Buzz

We have absolutely no problem admitting we love the work of former Detroiter, the notable Japanese-American architect Minoru Yamasaki, who among other gems, designed what is now known as One Woodward. Crain's Detroit Business is reporting this tantalizing rumor. What rumor?

Read more here,

Hatch Detroit has announced the top 10 semi-finalists for the 2012 Comerica Hatch Detroit contest.

This year’s competition brought in more than 250 business plan submissions, representing a 25 percent increase over last year’s contest.

Drum roll, please. Here they are:

Detroit River Sports – Kayak rentals to city-goers, offering tours through the canal districts of Belle Isle, Downtown and other parts of the city. 

Detroit Vegan Soul Café – Vegan food with a soul twist, currently operating as a catering and food delivery business, looking to open a store in Midtown.

La Feria – A wine bar featuring authentic Spanish tapas in a relaxed yet upbeat setting, looking to open in Midtown.

Motor City Design – A custom denim specialty retail store featuring Made in Michigan products where customers can watch garments be made right in the store, looking to open Downtown.

Pho da Nang – A Vietnamese restaurant based in Clawson looking to open another location in Midtown.

Rock City Pies – A handmade pie company specializing in unique combinations such as Salty Apple Carmel Pie and Blueberry-Custard Pie, looking to open in Midtown.

Tashmoo Biergarten – Based on the biergartens in Germany, operating as a pop-up in West Village, looking to open a permanent space in the neighborhood.

The Collective Tap – High-end beer retailer offering classes and food parings, looking to open Downtown. 

Vividbraille Studio Boutique – Fuses high-end fashion and design with USA manufacturing in a retail setting, offering customers some of the finest Made in the USA fashion goods, currently operating in Chicago and looking to expand to Detroit.  

Whip Hand Cosmetics – A cosmetic company, currently operating online, looking to open its manufacturing and retail facility Downtown.

HuffPost Detroit's Kate Abbey-Lambertz wraps some good narrative around this announcement here.

We take the business of Detroit music seriously here and devoted much of our July speaker series to that topic. This series of stories in Crains Detroit simply nails many of our concerns. Our kudos. Highly recommended reading.

Start here.

We've always believed a little competition for architects in Detroit could be a beautiful thing -- and end with the creation of many beautiful things.

So, right on cue, comes a design competition focusing on the redeveloping the riverfront.

An excerpt:

The competition will focus on the area between Cobo Hall and the Renaissance Center and between Jefferson Avenue and the Detroit River. This section of Riverfront which includes Hart Plaza is at the heart of the city. The major streets from the radial street plan created by Augustus Woodward intersect just north of this site.

Read the rest of the story here.

We spotted this item trolling, as we are prone to do, on GOOD. It's about a project that redesigns and remakes a city block.

An excerpt:

The organization's next stop: Detroit, where the city's first-ever Better Block project will take place from Sept. 22 to 23 as part of the Detroit Design Festival. Headed by volunteers from the US Green Building Council and Wayne State University, the project aims to reshape a location with plenty of vacant commercial space -- the North End.

Great stuff. Read more here.

Full disclosure: we've loved Matthew Dear since we first started hearing his music and going out to see him DJ in the early '00s. Our gophers even dug up this feature penned by managing editor Walter Wasacz in 2004: here. 

Now living in upstate New York, Dear still holds Detroit, well, dear. An excerpt from Cool Hunting:

That's Detroit--it always makes you feel like it's on the verge of tipping toward being successful and booming. And that's what keeps people there. And when you're in Detroit, you feel like you own it. It's your city, you're there, you're the one bringing in art and events and doing shows. You're meeting people who are also doing their version of what their creative interest is. So there's this little buzz that's always in Detroit and no matter how big that buzz gets on the world scale--like right now a lot of people are talking about it--you hope that it does finally explode.

Read more here.

Take a look at our News item today on developments in the M1 story and also take a peek at this, another report from the Detroit Free Press. An excerpt:

Project supporters were given 60 days to address concerns about the cost of building and operating the $137-million M-1 Rail line from downtown to the New Center area of Detroit -- a 15-minute route with 11 stops. It is a scaled-down version of the original plan to run light rail north to the city limits at 8 Mile.

Read on here.

Despite a snarky lead-in by writer Jude Stewart ("Detroit the Dinosaur hardly feels like the right place to investigate pockets of American innovation") - Hey Jude, don't make it (sound so) bad - this was still nice to see last week in Fast Company:

In a converted theater in downtown Detroit, Detroit Labs is a testament to the city’s resilient spirit of invention. The one-year-old startup designs and builds mobile applications, including Domino’s ordering app, which accounts for $150 million in annualized revenue, and the Chevy Game Time app, which dominated the Super Bowl last January, outranking Angry Birds for a time in the iTunes app store. Since turning a profit (in year one), Detroit Labs has activated phase two of its business plan: letting its developers work one day a week on totally independent projects. That’s right. Employees get paid to futz around.

Read on here.

Hoo-ray, we say. A summer bikes for kids program organized locally by the Detroit Eastside Community Collaborative (DECC) made possible by a $12,500 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy grant sponsored by Coca-Cola is paying dividends in one East Side neighborhood.

HuffPost Detroit has the rest of the story here.

Here's a nice "catch" we made by trolling our social media ticker last week, this one courtesy of our friends at I Am Young Detroit.

An excerpt:

The Live Detroit Fund was established last August through the "Do It For Detroit" campaign organized by CommunityNEXT of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. The fund allows recipients to receive $250 per month toward their rent. What’s the catch? The catch is you’re required to host a monthly event to help build community in Detroit.

Read on here.

We know ballplayers who once played at this hidden gem, an historic stadium once a playing field for the old Negro League. Now, thanks to community leaders, volunteers and preservationists, the stadium has made it on the National Register of Historic Places.

Well done everybody. The Hamtramck Review has the rest of the story here.

This is music to our ears, as written by John Gallagher of the Detroit Free Press: 

"There are traffic jams in the morning -- and after work on streets that were once abandoned after dark. New residents walk their dogs, buy coffee, get haircuts." He's talking about downtown and Midtown activity, of course.

Want to read more? Sure you do. Go here.

Here's one that has been on our radar for a while: nutrition company Savorfull, founded by nutritionist and CEO Stacy Goldberg, has moved its headquarters to the New Center One Building in Detroit.

Savorfull is a growing food membership service providing individuals with special dietary needs a sampler box of nutrient-dense, allergen-free food each month to their doorstep. The company’s new space at New Center One allows Savorfull to expedite service to its expanding customer base nationwide. 

To learn more about Savorfull, go here.