Midnight Golf in Downtown Detroit

One of the great things about the current drive for rebirth in Detroit is that hope and initiative emerge from the least likely places. Golf is not the kind of thing you expect to thrive in any metro center—and as for the Detroit area, well, you know, golf is reserved for those tony folks outside of town in their country clubs, right?

Not at Marygrove College.

There, a program called called Midnight Golf has proved extraordinarily successful over the last few years. Now, working with the SI Golf Group, nationally-renowned course architect Tom Doak is designing a state-of-the-art practice facility right in downtown Detroit. You can read all about the extraordinary project here.

This kind of stuff surprises me and doesn't surprise me on an ongoing basis. The national stereotype of Detroit is so ingrained that even after you've been covering the place for a while, it still has some force. That's why I find myself surprised. But the truth is that in example after example, the city defies that stereotype. In one sense, the city's transformation will be a move away from every aspect of that stereotype. The future city will be smaller, not this monument of manufacturing. It will be a multi-industry town, not a three-company city. It will be multi-racial and more geographically integrated than it is now. And its education system won't resemble anything like the current mess it has. All these things will have to happen as the city revives.

And it's unusual projects and ideas, from the least likely of places, that might well drive that change.