- [Narrator] Coming up on a special edition of One Detroit, we are at the historic Ford Piquette Avenue Plant Museum, for a preview of the NFL draft, which lands in Detroit in just two weeks.

Mayor Mike Duggan sits down for a one-on-one conversation with contributor Nolan Finley about what to expect during the draft.

Plus he talks about the changes in the city and what's ahead.

Also coming up, Visit Detroit's Claude Molinari and Faye Nelson from Detroit Sports Organizing Corp. discuss the NFL draft's impact on city tourism.

And we'll preview a documentary about the transformation of Detroit's riverfront.

That's all coming up next on an hour-long One Detroit.

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(upbeat music) - Now you have the Studebaker Service Center next door, which Peter Cummings has turned into apartments.

And then you got the Fisher 21 Plant across the street they're making apartments, the Fisher 23 Plant they're making a battery plan.

- So all this gonna be part of the museum ultimate.

- So that was the, no, that's what they call Piquette Flats.

(upbeat music) - In a few days now, we're gonna all be Downtown for the NFL draft, 300,000 plus people coming.

Are we ready?

- We will be.

You know, we handled the Grand Prix, we handled Taylor Swift, but this is going to be- - Bigger than Taylor Swift?

- This is even bigger than Taylor Swift, and Taylor Swift is pretty big.

- My goodness.

- But yeah, 300,000 people in Kansas City last year.

They're expecting at least that here.

And this city is gonna be jammed with visitors from around America for three days.

- We're within driving distance of what?

Six NFL cities?

- Well, that's right.

You know, I've been to the last two drafts in Las Vegas and in Kansas City, and the thousands of people who come from their own cities with their sports jerseys on.

It's a great atmosphere.

But when you're in Detroit, you could drive here really five hours from Buffalo, from Pittsburgh, from Cleveland, from Cincinnati, from Chicago, from Indianapolis.

And so they are projecting a large crowd coming to Detroit.

- So it's not a ticketed event, most of it, right?

So you have no way to know exactly how many people are gonna show up.

It's just based on what you've seen in other cities?

- So what you do, right, is they have something called an NFL OnePass, which everybody will be familiar with, but you get the app.

And the actual NFL draft zone will be fenced in, from basically from Hart Plaza up along Woodward, up to Campus Martius.

And the stands on TV, where the players go up when they're picked, that will be inside that fence.

That fence will probably hold 75,000 people.

- Wow.

- But the 300,000 people, I'm gonna say two out of three, three out of four people who come for the NFL draft, they won't actually be inside the draft fence itself.

They'll be out in Corktown, they'll be in Eastern Market, they'll be in Greektown, they'll be in the shops and the restaurants and the bars around Detroit.

- So most of us haven't been to one of these drafts.

You've been to a couple, and I think a lot of people in this area are still wondering what is this?

How would you describe what this event is?

- It is 300,000 NFL diehards who are convinced that this year's first round draft choice is going to take them on the Tom Brady track to success.

And they all show up happy, optimistic, and getting along with each other.

It really is a very enjoyable three days.

- So other than the actual draft picking that will go on, be televised, what are people doing here for three days?

- So the first night is the first round, so it's Thursday night, it starts at eight o'clock.

So you spend your afternoon in the city, doing whatever you're doing, bars, restaurants, and the like.

Friday is the second, third round starts at seven o'clock, and then Saturday starts at noon and goes all day.

Now, Friday afternoon, there's a Tiger game at one o'clock.

And how you kill time during the day has been an issue in other cities, but I think you're gonna see the crowds show up here early.

I think you're likely to see Comerica Park filled up for the one o'clock game for people who've always wanted to see that stadium and then come over.

It's gonna be- - And then places like this and other cultural centers around.

- Yeah, everything will be featured.

And I know it's not realistic to think that people are gonna head out to the remote areas, but you've got a lot of commercial districts who are plugging themselves, "Come see us while you're here."

And so it's gonna be interesting to see.

Will people go to the DIA?

I'm not sure whether a large number of NFL fans will, but you're gonna get a chance.

You can come here and see the first Model T if you happen to be a car buff.

But everybody's gonna be promoting the different things going on in Detroit.

And when you got 300,000 people who get up on Friday morning and don't have to go to the draft site till five o'clock at night, they've got all day to figure out what they'd like to do.

And the same thing on Saturday.

- So what's the impact of this event?

What do you anticipate?

What's your expectations?

- So the last time the city of Detroit was introduced to the national audience was in 2013, when we declared bankruptcy.

And that is a lot of people's last impression of us.

And this is a chance to reintroduce our city to America.

And as you know, everybody who comes here and visits now says, "Oh, my God, where did these buildings come from?

Oh, my God, you don't have any homeless encampments.

You don't have graffiti on your buildings.

There's all this activity.

The Riverfront is amazing."

And so what we want is a chance to show America that this is what Detroit is today, and maybe erase some of those unpleasant images from 10 years ago.

- So you think about 2006, we had the Super Bowl here, and a lot of smoke and mirrors activity trying to make the city look what it hoped to be but what it wasn't.

How much of that's going on this time?

- So I was on Roger Penske's host committee in 2006, where we went down Woodward and painted fake storefronts on empty buildings so that people wouldn't know that our main corridor was largely empty.

And it was the force of Roger's personality, basically, in 2006 that had this city in a good place.

This time, go down Woodward any Saturday morning now, and it's jammed.

And the shops are all open and people are living here that weren't living here.

Of course, 18 years ago you had almost nobody living Downtown.

It's a whole different city.

Now, we're fixing broken sidewalk slabs and replacing out-of-date streetlight poles and the like to make sure that it's really beautiful, but actually, you look at what's happened over the riverfront in the last 10 years, and if we get good weather, I think people across America are gonna be stunned at what USA today calls the finest river walk in America.

- So you're not having to fake it this time?

- Nah, nah.

It's good.

- So in terms of where these people, all of these visitors, where they'll stay, will they'll dine, do we have that capacity or we expect to see people all over metro Detroit?

- Oh sure.

When Taylor Swift was here last year, you had all the hotel rooms up to Troy were filled for that weekend.

And so we'll fill the hotel rooms throughout the Tri-County area.

And that's a great thing for everybody.

And then it'll be a question of what folks do for the day.

And we've done a, you know, I think a really good job of engaging Detroit businesses in making sure they'll be able to benefit.

- So you think about the Super Bowl 2006, it's now 2024, we've got this event last that's what, 18 years?

These 18 years, of course, some remarkable transformation in Detroit, but, of course, not where we wanna be entirely yet.

I mean, where are we in terms of the city's comeback?

If that was the beginning, are we at the midpoint here with this event or past the midpoint in your mind?

Do we have as far to go as we've come?

- So, you know, this city has lost population since 1957.

It's been a 65-year decline, and we're probably 8 or 10 years on the upside, so I won't tell you we're halfway there.

But when a friend of mine sent me a copy of the San Diego Union Tribune paper with the headline that San Diego was proud to be second to Detroit, it increased in home sale prices in America.

We're in a very different place than we were.

And so our neighborhoods are coming back.

We are leading the country in the growth of the prices of the homes throughout our neighborhoods, throughout the city.

A lot of our commercial corridors now, if you look at what's happened on Livernois, you look at what's happened on Kercheval and Van Dyke, East Warren and the like, it's spreading, but we're changing the arc of history here.

And it's going the right direction.

- Well, there's always friction between Downtown and the neighborhoods in terms of people's expectations, and, you know, where researchers should go, etc.

How will this event impact the neighborhoods?

- Yeah, I don't know this event will impact the neighborhoods.

What this event will do is change the image of Detroit nationally.

We have a lot of neighborhoods with the block clubs, they're doing a phenomenal job, and they're extremely proud.

And they resent the fact that their progress has been dismissed when they have beautiful gardens, beautiful parks, houses, vacant houses filled with families moving in.

But when you have friends come in from out of town, you wanna show off your city.

And, you know, right now, people come in from out town, they take them to the Motown Museum, they take them to the Riverfront, they walk through Downtown.

And I think the great majority of Detroiters are very proud of what is going on.

- There has been a COVID impact on the progress of the city's comeback and on Downtown activity, etc.

Will this do anything to jumpstart that to get us beyond all of the COVID pullbacks that we saw?

- You know, COVID has cut two ways.

We probably still have half the offices not filled during the day.

But what we've seen is huge increases in new housing.

And so you've got people living Downtown, we just, you know, had a 22-story apartment building opened over on the old Joe Louis site that you have people living down here now, it's a neighborhood.

And the Detroit you and I remember, people drove in at 8:30 in the morning, by 5:30 at night, the streets were empty.

Now it's just the opposite.

We're a little bit light during the day, but nights and weekends, there are big crowds here.

And so it's a different kind of Downtown.

Our revenues are doing extremely well.

We have less tax revenues from people working during the today, we have more income tax revenues from people living here.

So it's cut both ways.

- But that's a lot of empty office space and more emptying, you know, every week, with leases expiring, not being renewed.

The Olympia-related companies last month said that, you know, they're pulling back on two office buildings, and not starting that project, at least until next year.

What do you do with all that empty space?

- So again, Olympia's doing what's smart, what's happening every place all over the country.

They had a plan for 10 buildings, 2 of which were office buildings.

Right now there's no demand for office buildings the way people are working from home, and so they're accelerating the hotels and the apartments and they're pushing the office buildings back.

I'm talking to two or three other owners of office buildings who are talking about converting them to residential.

Now, we've seen that before.

We had the hammer building up on Woodward, that was the carpenter's office building got converted to residential five years or so ago.

Of course the David Whitney was an office building, got converted to residential.

So Detroit's been ahead of the curve.

Now Chicago, New York and a lot of the others are moving the same direction.

But I feel good about the fact that, yeah, there's no doubt about it, nobody's gonna build office at the moment.

But if we can get more people living here, that's actually strong for the city long term.

- But you need offices and you need workers Downtown, you need that commerce and that activity.

Do we think the change we saw, because of the COVID and the work-at-home environment we're in now, is that long term, is that going to change over time?

Or is this a new normal for Detroit?

- You know, I think people are gonna come back and have, maybe, two people out of three still there.

You got people working three days a week, four days a week in the office and the rest from home.

Most employers are concluding you can't really build a culture with everybody on Zoom.

And so you're ending up with hybrid models.

And so our question long term is how does Detroit compete for those companies that want to have that kind of team environment?

And I actually think the single biggest factor is gonna be the University of Michigan grad school that's being built right now on Grand River.

Because you're gonna have one of the finest grad schools in America producing grads in artificial intelligence and climate change and software technology and mobility and the like.

Which is then gonna allow not just Stephen Ross, but Dan Gilbert and everybody else, Bill Ford, to say, "I can now bring more office workers in because I've got the talent pool here."

And so over the next two or three years, I think you're gonna see us land major national companies who want to come here, where housing is affordable in Detroit, where it's not in some other hotspots in the country, where you don't have traffic jams to deal with here.

And so I think the combination of the University of Michigan, what's happening at the train station and Newlab next door, I think ultimately we'll have a big hand in filling up those office buildings.

- What sort of demand are you seeing from investors, people who want to come in here, build things, do business in Detroit?

- Housing and hotels and manufacturing of course.

- Are we still under hotelled?

- It depends on who you ask, but yeah, there's certainly a lot of interest in hotels.

Of course right now the neighborhood advisory committee just voted unanimously to support the convention hotel next to Huntington Place, which will give us a high-end convention hotel attached.

To compete for many of the major conventions, you actually have to have a conventional hotel attached to the convention center.

That's gonna be, I think, a great thing.

So we know there's interest in hotels.

Right next door to where we are.

Fortescue is building a battery assembly plant.

We continue to have high demand for manufacturing plants in the city of Detroit.

And that's exciting.

And it's been housing.

And so it's, basically, everything but office is going very well.

- So how close are we getting to Detroit being a market rate investment, where people can come in here and put money in the ground and not need tax subsidies from the city, tax breaks from the state, where rents and lease payments will pay for the investment?

- So it's a project-by-project basis.

So the Sterling Group just built that 20-story apartment building next to the convention center in the old Joe Louis site with no tax incentives.

But they're renting out their top floor for $4,000 a month, and it's all market rate.

Amazon built a 4 million square foot plant out in the fairgrounds with no tax incentives.

But if you want to have buildings where you're gonna set aside a portion for people of lower income, 'cause we believe people of all incomes should live in all neighborhoods, you're going to have to have tax breaks, otherwise the numbers don't work, and they just won't build.

So I think you're gonna see the same thing.

Market rate projects by and large can get done without tax breaks.

But if you want to have housing set aside on an affordable basis, we're gonna need those tax breaks.

- So Ford motor companies, central depot complex, their innovation center over there in Corktown coming online in a few weeks.

- Right, June 6th, yeah.

- In a few weeks.

What do you expect from that?

- It's already amazing.

Of course, you just drive down Michigan Avenue, as you know, and the transformative effect has already happened with the Godfrey and the new hotels and housing and the like.

But you're, basically, bringing 5,000 people into Corktown.

2,500 working for Ford, another 2,500 working for the startups affiliated with Ford.

And that's created huge demand for housing.

And because of that, we've got several hundred housing units being built, many of them affordable 'cause somebody's gonna have to be able to work in these areas.

It's been transformative.

What happened to Corktown in five years is incredible.

- And, of course, that's the other end of the place we're in now.

I mean, this is where it started, and that's now gonna be the electric car automative, you know, vehicle center of this industry.

I mean, there's a lot of synergy between, you know, past and present With automakers.

- Right.

We're sitting in the Piquette plant, where Henry Ford's team built the Model Ts by hand- - [Nolan] And several of them behind us.

- before they moved to the assembly line in Highland Park, where he changed the world with the $5 workday.

But just on this block on Piquette, which most Detroiters don't even know it's here, next door, the old Studebaker Service Center is being rebuilt by Platform as a group of apartment buildings beautifully being done right now.

On the other side, the Fisher 21 plant, which built bodies for GM cars, is now being built by Fortescue as a battery manufacturing site, across the street, the Fisher 21 plant, that big ugly white building you see at 94 and 75, been vacant for 40 years, Greg Jackson and Richard Hosey are turning it into apartments with an affordable component.

That's just on this block.

Hundreds of apartments, hundreds of manufacturing jobs.

Before, the only thing on this block was the old Model Ts.

And it's very exciting.

- One of the things we haven't talked about much lately is transit.

Mass transit has been a challenge for this area.

For two decades or more we've been trying to come up with an answer to that.

With the change in the work environment, fewer people commuting to work Downtown, fewer people commuting at all, staying in their homes, how has that changed the outlook for mass transit and how do we need to rethink what that's going to look like?

- So we need to think about two things.

One is, I don't know when robotaxis will be here, but every time somebody has laughed at Elon Musk, he's somehow gone and accomplished it.

And I don't know whether it'd be 5 years, 10 years from now, but there's gonna be a point at which you're gonna have more cost-effective point-to-point transportation.

The thing about public transit is it goes in a straight line.

If you live along Woodward and you work on Woodward, a good bus system, a good rail system is great.

If you've got to connect, now you better make darn sure that connection is coming soon 'cause people aren't gonna stand out 15, 20 minutes waiting for a connection.

So I think the answer in the short run is we need to dramatically increase the bus frequency, I think what's called bus rapid transit, which is a way of getting on and off the buses quickly without having paper exchanges or slowing down to drop money in the fair box is a step in the right direction.

So we need to dramatically upgrade the quality of the bus service.

And I think that, ultimately, will be a bridge.

And I know people don't want to hear this, but, you know, I think, ultimately, you're gonna see robotaxis being a significant part of the transit option in this country.

- Without knowing what that transit future's gonna look like, transportation future's gonna look like, does it make sense then now to pour billions of dollars into a system that might work for today but might be obsolete in a decade?

- And so those are the things we're looking at.

If you started to build fixed rail lines now, it would take you 10, 15 years to get them done.

And again, Detroit isn't like Chicago or New York with high rises that run down the street, we are far more spread out.

So it's more of a challenge to build a fixed line that serves a huge number of people.

And that's why I do think first-class bus service for this region makes the most sense.

And, you know, we had a proposal on Lansing for Wayne County, Oakland County and Washtenaw to come together, got blocked by the legislature, but we would've dramatically enhanced the frequency of the bus service.

Maybe we'll come back to that.

Macomb County is not expressing any interest in being a part of that.

But a dramatic increase in the quality of the bus service, I think, is an important next step over the next five years.

- Got 300,000 people coming in here, a lot of them from out of town, every single one of them probably asking the same question, is Detroit safe?

Is Detroit safe?

- So the numbers last year, of course, you saw Chief White at the National Conference on Public Safety, where he was the one selected to introduce President Biden because we had the fewest homicides since the 1960s.

We're down another 30% through today in 2024 in homicide shootings and carjackings.

The city is definitely headed the right direction.

Now, you saw at the Superbowl Victory Parade in Kansas City, half a million people on an absolute beautiful day, and two guys get into beef and start shooting each other.

And it does enormous damage to the city's image internationally.

But we've got an outstanding police department.

I think the folks who've been Downtown last year know that the Evolv weapons detectors have turned out to be an enormously good tool.

We're gonna have 60 of those weapons detectors around, and on the public streets, as everybody who has been down here knows, if you have a license to carry a concealed weapon, when you go through the detector, it'll show you have a gun, the officer will say, "Can I see your permit?"

You take out your CPL permit, you don't have a problem.

If you're carrying illegally, you're going to be arrested.

But we saw last year, we didn't see people carrying illegally.

We had 20 Evolvs on the street last summer, we will have 60 on the street for the NFL draft.

So I can't tell you that there won't be anybody stupid enough to do something, but the job the Detroit police are doing, it will minimize that chance.

- And for the people who live here day-to-day, you're saying the crime situation getting better.

That's not the story in a lot of other big cities.

What's Detroit done differently?

- Well, one, I believe we have the best police chief in America, and we have probably 30 or 40 of our senior management in the police department who have all gone through the Wayne State executive MBA program.

And that may sound obscure, but I realize that our top 40 management in the Detroit Police Department, 39 had criminal justice degrees and one guy had a chemistry degree.

That's not how you run a $300 million, 2,500-person organization.

And so we partnered with Wayne State and ran executive MBA program that says, "Here's how you manage HR, here's how you manage a budget, here's how you do strategic planning."

And now what you're seeing is our officers being deployed on the street with minimum staffings that are met every single day with rigorous metrics over response times.

If we have an officer that has an unusual number of assaults, they are pulled off, the videos from the body cams are reviewed.

It is a whole different level of a department.

And this last year, we've rolled out this community violence initiative with six activist groups of the neighborhood, and we're now eight, nine months into it, and we're seeing early returns with people from the neighborhood who are engaging with the groups who are maybe the angriest to talk about handling that anger in a way that doesn't involve settling your dispute with gunfire.

And those things appear to be working.

Now, we'll have a report card by the end of this summer, but over the last 9, 10 months, Detroit really has been leading America in the reduction in violence crimes.

- We're getting to the point where when people make a decision of where to buy a house, where to locate, where to send their kids to school, that Detroit is getting competitive, crime's not a factor, perhaps education's not a factor.

- Well, certainly we're having trouble getting parents with school-aged kids.

That's still a problem.

But beyond that, I mean, the reason you saw 23% increase in home sale prices in Detroit last year is because huge numbers of people are moving in that are driving up the demand.

Not as many families with school-aged children.

And I think Dr. Vitti has got the school district going the right direction, but that's probably the single biggest thing holding us back right now.

- So you've talked a lot about what's happened, you know, over the last 10, 15 years.

You look out the next 10, 15 years, what still needs to happen?

- Things that probably wouldn't be top of mind, but we got the carpenters, for example, to build a beautiful training center on I96.

There are hundreds of people being trained to build all these buildings coming out of Detroit.

We're very close to an agreement with the International Brotherhood of Electrical workers to build their training center in the city of Detroit.

So the electrical workers will be trained here.

We need to make sure we create career paths so that Detroiters can benefit financially from these opportunities.

We're working hard at that.

That's ultimately, we have to shift, we were, at one point, 40% of the city in poverty, now we're at 30%.

We need to be down dramatically lower than that.

And so as we continue to build, and there's gonna be another decade of building already on the books, we need to make sure, as Detroiters, we're benefiting from the jobs.

- You look at the job mix in the city and the opportunities in the city, are we at a place where no matter what your career ambitions are, no matter what you want to do, you can find opportunity in the city of Detroit?

- We're getting close to it.

And so when I started, we had large numbers of people with high school degrees who were unemployed.

And that's why I went so hard after the Jeep Plant, why I went so hard after GM building out Factory ZERO for the electric vehicles, why I went after Amazon, starts you out at $19 an hour with benefits.

And we've done it, made a real dent there.

But we also want the most talented kids growing up in Detroit to say, "I don't need to go to Atlanta or Los Angeles."

And so we need to land the tech companies of the future.

It's happening now at Newlab and at the Ford site, at the train station, It's happening now with a tech company like Majorel that hired 500 people that handle the interfaces you have on Twitter or Facebook.

We need to land a lot more of those companies so no matter what your dream is, you can pursue it in the city of Detroit.

- What role will the University of Michigan Innovation Center play in that?

- Huge.

I mean, the University at Michigan Innovation Center is going to be one of the top producers of that grad tech talent, and the incubator will be right next door.

Now, Wayne State has done a nice job of this with TechTown, but we want the founders, we want those 20-somethings who want to come out of a school and start their own companies.

Silicon Valley has benefited enormously, Austin, Texas is now benefiting enormously, Miami is benefiting enormously today.

We want Detroit to attract that same group.

And we think the U of M Center for Innovation is gonna be the driving force for that.

- When this comeback started in earnest 20 or so years ago, it was a fertile ground for entrepreneurs, people who didn't have a whole lot of resources could come here and get a start.

You didn't have to wait in line.

What's the entrepreneurial climate like today in Detroit?

- Oh yeah.

So Motor City Match by itself started 167 new companies in the city.

Overwhelmingly Detroiters and our folks compete for a grant because their business plan is so strong, but it's 167 times we pulled plywood off vacant storefronts on Kercheval, off of Warren, off of Livernois and started companies.

And you've had some national surveys that Detroit is the best place for entrepreneurs.

And I've had people who said, "I couldn't afford the rent in Chicago to start my company.

I can pursue my dream here in the city of Detroit.

It's a welcome environment, very supportive, and a lot of good, a lot of good city support."

- So over the next couple weeks, gonna be a lot of moving parts during that draft week.

A lot of things the city's gonna have to pull off.

Talk about the logistical challenge here, this on-the-ground event preparation and execution.

- It's monumental.

So we're gonna have to say to folks, "Here's how you work around."

The businesses have all been communicated to.

This is the strangest thing for me to say, but I'm saying to the businesses, "For a week or two there, you might want to have your workers work from home."

And they're all, you know, of course, they know how to do that now.

Those who have to be in the office, we made arrangements for them to get through the barriers and get to their parking locations.

But it's going to be two or three weeks of significant disruption Downtown, but also two or three weeks of excitement.

And I think most people are willing to put up with it.

- We've talked about Detroit's future, what about Mike Duggan's future?

What do you do next?

You're finishing up your third term next year, right?

You'll have to decide whether or not to run for re-election.

What's in your plans?

- You know, I'll make that decision this summer in an announcement this summer, but I never intended to be Mayor of Detroit.

You know, the city was in crisis, and I thought I could help.

And we'll sit down and evaluate what shape is the city in and what's the right decision to make.

And I'll make that this summer.

- You have the same feeling about the state of Michigan?

Could you help the state of Michigan?

- You know, I think if there is one thing that I have done that will be lasting in the city of Detroit is I've taken the us versus them politics out of the city.

It used to be Black versus white, city against the suburbs, city against Lansing, mayor against unions, everything was us versus them.

And you've seen, not just in the mayor's races, but the city council races, the council members who are succeeding are staying away from the us versus them rhetoric and bringing everybody in.

Then you get up to Lansing or, God forbid, Washington, and you watch the way the us versus them rhetoric is hurting this country.

And so the question would be, is there something that can be done?

But I'm speaking now probably at a national conference once a month of high-end business executives, they all wanna know the same thing.

How is Detroit coming back?

And I tell them, "We took the us versus them politics out of it."

And you should all be trying to encourage the parties to stop the animosity.

Don't tell them why you hate the other guy, tell them what you're gonna do for him.

- So what will determine whether you get in the governor's race?

- You know, we'll see.

We'll see.

- If you get in, can you win?

- You know, I don't worry about any of that stuff.

Right now, I'm focused on Detroit.

I'll make a decision this summer on whether to run for another term or not.

And once I make that decision, I'll decide from there what else I do.

- And we'll have you back to talk about it.

Thanks for your time today.

- For sure.

- [Stephen] All eyes will be on Detroit for the NFL draft, and it comes at a time when the city has been recognized by USA Today for having the nation's best riverwalk and art museum.

I sat down with two people who have played vital roles in attracting tourists, developing the riverfront and securing major sporting events.

Here's my conversation with Claude Molinari, who is president and CEO of Visit Detroit, and Fay Nelson from Detroit Sports Organizing Court.

- People are so amazed.

(upbeat music) - So, Claude, we recently, or somewhat recently changed the name of your organization to Visit Detroit.

It's an appropriate phrase, I guess, to use to describe the NFL draft, but I don't think we quite imagined that everybody would respond at once, "Come visit Detroit" on the same weekend.

I mean, the number of people that we're talking about here who are gonna be interested in this, who are gonna be coming to our city, I can't imagine something else quite like it.

- Yeah, I don't think that there's ever been an event like the NFL draft, where 300,000 people descend upon your city in such a huge amount of people and mass over three days.

It's really gonna be something incredible.

And, you know, I think though it continues to show that narrative of Detroit changing because last year was the most visitors we've ever had, in 2023.

2024 is gonna be boosted by this huge NFL draft and all the other great events we have coming.

It's an amazing time for our region.

- Yeah.

So I didn't know that 2023 was the most visitors we'd had.

What was the reason for that?

- I think a lot of it was to do with all the events that we had as well as the Lions were so successful, and, frankly, there's a lot going on here.

And the perception, the perception of Detroit and Southeast Michigan and the state of Michigan is changing for the better.

And people are starting to realize that this is a great place to visit and to live and to invest in.

- Yeah.

- What to add to Claude's point though, people are so amazed and surprised at the fantastic city that we call Detroit.

I mean, I had the privilege of co-chairing the International Women's Forum annual conference, which was here in Detroit in partnership with my colleague, Mary Kramer.

We had 700 women that came from all over the world to visit Detroit from 20 countries, most of whom had never been to the city.

- Yeah.

- So there was a lot of, there was, you know, I won't say trepidation, but there wasn't a lot of understanding of the assets of Detroit and what it was all about.

And I have to tell you, they were just beyond blown away.

It was fabulous.

And, you know, many of whom spoke about just coming back to visit, bringing their family.

So it was just amazing.

And we had the privilege of working with Visit Detroit to coordinate that conference.

- So Faye, you've been involved with all of this for a long time.

You know, we think about the Riverfront now as just another part of Downtown Detroit, and it's getting us all kinds of praise and recognition.

And we're now, I think, 20 years into that effort.

I'm not sure everyone knows that you're the person who built that, or you were the first.

You were the first one to lead the Riverfront Conservancy.

- Yeah, no, that's very kind of you.

It was a privilege and an honor.

I was with the Riverfront Conservancy as their inaugural president and CEO for 10 years, a little bit over 10 years.

But it was an amazing experience to be able to really lead in partnership with our public and private partners the development of a place and space that no one ever thought would have any chance of being renovated or restored.

So it was a great honor and a wonderful opportunity.

- Yeah.

And so much of what we're talking about now in terms of Detroit and the progress in places like Downtown, it keys off of that riverfront.

I mean, if you think about what it was before, this really inaccessible, dirty place, and what it is now, which is a gathering place, that attraction of people is the thing that fuels the idea that, okay, well, what else can I do Downtown?

- Oh, for sure.

- Or are there other things?

- Oh, it was such pride.

I mean, there have been so many folks that visit the waterfront, family reunions, business meetings, you know, and people are still shocked that, "Oh, my gosh, right across the water, that's Canada, that's another country."

But it's wonderful.

And the team that's developing now, continue to develop the waterfront has just done a fantastic job.

- People ask us sometimes, like, "Do you dye this water?

This can't be this blue."

- I said, "It's pure Michigan babe, what are you talking about?"

(Stephen laughs) They think this is, like, the Caribbean water.

It's, like, so amazing.

- Like real fresh water.

- But I think the most important point from, you know, thinking about or reflecting on the development of the waterfront is what it has done as it relates to the coming together of community.

The public, the private sector working in partnership with organizations like Visit Detroit, the broad-based community.

It's a wonderful story to tell.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So, Claude, let's talk about logistics with the draft.

300,000 people, that's almost half the population of the city.

Although the mayor might yell at me if he heard me say that 'cause he probably thinks there's more people, but it's still a lot of people.

How's that gonna work?

- So the draft is set up so that Hart Plaza, Woodward Avenue and then Campus Martius and Cadillac Square will be the main draft area.

But we're gonna have satellite locations throughout the Downtown.

Grand Circus Park, Capitol Park, Beacon Park, Harmonie Park, all of these are going to be set up with remote areas that's gonna have video screens and audio.

So as it spreads out and expands and as the fans, you know, basically flood the entire city, we're still going to have a great experience for everybody.

And again, Corktown is gonna be very vital to this, Greektown is gonna be very vital, Monroe Street is gonna have activations and video screens.

So while a worldwide audience of maybe 60 to 70 million people are gonna be watching, they're gonna see an incredibly vibrant, exciting Downtown loaded with people from all over the world enjoying all the amazing things that go on in the city of Detroit.

And we're gonna be so excited to host them.

- Yeah.

So when you're selling something like this though, to the NFL, I mean, they would have real questions, I would think, about, okay, hotels, freeway access, restaurants, things like that.

Was it hard to sell this?

- It really wasn't.

You know, it's funny how that that came through.

You know, the National Football League has less of a concern about having an incredible amount of hotel rooms in the right Downtown core.

Like, meetings and conventions, they recognize that they need to have, you know, 5 or 6,000 rooms specifically within walking distance of the convention center.

That gives us a hard time.

But really very few cities can support all of the hotel rooms that are gonna be needed Downtown.

So there's gonna be compression, which is, frankly, the great news for us because we have 45,000 hotel rooms just within Oakland, Wayne and McComb County.

So the best part is now that the Downtown Detroit hotel rooms will be sold out, that'll just spread it out throughout the Downtown core and then into the suburbs.

And we expect that Macomb County, Oakland County, they're gonna be flooded with attendees as well.

- Yeah, yeah.

Faye, when you think about all of the different kind of pieces that you got to put together for something like this, and you have private sector, you have businesses that are developing Downtown, think of how different it is than it would've been for us, say, 20 years ago, when we had the Super Bowl here.

And we had to do different things, right, to get ready for that.

It was a different city.

And we had to dress ourselves up, I guess, it felt like when that happened.

It's a different thing now.

And there are more people, I feel like, at the table, ready to help in a different way than they had to.

But it's progress in really dramatic ways.

- Oh, I agree.

I can remember when the Super Bowl came to town.

And it was, you know, it was good.

There were people from the suburbs that were marveling at being Downtown for the very first time in about 10, 20 years, you know, so.

But, you know, the vibe is so different now.

There's so much pride in Detroit and where it is now and directionally where its headed.

So we're just such a prideful community.

And it's just, I think to Claude's point, you know, the draft, you know, everybody is winning.

And so just the number of folks that we anticipate coming to town, our focus on not only the community, not only, well, community in terms of posting Downtown, but also our focus on community.

Not only on where this event will land and when it will take place but after the event and what we are working on in order to support our children and families.

- Yeah, yeah.

This Living Legacy part of this, which focuses on literacy, is that right?

- Well, it focuses on literacy and active play.

We are just so grateful for the philanthropic community and the $1 million that has been directed to our launch of this Living Legacy program in coordination with the launch of the draft, but, you know, the key part of this legacy program is that it goes beyond the draft.

So the focus is on literacy.

We're so pleased to work with Alycia Meriweather as she has identified, and we're supporting two schools, Dixon Middle School, which is a pipeline to Cody High School and the Detroit Lions Academy.

So that's one piece.

And then the other piece is active play.

So important to encourage our children to get out- - Go outside.

- and outside and play, right?

- Be active.

- So yeah.

And partnership with, of course, the Detroit Sports Commission.

We are partnering with Project Play, which is a collaboration between the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, the Wilson Foundation and also the Aspen Institute of Sports.

So two major initiatives that we look to continue funding and supporting beyond the draft.

You know, as a board member of the Detroit Sports Commission, it's with privilege and pride that, you know, you know, we have made the commitment with every major sporting event that we're able to attract to the city of Detroit, there'll be a community engagement, a component which will support that education and that play for our community.

- Yeah.

I hope a lot of kids come out to see the draft too.

- We think they will.

- I think that'll be really cool.

- Well, real quick, there's a series of play and sporting activities that are being planned.

It launches in the beginning of April.

But a whole bunch of activities are scheduled draft week, and the majority of which are going to be at the- - Corner Ballpark.

- Corner Ballpark.

- Oh, there you go.

- Yeah, we're calling it, we're calling it Youth Central.

So there's gonna be so many activities for children and families located in that area, so we're excited.

- Huge flag football tournament that's gonna bring teams from all over the country.

- Oh, very cool.

- Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

- So, Claude, your job is to sell Detroit all over the place, and you're pretty new in the role still.

Tell me where we are and stuff that we need to still do, gaps we still need to work on filling to make this as attractive a place as we can.

- Yeah, I think that we've done a really, I think, we've been very deliberate in that we've brought in, every year we've brought in large meeting-planner events.

You know, one year we brought in 1,200 meeting planners from Connect Partnership.

The next year we brought in 500 meeting planners from the Scientific Association community.

This summer we're gonna be hosting 1,200 people from Professional Conference Meeting Association so that we're introducing, reintroducing Detroit as a meetings, convention and trade show destination.

That's really been, I think, a great opportunity for us to showcase the things that we now have in play.

Again, all the new hotel rooms, that's putting us on a different level.

We're not where we need to be, but we're getting closer.

And with the work that we're doing on the hotel that's gonna be attached to the convention center, I hope that's gonna be breaking ground in early spring.

And then we'll be in a much better position.

From the leisure travel side, we're seeing huge gains in that.

We've done a lot of overtures out in Europe.

We've worked hard with our French and UK partners to drive that narrative, that Detroit is a great place to come to.

And we're seeing the fruits of those endeavors as well.

And so as people are starting to travel more and get back into it, Detroit is gonna be a very strong destination, we feel, moving forward, and we're seeing the benefits of that.

And the best part is our hotel partners are seeing the best part of that, which means it drives more development.

And then we start to see even more hotels.

And it's a virtuous circle.

The more people come, the more money there is in tourism, which means there's more development, more marketing, and it starts to improve.

- So I mean, obviously we need the hotels and the hotel space.

Are there other things that go along with that that we should be thinking about?

- Oh, enormous things.

I mean, you know, again, when people come to visit, they may say, "Oh, all right, I like your stadium," or, "I like your room, but where am I gonna eat?

Where am I gonna sleep?

Where am I gonna party?

Where am I gonna shop?

Where am I gonna get my sports?"

So all the things that you can do, I mean, even, like, our airports, the fact that, you know, we have the number one mega airport in North America led by Chad Newton and his team, they've done a, that's an incredible advantage for us.

The fact that Turkish Airlines and Iceland Air are now running nonstops, like.

Because that's two way, yeah, our people are visiting them, but now people are coming to visit us.

And I think that all the attractions, the Ford Piquette Plant, where we're talking from, this is a huge benefit to our region.

All of the various attractions, that drives people to come here.

- And once they're here, we can tell our story.

It's not only this wonderful waterfront, but think about all the amazing assets that are located right in Detroit, our museums, you know, our history in the music space.

I mean, there's so much that we have to offer, our restaurants, our hotels, our hospitality as Detroiters.

Once we get them there, we can tell our story, and that's what's exciting.

And I think that's what, among other things, the draft will provide us with the opportunity to do so.

- And you talked about, like, the International Women's Forum, and there was a slight bit of trepidation, but so often we always say if we can get them here, we'll get them here.

All we have to do is introduce people, and once they see it, they're like, "Oh, my gosh, I wish I would've known better.

- Absolutely.

- I come with a better sense now," and they're really starting to see it.

And that's why we're getting to win these big events and these big meetings and conventions because people are starting to change that perception.

- Yep.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I watched the draft in Kansas City last year 'cause I knew it was coming here, and I saw how many people were there, and I kept thinking, "How are we gonna do that in Detroit?"

But I also heard that, you know, Kansas City's isolated in the country.

It's hard to drive there from other NFL cities, but here, you can get here in, like, five or six hours from a bunch of different NFL cities.

So, I mean, I'm a little, I'm a little, like, trepidacious about- - You're nervous.

- It's gonna be too many people, like, how are we gonna do this?

- It's gonna be a lot.

- We have six NFL cities within just a four-hour driving distance of Detroit.

- My goodness.

- Plus, like, Minnesota and Green Bay, their fans visit a lot because we play them every year in Detroit.

- Because they're in our league, in our comfort.

- So we're anticipating a huge amount of people, but that's gonna be great because, you know, we're gonna have three Tigers games to entertain them with during that timeframe.

- [Stephen] Wait, so there are Tiger games during the draft?

- Yes.

Yes.

On the Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

- So more people?

- And then you've also- - It's gonna be okay.

It's gonna be okay.

- All right, whatever.

Maybe I just need to leave town that weekend.

- No, we're gonna need you to be an ambassador.

You got to get on the team.

We're gonna be very ready.

And I think that, you know, Mayor Duggan and the leadership, Warren Evans, Wayne County executive, they've done an incredible job of being very present in all the discussions about this and the plannings and the way we're gonna be able to park people and get them around the city and the people mover now being free, that's a huge benefit.

So we're seeing a lot, a lot of infrastructure work that's gonna make this, I mean, the next perfect event will be the first one.

So it won't be seamless, but I can tell you this, whatever challenges we deal with, it won't be because we hadn't been planning hard enough or we hadn't looked at all the different scenarios.

- Or we're not ready.

- So I'm excited about it, and I think that we're ready.

I mean, we are gonna be ready.

- So what's next after we get through this?

- You know, somebody was asking me that last week, and we have over 60 RFPs out right now.

- Dude, really?

- So, like, from the NBA Allstar game to the NHL Allstar game, to the Big 10 Football Championship, to the International Association of you don't really care, but they're gonna fill up every hotel in the region.

So we've got, you know, like, so many of these different events on the schedule, and we're bidding on and hopefully that we're gonna be able to acquire them.

- Yeah.

Thanks to both of you for all of your work.

And thanks for being with us on One Detroit.

- Thank you so, - Thank you so much.

- [Claude] thank you.

- [Stephen] And one other note about the Detroit Riverfront, a documentary about the development of the Riverfront is playing at the Free Film Festival this weekend.

It also airs here on Detroit Public Television on Monday, April 29th at 9:00 PM.

"Ignore the noise: The transformation of the Detroit Riverfront" is a collaboration between Detroit Public Television and Free Age Films.

Here's a preview.

(upbeat music) - There are a million ways this project could have gotten killed.

It didn't have to happen this way.

And it is uncommon for a community to be able to pull something like this off.

- The Riverfront was desolate, it was abandoned, it was in total disrepair.

- Tall piles of cement, burned-out buildings, abandoned cars, eroding shoreline.

It was not a place where anyone would have any reason for visiting.

I grew up in Detroit, and I didn't know we had a riverfront.

Unless you went to Belle Isle, you never saw it.

♪ This is Detroit ♪ ♪ I like to live in this town ♪ ♪ My neighbors are people who care ♪ - [Interviewee] You had the cement silos there, you had aggregate everywhere.

It was pretty bad.

♪ Detroit ♪ ♪ Detroit, my home ♪ - It was just real industrial when I started working at the Riverfront.

At the time, it was kind of like, "Are we really gonna make this a beautiful riverfront?"

I just couldn't see it.

It was just so much work that had to be done.

- [Narrator] Detroit, it literally means straight or river, so when we talk about our waterfront, the words are as important as the thing itself.

The water that flows past our city is our city, and it shapes so much of who we are.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] And finally, we wanna thank the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant Museum for providing the setting for today's show.

The nonprofit organization is dedicated to preserving the birthplace of the Model T, a legacy that is truly Detroit.

Here's more from the museum's president and COO, Jill Woodward.

(upbeat music) - The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant is really one of the most important historic sites for the automotive industry in the world.

It is really the origin point of The Motor City, so when we ask ourselves, you know, "Where did Detroit get its start as The Motor City?"

It happened right here in Milwaukee Junction.

Henry Ford built the Ford Piquette Plant in 1904.

He was here until 1910.

And this is where he envisioned and built the very first Model T, which we know is the car that put the world on wheels.

We actually have Henry Ford's secret experimental room rebuilt here in the museum on the third floor.

And it's holy ground for a lot of people, to see the spot where that vehicle, the very first one was made.

Over 15 million were made, and when you come here, you can see, for instance, number 220 that was made right here in this building.

That's our red Model T downstairs, a 1909.

We have over 65 very rare vehicles here, including one of the only collections of Henry Ford's letter cars.

Those are all the models leading up to the T that you can see anywhere in the world in the place where they were made.

I feel like we've lost a little bit the significance of Milwaukee Junction.

This is exactly where The Motor City got its start, right here because of the railroads.

There was all that innovation and entrepreneurship happening that really set the stage for what Henry Ford was gonna do right here in this building.

It was really the Silicon Valley of its day.

When we think about Detroit and what it means to the rest of the world, I think our contributions are really summed up by places like this that contain our history, our history that really went on to change the world.

The Model T really changed the way we live and drive today.

To have the birthplace of that vehicle here in Detroit preserved by chance and a lot of hard work is really a great gift.

- [Narrator] That is gonna do it for this special episode of One Detroit.

Thanks for watching.

Head to the One Detroit website for more of our NFL draft coverage.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] The NFL draft is coming, and you can help tell the country what is truly Detroit.

What's your opinion on the iconic and truly Detroit places?

Check out our special Truly Detroit story collection then comment to share your picks on our digital platforms.

Visit onedetroitpbs.org/trulydetroit to learn more.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program is made possible in part by Timothy Bogart, comprehensive planning strategies.

- [Narrator] 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 for this program is provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

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

Visit dtefoundation.com to learn more.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation and Viewers Like You.

(upbeat music) (bright music)