(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.