Published: 7/7/2010
Kurt Hesse is about as purebred a Detroiter as you can find these days. He was born here, grew up here, and still works for the company his granddad founded in 1888 — Detroit Cornice and Slate. He's a 47-year-old businessman who for years has been trying to help his community and make a livin...[MORE]
By Molly Tippen
Published: 6/9/2010
You are deep in debt, out of work and in desperate need of a job when a prospective employer asks a question you weren't expecting: "Can we look at your credit history?" Many people in this predicament face a lose-lose situation, experts say. Deny permission and that prospective employer ...[MORE]
Published: 6/2/2010
Michigan's economic future is at stake right now, in the state Senate. If you think times are bad, imagine what they'd be without the billions in trade that move across the Detroit River every year. The vast majority of it moves across the Ambassador Bridge, which was built in 1929, is wearing out,...[MORE]
Published: 5/26/2010
As News Hits listened in on a press conference held by the Detroit International Bridge Co. last week — holding a phone to our ear and biting our tongue — company President Dan Stamper and Matthew Moroun, son of company owner Manuel "Matty" Moroun, did their mightiest to spin t...[MORE]
Published: 5/5/2010
Anyone who has come within sniffing distance of this column during the past 18 months knows we've been fixated on Detroit's Riverside Park, located next to the Ambassador Bridge owned by Manuel "Matty" Moroun. The city, since late in 2008, has being trying to get Moroun to return a 150-fo...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 5/5/2010
Two recent events in the Detroit area represent what might be described as the yin and the yang of an issue expected to play a significant role in Michigan's environmental and economic future: wind power. First there was the Michigan Wind Energy Conference, held in late April at Cobo Center. Among ...[MORE]
Published: 4/21/2010
While most eyes were focused last week on the collection of powerful politicians, civic leaders and union officials who gathered in support of the Detroit River International Crossing, the main opponent of that new bridge — Grosse Pointe billionaire Manuel "Matty" Moroun and his Detr...[MORE]
Published: 4/21/2010
Things got so bad for Matty Moroun last week that the state's oldest amphibian had to send his normally invisible wife, Nora, out to try to defend him. Looking a trifle haggard, she clearly feared she and Manuel might be down to their last billion or so. "Is this the end of the American dream?...[MORE]
Published: 3/10/2010
Thirteen years ago, the strip of Willis Street just west of Cass Avenue in Detroit was nearly vacant. Not much retail, dining or bar business went on in the area at all, and the businesses that were there went largely unnoticed by those who traveled nearby Woodward or Warren avenues. The few estab...[MORE]
Published: 2/10/2010
If you've got somebody to love, or are just in a serious "like" mode, we suggest you do your Valentine's Day sweet-treat shopping at Detroit's Avalon International Breads at 422 W. Willis St. Why the promo? Sadly, its not because the Hits has been well-bribed with any Avalon goodies. No, ...[MORE]
Published: 2/10/2010
The Detroit International Bridge Co. and its billionaire owner Manuel "Matty" Moroun took a major hit in court last week, when Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Prentiss Edwards ordered the removal of a duty free shop and fuel pumps constructed atop of 23rd Street in southwest Detroit. The...[MORE]
Published: 2/10/2010
If the world's oldest profession is prostitution, our oldest pastime is masturbation. We get ourselves off with evolved efficiency. We do it with ease, we do it often, and no matter what we tell our lovers, we know there's no hand like our own. I'm not saying it's the most thrilling or rewarding met...[MORE]
Published: 1/20/2010
Fed up with alleged abuses and the restaurant owners' reported refusal to meet with them in an attempt to address grievances, eight current and former workers at Andiamo in Dearborn have turned to the court and two federal agencies for help. Since November, workers at the eatery have been staging w...[MORE]
Published: 1/20/2010
You have to have a certain amount of grudging admiration for Matty Moroun, sort of like you do for crabgrass or those zombies in the low-budget horror flicks we used to watch as kids, when we should have been running around getting fresh air and exercise. Matty takes a licking; has holes blown thro...[MORE]
Published: 1/6/2010
The last two decades have been economically characterized by bubbles. The 1990s brought us the tech bubble. You remember that don't you? That's when all your computer-savvy friends were walking around with smug grins making all sorts of pronouncements about the dawn of a new era and claiming to be m...[MORE]
Published: 11/11/2009
Two months ago Belva Davis looked at 125 or so neighbors, activists and others outside of her endangered house and said she felt like David against Goliath. Goliath, in this case, was the tag team of Wachovia Bank (which had written her subprime mortgage in 2003) and Ocwen Financial (the mortgage se...[MORE]
Published: 11/11/2009
News Hits doesn't usually run announcements about upcoming TV shows, but we're making an exception this week because there's an exceptional documentary set to make its U.S. broadcast debut on Detroit's public television station. We're talking about The Water Front, a deeply moving and incisive film...[MORE]
Published: 11/4/2009
For some, downtown Royal Oak's proposed 10-screen theater and bowling alley, with its already-approved liquor license, is the harbinger of suburban ruin. To them it promises parking woes, unwanted traffic and a "big box" operation that will be out of character with the walkable downtown an...[MORE]
Published: 10/21/2009
The 2007 inspection report released last week finding the Ambassador Bridge in "fair condition" was mostly unremarkable, save for a few descriptions of the "poor condition" of certain sections outside of the primary structural parts. The color photos of cracks and missing bolts ...[MORE]
Published: 9/23/2009
Has your job been shipped of to foreign shores or your workplace been sold to faraway profiteers with a bottom-line-only mentality? The Detroit Community-Based Business Week presents an alternative vision of cooperative economic development as we struggle to recover from recession and battered local...[MORE]
Published: 9/16/2009
Using his authority as Pontiac's emergency financial manager, Fred Leeb is selling the Silverdome his way: an auction with no minimum bids to be completed by the end of this year. "We have to sell it now," says Leeb, appointed in March by Gov. Jennifer Granholm because of years of unresol...[MORE]
Published: 9/16/2009
Two guys with a truck got Belva Davis into her three-bedroom bungalow on Bishop Street in Detroit's East English Village back in 2003. On Saturday, 125 or so folks — neighbors, anti-foreclosure activists, politicians and others — gathered outside her house in an effort to keep her there...[MORE]
Published: 9/9/2009
For a quarter-century, Carol Zimmerman has lived in her ranch house on Blaine Avenue on Pontiac's north side. The General Motors retiree used to know her neighbors. They were people like her. They owned their homes and took care of them, she says. Now the property on the northeast side of Zimmerman...[MORE]
Published: 9/9/2009
Working hard not to jump up and start screaming, News Hits sat in Detroit's 36th District Court last week, growing more and more disturbed every time lawyers for the Detroit International Bridge Co. raised the specter of terrorism, and how it's fallen upon the company to protect this vital economic ...[MORE]
Published: 8/26/2009
Manuel J. "Matty" Moroun is an 82-year-old billionaire, one of the richest people in the world, according to Forbes Magazine's annual ranking. He lives in Grosse Pointe, and owns, among other things, the Ambassador Bridge, the hulking ruin of Michigan Central Station, and vast trucking ope...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 8/19/2009
It's not always easy knowing for certain what's local and what's not. Part of it depends on how you want to define the term. In reality, there's a spectrum of what qualifies as local, with the purest light coming from those companies that are locally owned with local manufacturing facilities. Then t...[MORE]
Published: 8/19/2009
HSBC, one of the biggest banks on the planet, has taken to calling itself "the world's local bank." Winn-Dixie, a 500-outlet supermarket chain, recently launched a new ad campaign under the tagline, "Local flavor since 1956." The International Council of Shopping Centers, a globa...[MORE]
Published: 7/22/2009
That's the idea of ARISE Detroit's Neighborhood Day, planned for Saturday. Throughout Detroit, nonprofits, churches, community groups and corporate sponsors have organized nearly 200 neighborhood cleanups, home buildings, health fairs, health screenings, anti-crime rallies, youth concerts and other ...[MORE]
Published: 7/15/2009
So they celebrated the birth of the "new" General Motors last week, which emerged from bankruptcy in a mere 40 days, precisely as long as Jesus is said to have spent stomping around in the wilderness. According to the Bible, that experience purified the young man from Nazareth, who showed...[MORE]
Published: 7/8/2009
Years ago, back during the Vietnam War, I talked to a spokesman for the New Left who came to my campus. "You are going to see the United States and the Soviet Union becoming more and more like each other," he said. "They are going to get color television. We are going to get secret p...[MORE]
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