Arbor Update

Ann Arbor Area Community News

Kwame wins?!

9. November 2005 • Murph
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Detroit News:

Incumbent Kwame Kilpatrick claimed victory today in the Detroit mayoral race after a long, tense election day that saw him trailing challenger Freman Hendrix until the very end.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Kilpatrick had 53 percent of the vote, compared with 47 percent for Hendrix. The challenger had yet to concede.

“We had people power,” Kilpatrick told supporters at a 2:30 a.m. celebration. “Some of y’all are just plain crazy, because you had no business standing up … you had no business knocking on doors, we couldn’t win. And now, the whole country that’s been watching this race, they say you’re crazy like a fox.”

Well, that’s surprising.



  1. They also tossed the ethically-challenged city clerk, Jackie Currie.
       —tom    Nov. 9 '05 - 03:21PM    #
  2. I guess the FBI will tell us if this is legal or not. Goes to show that grandstanding and photo ops tend to determine these things.

    Currie is partly vindicated, but on the other hand was soundly voted out of office. City council looks somewhat saner, but it remains to be seen whether they’re up for the job. And does a former council member now have a tacit position in a Kilpatrick administration? Sigh. The good news is, it can’t get any worse for Detroit…
       —Young Urban Amateur    Nov. 9 '05 - 03:22PM    #
  3. Pretty far (but not completely) off-topic (Detroit mentioned several times). Is this an inappropriate way to make a thread nomination?

    Uncool cities:

    http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7072&AuthKey=864b5d0a0841d041edb673e66804aea5&issue=510
       —mw    Nov. 9 '05 - 05:07PM    #
  4. I don’t know that Kilpatrick has been trying to get “young creatives” to move to Detroit so much as he has been trying to get anyone to move to Detroit. Heck, he would probably settle for stopping the flow out of Detroit, never mind getting anyone to actually move there. As for Florida’s thesis, I don’t know that it’s all that accurate, but the perception of a city being a neat place to live certainly draws young professionals there. However, I think that even Florida would agree that jobs come first—in other words, you need to create the kinds of jobs that young professionals would want to have in order for them to believe your hype. It’s not the image you’re trying to sell: it’s the reality.
       —Young Urban Amateur    Nov. 9 '05 - 06:15PM    #
  5. YUA,

    I think Florida and others are drunk on the Jobs/Wozniak success myth – get enough “creatives” together in one place and pretty soon companies like Apple will pop up. Detroit’s got plenty of garages – if we could only get more people into those garages, with soldering irons instead of guitars, we’d have all the jobs we could want!
       —Murph.    Nov. 9 '05 - 06:19PM    #
  6. What’s interesting is that there is quite a bit of new and renovated housing going up in Detroit. Downtown and in other neighborhoods like Midtown (formerly Cass Corridor), a lot of old buildings are being converted to lofts, and they are selling.

    For those interested in these sorts of things, an outfit called Preservation Wayne have a number of tours of different parts of Detroit, with emphasis on older buildings and neighborhoods. I’ve taken several and can highly recommend them.
       —tom    Nov. 9 '05 - 06:22PM    #
  7. As I said at MichiganLiberal.com last night: with Kwame’s (and his mommy’s) appearance at Rosa Parks’ funeral, his apparent endorsement by Jackson Sharpton AND Farrakhan, Hendrix’s son’s domestic violence accusation, and the ad about Hendrix “dragging the old lady out of the school board meeting”, I had a sinking feeling about what the results would be…..

    As a consolation, you can hear my rap song “Kwame Got Fat”, at http://d-bo.com/kwamegotfat.html …
       —David Boyle    Nov. 9 '05 - 06:51PM    #
  8. No, no, Cass Corridor is still Cass Corridor. See, e.g., http://casscorridor.com/

    For some reason the image evoked by the words “Cass Corridor” among non-Detroiters are still stuck in the 1950s, when the neighborhood was Detroit’s drug and prostitution district.
       —Larry Kestenbaum    Nov. 9 '05 - 08:13PM    #
  9. Larry,

    I’ll see your http://casscorridor.com/ and raise you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midtown,_Detroit

    I was there just recently, and along Cass, 2nd, 3rd, near the WSU campus were a bunch of banners proclaiming the area to be Midtown.
       —tom    Nov. 9 '05 - 08:29PM    #
  10. According to that article, Midtown includes CC, but also covers a lot of other territory to the east and north. Brush Park, for example, is not part of Cass Corridor, but is mentioned as part of Midtown.

    Cass Corridor is bounded by the Fisher Freeway, Woodward Ave, Lodge Freeway, and West Warren.

    Banners on light poles are not generally put up by people in the neighborhood, or even by community groups, but by the city government’s PR flacks. My understanding is that the “Midtown” concept comes from the planning office, not the neighborhood.

    My only point here is that, contrary to what I think you were implying, Cass Corridor has not been superseded as a neighborhood identity by the Midtown marketing ploy.
       —Larry Kestenbaum    Nov. 9 '05 - 10:28PM    #
  11. I just moved from Ann Arbor to the Cass Corridor. Check out Wayne State’s Master Plan: http://www.facilities.wayne.edu/mp/2020mp.htm

    The area known as Midtown has an organization called the UCCA, University Cultural Center Association. www.detroitmidtown.com They are working on development programs, a new greenway, and tons of other stuff. The Cass Corridor is generally the area west of woodward in the Midtown area. It’s a nice place and getting better every day. If anyone wants a tour let me know.
       —Rohde    Nov. 10 '05 - 12:08AM    #
  12. Could Detroit city’s Ambassator program explain Kwame’s come from behind victory? Did he win when the absentee ballots were counted?
       —Chuck    Nov. 10 '05 - 12:42AM    #
  13. Heh, I actually wrote the Wikipedia article. Cass Corridor still has some negative stigma attached to it which is why many in the area like the newer Midtown designation. But as an area twice the size of Downtown Detroit it contains distinct quarters such as the Wayne State campus, Medical Center, Brush Park, and Cass Corridor. I recommend that people take up Rohde’s offer of the tour as it’s one of the best areas of Detroit while remaining under the radar of those who may only go into the city for sports.
       —tomo    Nov. 10 '05 - 01:41AM    #
  14. The revitalization of the Midtown area (which includes the Cass Corridor – ok Larry?) was my original point. Lots of interesting things are going on there “under the radar” as tomo put it.
       —tom    Nov. 10 '05 - 01:46PM    #
  15. Yes, I’m okay with putting it that way.
       —Larry Kestenbaum    Nov. 11 '05 - 03:57AM    #