Detroit’s Cadillac Heights neighborhood was once a thriving Black middle-class community. Today, parts of it are more industrial than residential.

One company—Crown Enterprises—has acquired almost every parcel surrounding its Kronos Concrete plant on East McNichols Road near Conant Street. Most of the homes in that area have been demolished. Of the few that remain, the people who live in them blame the owners of the concrete plant and the city for the noise, the dust, and the traffic they deal with every day.

Bridge Detroit and ProPublica spent more than a year investigating what’s happening in Cadillac Heights.

WDET’s Pat Batcheller spoke with Bridge Detroit’s Jena Brooker. She says residents are used to living next to industry, owing to old zoning laws that still exist dating back to the 1940s. But she adds that more recent developments have worsened things.

The following interview has been edited for clarity.

Pat Batcheller: What was Cadillac Heights like before the concrete plant started operating?

Jena Brooker: Residents were used to living next to industry to a degree in this neighborhood. And there was even a truck depot on this lot where the concrete plant is that the Morouns have owned since 1966. But then when the concrete plant went in in 2022, residents said that the neighborhood really changed. There are streets that used to have houses on them and nicely maintained lawns and trees. And those whole streets now are completely empty, and the lots are vacant.

PB: You mentioned the Moroun family, which owns the Ambassador Bridge. Do they also own Kronos Concrete?

JB: Yes, and then they also have another concrete operation by the Ambassador Bridge on the riverfront. They own several other concrete plants throughout Southeast Michigan, and they’re expected to open one soon in Toledo, Ohio, and in Windsor.

PB: How did they end up owning so much property in Cadillac Heights?

JB: They bought this central lot where they owned a truck depot and operated it since 1966. And over the decades, they acquired some properties in this neighborhood. They have property across the city, so that’s not unusual. By 2019, they had about 80 properties.

Then in 2019, Detroit had this historic land swap deal where they wanted to give land to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to open the first new car plant in 30 years. To do that, the city orchestrated this deal where they were shifting around different land.

The Morouns, who own Crown Enterprises, gave up a lot on the east side. In exchange, they were given 34 [Detroit] Land Bank [Authority] parcels in this neighborhood. And from 2019 until now, we also saw at least 16 private individuals sell their properties to Crown. That land swap deal also gave Crown first rights on any properties that enter into the Land Bank until 2034.

PB: How has the concrete plant affected the neighborhood?

JB: Residents say that it’s been dirty and noisy, and just a general nuisance in their everyday lives. We submitted many Freedom of Information Act public records requests, and we found that more than 80 complaints have been submitted to the city and the state regarding dust.

Residents described literal whiteout conditions, having to go inside when they were doing yard work. One of the families we featured had two kids under five and had just had a baby. They were concerned about how the dust was affecting their development. Another resident has COPD, and so the dust is a major concern, coating cars and entering people’s homes. Then there is the noise, the increased truck traffic, and the bright industrial lights from having this industrial operation right in the middle of a neighborhood.

PB: Have these operations broken any kind of laws or regulations?

JB: When the concrete plant was first set up, Crown did not have a permit to do so. They had applied for a permit. They hadn’t gotten it yet, but then they put it up. The city ordered it to be taken down, and then what we saw after that was the city giving special allowances to Crown to operate this whole thing. You’re not supposed to be able to get permits from the city if you have outstanding blight tickets, but we saw that happen in multiple instances. We also saw that they participated in the Wayne County tax auction and were able to purchase a house, even though they had outstanding blight tickets.

PB: How has the city responded to complaints from the neighbors?

JB: The city says that inspectors go out three times a week. The company was required to submit a fugitive dust plan of how they will control dust from exiting the site and going into the neighborhood. That includes things like watering around the plant daily, filtering the dust on the site, and reducing the speed of traffic. When Mayor [Mary] Sheffield took office, she directed the city to install some more air monitors around the plant. But the concern is we have so many air monitors across the city. What’s the next step once we have this data that the air quality isn’t great?

PB: How has the company responded?

JB: The company has said that they’ve increased fugitive dust protections by watering the site every day – they have a water truck that goes around the plant and wets the streets to keep the dust down – that they have never NOT been compliant with city laws and ordinances, and that this represents the biggest investment in the neighborhood in in recent memory.

PB: What promises did they make, and which ones, if any, have they kept?

JB: They promised to create a vegetative buffer and plant trees. In renderings that they publish online, it shows brand new sidewalks around their properties. And when you go out to the neighborhood today, it looks maybe worse than what it looked like before.

PB: How long did it take you to research and report this story?

JB: I’ve been working on this story for a few years. We had published a few articles in Bridge Detroit. But since July 2025, I really took the time to work with ProPublica for the whole year, looking at what this neighborhood used to be like.

Going back to one of the people I feature the most, her family built the first homes in this neighborhood in 1917. It took a long time to get a picture of what this neighborhood was like and how it’s transformed throughout the decades with the help of the city and the state, and the presence of Crown Enterprises.

PB: What do you think the next chapter in this story is going to be?

JB: I plan to continue to follow up. I was recently in the neighborhood dropping printed copies of the story off, and it was dusty. It’s still an issue. They recently got tickets for the dust, but they weren’t fined because of this special agreement they have with the city. There are still some residents left there, and they deserve to be protected and continue to focus on environmental justice stories in Detroit.

Restaurants in Detroit are now eligible to receive a Michelin star rating. That’s 20 years after the Michelin Group awarded its first star to restaurants in the United States.

The designation was born from the French tire company’s efforts over a century ago to recommend places for drivers to stop. It has since become an authority on where to eat worldwide.

Detroit is one of six cities being scouted to identify Michelin Star caliber restaurants for the American Great Lakes guide that is expected to publish in 2027. Currently, Chicago is the only Midwestern city with a restaurant that has secured a Michelin star.

Detroit Free Press dining and restaurant critic Lyndsay Green joined The Metro to explain what the Michelin star designation means, why Detroit is being considered, and if a metro Detroit food spot has a real shot at receiving a star rating.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on demand.

Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

More stories from The Metro

Detroit Police want to extend their contract with ShotSpotter before it expires at the end of the month. But DPD officials tell city council they’re searching for alternatives to the technology. 

Detroit City Council has expressed concerns about ShotSpotter’s surveillance tech in the past and they have questions about the effectiveness and security of the system. 

DPD Officer Mathew Pencil frequently responds to ShotSpotter incidents in the city’s ninth precinct.

He told council members that hearing gunfire is so common in the city, that sometimes residents won’t even call 911. “Sometimes residents are afraid. Sometimes they can’t tell where they came from, or they assume someone else will call. ShotSpotter doesn’t hesitate, it doesn’t panic, it doesn’t look away. It alerts immediately, and it gives the chance to intervene while seconds matter on the street.” 

Pencil says ShotSpotter’s surveillance is the reason police responded after 66 shots were fired in one neighborhood on the night of August 17, 2025, minutes before anyone called 911. 

The city’s Public Health and Safety Committee voted to postpone a decision on the contract until next week in order to hear from residents first. 

-Reporting by Bre’Anna Tinsley

Additional headlines from Tuesday, June 2, 2026

UAW strike

About a thousand UAW members went on strike at the Dauch Corporation factory in Three Rivers Monday. Dauch is the company once known as American Axle. The Three Rivers plant is the company’s largest in Michigan. It makes axles for General Motors. 

The union says Dauch is refusing to restore fair wages after the workers took cuts during the Great Recession. UAW President Shawn Fain kicked off the strike with a video saying “no contract…no axles.”

The Detroit News reports the strike could disrupt production of pickup trucks in Flint if it goes on for more than a couple of weeks. 

Pheasant Flock Party

This weekend, you might want to pop into Detroit’s first ever Pheasant Flock Party. Brewery Faison and the Detroit Bird Alliance are co-hosting the event Saturday where Michiganders and Michigeese can partake in a bird festival block party.

There will be a bird impersonation pageant, a “crow-off,” bird-themed workshops and games, a “pheasant strut” (as one does) and a meet and greet with Fabio the Pheasant.

The Pheasant Flock Party is Saturday from noon until 6 p.m. at Brewery Faison at 1087 Beaufait Street on the city’s east side.

Vault of Midnight hosts game night

Vault of Midnight hosts its monthly game night Sunday in Hamtramck. This month’s featured games include Wondrous Creatures, High Society Yokai Carnival, some tiny games and more.

Detroit Vault of Midnight Game Night is every first Sunday from 5 – 8 p.m. at Florian East Lagers and Ales at 9350 Joseph Campau in Hamtramck. 

Listen to the latest episode of the “Detroit Evening Report” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Metro Detroit’s Downriver area is where heavy industry meets nature, creating a complicated dynamic between the economy and the environment.

Steel mills and other factories that once lined the Detroit River employed thousands of people from River Rouge south to Rockwood. Workers enjoyed the benefits of well-paying manufacturing jobs that bolstered the middle class. But they also recognized the environmental threats those factories posed to the land, the water, and the air around them.

Labor unions and other groups fought to protect the Downriver area’s natural resources and the recreational opportunities they provided.

Michigan State University labor historian Lisa M. Fine has studied the working class’s relationship with the communities where they live. She studied those bonds and wrote a book about them. It’s called “Downriver Detroit: The Working Class, the Environment, and the Bonds of Place.”

WDET’s Pat Batcheller, a Downriver native, spoke with Fine about her research. Here’s a transcript of their conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

Pat Batcheller: Why did you write the book?

Lisa Fine: I cast out to find a place where I could test my theories that working class people cared about not only the natural world around them, but also the community, the region, the place in which they lived. My first scholarly exploration was Pointe Mouillee, the game reserve down there. And it was to my great delight and surprise to find a site Downriver that the people of the region and beyond wanted to preserve once it became available for sale to the state, so that everybody publicly can hunt there for ducks or whatever else they wanted to hunt for.

And to me, that just seemed like a great validation in some ways, or sort of an invitation in many ways, to explore this throughout the entire region. I wanted to uncover the ways in which working class people living in a particular region expressed their identities and their actions through the things that define them by that region.

PB: And what do you think connects people to Downriver?

LF: Since I’m a historian, the first thing that I’ll say is I think it’s history. So for many people, like Native American communities or immigrants, it’s the ways in which the region has become their home, the ways they’ve been able to make a living there, to establish families and communities, and to create a working-class way of life. There’s such a powerful nostalgia that I uncovered.

These things were threatened during the 1960s and 70s because of the kind of employment, because of the kind of life that people could build, because of the place itself. It’s not a place that you would normally associate with natural beauty. But in fact, the people that live there do love the waterfront, and they do love the terrain and the spaces there. People connected to that as well.

PB: You mentioned Pointe Mouillee, which is only a few miles down the river from what used to be heavy industry. You still have Great Lakes Steel in Ecorse. But a couple of steel plants dried up. DTE Energy tore down its coal-fired power plant in Trenton not that long ago. You’ve got this balance that you have to strike between preserving the natural features and at the same time maintaining the tax base, the job base. How difficult was that for people to balance?

LF: It was a constant negotiation. Pointe Mouillee was originally an elite hunting ground owned by industrialists from all over the northeast. But then when it was being sold, there was a groundswell to make this available as a public space, which is incredible. Federal, local and state funds became available to do that.

But there were also other developments later such as the creation of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, which was an incredible effort to preserve spaces up and down the river and even down to Lake Erie. All of those were negotiations that were affected by historical circumstances, availability of resources, public input, and sometimes pushback around it.

One of the labor leaders that I feature in my book, Harry Lester , said, “you have to have jobs. They have to work.” And so, the responsibility to make that balance or to engage in that negotiation should not rest solely on the working people. We’re not going to give up the desire to have a Detroit River that we could use, that we could fish in, that we could swim in one day. This responsibility should be shared by local, state and federal officials.

PB: You mentioned in your book the role that unions played in those negotiations. Why was that important?

LF: It signaled at least at the beginning of the environmental movement in the United States. Working class people, through their labor unions, were going to be lobbying for and engaging in activities on behalf of the environment. Unions recognized this: what good is bargaining for more spending money and more free time if the places that they want to spend their money and engage in their outdoor activities are unacceptable, trashed or polluted?

PB: What did you learn about the people who call Downriver home?

LF: I learned that they were both similar to places all around the country and also completely unique, which I know sounds contradictory. But for me, that’s the importance of the study.

On the one hand, very few communities of working-class people live in an environment like this. They don’t live beside a boundary water and a river with all the concentration of industry. But on the other hand, there are so many downrivers and downwinds and downstreams all across the United States.

Working class people who live in those communities never sign on to the fouling of their environments and never sign on to be pushed out of their communities. Those kinds of things are not unique. And yet the ways that the people of Downriver responded, with this powerful nostalgia, this commitment to improving their resources and their desire to stay I found very compelling.

PB: How important is the river itself to the region’s identity?

LF: It’s all about the water. I’ve visited many times down there and it does dominate the landscape, certainly among the communities that are right on it. People from the very beginning lived near there because of those waters. Industry came there because of those waters. It’s the magnet that brought both of these constituencies together—industry and people. It’s sort of the font of all activities in Downriver. And it’s not just the Detroit River; it’s all the different tributaries emptying into Lake Erie. It’s a very defining, important, feature of this. It’s the thing that makes Downriver what it is.

PB: Why is the bond to this place so strong?

LF: I think it’s history. I think it’s legacy. I think it’s the kind of life that working class people were able to create there. I think it’s the proximity to the resources, natural resources that they had access to, and that they created access to.

I mean, these were things that weren’t just handed to they, they worked to do this. And once that era of deindustrialization, or as I refer to in the book, the ‘Downriver disaster’ happened, all of these things were challenged so profoundly.

I think the importance of this comes to the forefront and they realize that they’re losing more than just a job. They’re losing a way of life that they had participated in creating.

And there are certainly people who left. I quoted some people who actually did leave because of the pollution and some of the challenges of living in Downriver. Nevertheless, once this is challenged, it is a very difficult obstacle to overcome because of the loss of the tax base when firms and companies left, and something that they had personally felt that they had been participating in creating.

PB: What was the “Downriver disaster?”

LF: It was the departure of jobs, companies, corporations, and plants. These were good union jobs that allowed them to support their families and to live close to a middle-class kind of life where they can engage in the different kinds of outdoors activities, if that’s what they were interested in. It didn’t just threaten their livelihood, but it threatened an entire way of life and communities as a whole. Plants just picked up and left or went out of business. It changed the whole character of the region.

One scholar that I quote believed that it was a collective trauma. They thought, “oh, this is just a downturn. It’ll come back.” And then over time, people began to realize maybe it wasn’t. And we have to think of a different plan for the future. It was a disaster for many of the communities and certainly for the families that live there.

PB: How has Downriver managed to survive these kinds of economic and industrial upheavals?

LF: There certainly was some outmigration. There certainly was a shift to different types of employment. There have been, as I talk about at the end of my book, different ways of thinking about the future of Downriver. Ironically, using the deindustrialization as a way to promote Downriver as a place of physical beauty and a place where people can come to take advantage of that has been one arena. The creation of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge has been one way to do that. But there is still some industry, and that’s continuing. There have been some efforts to promote it as a good place for people to live.

Again, there’s been a lot of different strategies here. I’m not sure that there’s one silver bullet or perfect course of action. but people have been staying and trying to make Downriver a ‘go’ even through the difficulties that have happened.

PB: People don’t necessarily consider Monroe as part of Downriver because it’s not on the river, it’s on Lake Erie. Why did you include Monroe in your book?

LF: I thought about that a lot because I knew the different characterizations of Downriver and the different towns and cities that have been included in it. It was purely to tell the story that I wanted to tell.

First of all, steel is an important industry, and some of the earliest steel strikes took place in Monroe in the 1930s, which I do recount. They’re part of that steel industry history.

I also didn’t want to leave out the Fermi atomic power plant story. It’s just north of Monroe, but a lot of the opposition and a lot of the activism around it comes from the Monroe area. So again, that would have been, I think, a little artificial to leave out.

And then finally, one of my favorite organizations that I feature in the chapter on water is the Lake Erie Cleanup Committee. It emerged out of the little beach communities north of Monroe and recognized that the pollution that they experienced at Sterling State Park was a result of what was going on upstream. So, it was impossible to separate that out.

And that brought on all of the efforts to try to clean up the Detroit River, even though it was originally a clean up Lake Erie committee. A whole bunch of individuals came together— sportsmen, environmental groups, conservationists. So to me, it seemed artificial to separate out all those efforts just because they happen to be a little further down and on Lake Erie.

I hope that some of the stories that I told explain why I thought it belonged there.

In the early 20^th Century Ford and Chrysler operated extensive facilities in Highland Park, helping its population grow to more than 50,000 people by the 1930s.

But both car companies moved away from Highland Park decades ago. Now its population hovers between 8,000 and 9,000.

Automotive historian Robert Tate writes for the website MotorCities and worked with the Chrysler museum.

Tate says Ford mass-produced its Model T in Highland Park, creating the moving assembly line that forever changed manufacturing.

Tate says even the Highland Park plant’s architecture was inspiring.

The following interview edited for length and clarity.

Robert Tate: The building was designed by Albert Kahn. He and Henry Ford had a great relationship. The doors opened January 1, 1910, on Woodward Ave. It became one of the largest factories in the world because they manufactured the Model T. The factory was about 865 feet and ran parallel to Woodward Ave. This was one of the most historic sites in the United States and the world, to be honest with you. And it also attracted a lot of people from European countries and other cultures to finally get a job and become an American citizen. So, the factory itself created a lot of things for a lot of people, not just the Model T, but for people to live a good life.

Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: Why did it attract people from Europe and elsewhere?

RT: Henry Ford began using the moving assembly line. And in 1914, the average wage was $2.30. But he raised it to $5 a day. That attracted a lot of people from all over the world to come here, including my ancestors. My family came here from the South to get jobs like that. The only problem was that the hours were long, 10 hours a day and then five hours on Saturday for the workers. And that created a lot of health issues for a lot of individuals because they were so regimented in putting together parts at the assembly plant.

QK: How much did the Ford factory actually mean to the city of Highland Park?

RT: It meant a lot because you’re talking about taxes and people coming in. The Highland Park Hotel was there, they had a racetrack as well at the time. That generated a lot of income.

QK: Why did Ford move it out eventually? Why did it leave Highland Park?

RT: My belief is that things began to change when the 1927 Ford came out and the company had the model assembled at the River Rouge plant. The Model T was produced from 1908 to 1926. And then Ford introduced the 1927 Model A, which was very, very popular. Ford sold millions of those cars. Also, and people don’t like to talk about this, unfortunately there were a lot of workers who got killed at the Highland Park plant. Because at that time they didn’t have things enclosed for safety. So, a lot of men, unfortunately, lost their lives. But I think that Ford wanted to get out of Highland Park and move it closer to River Rouge because you had more goods coming into that particular facility for models to be assembled.

QK: In regards to Chrysler, how did they get into Highland Park?

RT: It was their major headquarters until they moved to a larger facility in Auburn Hills. I used to hear a lot of Chrysler employees say that the Chrysler Highland Park site was just too archaic.

QK: I’ve heard some experts say that when Chrysler in particular moved out, it truly devastated Highland Park’s economy. And that the enclave has struggled to really replace that revenue since. Do you agree?

RT: Yes, I do. The same thing happened with American Motors when they moved out. Unfortunately, the neighborhoods and the communities suffered when both of those companies moved to Auburn Hills. The neighborhoods were devastated.

QK: There must have been a lot of tax revenue and other money coming into Highland Park that suddenly vanished. But you say that from what you heard people who were working for Chrysler were happy to vacate and to go to a newer facility.

RT: My God, yes. I would hear that all the time because it was a new facility. It created a new way of thinking, using the new things that they were not accustomed to having at Highland Park. I remember walking through the hallways at the Chrysler facility in Auburn Hills and it was a showcase. It was a very beautiful building.

QK: After all that has happened since Ford opened the Model T assembly line, when you look at Highland Park now, what do you think is the legacy that automakers have left there?

RT: As a historian, I look at the 1950’s in Highland Park. Virgil Exner, who was the chief designer in charge, came out with the 1957 Chrysler line. And I’m a big fan of the 1957 Chrysler line. So, whenever I think of Highland Park, I think of the good days that launched a lot of cars that were popular, the 1964 Dodge, the 1957 Chrysler. Those cars changed America.

Read more Crossing the Lines: Highland Park

Highland Park is an odd shape—a trapezoid to be exact. Its borders include West McNichols Road on the north side, railroad tracks along the eastern edge, alleys behind Tennyson and Tuxedo streets to the south, and the Lodge freeway forming part of its western boundary.

These have been Highland Park’s city limits since officials incorporated it 1918.

That’s how it managed to avoid becoming part of Detroit, which had already annexed most of the surrounding land.

Leaders and residents wanted autonomy

Jeff Horner is a professor at Wayne State University‘s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He says Detroit wanted to absorb Highland Park even before the latter became a city.

“Highland Park was not open to the idea of being absorbed,” Horner says. “They wanted to have some local autonomy.”

Michigan’s Home Rule law in 1909 made it difficult for one city to annex another. That same year, Henry Ford finished building his Model T factory in Highland Park. It was the first Ford plant to use an assembly line. Horner says the city’s population exploded.

“From the 1910 U.S. census to the 1920 census, the population of the city grew by over 1,000% from about 4,500 to about 45,000,” Horner says. “That is remarkable growth.”

Auto industry drove growth

Highland Park kept growing until 1930, peaking at almost 53,000 people. Marsha Battle Philpot grew up in the city and has written about its history. She says Henry Ford’s offer of $5 a day to work on his assembly line drew thousands of people from across the country.

“This was an astronomical sum in those days,” she says. “Maybe an average person might make $5 a month”.

The city’s population steadily declined through the 1930s and 1940s. But it was still relatively prosperous. Philpot says the schools were among Michigan’s best in the 1950s and 1960s.

“Even our elementary schools had swimming pools,” Philpot says. “It was really an extraordinary place to live.”

But good schools were not enough to keep people from leaving the city decade after decade. Ford eventually closed its Highland Park factory, which is now a Michigan historical landmark. Chrysler moved its headquarters, established in 1925, from Highland Park to Auburn Hills. The city’s tax base evaporated. It had so much trouble paying its bills its streetlights were repossessed. State-appointed emergency managers ran the city and the school district for much of the early 2000s, closing the McGregor Library and the high school. Glenda McDonald, Highland Park’s mayor since 2022, says those decisions hit young people especially hard.

“Children need a place to go, and literacy is a very important part of our children’s learning,” the mayor says. “It kind of put a very bad taste in people’s mouths.”

Lansing takes over

McDonald says emergency management didn’t solve Highland Park’s long-term financial problems. One was literally bubbling under the surface: leaky water pipes, some more than 100 years old. The city incurred tens of millions of dollars in debt to the Great Lakes Water Authority. Each side sued the other with the city accusing GLWA of overcharging residents who were too poor to pay for water. The legal dispute pushed Highland Park to the brink of financial ruin.

In 2023, the state intervened again, this time giving the city $100 million to pay its debt and fix its water infrastructure. McDonald says workers are now replacing every lead water line in town.

“We’re working with the state, we’re working with GLWA, and hopefully we’ll continue moving forward that way,” McDonald says.

Had the state not thrown Highland Park that lifeline, the city likely would have filed for bankruptcy. The financial crisis raised a question: would Highland Park be better off becoming part of Detroit? The mayor demurred.

“Blasphemy,” she says.

Legal hurdles, local pride make merging difficult

For one local government to absorb another, state law requires residents of both communities to vote in favor of it after weighing the pros and cons. Stephanie Leiser directs the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. She says uniting Detroit and Highland Park could reduce bureaucracy.

“You can eliminate some layer of management there,” she says. “They don’t need to have an additional mayor and a clerk and all of those things.”

But Leiser says there’s not a ton of evidence that it would help Highland Park financially.

“They’re not going to save money necessarily on like plowing the roads, picking up trash, or maintaining the infrastructure,” she says.

Leiser says Highland Park’s finances are in better shape than they were when officials were considering bankruptcy in 2023. But it still has challenges, such as high property taxes.

Highland Park has some of Wayne County’s highest millage rates

In 2025, the city’s millage rate for principal residences was 63.221. That’s $63.22 for every $1,000 of a home’s taxable value. The non-homestead rate as over 79 mills. Rates for industrial and commercial personal property were over 57 mills and 67 mills respectively.

Former Highland Park Councilman Ken Bates says the city’s millage rates and pervasive poverty make it hard to attract new investment.

“We have to look into the future as to what will help Highland Park become sustainable,” he says. “What kind of industry should we count on?”

Bates says city leaders need a plan and the expertise to implement it.

“If not, it’s just you maintaining the status quo year after year,” he says. “You’re just one disaster away from financial calamity.”

More than just lines on a map

Bates says Highland Parkers are fiercely loyal to their community and that most want to remain a city within a city. Resident Michael Williams, Sr. admits he wouldn’t rule out becoming part of Detroit.

“We would get more popularity, probably more services,” Williams says.

But other residents, like Kim McDade, don’t see the benefit of giving up Highland Park’s identity.

“Highland Park needs to be given a chance to continue to build,” McDade says. “Our mayor is doing a great job in doing some things and making connections with the right people.”

Mayor Glenda McDonald says the city’s greatest strength is its people.

“They’re resilient, they’re loving, they’re kind, and we take care of each other,” she says. “I know a person on every single street.”

The mayor says that resilience defines Highland Park more than its shape on a map.

Highland Park is a small city that once had a relatively large population for its size. At the height of Detroit’s automotive boom, more than 50,000 people lived within Highland Park’s 2.9 square miles. Today, the population is less than 9,000.

WDET’s Crossing the Lines series features conversations with and stories about Highland Park’s people, culture, and history.

Detroit Public Radio’s Citizen Vox project gives residents a chance to express how they feel about their communities and the issues that matter to them.

WDET’s Pat Batcheller spoke with Highland Park resident Ken Bates at a coffee shop on Woodward Ave. on April 10, 2026.

Bates was born in Detroit but moved to Highland Park with his wife more than 25 years ago. They bought a Craftsman-style bungalow in a historic district of the city. Voters elected Bates to the city council in 2018, where he served until 2022. He chairs the board of an energy nonprofit called Soulardarity. Its mission includes installing solar-powered streetlights in Highland Park’s neighborhoods.

Bates shares his thoughts on housing, poverty, community pride, and development.

Ken Bates: We know that there’s a housing crisis, a housing shortage nationally, affordable housing. Highland Park has an abundance of land that is underutilized, that really could be put forth in terms of development. So, we could look at land trusts. We could look at affordable housing, low-income housing, market rate housing, duplexes to grow the population because that’s what we have in abundance.

Manufacturing? I doubt that will ever come back to the extent that Henry Ford and Chrysler and some of the other manufacturers had here. That’s a bygone era.

And so, we have to look into the future as to what will help Highland Park become sustainable. What kind of industries should we count on?

You have to get education on board. You have to get private development. You have to get your government funding all in order, and you have to have a plan and a vision and the expertise in order to do it.

If not, you’re just maintaining the status quo. And year after year, you’re just one disaster away from some financial calamity, whether it be a natural disaster or something like the Great Lakes Water Authority suing us for $19 million and threatening to put it on our tax rolls.

Pat Batcheller: What do you like about being in Highland Park?

KB: Highland Park is centrally located. It’s convenient. There’s a sense of—like with my block, I never expected it to be so diverse. And yet you’ve got immigrants, you’ve got people of different faiths. You’ve got people who are ascribed to different lifestyles. I mean, it just it goes on and on, different political beliefs, and we all live together in the same community, and we’re able to communicate and talk and look out after each other.”

PB: From the conversations I’ve had with you and some of the other folks I’ve talked to, it isn’t really the borders that define Highland Park, it’s the people. Would you agree with that?

KB: Well, yeah, I would say the people do define Highland Park because, because again, they’ve been here. Most have been here quite a long time. And even if you travel outside of Highland Park and talk to people that formerly lived here, many people will tell you, ‘Yeah, my grandparents lived here.’ They remember it as a great city. They’ve had fond memories.

The historical district is obviously something that has gained attention. People are looking at those homes and, if they have the means to renovate them, are coming in and deciding, “well, let’s renovate this home.” Because you can’t rebuild those anywhere for anything that I would consider reasonable.

Highland Park has just had its own identity for a long, long time. And so, I can’t see that changing because it would be so difficult to incorporate us into the Detroit culture. We’re not Detroit. We’re not Hamtramck. We’re Highland Park.

PB: What’s the most pressing issue facing Highland Park right now?

KB: It’s poverty. You’ve got to figure out how to raise people’s incomes up, so to speak, their standard of living. So, whether it be through employment, homeownership, because poverty impacts everything around us. For example, ALDI is usually out of shopping carts because people abscond with them. If you’re running a business, that’s not helpful. We were fortunate in that Foot Locker moved into the old CVS building because CVS, Rite-Aid, and another drugstore left.

Convincing businesses to come here is a real challenge because the landscape has changed. Brick and mortar stores aren’t necessarily how people are going about retail experiences. You would think that we would have a thrift shop or something of that nature in a community like that. We don’t.

So, trying to look at trends that will allow people to be gainfully employed, increase home ownership, educate their children are things that should be made priority.

The appearance of the city has to change because we have a lot of blight. We had a press conference celebrating the announcement of Highland Towers on Woodward being torn down. We’ve got to have news that is uplifting, that is showing progress now. Yes, the building should be torn down because it’s caught on fire sixteen years ago. But we need to be announcing opportunities for growth projects that will bring about change.

Inquiries for new electric vehicles has risen more than a quarter since America and Israel’s war in Iran began. But EVs need to be charged — and that’s easier to do in some places.

If you’re in China, you can charge an EV in just a few minutes. In Michigan, we’re way behind that reality.

But despite the Trump administration’s distaste for EVs, the infrastructure for electricity is improving. The number of charging ports in the state grew by about 1,800 last year — the most significant uptick in one year. 

So, if you’re thinking about buying or leasing an EV, what does all this mean for you?

Sophia Schuster is the policy principal for the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council. She spoke with Host Robyn Vincent.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on demand.

Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

More stories from The Metro

Technology changes the world around us at a fast pace. So fast, our jobs, the way we communicate, even the way we move around hardly resemble what they were like 10 or 15 years ago.   

Typically, new technology becomes the standard and the old one becomes obsolete. The music industry is very familiar with this.  The songwriters and producers of today create music in bedrooms instead of major studios.

Vinyl records break this rule. In recent years, records have consistently generated the most revenue among all physical music formats. That’s due in part to Record Store Day which molded younger music fans into collectors. They leap frogged cassette tapes and CDs, which were considered more advanced than records when they were released. 

Jeremy Peters, a music business professor from Wayne State University, joined the show to discuss what in the last 20 years catapulted vinyl records back into the mainstream.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on demand.

Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

More stories from The Metro