More new signs of hope for downtown retail....

[casscorridor]

It seems quite obvious that Mudgie's would be foolish to look at median city income as a barometer of market viability.

Mudgie's market consists almost solely of downtown office workers. The relative size and wealth of downtown employee counts would be most relevant.

I frequent Mudgies but live in the greater downtown area, I know many others that do too. So while I'm sure a good portion of their business is office workers, they have a solid base of local residents as well.

[wolverine]

Detroit cannot support a downtown traditional retail core for various reasons

Lack of critical population downtown. Maybe if you can boost the downtown population numbers up to 40,000-50,000 I could see the potential of a store opening.

No substantial mass transit network. Overall, the median household income in Detroit is pretty low, and Penny's is an affordable place to shop. Perfect, now how do you get the residents there? Parking is too expensive, so trains are the best alternative since buses take awhile. There is no train, and there is no future plan in place that would serve city residents far and wide.....only just a single commercial corridor that serves a fraction of city residents.

Competition from suburbs. Yep, still going strong. When you have all that free parking and other stores to shop at nearby, it's hard force to work against when trying to push for downtown retail.