Mark Woods: More to downtown revival than a stadium. Look at Detroit and its riverfront.

A follow-up to my last column, about how it would be a shame if we can find money for renovating a stadium but not for finishing our riverfront parks.

I recently went to Detroit. My sister, an engineer for GM, lives and works north of the city. Her son was graduating from college and she knew how to further entice me to make the trip: The Tigers, the baseball team my childhood revolved around, were in town.

It had been years since I went to a game in Detroit. It was a beautiful April night, with a lot for people there to cheer about. And not just because the Tigers rallied to beat the Kansas City Royals at Comerica Park.

At one point, the fans began a chant of “Jared Goff, Jared Goff” — the Lions quarterback who plays his home games in nearby Ford Field — that wasn’t as random as it sounded.

It was the weekend of the NFL draft. The league estimated that nearly 800,000 fans filled downtown over the three days, setting the attendance record for the event. The streets were packed with people eating, drinking and checking out shops brimming with Detroit pride. Shinola watches and bikes. “Made in Detroit” T-shirts. Merchandise that said both “Detroit Welcomes Everybody and “313 vs. Everybody.”

The 904 isn’t the only place that can lean into its area code and a sense of being the underdog.

Downtown Detroit on the rise

It reminded me of when we had the Super Bowl in Jacksonville, how during that one week our streets and riverfronts were full of people and activity. I couldn’t help but wonder what downtown Detroit would be like once the big event left.

There’s reason to believe it wasn’t just a one-weekend thing.

Detroit, for all of its problems, has experienced a rebirth.

Downtown is a different place than what I remember, and what many Americans still picture: a hollowed-out, crime-ridden, decaying shell of a once-vibrant city.

That’s not to say Detroit doesn’t still have plenty of issues. But it also has reason for hope — and reasons for people to be living, working and playing downtown.

In the 1990s, when I covered the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, I made a trip to Detroit every fall for a Bucs-Lions game. Well, sort of. I flew into Detroit, got a rental car and drove about an hour north to Pontiac and the Silverdome. At the time, the NBA’s Pistons played even farther from downtown, in the Palace of Auburn Hills.

Now four major pro franchises play downtown: the Tigers at Comerica (opened in 2000), the Lions at Ford Field (2002), and the Pistons and NHL’s Red Wings at Little Caesars Arena (2017). Also, soccer club Detroit City FC is planning to build a new stadium in Corktown, an old neighborhood described in a recent Detroit Free Press story as the “front porch to downtown.”

It’s tempting to point to Detroit as an example of how building sports venues can transform a place. But while those venues certainly have been a part of what is happening in Detroit, it’s worth noting a few things (beyond sports economists saying stadium building has a dubious return on investment for a city), particularly in regards to Jacksonville.

It’s vastly different to have an MLB stadium (with at least 81 home games a year) and an NBA/NHL arena (the two teams combining for at least 82 home games a year) along with an NFL stadium. Between the three venues and four teams, downtown Detroit has games year-round that, even before you add in concerts and other events, draw nearly 4 million people.

And what is happening in Detroit involves much more than sports venues.

One of America’s best riverwalks

Ask people in Detroit what has changed and, beyond the sports venues, they’ll point to the billions of dollars invested downtown by Dan Gilbert (founder of Rocket Mortgage), the Ford family (as in Ford vehicles) and the Illitch family (Little Caesars pizza).

And — particularly relevant to Jacksonville — look at what Detroit has done to stake a claim to having one of America’s best riverfronts.

Yes, Detroit.

“Ignore the Noise: The Transformation of the Detroit Riverfront,” an hourlong documentary released last year, paints a bleak (and familiar) picture of what their riverfront had become. Desolate, blighted, industrial, buildings in disrepair, empty lots. It was, one of the subjects says, not a place that anyone had any reason to visit.

For decades, there had been plans for a linear park with riverwalks, greenways, playgrounds, events. Not much seemed to come to fruition. Until about 20 years ago.

Look at the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy website today and you’ll find more than renderings of what the riverfront could be someday. You’ll find some remarkable “before” and “after” photos, showing what it actually has become.

In 2021, the Detroit Riverwalk was named the “Best Riverwalk in America” in the USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards. It won the top spot again in 2022. And again in 2023, finishing ahead of Tampa, Louisville, Cincinnati, Boston and Indianapolis.

This isn’t something that happens because you build a stadium or two. It happens because you are determined to build a riverfront — in Detroit’s case, take 5.5 miles between two bridges and turn it into “a beautiful, exciting, safe, accessible, world-class gathering place for all.”

Since 2003, the Riverfront Conservancy, the nonprofit managing the riverfront revitalization, has invested more than $200 million (a mix of donations, grants and public funding). This has been an economic spark, according to the conservancy generating more than $2 billion in investment.

A familiar setback: corruption

I’ve said repeatedly that it would be a shame if we manage to build a shiny “stadium of the future” but fail to do much more than that. And with a stadium deal on the table in Jacksonville — including the community benefits agreement that would provide money for, among other things, riverfront parks — I was planning to write a column pointing to the Detroit riverfront offering some things to strive for here.

Then a funny thing happened. Well, not so funny to those in Detroit.

The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy’s CFO was fired and the CEO resigned after, according to the organization, it discovered the CFO had embezzled more than $40 million.

So we might not want to copy that part. (Not that we really need a reminder of the need for oversight and the potential for scandal where there is money. We’ve recently had both the JEA saga and a Jaguars employee stealing $22 million.)

In a sign of how much has been accomplished on Detroit’s riverfront despite this, two top philanthropic donors responded by reaffirming their support and pledging to give more money to sustain the “transformational projects.” The Detroit Free Press wrote an editorial saying the riverfront and conservancy must survive this — because the riverfront represents “this city’s most dramatic transformation.”

In the documentary, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan says: “Nothing compares to the beauty that’s being created along the riverfront. … It’s creating a totally different impression to the world about what the city of Detroit is.”

So the point still holds for Jacksonville. It will be a shame if we just build a stadium, expecting that alone to change our city.

If we truly want to create the kind of spark that comes from riverfront parks, we should do the obvious: Invest in riverfront parks.

mwoods@jacksonville.com

(904) 359-4212