Detroit knows all about prospering in the face of adversity. Recent headlines have focused on a mayor embroiled in controversy and a faltering auto industry, but the Motor City keeps its engine running, bringing new business and attractions to a burgeoning downtown.
Some economic woes are actually turning into economic gains for the meetings industry.
“The United Auto Workers union is bringing a lot of meetings back to Detroit,” says Carla Conner-Penzabene, director of sales for the Detroit Metro CVB.
Rather than hosting meetings in Las Vegas and Orlando, as has been the case, the industry is staying closer to home and finding home to be a very different place than decades past, according to Conner-Penzabene.
“The city itself is much more appealing than it was 20 years ago,” she says. “We have a beautiful riverfront, downtown stadiums and a theater district. We now have casinos downtown open 24 hours a day and there is A-list entertainment that goes into those casinos. There are two Wolfgang Puck restaurants and two Michael Mina restaurants. This is all new for us.”
Detroit is undergoing the country’s largest urban redevelopment boom, with more than $20 billion in new development under way.
New casino hotels are part of the boom. Last November, MGM Grand Detroit opened its $800 million casino hotel, and MotorCity Casino Hotel also recently debuted. Each property has 400 rooms. In January, the Greektown-Casino Hotel will open.
Downtown there are 4,500 rooms within a mile of the 2.4 million-square-foot Cobo Conference and Exhibition Center. The center offers 700,000 square feet of convention space, but prior to the new hotels, there were not enough hotel rooms for the center’s size.
“Now we have a better hotel package for filling up the building,” Conner-Penzabene says.
Along with the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center, which is located on the riverfront with nearly 1,300 guest rooms and 100,000 square feet of meeting space, Detroit offers a number of meetings-capable hotels. The historic Book Cadillac in downtown Detroit will operate under the Westin flag in 2008 after undergoing a massive $180 million renovation, while the former Pick-Fort Shelby Hotel is undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation and is reopening in December as the Doubletree Guest Suites Fort Shelby/Detroit Downtown.
Despite all the regeneration, there are obstacles in attracting group business, according to Conner-Penzabene, including a misconception about crime problems in Detroit.
“The area that makes up downtown—hotels, the convention center, casinos, theater—all that area is Precinct 1, and the crime status in that area typically shows Detroit is 28 percent safer than virtually any city in the U.S. We do have neighborhoods you don’t want to get into, but every city does. Where all the activities and entertainment are, you can walk around and be perfectly safe.”
One safe and convenient feature is Detroit’s above-ground monorail system, which stops at 13 of the most popular locations downtown on its 13-minute loop.
Seeing is believing, which is the reason Conner-Penzabene emphasizes getting meeting planners to Detroit as vital to the city’s self-promotion.
“What we want to do is bring them into the region. Detroit is very difficult to sell with a brochure or video,” she says. “There is a lot they need to see for themselves.”
The strategy is working, as Detroit is on pace with its booking of convention groups. Last year Detroit booked 11 citywide meetings, marking an upturn. In the previous five years, the city had not booked more than six citywides in any one year. For 2008, the city has been maintaining last year’s pace.
Part of the new appeal is the Detroit International Riverfront. The Detroit RiverFront Conservancy is developing access along five-and-a-half miles of riverfront property, from the Ambassador Bridge to Gabriel Richard Park, just east of the Belle Isle Bridge. The goal is a continuous RiverWalk with parks, plazas and green spaces.
“Continued development of the riverfront is a big thing for us,” Conner-Penzabene says.
In the past it has been an industrial riverfront, not for visitors or residents. Change happened when casinos came onboard. They talked about using one area on the river and had a landmass accumulated. The casinos instead built elsewhere downtown, while the city used the landmass to change the landscape of Detroit.
“We had a lot of warehouses and parking lots along the river, all land taken back. Now we have the most incredibly beautiful, walkable, friendly riverfront,” Conner-Penzabene says.
Currently the RiverWalk includes a carousel, lighthouse, marina and three parks along some three miles, while construction recently began for a new visitors center for incoming cruise ships.
“We haven’t had cruise ships in Detroit for years,” Conner-Penzabene says.
Currently ships dock on the Windsor, Ontario, side of the river, but Detroit will see its first ship in 2009.
Access to the city also got a boost from the September opening of the Detroit Metropolitan Airport’s new $426 million North Terminal. Though a recent report in the Detroit News states that six of the terminal’s 24 gates will not be leased due mainly to airline itinerary cuts, the terminal will still help accommodate more flights to the city.
Detroit boasts convenience, as it is only a 90-minute flight from 60 percent of the nation’s population.
While many of the city’s attractions are along the river, groups can also get out on the water. One option is the Detroit Princess Riverboat for up to 2,000 people, with three levels, each offering different entertainment. Diamond Jack’s River Tours offers a variety of boats, which ply the waters on the U.S. side one way and back up along the Canadian side.
On land, the city’s ’60s Motown past is still a draw. The Motown Historical Museum chronicles the genesis of the record company and is home to the world-famous Studio A, where the Temptations, Marvin Gaye and countless others recorded with the Funk Brothers.
“The Motown era was great, but there is always new music coming out of Detroit,” Conner-Penzabene notes, referring to top names like Eminem and the White Stripes. “The music scene is just huge. Any night of the week there is free music everywhere—downtown, on the riverfront. It’s something Detroit does well and is very proud of.”
Detroit is also home to the Detroit International Jazz Festival, the country’s largest, held every Labor Day weekend.
Another unique option for groups is the Detroit Science Center, which offers 110,000 square feet of museum space, featuring traveling exhibits, five hands-on exhibit laboratories, two demonstration stages, an IMAX Dome Theatre and the Dassault Systemes Planetarium. The center offers over 62,000 square feet of meeting and event space.
Also available to groups are the two side-by-side stadiums: the open-air Comerica Park and domed Ford Field, both located in the city’s entertainment district.
Outdoor buffs can visit Belle Isle, the largest city-owned island park. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who fashioned New York’s Central Park, Belle Isle features an 85-foot carillon tower, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, Scott Memorial Fountain and Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory, as well as a nature center, athletic fields and fishing piers.
Outside the main downtown area, Detroit shows off its multiethnic diversity. Visitors can get a taste of the city’s cultural milieu in bustling Greektown, as well as the less-touristy Mexican Town in southwest Detroit, the Italian neighborhoods of Macomb Township in Macomb County and the Polish and increasingly Indian and Bangladeshi neighborhoods of the city of Hamtramck.
Detroit’s three counties—Wayne, Oakland and Macomb—comprise the metro Detroit area. They are home to the “Big Three” American automakers: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Each district has its own attractions.
In Wayne County, Dearborn features the Henry Ford Museum and the Automotive Hall of Fame. Dearborn is also home to Largest Arab population outside the Middle East and the only Arab-American museum in the country. North Oakland County offers shopping, with Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom as top-name attractions, while Mt. Clemens in the Macomb area is home to the Emerald Theater as well as funky restaurants and bars.
The towns within the counties, such as the suburbs of Dearborn, Romulus, Troy, Novi, Southfield, Plymouth and Bloomfield, all have group-friendly hotels.
Among the options are the Inn at St. John’s in Plymouth; Westin Detroit Metropolitan Airport and the Metropolitan Hotel Detroit Airport; Novi’s Rock Financial Showplace and the Sheraton Detroit Novi Hotel; the Hyatt Regency Dearborn and The Ritz-Carlton, Dearborn; the Hilton Detroit/Troy-Auburn Hills hotel and the Detroit Marriott Troy; the Westin Southfield Detroit and the Embassy Suites Detroit Southfield; and the Radisson Hotel Detroit–Bloomfield Hills.
Good Neighbors
Across the Detroit River, with access via the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, Windsor, Ontario, makes the Detroit area truly an international destination.
One of its main attractions is the Caesars Windsor casino, formerly the Windsor Casino. The rebranded casino launched in June following a $400 million expansion project that added a convention center, a 5,000-seat entertainment center and another hotel tower.
Along Windsor’s waterfront, which stretches from the Ambassador Bridge to the Hiram Walker Distillery, are a number of attractions, including the Odette Sculpture Park, with over 30 large-scale contemporary sculptures. The waterfront is also home to the Dieppe Gardens, Bert Weeks Memorial Gardens, Coventry Gardens and the Charles Brooks Memorial Peace Fountain.
“We work with Windsor a lot,” Conner-Penzabene says, noting that Windsor is appealing for international conventions and national associations that have large Canadian chapters or contingencies that attend conventions.
The St. Clair Centre for the Arts, formerly the Cleary International Centre, offers 40,000 square feet of meeting space over four levels for groups of up to 1,500. The center features 25 meeting rooms and a rooftop terrace, and is also home to the 1,200-seat Chrysler Theatre, Masonic Temple Ballroom and Mackenzie Hall, originally a courthouse.
Windsor also caters to groups with the Hilton Windsor and the Radisson Riverfront Hotel Windsor, both offering meeting space.
For More Info
CVB of Windsor Essex County & Pelee Island 519.255.6530 www.visitwindsor.com
Detroit Metro CVB 13.202.1800 www.visitdetroit.com
