I think you've framed the discussion wrong, Blk_soul, but I'll make some observations.

First, the rents are too high. There's a reason there's such a lack of occupancy along Woodward Ave.

Second, the worker population needs to be higher. Quicken should help...making constructive use of the Hudson and Statler site long-term should help. Downtown workers are diverse, and all sorts of service-type retail should follow them, black or otherwise.

As to your 'where's the black retail?' question, I would posit that Detroit is too large, spread-out, and unconsolidated. You're right, it's hard to find anyplace downtown that looks like 125th St. in Harlem or like Broad-Market Sts. in Newark, near my current residence [[despite being a city with a large poorer-than-average, black population like Detroit, it has a bustling downtown that truly acts as a center-- but only during business hours-- where people go for practical things like apparel, furniture, services like hair/nails, dollar stores, and food, such that there are practically no empty storefronts...when you mix this is in with some of the newer investment geared often to the professional office workers or younger/student population, you have something rather interesting). If you added up all the various strips around Detroit in various neighborhoods and put them in one focused neighborhood or downtown avenue, we would have something like that. I think Newark and Harlem are simply smaller and more consolidated, so their residents look to a central business district as a place to carry on their affairs.

But for black metro-Detroiters, just like everyone in metro Detroit, the fact is that downtown is not a center and most people don't have a strong desire to make it one. Better transit and a continued shift in attitude that makes downtown a place of prominence for many reasons [[and not just sports and the occasional night of drinking/clubbing) should resolve this issue.