Letter to the Editor: Strip Auto Despair From The Front Page
It’s time to strip the auto industry stories of despair from the front page. With bailout money in place, the situation seems to be going in some direction and a higher power will ultimately determine its fate. Plenty of great things are happening in the City and region, but have become “white noise” lost in the drone of the auto industry woes.
I have always been a contrarian by nature and tend to not go with the crowd. When it came time to expand my business, I chose Detroit. I found I had comfort level with the area, having spent many summers here with my father who was a GM executive at the time. As a business owner with seven sites located across the eastern United States, our Detroit office has become the fastest growing in only three years. With great people, solution-based customer engagement, constant process improvement, strong corporate responsibility, support/buy local mentality and respect for the environment, our commercial flooring service is thriving.
We are not alone. With hard work and sound practices, businesses like RD Weis are determining their own fate without the benefit of taxpayer money or stimulus. We’re not just in business to make money, we’re here (in Detroit) to build relationships and make a difference… in more ways than one.
Hey Detroit, put those Midwest values to work. Let’s move forward.
Randy Weis, President
RD Weis Companies
www.rdweis.com
I was detailed to Detroit from September 2008 to last October. It’s where I’m orlingaily from. During the last 15 months of the assignment I lived right downtown, on the riverfront. I’m back in the Imperial Center, Metro DC, now.Detroit’s got severe problems, sure. It looks — well, ‘grim’ doesn’t quite capture it. It’s a little like living in an archaeological ruin. But I bicycled all over the city, day and night, solo and with a group of guys I fell in with. Never had a problem. Emptiness is the main vibe in Detroit now, not menace. Granted, I was — much to my astonishment — living a very privileged existence, compared to the average Detroiter. But I didn’t see the kind of daily mayhem that made Detroit the Murder Capital 20, 30, 40 years ago.For all its problems, there are several things going on in Detroit that I find very intriguing, that may yet bring me back there to stay. Land is so cheap and available that it’s almost like a new frontier. A trickle of younger people is starting to flow back into the city. There’s an active urban farming and gardening scene. Don’t forget that the world’s largest fresh water system drains right past Detroit’s eastern edge. I think the city might host some very interesting social and economic experiments in the years to come. (Unfortunately, Michiganders have opted to put an especially rabid sort of Republican in charge of the state. Not promising.)Here’s one contrast between B’more and The D that I never could figure out: In the bad neighborhoods of Baltimore I’m used to seeing little knots of young males hanging out, engaging in the commodities market. I never saw that in Detroit. I’m sure there’s a hopping drug trade there, but I don’t know where the deals happen. I heard speculation that dealers work out of vacant houses — no shortage of those in Detroit.I don’t know how I stumbled on to it, but I like the blog. It’s nice to know that not all cops are, well, state-sanctioned thugs. Gotta say, more and more I look at cops with wariness. And I’m a citizen, a white male taxpayer.– sglover