Quote Originally Posted by southen View Post
While I feel festivals are an important part of the function of the park, it needs to become a place for visitors to congregate and want to visit on non event days. During the summer the riverwalk through there is packed, as is Campus Martius, and a new design needs to connect these two areas better as well as give people reason to stay in the park.

How do you do that? For starters a fountain that works more than one weekend a year as a draw, but you add public art and things to activate the area. As was mentioned above, food trucks and rentals of bike or segways is a great way to get people in. A brick and mortar restaurant or two near Jefferson would also help and I think at this point in Detroit's recovery could be profitable.

Ideally I would love to see it become some sort of cross between the festival friendly space it is now and Millennium Park in Chicago. There is enough land to do a bit of both and make it a larger draw while retaining the usefulness it has now.
A fountain that doesn't look like an inverted robot's butthole would be nice...