Mayor Duggan reflects on how city overcame debt and inefficiencies
When Mike Duggan contemplated running for mayor of Detroit, the city was roughly $20 billion in debt and unable to deliver the most basic of municipal services.
“Every neighborhood thought they had been forgotten,” he said. “Half the streetlights in the city were out. The ambulance didn’t show up for an hour. The parks had been closed. The grass was four feet high in the park.”
Determined he could do better, the former prosecutor and medical center executive built a mayoral campaign around unity.
“I ran the only way I knew how,” Duggan said. “I told folks, ‘Invite me into your living room, and I’ll show up.’”
As the invitations grew, so, too, did voters’ appreciation for Duggan and his personal approach. He was elected mayor in 2013, winning nearly 55% of the vote.
“We made a commitment that we were building a city for everybody,” Duggan said.
Now in his third term, Duggan was a special guest this week at the Tulsa Regional Chamber’s Intercity Visit to Detroit, appearing alongside dialogue moderator Blake Ewing, chief of staff for Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum.
More than 125 attendees from across northeast Oklahoma – including city and county elected officials, business leaders, regional partners, education administrators and young professionals – participated in the three-day Intercity Visit, which ended Oct. 9.
Under Duggan’s leadership, Detroit has stabilized its bottom line, revitalized its downtown and beautified its riverfront.
In recent years, he also has helped land major employers such as Stellantis (Jeep assembly plant) and Amazon, which last year moved into a 3.8-million-square-foot fulfillment center.
Part of Duggan’s secret sauce is accountability. When hospitals in the city were struggling with emergency room wait times, Duggan made sure that two Detroit Tigers’ tickets were given to each patient who wasn’t seen within 29 minutes.
“We put that measurement across eight hospitals seeing 300,000 emergency room patients,” he said. “We transformed the culture of the organization in one year, from a place where ‘woe is me’ to a place of enormous pride.”
His staff meets regularly and is briefed on statistics that range from homicides to new businesses.
“You have to measure by metrics,” Duggan said. “So, my team knows first thing every morning how many shootings we had. There’s a reason we have the fewest shootings since 1963. Everybody is aligned on the strategies.”
Detroit’s transformation was on national display in April, when more than 750,000 people, an NFL draft record, flooded downtown Detroit for the three-day event.
“It was a celebration of the city,” Duggan said. “The interesting thing was lots of Detroiters were here. Lots of Michigan residents who hadn’t been here in 20 years came down.
“A number of people I met who had come down here for the draft came back with their family and kids to see a baseball game or visit a museum. This city has very much embraced being a city where everybody is welcome.”
Detroit has been blessed with corporations that are sharing the wealth, with firms such as Ford Motor Company and Rocket Mortgage leading the way.
Ford invested $950 million in the restoration of Michigan Central Station and the surrounding 30-acre campus. Dan Gilbert, co-founder and majority owner of Rocket Mortgage, has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to halt foreclosures in neighborhoods and build houses.
“I’ve been very fortunate that I have corporate leadership here,” Duggan said.
Detroit also has a centralized professional sports core, with four marquee teams – the Lions (NFL); Tigers (MLB), Red Wings (NHL) and Pistons (NBA) – all housed within a couple blocks of one another.
The Lions moved from the suburb of Pontiac (Silverdome) in 2002, the Pistons from Auburn Hills (The Palace) in 2017.
“When there’s no more Palace, every single concert in southeastern Michigan is right here,” Duggan said. “It’s in Little Caesars Arena or Ford Field or Comerica Park, whether it’s Madonna or Taylor Swift or Earth, Wind and Fire, which means, now, what happens? Every bit of corporate entertainment is here. And now, where do you want your headquarters?”
The downtown bustle, Duggan said, also attracts young people working remotely.
“You no longer want to work in a suburb where you’re going to Jimmy John’s for lunch,” he said. “If you’re going to be working out of your house, you’re now moving into the city and being in an apartment down here where all the activity is.”
“It has just benefited this city’s comeback enormously.”