DETROIT (WWJ) – Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s biggest focus of Wednesday night’s State of the City address was tackling blight across the city.
Duggan shared both the progress that has been made and the work that is yet to be done.
The city has removed more than 23,000 vacant homes since Proposal N was passed in 2020. But the mayor says he’s “more proud” of the roughly 11,000 homes that have been rehabbed instead of removed under that program.
Duggan said the city is still only about two-thirds of the way done with its blight removal endeavor.
He hopes all abandoned and dilapidated homes will be removed or renovated by the end of the next four years.
Duggan shared an anecdote of visiting Washington, D.C., when someone told him he had to visit a Detroit exhibit at a museum in their city. It turns out, the exhibit was a bunch of photos of the city's decay and decline.
Other cities -- London, Paris, Amsterdam, and others -- also had similar displays, according to Duggan. "Who's low enough," he asked, to go look at such a display?
The city has come a long way since then, a fact he highlighted by the work of developers like Dan Gilbert, who took on massive projects at the Hudson’s site and the Book Tower restoration – which is expected to be completed this year with residential units, office and retail space.
Other big makeovers across the city include the Ilitch-led removal of "Zombie land," the recently announced renovation of the Fisher Body 21 Plant, and of course, Ford's renovation of Michigan Central Station.
Mayor Duggan also talked about COVID-19 pandemic in the city, saying cases and hospitalizations are down in Detroit.
He said it's becoming an endemic virus that we will have to learn to live with.
He delivered the speech from Factory ZERO, General Motors’ first fully dedicated electric vehicle assembly plant.
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