit and just dig into sort of like the what's at stake here for the city and for the community.

First, Stephen, with these latest news.

- Well, I mean, with all of this, what's at stake is tremendous here in Detroit.

I've been saying since all of this broke that, you know, the Riverfront and the reclamation of the Riverfront is the single most successful public and civic project in my lifetime in Detroit.

Nothing has changed more over the time I've been here than what we've done along the Riverfront and the success there was, you know, unequivocal, you know, the success in creating what's there, in getting people to buy into the idea that we could do it, that we could do it together, that we could welcome people from all over this community to a public space and they could all use it and get along.

I mean, there was just one good story after another.

And this of course puts the whole thing a little more in the category of lots of other things that have happened around here where corruption and mismanagement are part of the narrative.

And so it's not just a risk to the conservancy, which, you know, has managed all of this and raised all the money, I mean, it's a risk to the faith, the good faith that everybody was feeling about this, which we hoped could extend to lots of other things.

It gives people pause about how secure their investment is and things like this, whether it's money or their good faith.

And so that's what we've gotta worry about trying to rebuild on the back end of this is that feeling that we all had about the success of this project.

- Nolan, is that possible?

- Well, I don't know.

I mean, it hit just at this time probably when Detroit had hit a 10 year high coming off the NFL draft.

Everybody was buoyant.

Everybody was bullish and optimistic about the city.

You know, the Riverfront benefits from some pretty significant patrons, if you will.

Most of the huge nonprofits in the state and some of the biggest in the nation are pouring... Have poured money into this thing.

And it's taken a lot of money to get it to this point.

And it's almost done.

I mean, you build out that West Riverfront park and you've got the park almost completed, but there were always questions about how you sustain what's been built.

Because it's not a government...

It's not a government park, it's a nonprofit running it.

And so it's gonna take tremendous amount of fundraising or a large annuity, and stripping $40 million away from that does put the future at risk.

I don't think, you know, it is going to...

Anybody's gonna let it collapse entirely, but it is gonna be a struggle raising the funds they need, not just to build it out, but to sustain it long term, to sustain operations long term.

And you've gotta expect, there are a lot of... A lot of donors out there who are saying, "hmm, I don't know.

I wanna see where this before I write another check."

- Well, Steven, to that point, we saw Wilson Kresge come out saying they're still, you know, committed, but what does that look like dollars and cents?

And to Nolan's point, this idea that there has to be folks who are cheerleading for this project even after this really, really bad news.

- Yeah, I mean, look, I expect that philanthropy will say that now, and they have to because they're the major investors in this.

They've gotta protect what they've already put in as much as anything.

And I don't think that philanthropy wants to walk away from this.

I mean, again, this is a transformational project in the city.

There wasn't a better investment to make for many years in Detroit.

I think the question though is how you restore enough faith for them to be able to justify to their boards, for instance, the continued flow of money.

I know that in the nonprofit community right now, what everybody's doing is checking up on the numbers, right?

- That's right.

- How's money being spent?

How are we accounting for it?

Everybody's running a little scared about the potential for this kind of mismanagement in other places.

And here's the other thing that this has the risk of really affecting.

The Joe Louis Greenway is just getting started.

That is the part of this endeavor that connects what we did along the Riverfront to where people live in Detroit, where ordinary Detroiters spend their time.

And the idea of bringing that kind of change and transformation to neighborhoods all the way across the city, that's such a vital part of the whole vision of the Riverfront.

And then, look, we should make clear that's a separate organization, a separate conservancy.

It has nothing to do with the Riverfront, but certainly what will come to people's minds as we try to raise money to do that and sustain that is this problem that we've had along the Riverfront and we've gotta convince people that, look, this happened.

It was terrible, but it won't happen again.

And I don't know how you do...

I mean, I keep racking my brain for what you do to assure people of that.

I don't know what it looks like.

- Well, a lot depends, I think, on how much money they can recover.

You know, the frustration after the Kwame Kilpatrick convention was... Not much money was recovered of any, and in this case, I think there's gonna have to be, before you restore full faith and get this thing rolling again, they've gotta get some of that money back.

And, you know, every dollar they get back is a dollar they don't have to fundraise for or borrow or bond for up the road.

- Steven, in the final seconds we have, is there a possibility that we could see some money coming back to the coffers?

Do you see that happening?

- I think it's hard in all of these cases to do that.

I mean, that it really depends on the cooperation of the person who's been accused.

I mean, if Will decides that he wants to do that, he can.

But there's not a whole lot of ways to force that.

I mean, that's what this negotiation is about, this plea deal, and that'll be a big part of that.

But the record there is not great.

I mean, they don't get a lot of this money back when people figure out ways to steal it.

- All things we're gonna be watching for over this very hot summer, as it were right now.

Thanks gentlemen.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] June is pride month and we're shining a light on Detroit's oldest gay owned gay bar.

Gigi's has long been a cultural mainstay in the city and a safe haven for the LGBTQ community.

The bar also the site of the nation's oldest drag pageant, the annual Miss Gigi's contest.

This spring, the venue completed a major remodel of its exterior, debuting its new facade just in time for pride month.

One Detroit's Chris Jordan visited the bar last year for its 50th anniversary.

(mellow music) - Gigi's has always been a place, it's predominantly gay, but everyone's welcome.

Everybody's welcome.

It doesn't matter who or what you are.

Color, creed, it doesn't matter.

Everybody's welcome except narrow-minded people.

(laughs) (upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] Gigi's is Detroit's oldest gay owned and operated bar located on Warren Ave just off of Southfield.

This year, Gigi's has celebrated a major milestone, 50 years in business, having opened in 1973, just four years after the Stonewall Uprising in New York City.

- People think that this is just a bar and it's not.

It's a community haven for not only the gay community, but anyone that feels different than their surrounding area.

We speak the language of love.

We don't ask at the door who you love, who you want to love, who you are, who you wanna be.

We just accept you for who you are and we offer you a place to be able to come and socialize and- - [Narrator 1] Co-owner Louis Mandujano bought the business in 2020, but before that, he had been a regular at Gigi's since the 1990s and even met his husband there.

- I have been coming here for over 20 years at that point when I was approached.

I had, at that point, been retired out of the army.

I spent a little over 30 some odd years in the Army.

Being in the military, I was under the don't ask, don't tell.

So it was very difficult to find a happy space for myself in the military.

And so this gave me an opportunity to come here and be free, be who I was and be who I actually felt comfortable being around.

And in the late '90s, I met my husband here and so I take great pride in what we try to do here, not only for my sake, but for the sake of the community and for the sake of all the customers that have walked these halls and continue to walk these halls.

(people laughing) We've gotta just remember where this establishment started.

In 1973, if you were female, you couldn't wear anything male.

If you were male, you couldn't wear anything female.

And so it was illegal.

You could have basically gone to jail.

And so a lot of that history that we have in the Miss Gigi's contest started as a Halloween gimmick.

And because during Halloween it was kind of, okay, you can be whoever you wanna be because for that night it's acceptable.

And that's how we evolved into a pageant, a contest.

And now to this day, we are one of the biggest contests in the Midwest.

- [Narrator 1] Nickki Stevens has directed the drag shows in Gigi's cabaret space for 31 years ever since she was crowned Miss Gigi's in 1992.

- The old show director who has now passed, which was one of the old owners, when I won on Sunday, October 10th, 1992, Monday, October 11th, she said to me, "you are now the show director."

So included in winning the title, I had to take over the shows.

(laughs) Miss Gigi's is the longest gay bar title in the nation.

We just... We're gonna be celebrating in October 50 year anniversary.

We know all of our old title holders and the ones that are able to, and the ones that are still with us come back each and every year.

Well, when I started here, we were going through the AIDS epidemic and you would be sitting next to somebody and two weeks later they would be gone.

We would, you know, put on shows and benefit shows for research and trying to find, you know, the cure and trying to bury, you know, some of our friends that, you know, their families had abandoned them because of their sexual orientation or whatever.

There was people dying that just couldn't even get buried.

They were in Wayne County.

And so we did all that, and trying to fight for our rights.

And it's come a long way, but there's more that can be done and needs to be done.

- I love listening to all their stories.

It's so empowering and it's so freeing listening to how it was back in the day to compare to now.

It's like the struggles and how much freedom I have now, it's crazy.

- [Narrator 1] Randy Marcos Santiago has been the bar manager for 15 years.

- The owner before his name was Paul Manduluzo.

I asked him one day, I was like, "why don't we ever put money outside?

Why don't we ever make the building look nice?"

And, you know, back then they would graffiti it, they'd throw bottles at the walls, they'd tear down...

They'd destroy the bar on the outside because it's gay.

It was so much hate back then.

He said they would never put money on the outside.

But now it's 2023 and we finally put flags up on the roof.

We're making it well known that this is what we are, and it's okay.

I've been here 15 years, I've seen people get thrown out of their homes, nowhere to go.

So they'll come to the bar to spend a peace of mind that no one's gonna hurt them here.

Only thing they'd have to worry about is where they're gonna go after the bar's closed.

They'd have to go to a friend's house from one person to another until they figure it out because their family don't anything to do with them.

I've known some people that committed suicide because of it.

It's really sad.

So there's never a stop to fighting for equality and all of that.

- One of the things that we pride ourselves is that we are one of the only establishments that allows 18 and over.

Not because we want to try and get anything out of them, but because we want them to have a safe space.

It's very difficult for an 18, 19, 20-year-old to find a safe space that they can go and find other people that accept them for who they are.

Once you come through the door, it is a magical experience.

You will experience nothing, but acceptance when you walk in through our doors and you will leave a very happy person because you obviously came here to enjoy yourself.

And I can guarantee you that's what you will do.

- Even though I work here, I still feel like I can be myself here, I don't have to worry about the hate out there like...

There's still hate out there.

I can't walk down the street holding my husband's hand and not have people stare at us weird or look at us funny.

I can't give him kisses outside of... At Bell Isle, we can't sit at the park and just hold hands because people are gonna look at us weird.

Here I can kiss him on the face, I can kiss him on the cheeks, I can be whatever.

But out there, it's still crazy to me that people still hate and like it's 2023, move on.

(upbeat music) - We're working hard to try and hopefully make this a historical site one day, I mean, it's 50 years, 50 years is about the same time that Stonewall has been around.

And we know that that's a historical site now.

So at one point I had a conversation with the governor of Michigan and asked her, I said, "how long or when has the last LGTBQ site been historical site in Michigan?

And there isn't one there, there aren't any.

And I think that this qualifies for it.

Yes, it is a bar, but it's more than a bar.

It allowed me to be who I wanted to be and enabled me to meet the person that I love now.

And that I live my life with.

- The ones that wanna criminalize us and everything else, it gives me a lot of joke material.

(laughs) But we go on with what we do, unapologetic.

This is, you know, for people that are looking for a good time and entertainment, everyone's welcome, come, come see me.

The crazy peroxide piranha.

(laughs) - [Narrator 1] This month's grand opening of Ford Motor Company's Michigan Central has put Detroit on the map as a center for innovation and technology.

The Corktown campus includes a facility called Newlab, which uses cutting edge technology to help bring ideas to life for startups.

The state-of-the-art operation is helping Detroit compete with coastal tech hubs.

I had the chance to see the transformation the building has undergone and how Newlab is helping entrepreneurs.

(upbeat music) Next to the iconic Michigan Central Station in Detroit's oldest neighborhood Court Town, a cutting edge facility called Newlab at Michigan Central has quickly become a hub for tech companies and entrepreneurs.

Since opening in 2023, 90 companies have joined.

CEO Cameron Lawrence is at the helm.

- It's becoming this amazing ecosystem.

You're seeing entrepreneurialism on a day-to-day basis.

You're seeing products come from vision to reality in real time.

And it's actually a really special place that I think Detroiters can really be proud of.

- [Narrator 1] Newlab was built from the skeleton of a former book depository.

- This is an old decrepit building.

It had a long history in the city but was, you know, overlooked.

It was abandoned.

But man, look around, the bones are fantastic, right?

So we have this history of taking historic buildings and creating something new and this kind of poetry between what it was in the past and what it can be as a center of excellence for a city in the future.

- [Narrator 1] Open to the public, the first floor is full of displays from the startup companies calling Newlab home, a cafe and plenty of meeting and workspaces all underneath a massive glass ceiling.

The new aesthetics pay homage to the past with exposed beams and pillars.

But what makes Newlab more than a historic building turned coworking space is the hardware amenities available to startups.

- [Cameron] Because we have all the best in class equipment here, we're taking months if not years off their product development cycle.

- [Narrator 1] Newlab Michigan Central is the sister facility to the original Newlab in Brooklyn that's home to over 200 startup companies.

Newlab's mission is to compete with coastal tech hubs to spark job creating innovation and attracted talent needed to fill those jobs to the Detroit region.

- I'm seeing the entrepreneurs choose to call Detroit home and they're building their companies and their products outta here.

And seeing the amount of pride the city is taking in becoming a bit of a hotbed for innovation and entrepreneurialism from where it was, that gives me a huge amount of pride in what my team and Michigan Central are building here.

- [Narrator 1] As Detroit's revitalization has continued over the years, Newlab has also been embraced by the city.

- I found that in a very short period of time, this has been a real source of civic pride.

I mean, we have a lot of, you know, significant leaders in the community that are here quite regularly.

They're celebrating our wins.

- [Narrator 1] Cementing its footprint and commitment to Detroit with things like the nation's first ever wireless charging roadway, Newlab shows no signs of slowing down.

- Walk around the concourse floor.

There are so many great examples of the prototypes of companies that we support, whether it be Tarforms like electric motorbike to grounded RV, to live (indistinct) off-road vehicle.

You can't leave this building without being inspired by our founders and what they're building.

It's beyond magical.

This is a place where you see stuff actually get built.

And you don't see that everywhere.

- [Narrator 1] Summer is officially here and there are a lot of festivals and outdoor activities taking place this weekend and beyond to welcome the season.

Here's Peter Whorf of 90.9 WRCJ with today's One Detroit Weekend.

- Hi, I am Peter Whorf with 90.9 WRCJ here with some great events for you to head out to this weekend.

Let's start with Sunset at the Detroit Zoo Friday from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. where you can enjoy food, drinks, live entertainment, and an auction.

Of course, you'll also be able to check out many of the beautiful animal habitats at night.

Starting Friday through the 23rd is the Michigan Glass Project, Glass Music and Arts Festival at the Russell Industrial Center.

Come join over 100 glass artists from around the U.S. who will wow you with their skills.

There are also other visual artists showing off their craft.

And of course you gotta have live music and there will be plenty of acts throughout the weekend at the main stage.

And delicious strawberries are in the spotlight Saturday, June 22nd during Blake's Strawberry Festival at Blake's Orchard and Cider Mill.

The fields will be brimming with a sweet fruit and they'll also be kids activities, line dancing for the adults and plenty of strawberry treats, plus a fireworks display to end the day.

Then it's Log Cabin Day at Palmer Park on June 23rd.

Head to the park's log cabin overlooking Lake Francis to see patrons dressed up in vintage outfits.

Take part in crafts like basket and flag making, learn history and more.

And can you believe it's already time for the annual Ford Fireworks?

The incredible annual show happens Monday, June 24th.

So get to your favorite viewing spot with your friends and family and enjoy the spectacle.

Of course, there's so much more happening than these events around Metro Detroit.

So stay tuned for a few more options.

Have a great weekend.

(upbeat mellow music) - [Narrator 1] That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thanks for watching.

Head to the "One Detroit" website for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

(upbeat mellow music) - [Narrator 2] From Delta Faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator 3] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator 2] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(upbeat music)