Detroit looks for Final Four boost

DETROIT - The news out of this proud city has been overwhelmingly bad for, oh, 40 years or so. And in the last few months, with the mayor sent to jail and the auto industry dog-paddling for survival, Detroit has endured yet another run of negative publicity.

But there is no better antidote for a bad image than successfully hosting one of America's premier sporting events, where thousands of out-of-towners - including a large contingent of Villanova fans - can see the city for themselves and possibly walk away impressed.

For Detroit, college basketball's Final Four is arriving just in time.

"The perception is that if the auto industry is struggling, then the city must be closing its doors," said Renee Monforton of the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau, which put together the bid to attract the NCAA tournament games. "The city is not dead."

Local officials have no doubt that they can pull off the event. Detroit hosted the 2005 Major League Baseball All-Star Game and, more significantly, the 2006 Super Bowl to great reviews. In a survey following the Super Bowl, 90 percent of visitors said they would come again, Monforton said.

"We find that people who had preconceived notions about the city changed their minds," she said.

The question is whether the temporary distraction of sports can lead to sustained vitality.

"Detroit puts on a good party," said Kurt Metzger, who runs a nonprofit here. "There will be a big hoopla for four days and maybe Kid Rock will sing. . . . Will we be able to maintain that going forward? I don't know."

Before the Super Bowl, city leaders gave the downtown a massive cleaning, paving roads, installing street lights, and sprucing up vacant buildings.

"Just the facade of the whole city looked better pre- and post-Super Bowl," said Ross Varacalli, co-owner of the Well, a landmark bar in the Greektown neighborhood.

But Metzger said the momentum was lost. His nonprofit Detroit Area Community Information System gathers data and encourages regional cooperation.

"What happens is, when everybody goes away and we have to deal with ourselves, we fall back," he said.

The city appears to be in need of another jump-start, which the Final Four could provide. The men's semi-final games on Saturday and Monday's national championship are expected to pump from $30 million to $50 million into the sluggish local economy.

"This winter has been super, super slow," said Megan Dieringer, manager at Cheli's Chili Bar, which is owned by Chris Chelios, the legendary Detroit Red Wings player. "We cut down on hours majorly. . . . The NCAA is really a huge blessing for us."

Basketball fans are unlikely to venture far beyond downtown, which has been the focus of Detroit's revitalization efforts.

Two new stadiums have located there in the last decade, including Ford Field, which will host the basketball games. The riverfront, where many of the weekend's nonbasketball activities will take place, boasts the Renaissance Center, a complex of towers that includes General Motors' massive headquarters. There are also three casinos downtown.

During the week, though, the area has little foot traffic. And with burned-out neighborhoods a short drive away, the city center feels like a Potemkin village.

Metzger said Detroit's biggest problem is that suburbanites take a strange pride in avoiding the city. Varacalli agreed, saying that his goal this weekend was not to impress the tourists, but to woo nearby residents - many of whom are coming to root for Michigan State against Connecticut before the Villanova-North Carolina game on Saturday.

"You can have people from Philadelphia and they might have a great time, but are they going to come back? Probably not," he said. The suburban dwellers "are the people who are going to keep me in business for 10 years."

If more people took an interest in the city when it wasn't hosting a national sporting event, maybe some of Detroit's larger problems could be addressed, Metzger said.

Once, nearly two million people lived here; now there are fewer than 900,000. The city has a 22 percent unemployment rate and a third of its housing sits vacant - a legacy beginning with the riots of 40 years ago, a dark period in the city's history.

"Detroit was kind of down to one building," recalled Douglas Holloway, who was born and raised here.

But "the motto of Detroit is, 'We will rise from the ashes.' "