New and Improved Downtown Detroit

You may have noticed my column has been missing for a few weeks. That's because we (the Mrs. and I) drove to Detroit and spent the Yomim Tovim there and had a great time and had a great, sunny Sukkos.

We visited Downtown Detroit and the area never looked better. Former battered, grimy, empty buildings, are spiffy clean and reopened as mostly combination office and residential units. New hotels, restaurants and stores have also livened up the downtown area.

The Downtown Synagogue, mostly Conservative services, has been refurbished and boasts a growing membership of young area residents taking advantage of the events, parks, riverwalk and bike trails along the Detroit River facing Canada. The Gordie Howe Bridge (named after the great Detroit Red Wing hockey player who passed away a few years ago) is almost ready to open. That will shorten the drive to Toronto as the bridge will take traffic much closer to the highway. Now the Ambassador Bridge and Detroit-Windsor Tunnel put traffic into Downtown Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Sort of a miniature Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Much of the talk among the people I encountered in the Orthodox community was regarding the local sports teams. The Detroit Lions are expected to be part of the football playoffs again while the Detroit Tigers fizzled out in the second round of the baseball playoffs, though they should contend again next season. The Tigers have some great prospects in their Minor League system and two look like future impact players who could make their Major League debut sometime next season.

Because of the timing of Yom Tov a couple of weeks ago, the local Orthodox community was shut out in catching football and baseball in person, but about 20 people I know took in the opening night game of the Detroit Red Wings hockey season. The Wings share a beautiful relatively new arena with the Detroit Pistons Basketball team and all of the four aforementioned teams are housed near each other in Downtown Detroit. Ford Field, the domed home of the Lions is across the street from the left field giant scoreboard that looms over Comerica Park, home of the Tigers while Detroit's other two teams skate and dribble just a few minutes away by foot.

Just as Detroit's sports teams are close to each other, so are the stores, schools, kosher eateries and shuls in the Orthodox Jewish section of the suburbs. The adjoining northern suburbs of Oak Park and Southfield are divided by Greenfield Road on which you'd find all of your food needs. In a small area north of Ten Mile Road on the Southfield side there are four places to take out meals, (two you can sit down and eat in).

The Grove, all kosher supermarket and meat store, is in the same parking area.

On the Oak Park side, which can be seen easily from the Southfield side, there are three more eateries, a kosher bakery and a seforim store. A nearby shopping center houses a couple of Orthodox ladies’ clothing stores, a large men's store, that has plenty of black suits, and a cleaners operated by a hard-working, frum guy. On the edge of that shopping center there's a large Kroger's supermarket and an Aldi's.

Within a square mile the Detroit community can boast nine kollelim, 20 shuls and a couple of schools. Whether you live in Southfield or Oak Park, everything you need is not much more than a five-minute drive away.

I'm back in Lakewood where I live with a great wife, but I’m looking forward to our next 10-hour road trip to Detroit where everything is a bike ride away.