How Detroit’s recovery from bankruptcy has continued through the pandemic

The rise, fall and rise again of Detroit offers lessons to the rest of America as it seeks to recover from the pandemic.

The Shelby restaurant in Detroit has been set up in a disused bank vault. Picture: Angus Mordant

Brenda Garland spent the afternoon of her 47th birthday cycling with her young son on a waterfront bike path that has become one of the more visible symbols of her revitalised hometown.

After a long and hard year in which she had stopped working as a medical research assistant when her babysitter became sick from the coronavirus, Ms Garland was happy to be out in the sunshine on Detroit’s Riverwalk.

A new and growing stretch of public space that has replaced the no-go, crime ridden and abandoned industrial blocks that previously faced Canada just 1.5km over the Detroit River, the Riverwalk is one of several reinvigorated areas that have helped turn the midwest city into one of the country’s most inspiring comeback stories.

Detroit mother Brenda Garland and son Elijah cycling in a revamped area that was previously a no-go zone. Picture: Angus Mordant

“I feel safe bringing him to ride our bikes and enjoy the weather here,” Ms Garland said of her son Elijah, six.

“It’s changed a lot. I’m proud of this space and other places here in the city that we can all share here now.”

The rise, fall and rise again of Detroit offers lessons to the rest of America as it seeks to recover from the pandemic.

Once America’s fourth largest city and the birthplace of motor vehicles, Detroit was infamous at the turn of the century for its widespread poverty, race disparity and rampant crime.

By 2013, when Detroit became the largest US municipality to declare bankruptcy, vast areas were vacated as people walked away from their homes to avoid back taxes and unemployment topped 25 per cent.

Several prominent philanthropists and businesses joined a rejuvenation effort that included a billion dollar injection to fund two decades of pension payments as well as the headquartering of several large corporations there.

Among them was local billionaire Dan Gilbert who became the city’s largest private employer and taxpayer when he moved his Quicken Loans headquarters and its tens of thousands of employees to downtown Detroit, where he has invested more than $A7.23 billion ($US5.6 billion) in property to give new life to the city.

Downtown Detroit’s skyline has been revitalised since the city went bankrupt in 2013. Picture: Angus Mordant

Mr Gilbert is also owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team and in March pledged a further $A19.3 million ($US15 million) to cover overdue property taxes for 20,000 homes in an effort to return people to the deserted suburbs.

“I’d like to see the people of Detroit benefit,” Mr Gilbert said.

“You look at every level in downtown right now and we have to carry that through to the neighbourhoods and have the whole city have that energy.”

While there is still widespread poverty in some quarters of greater Detroit, the rejuvenation of downtown and some inner city neighbourhoods was so successful that in 2018 it was the only mainland US city to make the top 10 of Lonely Planet’s global destinations and Vogue described it as one of five cities “making America’s rust belt shine again”.

With it’s resilience already so tested, Detroit can offer some lessons to the American cities that now need to rebuild from the disastrous urban blight of the pandemic.

Huge tracts of land in Detroit’s suburbs remain abandoned. Picture: Angus Mordant

“Anyone who doubts the capacity of American cities to transform themselves need only look to Detroit for inspiration,” said local business leader Rip Rapson recently.

“In 2013, the Motor City seemed beyond recovery — its pension obligations too high, its budget too out of balance, its assets too thin. Sky-high poverty, rock-bottom educational achievement, and pervasive physical abandonment combined to create a sense of impossibility and helplessness.

“But rather than ushering in doom, Detroit’s bankruptcy catapulted the city into reimagination, recalibration and renewal.

“The Detroit of 2013 was a microcosm of the conditions that now afflict many American cities — growing racial wealth disparities, undercapitalised pension systems, race relations at the dagger point of distrust,” Mr Rapson wrote for Bloomberg.

“But the Detroit bankruptcy became, as the pandemic does now, a portal for change.”

Australian Tom Walsh in front of Michigan Central Station, which Ford is redeveloping in Detroit. Picture: Angus Mordant

Australian executive Tom Walsh is married to a Detroit native and says the city’s turnaround has been dramatic.

Mr Walsh leads commercial partnerships for Ford’s autonomous vehicle business, which will be based in the formerly abandoned Michigan Central Station when the motor giant completes its renovation in 2023.

The $A955 million ($US740 million) station redevelopment is one of the city’s biggest current projects and will house a tech hub, retail and community space in what was previously one of Detroit’s most forlorn areas.

“What this project shows is reflected in the experience downtown, a genuine rejuvenation and a real asset for the whole city,” Mr Walsh said.

His Australian colleague at Ford, Trevor Worthington, returned recently after an earlier stint in Motor City and was pleasantly surprised at the transformation.

“We were probably a bit naive 20 years ago,” he said of his first experience living in Detroit.

Mr Worthington is a global program manager for Ford’s electric motor vehicle division and said that while the past year had challenged Detroit, the city was finding its feet.

“It’s got a real life about the place now,” he said.

“And more and more young people are setting up restaurants and bars. A lot will have left Detroit go to the big cities to be chefs or to do their thing and a lot of them have come back and it has got a really nice feel about it.”

Meagan Lewandowski, 27, lead barista at Detroit’s Coffee Down Under. Picture: Angus Mordant

With the pandemic having accelerated the move to working from home, Detroit is one of many smaller US cities that have drawn young newcomers with its lower living costs.

Cheap rent combined with a growing economy has seen an influx to the city, including many who have returned after leaving early in their professional lives.

Among them are Meagan Lewandowski, 27, who moved home from Montana and said she had been “inspired” by the growth in Detroit.

Ms Lewandowski is the lead barista at Coffee Down Under, an Australian-themed cafe in the basement of a disused bank in the city’s downtown that opened in January.

“It’s kind of cool, we just took advantage of the space and cheap rent as downtown can get a little pricey now,” she said.

“Detroit’s actually coming around.

“Seeing the city and the growth from when I was a kid to now, just the evolution, it’s really inspiring.”

Like many of the restaurants, bars and stores that are drawing new foot traffic to the area, the business is in a space that like much of the city’s downtown was previously abandoned.

“Being able to have a space that brings people together when there wasn’t anything here for so long, it’s really cool,” she said.