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The splashy Detroit Homecoming event underway through Friday morning catches flak from a sideline observer on its first full day.
Metro Times managing editor Michael Jackman sees it as "a huge dog-and-pony show" and "a bunch of crap," he says in a blog post.
The tour, closed to the media, will likely be reminiscent of the tours Castro gave visiting European Communists back in the 1960s, showing how Detroit is a model of capitalism and entrepreneurship that just needs a few more rubes … er, enthusiastic young investors to really get things going.
The ambitious first-time event certainly isn't immune from critical commentary during its presentations or, perhaps more fairly, after it wraps up. A Deadline reader's comment, for example, legitimately asks: "Would love to know what % of the 160 invited guests was African American. Moreover, would also love to know what % of African Americans were sitting on Crain's selection panel." (The list of attendees is here, but we don't know the racial mix.)
Jackman's beef, based on what he reads and assumes about the three-day gathering, is that "most of the people who loved this region but left it anyway did it because the leadership of Michigan and metro Detroit simply do not have their priorities in mind, and never will."
Many young professionals want to live in a dense thriving neighborhood, eschew car ownership, ride effective rapid transit, and live among all sorts of different people. . . .
Also, when you bring in a bunch of people from New York and other ultra-gentrified cities where you can't be an artist or struggling writer anymore to tell us about how Detroit can be as creative as they are, we call bullshit on that too. Detroit may not be New York, but that's a good thing when you consider the scrappy people from both coasts who don't mind failed public services and want to live in edgy neighborhoods with social ills and do move here. Apparently, the clueless boobs in charge of Detroit Homecoming don't realize that they'd sacrifice exactly the things that make Detroit interesting in their rush to plant a Whole Foods on every block.
OK then, now that bull is being called out, let's take a look at what the managing editor of one Detroit weekly says about something run by a larger Detroit weekly.
- Detroit Homecoming isn't primarily an "effort to get former and native Detroiters to consider moving back to the city," as Jackman claims. It also isn't aimed only, or even mainly, at "enthusiastic young investors." It's a get-reacquainted event aimed at generating appreciation, support and back-home buzz about Detroit among ten dozen or so influential "alumni." Investments and relocations aren't discouraged, naturally, but the scope is wider than assumed at Metro Times.
- Presentations and discussions are not closed to the media and are livestreamed for public viewing. Tour buses are for attendees, but journalists who trail them or await them can cover visits to Ponyride, Next Energy, the DIA, the Henry Ford Innovation Institute and other stops.
- Just because the co-CEO of a fancy foods chain spoke Wednesday at the conference about a possible second site here doesn't mean Crain's and other event sponsors value gourmet retailers over galleries, lofts, performance spaces, locally incubated public art, food trucks or craft breweries. That's just a reflexive shot at an easy target.
- That "bunch of people from New York and other ultra-gentrified cities" include guests from Syracuse, Denver, Palm Beach Gardens, Toledo, Richmond, Calif.; Lexington, Mass.; Hyattsville, Md., and cities of all types.
While Jackman snipes at Whole Foods and pledges by "visiting billionaires," Crain's blogger Sherri Welch reports that a Homecoming invitee who couldn't come has pledged $10 million to the Detroit Children's Fund, a new Skillman Foundation charitable affiliate that will invest in neighborhood programs.
The managing editor's venting, headlined "The problem with Detroit Homecoming," reaches far beyond the event -- which he sees as a symptom of something larger:
The leaders of Michigan and the metropolitan Detroit region have priorities that are diametrically opposed to those of the young people they hope to entice back to Detroit. . . .
And no marketing program can solve that.
The puzzlement at reading Jackman's commentary arises not from seeing a 45-year-old editor speak on behalf of "what young people desire." It comes from wondering why a Detroit journalist and his publication turn a well-intended, privately financed Detroit pep rally into a target for divisiveness.
Detroit Homecoming participants came from New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin, LA, Seattle and "other ultra-gentrified cities" because they believe in Detroit and want to see it become healthier. Metro Times should be able to debate the best ways to do that without attacking the hosts as "clueless boobs."
