I live in a very unique bubble, to say the least. I personally think that we’re going to get out of this. And I think that business may even be better by the time we get out of this, because we’re going to have more adaptability of being able to overcome, being able to spend more time with families and not necessarily grind as hard as we need. And still have more of that quote unquote, life balance.
Detroit is going to be the city to look at to figure out how to get out of it because of the way our leadership is set up. We already were at rock bottom. Literally, it was declared by the federal government that they were bankrupt. One thing I always say about Detroit, is we’ve got pride. We’re Detroit Lions fans. They’re the most losing franchise out there. But yet we’re all still for it. So I think it really takes a lot to break our spirits and we’re made with hard workers. It’s where the original assembly plants were. So just being in the uniqueness of a bubble; we felt it. Even with the protests, you didn’t necessarily see Detroit as much because we’re already a really tight knit community. We were already there at the bottom and we were open to listening.
We are open to different ideas because essentially our generation is making Detroit what we want it to be. The company I work for pretty much owns 80 percent of Detroit. We’re playing Monopoly with the city. So, it’s a different sense of ownership and I think when you have that ownership you tend to be a little bit more optimistic and take some of your past dealings and what worked well to overcome a lot of this other stuff.
One of the things that our owner first said during Covid was, especially to all of his tenants, you don’t have to pay. Clearly, he’s running a negative balance sheet. Because he understands the impact, we’re always long term thinking where is Detroit going to be five years from now? Not necessarily tomorrow. I think at some point it’s gonna play because you’ve got a lot of money tied into assets there. Detroit was actually up and coming with restaurants and we had Michelin chefs moving in to start new restaurants right before Covid. We had four brand new high end restaurants, which I don’t know if they’re still open anymore. But I think that we’re gonna bounce back. I’ve been seeing a lot more people moving downtown as more good news comes out. And we’re not having skyrocketing cases because we’re all being very responsible. And the majority of people all want to go back to the city; we literally felt as though we were all part of this monopoly’s structure being built up. But, at least the people I have around my circle, my family are excited for it.