Edit: I lived downtown for nearly a year and a number of grocery stores opened in the downtown business district while I lived there, with plans for more. According to this article [1] from 5 days ago, there are 80 grocery stores in Detroit. Not to mention the awesome Eastern Market year-round farmer's market.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-walljasper/detroit-fresh-f...
There's ~800k people in Macomb County, and there's > 170 grocery stores.
Edit: You can buy fresh everything in Eastern Market every day of the week, not just during the market on Sundays.
There needs to be more in a city for people to do than to work and eat office lunches. Grocery stores are a visible indicator of how many people make their home (families, kids, long term commitment to the area, etc) there, and Detroit has very few serving 700,000 people. Getting commitment from larger chains, as well as tax incentives to help the smaller mom-and-pops expand to serve more areas - both of these will serve to help attract more people - and this goes for dry cleaners, accountants, and other service businesses.
Companies like Quicken (mentioned in the article) provide significant incentives to get their 4k+ employees to relocate downtown. And it's working...
-The income tax needs to go. 2.5% to live in a city with pretty bad crime and no amenities? No thanks.
-Car insurance is through the roof. If you park on the street it's assumed your car will get broken into occasionally.
-I don't feel entirely safe. If I were to walk home from a bar at 2:30am I would be concerned. 20 miles away in any direction and I wouldn't think twice about it (I'm a young guy and I will not drink and drive, so this is a legitimate issue)
-It's actually quite expensive considering the above. A "nice" apartment in a decent part of downtown will cost $1k+/mo. Go to Plymouth, Northville, Royal Oak (high demand, up-scale areas nearby), and you'll be able to get a reasonable apartment for this same price, sans all the above issues.
I really hope it turns around, but my realistic side is a little worried.
At any rate. The state of Detroit is extremely Depressing. It's the region's major city!
All of the "nicer" areas that I mentioned in my previous post have very low crime rates and no municipal tax. To add to the previous issues I had, Detroit is poorly run. There have been quite a few cases of corruption of city officials.
It's just another thing that needs to be wrangled in.
The state needs to take over the city, incent multiple neighborhood businesses (grocery stores, shopping malls, etc) to be relocating within a moderate radius of the downtown area, and incent families to move there (tax breaks, land redistribution, etc). Pull eminent domain on dozens of square miles of abandoned houses, relocate people if necessary, etc. Businesses grow around people, but people have way too many choices as to where to live. If Detroit is going to even moderately survive again, drastic action needs to be taken on multiple fronts - legal/govt, individuals and private businesses.
I applaud the steps QL and others have taken, but it tends to be not enough - Compuware 15(?) years ago moved there and it didn't do much, for example.