Not Breaking News, Just BIG News For Detroit!

Photo: Curbed Detroit

Bedrock has officially confirmed they have commissioned the identical twin brother team How & Nosm to erect the world's largest mural on the First National Building's eastern facade.

A geometric design from Detroit artist Alvin Loving Jr was in the same spot from the 1970's until 1989.  The new design will have elements of what was originally there.





Art X Detroit: Kresge Arts Experience (AXD) is a 10-day festival of dance, literary, musical & theatrical performances, film screenings, visual arts installations, workshops, panel discussions & interactive experiences.

AXD presents works created by the 2013-2014 Kresge Eminent Artists and Artist Fellows. AXD will be hosted at multiple venues throughout Midtown Detroit and beyond over a three-week period in April & is FREE to the public.


Dates: April 9-12, 16-19, 25-26

Schedule of Events: http://www.artxdetroit.com/art-x-detroit-2015/schedule/

For more information, visit www.ArtXDetroit.com or call (313) 420-6000


A walk through the Detroit Institute of Arts’ first major exhibition since the city emerged from bankruptcy in December doesn't just offer a closer look at the museum's most famous piece; it gives visitors a chance to see the early stages of the artist's masterpiece.

The exhibition, “Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit,” looks at the trajectories of the married Mexican artists before and after they arrived in the city in 1932; however, the exhibition directs most attention to the making of Rivera’s large-scale mural “Detroit Industry," a piece made up of 27 individual panels. The fresco cycle, commissioned by the museum and paid for by auto baron heir Edsel Ford, fills an airy central court at the museum.

“It’s like a secular Sistine [Chapel] ceiling,” Mark Rosenthal told The Huffington Post, comparing Rivera to Michelangelo and praising a near-unmatched ability to “compose fantastic narrative” in his paintings.

The mural, a celebration and subtle critique of modern industry, is sprawling in size and content, but every detailed inch contains symbolism of the city’s present, past and future. The exhibition takes a closer look at some of those details in their early form: Rivera’s large preparatory drawings, which served as drafts for the final murals, are on display for the first time since the 1980s. Placed alongside the panels they inspired, the exuberant charcoal sketches he called “cartoons” reveal how Rivera translated his broad strokes into the final scenes.

Click HERE For The Full Article! 
www.detroityp.org


Greater downtown Detroit continues to have near-full residential occupancy according to a new report.

The figures come from the “7.2 SQ MI” report, which is from a partnership between the Hudson-Webber Foundation, Downtown Detroit Partnership, Midtown Detroit, Inc., Detroit Economic Growth Corporation and Invest Detroit, and provides an assessment of those living, working and investing in downtown Detroit.

“We believe a strong core is critical to the success of Detroit and our region,” said Eric Larson, CEO of Downtown Detroit Partnership, in a release. “Having this data assists us in shaping new programming and fine tuning our initiatives supporting a resilient city and downtown.”

This is the second edition of the report, which was first released in early 2013, and covers a 7.2 square mile collection of neighborhoods: Downtown, Midtown, Woodbridge, Eastern Market, Lafayette Park, Rivertown and Corktown, and found there are 35,037 people living in the area.

For those living downtown, there is a greater foreign-born population in downtown than the state ( 7 vs. 6 percent) and larger concentration of college educated individuals in the area than even the United States (8 vs. 4 percent).

Click HERE For The Full Article! 


Who can apply?

  • Homeowners must own and occupy their home for at least six months prior to applying.
  • Low-income homeowners can apply no matter where they live. View the income table to learn more.
  • Regardless of income, homeowners in designated areas in each city council district can still apply. See the map.
  • The minimum credit score is 560. If you don’t qualify for a loan, we’ll help you improve your credit score with free credit counseling.
  • Homeowner’s insurance and taxes must be current.
  • The homeowner must be able to afford the loan payments.



What repairs qualify?

If the home has health and safety hazards, those issues must be addressed first before other repairs can be made. The following are sample projects:

  • Correcting health and safety hazards (required)
  • Electrical repairs;
  • Furnace replacement;
  • Roof replacement;
  • Plumbing;
  • Door and window replacement, restoration or maintenance;
  • Porches and structural support.



Click HERE For More Information!
Photo: BrickCityLive.com



Craft Entrepreneurship is an educational program that equips creative people in underserved communities with the knowledge and skills to start Etsy businesses and earn supplemental income through their craft.

In each city, Etsy partners with local organizations that are working to empower lower income residents through creative and interactive programming. Each organization is responsible for recruiting students who have craft and manufacturing skills, and who need support in applying their talents to entrepreneurial endeavors.

This support can be best provided through in-depth education and hands-on experience. Etsy has created a curriculum designed to be taught in person by experienced, local Etsy sellers who we train and prepare for the classroom. Participants put their learning into action by setting up and running an Etsy shop and practice strategies for success across a variety of selling environments.

Detroit's Build Institute CEP is a 5-week, 12-hour course with sessions running Fridays April 10th, 17th, 24th and May 1st and 8th. All sessions run from 6pm - 8pm, except the April 17th class will run 4pm - 8pm for a special product photography session.

All classes will be held at the Ford Resource and Engagement Center (2826 Bagley Ave, Detroit MI). The cost of the course is $75 for BUILD graduates and $100 for non-BUILD graduates. You must pay the full cost in order to reserve your seat in the course.

Eligibility requirements:
At least 1 handmade craft ready to sell
No previous sales on Etsy.com 
Credit card (for your sales) & Internet access

Click HERE For More Information & Registration! 
Good French fries are so much more than a limp side dish for burgers. The best are capable of standing alone — figuratively and literally — on the plate. And the best of the best can draw you back to a restaurant over and over again. When the Yahoo Travel editors assigned me the task of creating this list, I began dreaming of deep-fried delicacies from across the country. I imagined months spent traveling and savoring the earthy aroma released by fresh cut potatoes when they first begin to brown. Count me in!

And then I fell back to Earth. They were not interested in my list of favorite fries; they wanted yours. The list was to be crowd-sourced through Yahoo Travel's readers, as well as our favorite foodies across this great French fry-eating country.

The number of people who crave the fries of national chain burger joints (which shall remain nameless) is shocking. Those are NOT fries, people. Step outside the burger box and see what the rest of the country is eating.

Here’s the list, as curated by one very hungry writer.

Truffle fries at Green Dot Stables in Detroit (Photo: MyThy H./Yelp)



Michigan 

Sure, there are truffle fries at Green Dot Stables in Detroit, but the crowds prefer the venison chili cheese fries.

Click HERE For The Full List!  Road Trip, Anyone???




Detroit Locations:

Detroit RiverWalk 

Ford Field 


Full Michigan List




One of Detroit's most-abundant "resources" is the graffiti which covers walls and abandoned buildings all over the city. Where some people might see urban decay, Amy Peterson saw opportunity and today she is the co-founder of Rebel Nell - a jewellery company which turns graffiti into earrings, necklaces and cuff-links. The company took off after winning funding from the local community at a Detroit Soup dinner, and today it employs three previously homeless women who design the jewellery which is sold in cities across the United States.

Click HERE For The Full Detroit Series! 
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Photo: Courtesy of Timothy Orikri - Detroit Resurgence via Pierre Paul Design

Makers are slowly but surely helping to regenerate the city of Detroit, which collapsed with the auto industry. Since the Michigan metropolis went under largely because it relied on a single corporate industry, diversification by creativity seems a fitting antidote. “When you take a city down to a low point, it requires such an enormous amount of heart and soul to rebuild,” says Shane Douglas of Douglas & Co., a designer and hand-maker of fine leather goods in Detroit.

"Many people abandoned this city and ripped the ground out from under it. Those who remained are passion-driven people–artists, creators, and crafters who use their pleasures as a vehicle for business. There is such strength behind that kind of work. It is no longer just a hobby," Douglas says, reflecting on the vitality of the city’s patriots.

“No dream is too big for Detroit,” says his wife Melissa, an artist and lifetime Metro Detroiter and co-founder of Douglas & Co.

Creatives from other cities are even moving in now. Brooklyn-born-and-bred Galapagos Art Space is relocating its 20-year-old performance center to Detroit after being priced out of New York. Galapagos bought nine buildings totaling 600,000 square feet and has plans to create a 10,000 square-foot lake near Detroit’s Corktown in an area some refer to as the “Hubbard-Richard” neighborhood.

Galapagos Executive Director Robert Elmes told the New York Times they bought the buildings for the price of a “small apartment in New York City” at the time. Among the buildings is “an old power plant that looks like a little Tate Modern,” Elmes said. Galapagos helped put Williamsburg, Brooklyn on the art map. Now it’ll give Detroit cache.

Click HERE For The Full Article! 


The real hipsters of Portland have had it.

With the cost of living in Rose City steadily rising, some Portlanders are packing up and heading to Detroit in pursuit of the music and art scene Portland was known for in the 1990s.


An abandoned house in Detroit, MI overlooks the city's downtown. Photo: Harvard.edu
Realtor Larry Else of Realty Flo, who famously represented a Detroit man selling his house for an iPhone in 2014, said he has helped at least five Portlanders buy homes in Detroit in the last year. He said he is in the process of helping a handful more, all connected through word of mouth.
“They’ve been buying houses in decent neighborhoods, move-in ready, for 20 grand,” Else said. “It started with a band member, and then he moved out the rest of his band, then they all got their own homes.”

'Portland isn't the same'

Multiple venues that once formed the backbone of Portland's music scene have now closed--Satyricon, Slabtown, The Blue Monk, Laughing Horse Books, Backspace, East End, Berbati’s, Langano, to name a few--and neighborhoods in Southeast where bands like Sleater-Kinney once practiced at full volume are now home to middle-class families.

"Whenever I talk to people from Portland, it's 'Portland isn’t the same anymore," Else said. According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which measures the value of residential real estate, and calculates the average change in value of real estate year over year, Portland’s index rose 70 percent between 2000 and 2014.

Each artist has purchased a home in the range of $20,000, he said, and that although there is red tape involved in making modifications and additions, such as studio garages, it's rarely enforced.

One woman, a Portland musician who Else helped to close a deal in a central Detroit neighborhood, talked about painting her house a "crazy color."

"It's totally acceptable out here to do that, the neighbors are going to be happy they’re occupying the place," Else said. "A band can practice and no one is going to compain."

Detroit is still battling urban blight and a significant population loss: in 1990, Detroit had just over one million people, and its population currently hovers between 600,000 and 700,000 people. Still, Detroit's emerging business and artist community is a supportive, friendly one, Else said. The city boasts a growing arts scene, urban farms, and eco-projects started by "urban pioneers" who move to the city because of its affordable cost of living and opportunity to build community.

One of the definitions of "urban pioneer" offered up by UrbanDictionary specifies someone "who buys a run-down house in an older sometimes depressed neighborhood of a city, remodels it, then sells it for a profit." While widely accepted as the first wave of gentrification, in the broader sense, an urban pioneer moves to an undeveloped and low-market area, bringing a wave of new business, art, and innovation that leads to urban renewal.

Click HERE For The Full Article! 



Part One: Detroit
Can Soup Change the World?

Episode 1 of 2

Once the engine of America, Detroit has fallen on hard-times. The decline of the auto industry hit the city hard, and in 2013 Motor City finally went bankrupt. Detroit Soup is community project breathing life back into the city with its monthly dinners. It's a simple concept: members of the community pay five dollars at the door, and for that they get soup, salad, bread - and a vote. Social entrepreneurs present their ideas, and whoever has the most votes at the end of the evening walks away with the money raised, and a chance to put their idea into action. Since it began in 2010, Detroit Soup has raised over 85,000 dollars which has been used to kick-start a broad range of initiatives in areas such as urban farming, art and theatre, literacy and learning, and blight clearance. It has also helped launch small businesses with a social mission - such as The Empowerment Plan and Rebel Nell, which today employ people recruited directly from homeless shelters. The BBC meets the project's founder, Amy Kaherl, and some of the urban pioneers who have put the money raised to good use, rebuilding their city a dollar and a vote at a time.

Click HERE For Air Times! 




The second annual Freep Film Festival, March 19-22, features a bigger, more diverse lineup that will give attendees an inside look at the area’s arts, music, history, challenges and aspirations. Throughout the four days, there will be more than 20 programs, including six world premieres, one U.S. premiere and seven Michigan premieres. They will be screened at some of Detroit’s best venues – The Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), The Fillmore Detroit, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and Cinema Detroit.

“The Freep Film Festival this year offers more opportunity to propel Detroit forward with good movies and provocative discussions,” said Steve Byrne, the festival’s executive director. “This year we have more films, more venues and a larger scope, and we’re using this to show everything Detroit and the region have to offer.”

The festival’s backbone remains documentaries with strong connections to Detroit and Michigan, though the offerings this year have expanded to include broader-based docs, a dramatic film and other programming. The film and program premieres feature daring personalities, never-before-screened footage of key moments in Detroit’s history, soaring Motor City music and more. Some highlights include:


  • Opening night Fire + Water double feature: Produced by the Detroit Free Press’ Emmy-winning video team, opening night includes two films: “Fire Photo -> 1” profiles Bill Eisner, who has been photographing fires in Detroit for more than 50 years and “Graveyard of the Great Lakes” explores the underwater world of David Trotter, who has discovered nearly 100 Great Lakes shipwrecks.

  • ‘Funny or Die with the Farahs: The Tension Between Truth and Entertainment’Ann Arbor-raised brothers Christopher and Mike Farah have made their careers straddling the seriously hilarious and the hilariously serious, most prominently at the humor website Funny or Die, where Christopher is a consultant and Mike is the president of production. Many of their projects have capitalized on some element of what is commonly called “reality”: “Billy on the Street,” “American Muscle,” “@midnight,” “Between Two Ferns.” That specialty will be the jumping off point for this Freep Film Festival program, which will include clips from their projects and conversation between the two brothers about what it all means. 12:30 p.m. Saturday, March 21, at the Elizabeth Theater (above the Park Bar). 

  • “Detroit Industry and the Ford Motor Company Motion Picture Laboratory”: This program documents Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo’s time in Detroit while Rivera painted his famous “Detroit Industry” murals at the DIA. The footage – most of which has never been screened publicly  – follows Rivera and Kahlo from start to finish of the murals, revealing the intricacies of his work as well as casual moments between the couple.

  • “Being: Kem”: From homeless on the city’s streets to nationally charting R&B star, the story of Motown recording artist Kem.

  • “Detroit Dog City”: The city’s stray dog problem is seen through the eyes of the Detroit Dog Rescue crew. 

  • “Let’s Have Some Church Detroit Style”: A spiritual journey with award-winning gospel group the Hallelujah Singers.

While the movies are reason enough to attend screenings, Freep Film Festival offers attendees more. Every program will include further engagement – from panel discussions with directors and film stars, to musical performances, dance parties and more.

Details about the festival’s lineup can be found at freep.com, freepfilmfestival.com and in the Free Press print edition.

For even more information, follow the festival on Twitter @freep_film_fest and Facebook.


Yoga At The Zoo! returns on Sunday, June 28, 2015 for another great morning of yoga, music and fun.

From beginner to expert, Yoga At The Zoo! is for everyone who enjoys yoga or wants to try it.

Afterwards you can enjoy the Detroit Zoo at your leisure.

This is your chance to participate in one of the largest yoga events in Michigan. Bring your family and friends to Yoga At The Zoo!

Event Details 

The Detroit Zoo
8450 West 10 Mile Road
Royal Oak, MI 48067

Sunday, June 28, 2015
Check In: 6:30am - 7:45am
Yoga Stars: 8am

Register today at www.TheYogaMovement.net
Photo: Kevin Wobbe


Click HERE To Watch John Varvatos The Announcement Last Fall! 
Photo: Justin Maconochie


Pleasant Ridge, MI

The Neighborhood
Just a 30-minute drive from downtown Detroit, Pleasant Ridge isn't exactly a suburb—it's one of Michigan's smallest incorporated cities, with 2,594 residents. Resident Kate Redmond calls it "a time capsule from the 1920s," when upper-middle-class automobile tycoons built homes and raised families here. It's long been a draw for folks on the family track; it's not uncommon for newlyweds to buy a starter home here, trade up to a larger one when the kids arrive, then downsize as the nest empties, but never leave Pleasant Ridge. Public schools spend almost $2,000 more per student than the national average, and class sizes average just 18 students per teacher.

The Houses
Arts & Crafts homes, English Tudors, Prairie Schools, Georgian Revivals, and Dutch Colonials are all here.

Prices
Prices range from the low $100,000s for a modest bungalow to over a million for a big Colonial Revival or Tudor.

Why Buy Now?
Pleasant Ridge is already home to two national historic districts, and plans are under way to list the city, established in the 1830s, on the National Register. This small city stands to retain its historic fabric long into the future.

Among the best for:
Families with Kids, Retirees, First-Time Buyers, The Midwest

Click HERE For The Full Article! 


 Faygo Beverages and 7-Eleven, Inc.  announce an exclusive partnership to release the long-demanded combination of their flagship products – the Faygo Redpop Slurpee drink.  Beginning this month, Redpop Slurpee beverages are available at more than 300 7-Eleven locations across Michigan and Ohio.

“Redpop has been the most popular flavor in Faygo’s history, so how do you improve on that?” asked Al Chittaro, executive vice president of Faygo Beverages, Inc.  “We’ve been getting requests from Faygo fans for years to mix up their favorite flavors in an ice-cold Slurpee, and now, together with 7-Eleven, we can bring out the best of the best.”

“7-Eleven has had a strong presence in Michigan for over four decades,” Chittaro added. “Faygo is now celebrating its 108th anniversary, so this collaboration has been a long time coming.”

Based in Dallas, 7-Eleven introduced the Slurpee drink in 1966 and estimates that more than 13 million Slurpees currently are sold every month in the U.S.  However, according to 7-Eleven, its stores in the greater Detroit area sell more Slurpee beverages than any other 7-Eleven market in the U.S., making this region an ideal location to bring together its best-loved frozen treat and one of the Midwest’s most iconic soda brands.

“We want to bring our customers the local products they love and grew up with,” said Nancy Smith, 7-Eleven senior vice president of fresh foods and proprietary beverages. “Redpop is a long-standing hometown favorite because it’s what they love and crave.

“We have found that our customers love having their childhood-favorite sodas available as a Slurpee drink, which also is loved by kids and adults,” said Smith. “Red is a favorite color on the Slurpee machine, and three of the four regional Slurpee flavors we have introduced in the past year have this in common.

“And from now through May 5, all small-size Slurpee drinks are just 99 cents at participating stores.,” she added.

You hear a lot of generalizations about the Motor City: Detroit is dead. Detroit is saved. Detroit is the new Brooklyn. Detroit is an urban wasteland. Sure, Detroiters are used to hearing these things, but that doesn’t mean they’re not sick of it.

Some residents discussed those misconceptions and other topics Tuesday in a Twitter conversation about their city. The chat was organized by local news site Model D, youth-focused nonprofit the Skillman Foundation, and moderators Aaron Foley and Lauren Hood.

Using the hashtag #YourDetroit, the conversation touched on topics that go deeper than 140 characters allow.

“There’s a lot that gets trotted out in the media, whether it’s local or national, about what any one part of Detroit is,” Skillman Senior Communications Officer Krista Jahnke told The Huffington Post. “It’s starting to just feel like some of the nuance, and some of the great differences that there are, in all the parts of Detroit, keep getting lost.”

But the misconceptions don’t just come from media and outsiders, said Foley, who is currently writing a book titled How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass.

“Some of the newer residents, black, white, whoever, are so insulated in their own circles and bubbles that they have preconceived ideas of what they think Detroit is,” Foley said. “The only thing I'd add [to the chat] is that it could've been maybe 50 percent more honest.”

Below see 11 Motor City misconceptions mentioned in the #YourDetroit chat.

1. Detroit is an abandoned city of ruins, “like an American Pompeii.”

Detroiters know more than anyone how many blighted and vacant buildings exist, from the dramatically massive train station to the houses on their blocks they’ve spent weekends boarding up and worrying about. But it often seems that outsiders who talk about abandonment forget that people live next to these structures, and the empty buildings matter because they affect those residents.


It's also worth noting that Detroit has its share of famous architecture, new buildings and well-maintained homes.

Click HERE for the full article! 
Photo: American Coney Island 

American Coney Island, Beans & Cornbread, and Sweet Potato Sensations will be featured on ABC's "The Chew," broadcast locally at 1 p.m this afternoon.  Keep your eyes peeled for the three familiar Detroit favorites during the "Dining In A Dash" segment. 

Host Carla Hall tells the Detroit News about visiting Detroit, "The highlight for me was meeting the people of Detroit - they are the reason I would go back and visit time and time again," Hall said. "Everyone I came in contact was warm, personable, and sincere. It's a city where you walk around and never meet a stranger."

Mashable: (Detroit) It's Not A Blank Slate

Inside D:Hive's Office Hangs A Chalkboard Containing Dreams For The City Of Detroit.  MASHABLE 



Born and raised in Detroit, Jeanette Pierce has witnessed a lot of that hardship. But she loves her city. She raves about how invigorating it is to live in a place people are willing to fight for.

She and I meet over beers in the dimly lit Motor City Brewing Works in Detroit’s Midtown, considered one of the most developed neighborhoods in the city.

Jeanette is the founder of D:Hive, an organization that helps visitors and potential residents get acquainted with Detroit. Since our meeting D:Hive has evolved into the Detroit Experience Factory, which provides tours of the city, and Build, which helps local entrepreneurs turn their business ideas into profitable realities.

She laments, however: It’s the white kids who move here and start businesses like the bar we’re in who get a lot of the attention. Jeanette herself is white.

On cue, our twenty-something, tattooed server runs down the list of craft brews on tap. I settle on the “Ghettoblaster,” their signature English ale.

It’s businesses like this one that make Midtown appealing to potential outsiders, like myself. Cheap craft beer, a bustling atmosphere of young people who comfortably match my socioeconomic status.

Expressing my comfort gives Jeanette a rejuvenated burst of enthusiasm. She regales me with reasons to relocate to Detroit, chiefly the opportunity to be part of a turning point.

“Detroit is big enough to matter to the world. But small enough for you to matter to Detroit.” She recites the sound bite with such conviction that it sounds rehearsed. She laughs, “Wow, that’s pretty good. I just thought of that.”

Her smile fades. “Just don’t call it a blank slate.”

I blush, remembering I had used that exact phrase with Detroit local and Write a House board member Francis Grunow earlier that day.

“It’s so exciting to be here right now, isn’t it?” I had asked with enthusiasm. “It’s like a blank slate, just waiting for people to fill it!”

In hindsight, his reaction was contained: “Well…yes. But it isn’t really ‘blank.’ There are people who have lived here for generations and never left.”

Francis and I met at The Green Garage, a coworking community of entrepreneurs. The open office’s techy vibe — iPhone chargers tangled behind desks, whiteboards scrawled with notes — is evidence of yet another movement taking place here: startups.

Like artists, startups have taken advantage of Detroit’s cheap property options, initiating a wave of gentrification in the area. The faces are multiplying: white twenty-somethings, plaid button-ups, hipster glasses. Many feel taking business risks is a Detroit tradition. It’s a working man’s town.

“Living here is tough,” he tells me with a hint of exhaustion. He loves it here, but feels responsible for working to improve it, a purpose with no guaranteed return.

Through his involvement with Write a House, he sees an opportunity to try something new and hopefully do some good.

Write a House founders Toby Barlow and Sarah Cox tried to avoid the “blank slate” approach. They knocked on doors and introduced themselves to neighbors during the renovation process, hoping to become a part of the community, rather than disrupt it.

Click HERE For The Full Article! 
Bozii Restaurants opened its first Detroit location in the Renaissance Center food court today. The location is the fourth in the metro Detroit area, with other locations in Dearborn, Auburn Hills and Clinton Township. New to the quick casual food industry, bozii Restaurants focuses on made-from-scratch, portable entrées and menu selections.

The restaurant will be open Monday through Friday, 6:30 a.m. - 7 p.m.

“Our one promise we make to each of our guests is that there’s nothing fake in our food,” stated Michael Steffke, director of U.S. operations for bozii. “We take tremendous pride in the fact that we offer what most can’t – natural ingredients with no preservatives or chemicals. All of our poultry is organic, and we use nothing but premium ingredients to make our food.”

The Bozii menu at the Renaissance Center will include four breakfast boziis (quiches), four dessert boziis (treats) and nine entrée boziis. Salads, soups, smoothies and a variety of organic soda will also be available.  Prices for a bozii range from $2.49 for a treat to $4.69 for a premium selection, like roasted tenderloin or crab cake. Vegan and vegetarian options are also available.

 The restaurant will boast items from local companies as well as nationally recognized organic brands. The Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company’s 313 Blend will be the featured coffee, used for all coffee drinks, including espressos and cappucinnos. Six flavors of Maine Root organic soda as well as two varieties of Jackson’s Honest organic chips will be featured.

"Guests already enjoy our food, but as they learn more about our philosophies and business practices, we’re certain a love will develop,” continued Steffke. “We are as proud of the reclaimed wood used in the restaurant and commitment to recycled products as much as we are of the organics and locally sourced items. To us, everything needs to be done right – not just the food.”

Bozii is a Windsor, Ontario-based company that provides natural, made-from-scratch products. Currently, there are 10 locations in the Windsor and metro Detroit areas.
Photo: Jessica Archer

Spring is three weeks away, and that means it's time for one of American cities' newest rituals: announcing the year's protected bike lane construction plans.

Every few days over the last month, another U.S. city has released plans or announced progress in building protected lanes. Even more excitingly, many are in downtown and commercial areas, which tend to have the highest latent demand for biking. Let's take a scan from east to west of the projects that popped onto our radar in February alone, to be built in 2015 or 2016:

Detroit is installing southeast Michigan's first protected lanes this year on a "very short segment" of East Jefferson. Advocacy group Detroit Greenways says it's "precedent setting and could serve as a model for all of Detroit’s major spoke roads."

Click HERE For The Full Article! 

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