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PrintCandy Cane or Coal?
“He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake!” That’s right. Santa has made a list and checked it twice. Now here’s his local roster of who’s naughty and who’s nice.
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A CANDY CANE TO...
• The College for Creative Studies, for its redo and reuse of the Argonaut Building (since renamed the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education) in Detroit's New Center.
• Robert Bobb, Detroit Public Schools emergency financial manager, for being brutally frank about the woeful financial state of the DPS and dealing with it. He even took his fix-it mission to the bus stops.
• Southfield-based Doner Advertising, for its inspired “Vitamin Z, part of a complete childhood” ad for the Detroit Zoo.
• Drew Barrymore, for heaping praise on metro Detroit, the location of her movie, Whip It, and for hanging out at Detroit’s Majestic and Ann Arbor’s 8 Ball, a PBR-style dive bar.
• Whip It actress Ellen Page, who gushed about northern Michigan and added: “I’d live there in a second.”
• Jay Leno, for his free shows at the Silverdome and for using a battery-electric Ford Focus ST in his Green Driving Challenge on The Tonight Show.
• Time Inc., for taking an in-depth look at Detroit.
• Furniture mogul Art Van Elslander used the golden anniversary of Art Van Furniture to raise funds for three health-care organizations. All proceeds from tickets sales for three galas went to: The Hermelin Brain Tumor Center and the Neuroscience Institute at Henry Ford Health System (metro Detroit), the Special Care Nursery at Genesys Regional Medical Center and the St. Mary’s of Michigan Cancer Transportation Van (Flint), and the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital Foundation (Grand Rapids).
• Dave Bing declined to accept a salary and asked City Hall workers to dress appropriately.
• The organizers of Detroit Restaurant Week.
• Kresge Foundation president and CEO Rip Rapson awarded 18 Detroit-area artists $25,000 each in fellowships — an incentive to retain our creative talent.
• Ford president and CEO Alan Mulally avoided a federal bailout and helped the company achieve a hefty third-quarter profit.
• DSO Music Director Leonard Slatkin made good on his vow to bring the Detroit Symphony Orchestra into the community by offering a series of free concerts in September, mostly in schools.
• Warren Mayor Jim Fouts banned gifts at city hall, including free meals, concert tickets, and sporting events. “Any gift, including a box of doughnuts, is meant to influence employees in some way,” the mayor told the Detroit Free Press.
• Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who keeps hammering away at disgraced and disgraceful ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. When he whined about his monthly restitution payments to Detroit, she pointed out that he lives in the lap of luxury in a gated community in Texas, and issued a subpoena for him to turn over financial records, including his salary info from Compuware.
• The State of Michigan’s Land Bank Fast Track Authority, for offering to buy the once-lovely Farwell Building on Griswold downtown for $3.3 million. We can only hope that the eight-story Chicago School-style structure (listed on the National Register of Historic Places) might be restored to even a bit of its former beauty.
• Greg Lenhoff, for taking the bold step of opening Leopold’s Books in Midtown Detroit’s Park Shelton.
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