After an excellent dinner downtown my family and I wanted to take a post-dinner stroll along the river-- just the promenade portion by the Ren Cen.

No can do. Brushed away by Detroit bike cops at 10:04pm upon setting foot off the sidewalk. Even the park benches closer to the sidewalk were not accessible-- the whole riverwalk closes at 10.

Questions:

1) why enforce the early closing during the beautiful summer months...when it only gets dark a few minutes before 10 and people are out/about?

2) why enforce the early closing on a weekend, when more people are apt to use the recreational space? There are all those restaurants right there in the Ren Cen; I was done eating at 10. Some people were still sitting down to eat at that time and the place was still full. 10pm is not a reasonable hour to shut down in light of the hours of nearby establishments and events.

3) why not make an exception for the downtown promenade part? There are tons of likely users right there with the restaurants and the Marriott Hotel. This is quite a cold shoulder to lots of likely first-time Detroit visitors staying at the hotel, and the public at large who choose to spend their evening at a riverfront venue...because of the riverfront.

4) why station at least 5 cops right there at the promenade alone, with the simple duty of shooing people away and making productive public space unproductive and dead? If you're going to hire five cops for one small space, why not have them do something constructive/productive role-- i.e. surveil the area while people enjoy the park?


That the waterfront and premier public space of one of our biggest and most important cities closes at 10pm on a summer weekend evening is, quite frankly, bogus. To the extent that we still embrace that old Mayor Archer quote "it's a great time in Detroit" [[which arguably kicked off the movement of getting people to stay and play downtown and to enjoy rather than avoid the city), the current use of the waterfront is absolutely not in keeping with this ideal. Very sad.