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Downtown Detroit's Revival

DETROIT—Retail in Downtown Detroit has gone through a long twilight, but recent openings by national retailers is a sign of new life.

By Dees Stribling | Updated on October 14, 2004

DETROIT—The imminent opening of bakery-café Au Bon Pain in Downtown Detroit’s Campus Martius Park and the inking of a lease for a Nike concept store on nearby Woodward Ave. late last month are the latest milestones on the road to recovery for a long-suffering area. Retail has come Downtown in recent months, as work continues on Campus Martius Park, a public work intended to bring visitors Downtown, as well as serve the existing office-worker population.

But the future of retail in the area remains an open question. For one thing, the resident population necessary to support retail—as opposed to those retailers aimed at visitors—remains small. According to figures compiled by the Greater Downtown Partnership, the projected population in 2005 of the Lower Woodward area would be 12,382, slightly down from 2000′s 12,601 total. (Lower Woodward is a mile radius from the intersection of Griswold and Congress, and takes in all of the city’s CBD.) Even more telling is the income statistics for the same area: nearly 40% of households earn less than $15,000 per year.

Still, it’s been a heady time for retail in Detroit’s CBD, which is anticipating a big boost in the run up to Super Bowl XL in February 2006, which will be at the relatively new (2002) Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions. Au Bon Pain was chosen this summer to be the only retail establishment in Campus Martius Park, and has opened even before that park, which is set to be complete by the end of this year.

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