Good evening everyone:

Change begins with impatience … but it comes to fruition only with persistence.

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We’re seeing that as the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy tomorrow breaks ground on the Uniroyal site, the last stretch of the Detroit RiverWalk needed to extend it east from the Ambassador Bridge clear to Gabriel Richard Park. That will, in turn, allow walkers, runners, cyclists, and everyone in-between to travel all the way to Belle Isle — the city’s jewel of an island park — without setting foot on a major throughfare. It will connect one of the iconic symbols of Detroit’s hard-wrought resurgence in this century to one of the bright, enduring legacies of centuries past.

We at The Kresge Foundation have admired and participated in this long-term project since its inception. At the turn of this century, it was apparent that the downtown riverfront that once served Detroit’s commercial boom was serving almost no one. Despite a few notable exceptions like Hart Plaza, GM Plaza, Chene Park (now the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre) and William Milliken State Park, the city’s expansive front porch was defined by empty warehouses and parking lots. Beyond a few pockets of beauty, it was uninviting, unusable, and inaccessible.

The inflection point came almost 17 years ago: The time was right. Pieces were in place. The City of Detroit was ready for a new partnership to come together. That’s when Kresge made what was then the largest grant in our history to launch the Detroit RiverWalk. Our $50 million pledge, in the form of a capital challenge grant, invited General Motors to match our commitment and start in motion the process to raise another $200 million to realize the vision of building out the RiverWalk east from GM Plaza toward Belle Isle.

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The new Riverfront Conservancy, the nuts-and-bolts embodiment of that dream, took up the challenge with phenomenal skill and determination. First under Faye Nelson and now under Mark Wallace, it has consistently delivered on its promise, and taken it further. The new RiverWalk has been beautiful and inviting from the outset; it was quickly embraced by Detroiters, by our entire metropolitan region, by visitors far and wide.

Kresge continued to reinforce the Conservancy’s vision by joining with the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan a decade later to turn the Dequindre Cut — an abandoned railroad line — into the first leg of an extensive greenway system, connecting the RiverWalk north to Eastern Market, the city’s cornerstone of fresh food and commerce.

Season-by-season, fans of the Detroit RiverWalk have eagerly watched the area grow, segment-by-segment, new-amenity-by-new-amenity. And the Conservancy remains on pace to not disappoint.

Earlier this year, we all took  enormous and justifiable pride when the Detroit RiverWalk was chosen by the readers of USA Today as the nation’s best riverfront. Competing against extraordinary and visionary projects across the country, the honor was a ringing endorsement of years of visioning, planning, fundraising, community engagement, build-out, and refinement.

And, with an extraordinarily generous gift from the Wilson Foundation, groundbreaking will take place this Fall on the 22-acre Ralph C. Wilson Memorial Park, which will help build out the western portion of the RiverWalk; it is slated to open in 2023.

Which brings us to today’s remarkable step forward. The site where a massive Uniroyal factory produced tires until 1980 has now been cleared and remediated with federal and state support. Lying along the riverfront, the site will become part of the east RiverWalk, permitting unbroken passage between links previously separated by a parcel too contaminated to walk on. The celebration of this final piece falling into place represents a glorious, 3.5-mile-long testament to the region’s ability to come together to create a civic commons that will define Detroit’s waterfront for our children, grandchildren, and beyond.

Our news these days includes plenty of wonders from the heavens. We watch the SpaceX team docking with the International Space Station; we watch airflight as it is being reinvented remotely in the rarefied atmosphere of Mars; we learn about solar flares from Proxima Centauri, which is four light years from us. But in this magnificent stretch of river, we have something here and now, in our midst, something that doesn’t require space-ships, telescopes, and astrophysics to inspire awe and ground our sense of shared vision.

If we ever lose confidence in what we can achieve together, a 5.5-mile stroll along the magnificent Detroit RiverWalk might be just the antidote we need. Renewing. Uplifting. Fun.

Rip

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P.S. The groundbreaking celebration will be streamed by DRFC on Facebook Live beginning at 11 a.m. EDT tomorrow/Wednesday May 12^th.