1 year ago
Duggan to deliver final State of the City address in new Hudson's Detroit building
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, three-term mayor and first-time gubernatorial candidate, delivers his final State of the City address Tuesday night at the still-unopened Hudson's Detroit development where he's expected to tout a legacy of stabilizing the Motor City.
This year's speech, his 12th as mayor, begins at 7 p.m. where he'll address hundreds of supporters at the invitation-only event. The event will be livestreamed on city's various social media platforms.
The $1.4 billion Hudson's project, named after the famed Hudson's department store that previously occupied the same downtown block of Woodward Avenue as the current development, will serve as a reminder of the major progress the city has made since Duggan took office in 2014. At the time, the city was exiting from Chapter 9 Municipal bankruptcy.
"We hope that Detroit will take this opportunity just to sit back and when they're listening to the speech and the mayor doing his presentation, to look at where we were in 2014 coming out of bankruptcy,'' said Deputy Mayor Melia Howard on Monday.
Beyond downtown developments, Duggan also will likely talk about eliminating tens of thousands of blighted properties, surging home values, improving basic services such as streetlights and restoring the city's credit in financial markets, Howard said.
"The mayor . . . has set a solid foundation for the next mayor, city council to come in and move through their path and continue to progress forward," Howard said.
Duggan, who has been in office since 2014 and focused on neighborhoods in his State of the City address last year, is not seeking a fourth term. Instead, the longtime Democratic politician is running as an independent candidate for Michigan governor in 2026.
Duggan will also speak on how the Renaissance Center can become "a kind of a public asset" that it is key to downtown's riverfront revitalization, Howard said. The future of the riverfront set of towers remains uncertain. Last year, General Motors Co. said it was relocating its headquarters to the Bedrock-owned Hudson’s Detroit, which is several blocks away from the Renaissance Center.
GM is working with Bedrock on plans for the riverfront facility. The companies in November announced a $1.6 billion proposal to shrink the five-tower complex to three with residential, office and hotel tenancy. Towers 300 and 400 would be demolished to create a 6-acre riverfront park.
But plans hit a snag when requests for $350 million in taxpayer subsidies from the state of Michigan and the city's Downtown Development Authority for public infrastructure upgrades were met with bipartisan backlash. Bedrock officials now say the plan could cost taxpayers $100 million less than originally anticipated.
Some groups such as Preservation Detroit have pushed back at demolishing two of the RenCen towers.
Both the potential RenCen deal and Hudson's Detroit project are both examples of major downtown developments that are viewed as controversial by some because of the millions in tax breaks each project has received. Duggan has often defended the use of those tax breaks as the only way to revive development.
laguilar@detroitnews.com
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Duggan to deliver final State of the City address in new Hudson's Detroit building
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