Daily Detroit

The Detroit Tigers have the worst record in Major League Baseball, and we're wistful of Tiger Stadium's last pitch 20 years ago

Electric car startup Bollinger Motors releases a pair of new vehicles, and they don't use stamping so it's very boxy

Oakland County guarantees county employees $15 an hour

Detroit's North End breaks ground on a new mini golf course

A makerspace in Ferndale is having a livestream fundraiser this weekend and has a pedal pub with sewing machines and soldering irons. Find out more at http://www.i3detroit.org

Fletcher Sharpe talks all things Detroit City FC

A new T-Shirt is getting Twitter talking, and no, Michigan doesn't have a budget deal yet.

Lester Graham is a journalist at Michigan Radio, where he hosts "The Environment Report" and the news magazine "Stateside." Tammy Coxen is the host of Tammy's Tastings, a series of food and drink tastings, classes and experiences in Ann Arbor. The two friends been doing a segment on cocktails on Michigan Radio called "Cheers!" for more than three years.

Now, they've got a new book based on that series. It's called "Cheers to Michigan: A Celebration of Cocktail Culture and Craft Distillers."

As Graham and Coxen explain in today's episode, the book is part recipes, a little how-to and a lot of Michigan history stirred in the shaker. It covers everything from Detroit's outsize role in bootlegging during Prohibition to the city's invention of three famous cocktails, and the current boom in craft cocktails and craft distilleries. So belly up and have a listen.

Thanks for listening to Daily Detroit. If you like what you're hearing, tell a friend about us, leave us a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or support us by becoming a Patreon member.

The United Auto Workers strike against GM over a lack of a new contract has dragged on into a second week. Meanwhile, the negotiations over the state budget are going down to the wire ahead of the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, and the prospects of enacting a budget and avoiding a state government shutdown don't appear bright.

The combination of those two storylines isn't good news for Michigan's economy. On today's show, we hear from Charles Ballard, an economics professor at Michigan State University who has written extensively about the state's economy.

Ballard says the economics of a prolonged GM strike, coupled with a state government shutdown, would particularly hurt the Lansing region, which has a GM plant and is the state capitol. And it could definitely push Michigan back into recession for the first time in a decade.

And Michigan's economy hasn't been doing all that great to begin with, Ballard says, with a major slowdown in the number of jobs created since 2017, and any economic gains mostly flowing to the top earners. Have a listen in the player above.

Thanks for listening to Daily Detroit. If you like what you're hearing, tell a friend about us, leave us a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or support us by becoming a Patreon member.

The Motor City is a nickname for our town that is known the world over.

After all, we put the world on wheels. But what if the same industry that gave us economic strength also, in a way, took away the vitality of the city?

Detroiters for Parking Reform says there is too much surface parking around greater Downtown Detroit. And our guest today is Francis Grunow.

They point to statistics like 40% of Downtown Detroit is devoted to storing cars. And they say in today's world, that hurts Detroit's resurgence.

We'll get into that with Grunow and talk about lessons learned from being a key part of a Neighborhood Adivsory Council in the shadows of Little Caesars Arena.

After all, the District Detroit held a lot of promise. But most of it is unfulfilled.

And then we share a couple things you should know around town.

The now-defunct Axle Brewing said it hoped to find a like-minded brewer to take over their gleaming Livernois Tap when it announced it was ceasing operations in June, and it appears to have found one in Eastern Market Brewing Co., which announced it will take over the gleaming brewpub and eatery in Ferndale they're calling the Ferndale Project. According to the Freep, EMBC will rebrand the facility, which will allow them to triple — yes, TRIPLE — their brewing capacity.

Also on today's episode, we talk about Devin Myers, the guy from that viral guilty-of-being-black video of being questioned by police officers from Royal Oak after a white woman said he was suspicious. He faces charges from an unrelated incident allegedly fleeing the po-po. [Daily Tribune]

We also talk about what's going on with the project to convert I-375 in Detroit from an urban freeway to a surface boulevard with bike lanes, and one other little ditty about perseverence in Detroit.

BONUS AUDIO: If you listen all the way to the end, I pull my leftover bottle of Axle's Secret Meeting, a 13% ABV Baltic porter that was released way back in April. Is it still any good? Tune in to find out.

Thanks for listening to Daily Detroit. If you like what you're hearing, tell a friend about us, leave us a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or support us by becoming a Patreon member.

On today's show:

• Amazon is looking to build a new facility at the site of the old Silverdome.
• Also, Amazon is buying 100,000 electric delivery vans from local electric car startup Rivian.
• An adult club was shut down in Detroit.
• The city is getting a grant for self-driving vehicle testing.
• I-75 is going to be a special kind of mess this weekend.
• The Somerset Collection is opening a permanent spot in downtown Detroit
• And Jer stopped by the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy to talk about the progress on the riverfront and a new cigar and cocktail event, Smoke on the River. https://www.smokeontheriverdetroit.com/

Nearly 50,000 UAW workers have gone on strike at General Motors, the first time the union has gone on strike in 12 years, after the last four-year agreement expired without an agreement over a new one.

The strike also comes at a time that federal authorities are widening their investigation into embezzlement by top union leadership past and present, with nine people so far convicted of skimming member dues and money from automakers meant to support job-training programs.

On today's show, we speak with auto analyst Michelle Krebs of Autotrader.com all about the strike, how the corruption scandal is affecting negotiations and how a protracted labor stoppage could affect workers, GM and the broader economy.

Also on this episode, we run through Ford's new master plan for its Research & Engineering Center in Dearborn. And we discuss Bon Appetit's mention of Ochre, a bakery you probably hadn't heard of (raised hand) on the far edge of Woodbridge, in its Hot 10 list. Thanks for listening to Daily Detroit. If you like what you're hearing, tell a friend about us, leave us a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or support us by becoming a Patreon member.

Today my guest is Chris Gethard.

He's the host of the podcast Beautiful / Anonymous, which tells beautiful stories from anonymous people in a most interesting way.

Each week Gethard opens the phone line to one anonymous callet — and he can't hang up first, no matter what — and he doesn't know where the conversation will go.

Anything can and does happen, and a live show is coming to Hamtramck this weekend as part of the Motor City Comedy Festival.

More on the Motor City Comedy Festival: https://motorcitycomedyfest.com/

Also some brief news around town:

There's a massive strike at GM. UAW workers want a better contract that makes up some of the ground they gave in leaner times.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan wants city council, then voters, to approve a $250 million bond to fight blight ahead of schedule.

And 20,000 defective streetlights in the city have been replaced, according to the Public Lighting Authority.

It's almost the weekend!

On the show today:

Sven Gustafson breaks down what he's been able to track down up on Mackinac Island about the Grand Hotel's sale to a private equity firm, and talks about his experience working on the island

Fletcher Sharpe joins us in studio to talk about Detroit City FC's epic win over Mexican first division Club Atlas, and previews this weekend's match against the Milwaukee Torrent

And we chat with educator Justin Trombly as Waldorf schools are celebrating their 100th anniversary next week, and a Waldorf school has been a part of Detroit's Indian Village for decades.

Love the show? Support us on Patreon. Or tell a friend about the show. Available in all of your favorite podcast apps.

The nonprofit Jefferson East Inc. has been working since the 1990s to redevelop Detroit's hard-bitten Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood and business district, located on the far east end of Jefferson Avenue near the border with Grosse Pointe Park.

Recently, the organization and its for-profit real estate development arm East Jefferson Development Corp., held a weeklong community workshop to solicit ideas from residents about what they want to see in their neighborhood.

On today's episode, we speak with EJDevCo CEO Derric Scott and Jefferson East Chief Exec Josh Elling about what the organization learned from the process, how it's working with would-be tenants to best serve the immediate needs of the neighborhood, and how the for-profit development unit helps expand what the organization can accomplish.

Scott says East Jefferson Development Corp. owns or controls 87% of the properties located within Jefferson-Chalmers, a once-thriving business district that stretches along Jefferson from Lenox Street to Alter Road. The district is filled with some incredible architecture, but also many vacant and blighted buildings. It's also home to the first protected bike lanes in the city.

Residents who came out to the workshops expressed a desire for things including a new first-run movie theater, a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, and a redevelopment of the formerly whites-only Vanity Ballroom as an inclusive mixed-use asset to the community.

Thanks for listening to Daily Detroit. If you like what you're hearing, tell a friend about us, leave us a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or support us by becoming a Patreon member.