The issue of whether or not Dan Gilbert's building renovations are tacky is relatively trivial in the scheme of things, but I think some of the posts in this thread are symptomatic of a much bigger problem with how we in Detroit view our city. We were built up very quickly through the largesse of a very small number of very large corporations, and then were smacked down again just as hard by those same corporations and corporate bosses. With Big Auto having all but disowned the city proper, we've turned into a population of blue-collar Midwestern ronin, constantly searching for a new corporate boss to make things right again. Gilbert, so to speak, is the Boss Du Jour, and everyone in Official Detroit is scared to death of uttering so much as one critical word about the man or his company lest he decide to up and leave us too. In short, we've got ourselves a bit of a self esteem problem when it comes to rich businessmen, and I don't think it's conducive to healthy conversations about who we want to be as a city and where we want to go in the future, and I also don't think it's conducive to good public policies and effective management of city government. Heck, it's probably not even conducive to "economic development" and "job creation" and all that sort of thing.
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