Detroit Museum Not The First To Consider Selling Out. Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Postman Roulin is part of the collection in the city-owned Detroit Institute of Arts.
The financially troubled city of Detroit is eyeing the sale of its prized artworks. aPic/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption aPic/Getty Images. States, Cities Tackle Housing Crisis for Low, Moderate Income Families. A group rallies for affordable housing outside City Hall in Portland, Oregon.
States and cities are looking for ways to ease the housing crunch. This story was updated to reflect the proper name of the Minnesota Housing Partnership. In Roseau, Minnesota, there are good-paying jobs at the Polaris snowmobile factory. But a dearth of moderately priced housing means there are few places for the company’s managers and engineers to live. Without more affordable housing, Polaris will have trouble growing in this northern Minnesota city of 2,600. “We’re competing as a community to say we’re a viable place for Polaris to do business, but we can’t provide housing for the people they need to work,” he said. Sears, Kmart To Close 78 Stores This Summer — 3 Locations In Michigan.
DETROIT (WWJ/AP) – Sears Holdings Corp. is closing another 78 stores, including three in Michigan, as it looks to restore profitability.
In all, 68 Kmart stores and 10 Sears stores will close. That accounts for about 5 percent of the company’s store base, which is nearly 1,700 stores. Locations closing in Michigan include: the Super K on Van Born Road in Taylor, the Kmart on Houghton Lake Drive in Houghton Lake, and the Sears on Eastman Avenue in Midland. The Super K store is closing in mid-September, while the other two stores will close in late July. The ailing company, based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, had said in February that it would accelerate the closing of unprofitable stores following a “challenging” holiday season. “The decision to close stores is a difficult but necessary step as we take aggressive actions to strengthen our company, fund our transformation and restore Sears Holdings to profitability,” said Edward S.
As Detroit breaks down, scourge of arson burns out of control. Fixing Detroit’s Broken School System: Improve accountability and oversight for district and charter schools. Detroit is a classic story of a once-thriving city that has lost its employment base, its upper and middle classes, and much of its hope for the future. The city has been on a long, slow decline for decades. It’s difficult to convey the postapocalyptic nature of Detroit. Outsourcing Jobs to ... Detroit? Forbes Welcome. Detroit Manufacturing Rekindled By Newer Companies Betting On City Despite Bankruptcy. By Nick Carey DETROIT, Aug 2 (Reuters) - For nearly six decades Detroit’s story has been one of relentless erosion of its once mighty manufacturing base, but even as the Motor City faces a long bankruptcy a clutch of small producers has moved in to rekindle the “Made in Detroit” brand.
Making products ranging from bicycles to luxury watches and “sleeping bag” coats designed for the homeless, these small firms have tapped into a surprising amount of demand for goods made in a city more commonly associated today with failure and decline. “Our customers come from all walks of life and are looking for a little bit of soul and something that is authentically Detroit,” said Eric Yelsma, founder of Detroit Denim Co., which produces hand-made jeans. “We can’t make them fast enough.” Tech and innovation power Detroit's manufacturing revival.
Similar efforts are under way in Detroit to foster innovation and entrepreneurism.
These include the Obama administration's manufacturing innovation institute, called Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow (LIFT), launched in January, and the philanthropic New Economy Initiative (NEI), an economic development initiative working to build a network of support for entrepreneurs and small businesses. "We don't support entrepreneurs directly, but the ecosystem that does," explained David Egner, executive director of NEI, which has raised $135 million to fund entrepreneurs and programs like LIFT. Egner said that about 20 percent of its recipients are budding manufacturers, making things like heated motorcycle jackets, wooden pallets and carbon dioxide-based coolants for machinery.
Many are former autoworkers who have hooked up with TechTown, a nonprofit innovation hub and incubator situated in a 135,000-square-foot downtown facility provided by General Motors. —By Bob Woods, special to CNBC.com. What Really Ails Detroit. Is Detroit’s collapse the story of one American city gone awry?
Or is it indicative of a more profound nationwide problem? The facts point to the latter. Though Detroit’s bankruptcy is exceptional in many ways — notably, its size and its disproportionate impact on African-Americans — the overall decline of America’s manufacturing centers is evident in the deterioration of many smaller cities and towns throughout the Midwest and Northeast. What accounts for this sad turn of events? The traditional narrative holds that globalization, outsourcing and, after 2007, the recession have been responsible for devastating American manufacturing by moving jobs out of the country in enormous numbers. American manufacturing has been in trouble even since its heyday, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the United States was the global economic powerhouse and American assembly-line workers earned very decent middle-class wages. Who was to blame for this? Amid Detroit bankruptcy, residents grapple with poverty and unemployment. DETROIT — Daniel Rice comes to the Michigan Works!
Job placement office almost every day for four or five hours, searching for a job he has had no luck finding in a city that has seemed in perpetual decline. On Friday, he found one listing, operating a forklift for $8 to $9 an hour. He’d happily take the work, even though it pays a third less than he made building axles for Chrysler before his factory shuttered two years ago. He hasn’t been employed since. “I put all my eggs in one basket,” said Rice, 39. The bankruptcy of Detroit on Thursday was a raw and discordant moment here, underscoring how dramatically the fortunes of the nation’s auto industry and the city with which it is synonymous have diverged. Billions in Debt, Detroit Tumbles Into Insolvency.