Michigan
Mitch Albom: Michigan Central Station celebrates not just Detroit’s future, but its present
‘It’s beautiful to be a Detroiter’: Residents react to Michigan Central Station reopening
Detroiters Darlene Calloway, 67, and daughter Algeria Calloway, 40, came to Michigan Central Station’s reopening to witness the legacy of Detroit.
“The past is a bucket of ashes.”
— Carl Sandburg
Sandburg was right. The past is ashes. And the first thing you should know about Detroit’s newly famous train station is that, much like our city itself, it has now risen from the ashes twice.
A fire claimed the city’s previous train depot in 1913 and rushed a new building in Corktown into immediate service — one day after Christmas. It wasn’t finished, but it didn’t matter. Anyone coming through the doors saw its promise.
Today, 111 years later, history is repeating itself. Now dubbed the Michigan Central Station, the once magnificent Beaux Arts building has risen from the ashes again, this time the ashes of urban decay, under which it sat in shadowed abandonment for 35 ugly years.
And what mattered last century is what matters in this one.
Promise. Hope. A future of the possible.
PHOEBE WALL HOWARD: Childhood memories of Detroit explain emotion of Michigan Central Station opening
Here in the Motor City, we have been making a big fuss over the station’s reopening — special tours, a massive concert, etc. And perhaps the outside world is wondering why we bother. It’s just a train station, right?
Not to us. Michigan Central is more than a building. It’s more than a new beginning. It’s the end of something.
It’s the end of rot as a symbol of Detroit. The end of decay as some kind of Detroit sport. The end of headlines like the New York Times ran in 2012:
“How Detroit Became the World Capital of Staring at Abandoned Buildings.”
Sorry, great Gray Lady. You want poverty porn, you’ll have to go someplace else.
We’re about the future now.
Decades in the making
I recently took a tour through the Michigan Central renovation with the project’s CEO, Josh Sirefman. As we walked through the former lobby, the reading rooms, the elegant parlors and the various magnificent spaces of this 15-story tower and adjacent buildings, covering 30 acres of a future tech and innovation hub, he gave witness to the transformation this project represents.
“It’s been a privilege to help this come together,” he said.
Sirefman himself is a microcosm of Detroit’s full circle. He came here as a young man to get a master’s at the University of Michigan. While enrolled, he moved into Detroit, about six blocks from the train station. This was in the mid-1990s.
“It was a lot different then,” he understated. “But I fell in love with Detroit, and kind of always hoped for an opportunity to be able to be involved again.”
He left for New York and was gone for decades. Still, Detroit stayed with him, the way it stays with many people who come to know it. So when the chance to helm the renovation arose, under the new ownership of the Ford Motor Co., Sirefman jumped at it.
Since then, he has helped spearhead Ford’s nearly $1 billion effort. It’s taken six years, thousands of workers, and everything from an original clock being dropped off anonymously to 3D laser printers re-creating rams heads above doorways. But the results are nothing shy of stunning.
A WORK OF ART: Michigan Central Station still has decades-old graffiti: Why Ford decided to keep it
You can’t fit into words what the MCS now represents. It’s a blend of past and future so bright it appears seamless.
Here, refurbished tiles and copper skylights spill into modern art displays and a virtual mini-museum of historic Detroit posters. Here, the Doric columns and the marble tiles of the early 20th century surround an undulating 21st century history display. Original and freshly created architecture dance together under a 29,000-tile ceiling. In adjacent buildings, modern tech businesses bustle under the arches and exposed rafters of bygone days.
This is not just a train station. Hardly. In fact, trains have little to do with it. Sure, someday in the not-too-distant future, a train may begin to stop here. But for now, this project is about rebirthing an entire neighborhood and anchoring a second Detroit downtown, not only the main terminal, but with the beautifully redone Book Depository building, which already houses dozens of budding startups, shared office space and food options.
Not to mention the hotel that is coming, the massive parks, the additional structures tabbed for tech and innovation, the outdoor leisure options and the parking.
The fabulous future. Not the rot of the past.
Take your ruin porn obsession elsewhere
I remember the year I went to the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. Reporters had heard of impoverished areas in the city that the government was hoping to shield from the press. One day, I got into a taxi and, through a translator, asked the driver to see “one of the really poor neighborhoods.”
He hesitated. He looked upset. Finally, he turned to the translator and said, “Why does he want to see the worst of my city? He is a guest here. Let me show him the best.”
For years, many of us felt that way when people came to visit Detroit. Our Poverty Porn, or Ruin Porn, had somehow become a major attraction, often the first thing outsiders wanted to see. The Packard Plant. The train station. The rows of abandoned homes.
Eight years ago, Britain’s newspaper, “The Guardian,” did a story about those gawkers, and how they were advancing nothing and helping no one.
“The ruins,” it wrote, “are gazed upon for amusement, gratification and pleasure.”
Well, guess what, decay junkies? We’re no longer here for your debris obsession. We are not interested in putting our ugly past on display.
Instead, come look at our growth. Come see a future we’re proud of, not a past we can’t help.
The Michigan Central Station, by itself, isn’t a cure-all. But it’s part. It isn’t a neighborhood. But it’s anchoring one. It isn’t everything to everybody. But it’s a whole lot to a whole lot of people. And anyone who witnesses its impressive span will see what we mean.
There’s a small section of the train station’s reconstruction that deliberately left a rotting staircase and a graffiti wall. It is chained off, and clearly marked as a historic relic. But it’s there: as a reminder of what was, and an appreciation of what is. If we want to be reminded of the bad old days, we’ll set aside a reminder. But that’s our prerogative. It’s no longer the reason for people to come to town.
Carl Sandburg’s full quote is as follows: “The past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now.”
Pretty good advice, for life, or for a symbol of rebirth in the form of a train station. And like a locomotive pulling to a steaming stop, it’s no longer coming, folks. It’s here.
All aboard.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.
Michigan
Urban Meyer reacts to Sherrone Moore scandal after coach’s shock Michigan firing
One of the best college football coaches of all time, Urban Meyer, lent some sympathy to Sherrone Moore — or at least his family — in the wake of the former Michigan head coach’s shocking firing last week.
“Last night, I said a prayer for that family,’’ Meyer said on “The Triple Option Podcast,” speaking of Moore’s wife and daughters.
“I mean, you’ve got three little girls,’’ said Meyer, who won a national title at Ohio State a little over a decade ago. “You’ve got a guy that was on top of the road a week ago.”
That changed in stunning fashion, as Moore, a married father of three, went from leading the Wolverines to out of a job, fired in Ann Arbor for cause after the university confirmed he had an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.
The situation only worsened when Moore was later arrested after he allegedly broke into the home of the staff member, and during an argument, grabbed butter knives and threatened to kill himself.
On Friday, he was charged with third-degree home invasion, a felony, as well as a pair of misdemeanors — stalking and breaking and entering.
Here’s the latest on former Michigan coach Sherrone Moore
Even Meyer, who created some controversy of his own during a brief, ill-fated tenure as head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars — when he was seen on video in 2021 that showed him dancing suggestively with a woman who was not his wife and was later fired before finishing his lone season in Jacksonville — was stunned by Moore’s downfall.
“They’re up 6-0 on the Buckeyes at home,” Meyer said of Michigan’s early lead against rival Ohio State on Nov. 29. “And then, also, you wake up, and they’re in this situation. Rivalries aside, this is all human element. Now, this is something that, from what you read, that’s some serious stuff that went on. And just, all of a sudden, you start seeing the impact. Forget football. Who cares about football?’’
Michigan
Yaxel Lendeborg scores 29 points and No. 2 Michigan stays unbeaten with 101-83 win over Maryland
COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — Yaxel Lendeborg had 29 points, a career-best nine assists and eight rebounds, and No. 2 Michigan rallied from a nine-point deficit Saturday night to defeat Maryland 101-83.
Aday Mara scored 18 points for the Wolverines (10-0, 2-0 Big Ten), who overcame a halftime deficit for the second time this season and the first since they beat TCU on Nov. 14.
Michigan scored 100 points for the fourth time in five games.
Diggy Coit made eight 3-pointers and scored 31 points for the Terrapins (6-5, 0-2), who lost center Pharrel Payne to a right leg injury late in the first half and forward Solomon Washington to ejection after he picked up his second technical foul early in the second half.
Coit scored nine of Maryland’s first 10 points and 22 before the break, helping to prevent Michigan from opening a lead larger than six in the first half.
The Terps lost Payne, their leading scorer at 18.7 points a game, with 4:36 remaining before halftime. Yet Maryland stretched its lead from one to 50-45 at the midpoint, then expanded it to 56-47 on Elijah Saunders’ 3.
Washington, who had a first-half technical for celebrating a 3 in front of the Michigan bench, was called for a delay-of-game technical just after Saunders’ basket. His departure left the Terps without their two most experienced and imposing interior players.
Lendeborg took advantage, scoring the next eight points. Mara’s dunk with 14 minutes left made it 64-63 and gave the Wolverines the lead for good.
Elliot Cadeau’s layup with 21.2 seconds remaining got the Wolverines to 100 points for the fifth time this season.
Up next
Michigan hosts La Salle on Dec. 21.
Maryland visits No. 24 Virginia on Dec. 20.
___
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Michigan
Aquinas College expands automatic acceptance to 2 more West Michigan high schools
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – After beginning a direct admittance program at one West Michigan high school in November, Aquinas College has now expanded the program to cover more classrooms.
The guaranteed admission program, first implemented for graduates of West Catholic High School with a 2.0 GPA or above, has now been expanded to Catholic Central High School in Grand Rapids and Muskegon Catholic Central High School.
The partnership will apply to students from all three schools entering college in the fall of 2026.
The direct admission program was described by Aquinas College leaders as offering high school students a “clear path to college success” while also continuing to develop partnerships.
Aquinas College, a private Catholic liberal arts institution located at 1700 Fulton St. E, was founded by the Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids in 1886.
The college has enrolled 1,262 students during the 2025-26 academic year, and its new student numbers are up, with 419 new students on campus this fall, up from 311 in 2024-25.
The college’s overall enrollment total is just slightly under the approximately 1,300 students Aquinas recorded across its campus in 2023-24, according to a press release sent out in January 2025.
This year’s partnership announcements do not mark Aquinas’ first direct admittance deal.
The college also has a direct admit bachelor’s in nursing partnership with the University of Detroit Mercy, which allows students to take core curriculum courses at Aquinas and nursing classes from Detroit Mercy faculty.
On Nov. 14, Aquinas announced its direct admittance deal with West Catholic High School.
The school, located at 1801 Bristol Ave. NW, enrolled just over 500 students as of the 2024-25 school year, according to an online school profile.
West Catholic President and CEO Jill Wierzbicki said the initiative simplifies the college application process and offers students a straightforward path to higher education.
On Nov. 20, Aquinas then announced it had also partnered with Grand Rapids’ Catholic Central High School, 319 Sheldon Blvd SE, which enrolls 567 students and is the oldest co-educational diocesan Catholic high school in the nation.
Brian Matzke, vice president for enrollment management, said there’s “no doubt that Aquinas here has had more graduates from Catholic Central than any other school in our history.”
On Dec. 10, the college announced another partnership deal with Muskegon Catholic Central High School, 1145 W Laketon Ave., which enrolled just under 300 students in 2023-24, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Jerry McDowell, Muskegon Catholic Central president, said both the high school and Aquinas share a “deep commitment to developing the whole student — academically, spiritually, and individually.
“This direct-admit program provides our graduates with an exceptional opportunity to transition confidently into higher education while maintaining the Catholic values that guide their formation,” McDowell said.
Aquinas’ listed price for traditional undergraduate tuition is $41,192, according to senior director of strategic communications Dave DeJonge.
Students are eligible for annual merit scholarships between $15,000-$25,000, depending on their GPA and housing status. Additional scholarships may be available. This applies to all students who are admitted to Aquinas.
Matzke highlighted the direct admittance program’s easy transition from one West Michigan school to another, with those accepted to Aquinas able to live on campus or commute from home depending on what best fits their needs.
He also said a growing Grand Rapids job market, combined with support from the college’s career center, contributes to a 97% placement rate for graduates.
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