 
Hunchentoot
Member
Username: Hunchentoot
Post Number: 96
Registered: 03-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - 9:13 pm: |    |
Now that I have lived here for almost a year, I've found that the city is not as lacking in amenity as I had thought. It's not paradise but most daily needs are not far if you're near downtown. Business hours are the problem. Things close at 5, 6, 7PM. Other places have unpredictable hours and must be called before visiting. After 8PM all that's left are bars and gas stations.
If rebuilding Detroit will take baby steps, I think simply extending business hours at many places would do wonders to improve quality of life here. |
Detroitjim
Member
Username: Detroitjim
Post Number: 36
Registered: 02-2008
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - 10:04 pm: | |
Wow that is exactly what I was thinking!
That trickle down economics stuff will certainly help fill my pockets.More late night sheep to car jack and businesses to rob.
The true racist will look for and find something racial in everything.
"The ink is black, the page is white"
(Message edited by detroitjim on August 21, 2008) |
65memories
Member
Username: 65memories
Post Number: 608
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - 10:31 pm: | |
Detroitjim...wow, two blatantly negative and racist statements in one evening...you obviously do not understand this forum. |
Detroitrise
Member
Username: Detroitrise
Post Number: 3441
Registered: 09-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - 10:40 pm: | |
Hunchentoot, I agree.
However, before that could happen, Detroit must lose its crime stigma (no telling when that will occur).
(Message edited by DetroitRise on August 20, 2008) |
Hunchentoot
Member
Username: Hunchentoot
Post Number: 97
Registered: 03-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - 11:42 pm: | |
Detroitrise --
I don't understand why Detroit must first lose its crime stigma. There are a small number of businesses now that are open late and they are open regardless of Detroit's crime stigma.
I think the most valid barrier is that not enough people actually live here, but that too is not a satisfactory excuse because it gets into the endless loop of people-don't-shop-because-plac es-aren't-open and places-aren't-open-because-peo ple-don't-shop. |
Detroitrise
Member
Username: Detroitrise
Post Number: 3442
Registered: 09-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - 11:57 pm: | |
Yes, I was also going to say tehre isn't really a lot of people near the CBD after 5 PM, which means less customers.
However, crime isn't a big issue. However, I'm sure te business owners perceive Detroitr as "not so safe" after dark with all the relative emptiness in the air. |
Spaceboykelly
Member
Username: Spaceboykelly
Post Number: 302
Registered: 04-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 12:13 am: | |
Many restaurants are generally open until 11 pm but 11 pm does seem like the general cut off on week nights. Luckily drink-oriented places like the Park Bar and Motor City Brewing Works serve good food late into the night.
I agree there are too few places like that. |
Sean_of_detroit
Member
Username: Sean_of_detroit
Post Number: 1554
Registered: 03-2008
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 5:40 am: | |
What's the number... 7,000? The CBD has some 7,000 residents in that little area. Count Midtown, Lafayette Park, New Center, and Corktown, and that number skyrockets. You also have a large amount of hotel guests, concert goes, and tons of casino and night club patrons.
We need to start planning our visits to some of these businesses as close to closing as possible... make it obvious there are customers after the office workers leave for the suburbs.
Worse than the lack of service, is the look of them when they are closed. The graffiti covered metal doors (like the one City Slicker's Shoes uses) are an eye sore. They really bring down the look of the area. Would it kill them to clean and paint them, like most other revitalized city centers? That would be a nice little new ordinance that would be cheap and easy to follow. It really would benefit everyone... |
Hunchentoot
Member
Username: Hunchentoot
Post Number: 98
Registered: 03-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 7:57 am: | |
Are there organized or coordinated business districts downtown? Seems that if businesses could participate in improvement zones or something similar there could be action taken to persuade multiple shops to extend their hours -- if you do it, I do it. That would lower the risk of one lone shoe store being open later amidst a landscape of graffiti-covered gates. |
Gannon
Member
Username: Gannon
Post Number: 13909
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 11:07 am: | |
If in power, I would establish tax credits or other forms of incentives for those establishments that stay open late.
IF I were the Chamber of Commerce, I'd be studying this to learn who IS here after regular, old business hours to find out what the latent desire and potential truly IS.
But then again, our Chamber is not Detroit-specific, right, what stake do they have in this?
So it should be within some realm of City government, which will surely be put in place after the current corruption is uprooted...and the greedy, selfish friends and family are replace with people who LOVE the city and everyone who dares stay in it.
Perhaps we use this thread to count the businesses we'd all use IF they had more comfortable hours...there is a chance they simply do not know what they are missing, and we might help them adjust their business plans and operations some to capitalize on the latent opportunity.
Cheers! |
Downtown_lady
Member
Username: Downtown_lady
Post Number: 111
Registered: 08-2008
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 11:12 am: | |
^^^ For starters...
IF they had more comfortable hours, I would definitely in the evenings shop at CVS on Woodward, Borders in the Compuware building, and Au Bon Pain at Campus Martius.
Yours? |
Digitalvision
Member
Username: Digitalvision
Post Number: 1142
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 11:13 am: | |
Having known more than a few businesses that have tried later hours, they find that there isn't the demand. There just aren't enough residents yet, or I should say, residents with the disposable income.
The only way it could work is if EVERYONE decided to stay open and out aside the money to be open for 6 months to a year that late so that the message that they are open later permeates through to customers and can be out there long enough to affect folks making loft-buying decisions.
Gannon - I've been saying that for years. But no one wants to listen to that, and the political powers that be don't want it to happen. |
Gannon
Member
Username: Gannon
Post Number: 13910
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 11:29 am: | |
I hear you DV...
They need to MARKET their open hours, not just do it and assume the latent demand will all of a sudden know and show.
It is too much 'build it and they will come' mentality...since this is SO much a behavior change, the new residents must make their desires known...then they'd damn well better follow up on 'em when the businesses make the commitment to personnel and energy and risk and such to stay open.
YES, it needs some sort of organization...and I see Liz and Claire's initiative as the best way to guide everyone...I can see that growing into the Detroit-specific Chamber of Commerce we so desperately need in this new age of the city. |
Sean_of_detroit
Member
Username: Sean_of_detroit
Post Number: 1565
Registered: 03-2008
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 12:08 pm: | |
DV, it has more to do with CBD location. They are positioned for the office crowd/foot traffic. For example, a location in the financial district or Renaissance Center will often not attract CBD residents. It's to far to walk. Actually, it's to far from everyone except the office workers.
There were soooo many more places open 24 hours in the CBD then there was back when I was in the sleepy suburbs. It's not the best... but compared to them, it's great. Plus, the pizza places actually deliver. Everyone elsewhere seems to be going the "Hot N' Ready" route. |
Hunchentoot
Member
Username: Hunchentoot
Post Number: 99
Registered: 03-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 12:45 pm: | |
Sean, this is a worthy point. Our designations for neighborhoods aren't small enough. "Corktown", even "South Corktown" is still a very large area. To walk from Slows to The Lager House is two or three times the distance urban planners often use to designate walkability in a neighborhood, and for a successful walkable neighborhood most of one's daily needs should be met within that short 1/4 or 1/3 mile walk from one's front door.
The CBD, then is at least four times the size of this "neighborhood" measurement. This is why we need to develop a mechanism for paying attention to fine detail in our urban design to combat the half-century of slash-and-burn. A single surface parking lot or parking garage can signify the end of a district, so how are we to build districts throughout the city without contiguous intact blocks?
This is getting off the point though -- I'm confident, especially with collaborative organization, that businesses in the central city could extend their hours successfully. In part due to the reasons I just discussed, the city functions in a suburban way almost down to its core, and so the 7000 living in the CBD aren't the only ones to consider to support downtown businesses. Extend that radius out a few miles and consider that population. |
Digitalvision
Member
Username: Digitalvision
Post Number: 1144
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 1:39 pm: | |
Well, the CBD has a problem in general in regards to density - in being that it's not dense at all. Go to Ann Arbor. Copy that level of density, and then we'll get somewhere.
Due to the surface parking lots, almost everything is a multi-block walk past parking lots.
When I lived near downtown and in Joe Berry, I hate to say it, but very very few people shopped downtown, even if they worked downtown. They would go to Grosse Pointe, Troy, Royal Oak; rarely downtown. They felt there were more and nicer retail options in the Village than in all of Downtown Detroit.
I asked people about it - mostly black folk, cause, well, Detroit is 80% black - and they felt it easier to go there because of parking, variety and safety than go downtown. I never ran into my neighbors downtown; but always in the 'burbs. |
Chitaku
Member
Username: Chitaku
Post Number: 2112
Registered: 03-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 1:57 pm: | |
I was out with my dog in grand Circus Park on Monday at 7pm. A German couple came up to me explaining they were touring Detroit and asked if it was normal that it was such a ghost town. First I laughed because I thought there were a decent amount of folks out that night. I asked if they knew the history of Detroit and they did not, so after a quick explanation i told them where to go blah blah. Then I remembered most stuff closes at 5 so i can see why out of towners who have no idea about the city would think of a Ghost town. |