Should The Wings or Tigers Be Sold? Plus 5 Stories Around Town

0:00Before we get started, I wanted to tell you about something happening right here at Techtown. Connect with Detroit Entrepreneurs, creatives and innovators at Techtowns first Thursdays on October 1st. This month, they're celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with Hispanic-owned vendors and live music featured. Networking runs from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm, followed by music until 9. It's free with refreshments and light bites throughout the evening. In the Techtown 440 Burrow Street, Detroit, register at TechtownDetroid.org. Hello friends, welcome to your daily Detroit. It is Friday, September 18th, 2026. We are coming to you from our studio, Techtown. I am Jair Stays. Enjoying me across the table on a Friday is Mr. Friday himself, Devano Riley. It's good to see you, man. It's good to be here, Jair. It's exciting. There's pretty much cooperating and sounds like we've both been out and about a little bit.

1:00We have. You know what? The weather for fall outside of that big storm. The weather for fall has been great. It falls off to good start. Yes, it is fall. I mean, at this point, we're entering week two of the NFL season. We're in like week three of college football, the Lions dropped. You saw the game. I did. But, you know what? Buffalo is actually supposed to be one of the best teams. That's a super bowl contending team. So I think we were always supposed to drop the Buffalo game unless we were really good. But our next two games are at least I know the Jets and then another team that isn't very good, maybe Carolina. So I think we have easily a chance to go three and one. Well, where have you been? Well, I got a couple quick ones. It's more of a one is where I've been and one is where I tried to go. So the where I've been is I just came back from lunch at UNKS, which we talked about a couple episodes ago. You had mentioned you went there. I was, you know, quick, quick observations. I love the interior, you know, because you, I mean, I love the decor, I love the interior, love the vibe. It's really cool. It's very different than any, any place that's downtown in that area right now.

2:04And one of the things that we talked about, which is relevant to our conversation now is when we talked about it, I said, I was interested. However, it was going to be hard for me to get to because the initial press was about them opening, I think, at like four or five o'clock, which I'm not going to have dinner there. It doesn't work, that doesn't work for my life. However, UNKS reached out to us on social media and let us know that they were going to start opening for lunch. And sure enough, I'm a man of my word. They did open for, open for lunch and I showed up. So I had lunch there. It was great. They still have the same, I think they have this pretty much the same menu. It's the pizzas, you have the red pizzas, the white pizzas, you have the salads, the burgers, the chicken tenders and the sides. So I think it's pretty standard no matter what. So I felt called to the, what was it called? I think the pink room, like pepperonis, banana peppers, honey drizzle, ricotta. It's really good. See, I'm impressed. I didn't know that you would like dive into the Detroit style pizza like that. It's a little bit harder than what I would do for us, a lunch pizza.

3:07I'll be honest. But it was good nonetheless. I can only have a couple of pieces. But it was good nonetheless. And obviously, UNKS has a full bar so that you could have your options there if you want to make it a power lunch. As I say, man, do I miss the power lunch? We should just have, you know what? We should do a daily Detroit power lunch like on a Friday. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's where I'm showing up. You'll get me there. I think it would be kind of fun. Anybody who might be off on a Friday or working from home. Yeah. Well, hey, look, I would have to curate that and I'd be happy too because that's kind of my thing. So let me know daily Detroit at gmail.com. I know we've done a ton of different kinds of events. A power lunch could be fun. Would you come to a power lunch? Yeah. I was also just encouraged by, I have to say, when I walked in, I was ready to see kind of an empty place because you know, lunch is a tough go in downtown these days and has been. But it was pre crowded. I was very happy. There was a good amount of people in there. Is it a product thing? Because here's the thing. I've been down to places like Kavan such at all different hours and they have been kind

4:11of bouncing. And I wonder if some of the malaise is a product thing because like Athens, Slovakia closed in the Penobska building recently. I heard that I used to go there when years ago when I worked corporate, my office was upstairs. I wonder like it has the taste of things changed. You know, we lost seven greens, seven greens close. Although part of their problem, I think for me was they were never open when I could go. Well, opposite for me, there was, they were always open for lunch, but what happened is it looked like the whole slaphole industry just cannibalized them. You know, you had Kava and sweet greens come in and there's only so many spaces for those type of places. Never in my entire life did I think that the word slop would become so ubiquitous for so many things in my vocabulary on a day to day basis. AI slops. Slop, bull, slap. Yeah, so much slop. Well, yeah. So that's what I think the death knelt for seven greens. I always liked them. I thought their quality was top notch. 100%. Every time I got the chance to go, I really enjoyed them.

5:11So we'll miss them, but they still have a spot at the airport. Great. So if you're flying out of town. It's open for lunch. That's what I think the headline for this is go visit. Yes, go visit. So I did actually have a where I didn't get to go. I was trying to go to this weekend. My wife never going out to dinner and we were going to lots of premium. I wanted to grab a drink beforehand and I thought, well, I hadn't been to Pine Hall yet. But I remember from and again, we've discussed this and it was out on various articles online that they don't take reservations at Pine Hall that you just kind of show up and the place is pretty big. And so, you know, it shouldn't be an issue unless it's the busiest time. Now it was a Saturday evening and I thought maybe if we caught it right around the 530 hour, we'd be good because two of us just grabbed a drink. So we walk in. It's busy downtown. I mean, again, I can't stress enough. You know, you go sometimes, Jared, but if people haven't been downtown on a Saturday recently, especially in the summer and spring, it is packed downtown, packed. And so we walked in and there was, I don't know, maybe 25, 30 people just kind of wandering around the lobby, kind of loitering there and a person with an iPad and they came up to

6:15us and said, Hey, do you have reservations? And I said, I know because I thought you didn't have it. You didn't do reservations. And they said, Oh, we started doing them two weeks ago. And sure enough, the wait time was like over an hour to get on the pine. Wow. On a Saturday. So that's probably something good for listeners. If you were thinking of going to Pine Hall and you might have thought that perhaps you didn't have to make a reservation, I would highly suggest that you make a reservation probably more than a weekend advance because that place gets packed up. So long story short, we did not go there. We went to Bestie-L-Bar, which was lovely. I highly recommend they have a new patio out there. So you can kind of sit on Washington Boulevard, delightful, beautiful atmosphere. But no, Pine Hall remains elusive to me. Bestie-Lokie does a great job. They really do. I have not been up to Pine Hall. I do hope to go. You know, I love these follow-ups and listeners tell me they love the follow-ups because so many places, so many outlets. Of course, let's talk about when the place just opened. But getting a little bit of that later intel, I think is so important. I think next week we will do a little bit of a revisit to the Cosm conversation because

7:16oh boy, I'm not going to get into it today. Today, but I have gotten so much feedback on all sides about Cosm. People are really, really passionate about it, but I will say one thing before we move on to where I've been. All the feedback really tells me we really do need a standard movie theater down here. Oh God, yes. Yes. Well, that's a good, good tip for the Cosm conversation. So give me more feedback daily. DetroitGmail.com. So I want to talk about where you've been because you get to go, I just want to say this, I'm not jealous, you know, different lifestyle, but you get to go to like night events. I don't get to go, my life doesn't, or my night events are city council meetings. So which are not fun. It's all about seasons, right? This is just all about seasons. And in this season of life, you're at council members and council meetings and stuff. So to learn about what's going on at night in Detroit, I got to talk to you. So. Well, I was out at Eastern Market After Dark. Shout out to the listeners I ran into, shout out to the friends that I ran into, especially Lynn, always good to see you. Anyway, me and my partner went out.

8:17The first time I actually ever been at Eastern Market After Dark with a partner. Okay. I usually just kind of bop in for the art and bop out. I not realized how much shopping there was. Yeah. Like Sheds and Sheds and Sheds and Shepherds for me. Yeah. And it was good to see a lot of people. It was good to see the music performances. Listen, I've never seen it so packed. People were parked like a mile away. They got to figure out something with that because people were on side streets. Like, you know, East of Eastern Market, it just basically fields with like the sidewalks are gone. It's all been blown out. Yeah. That was just giant parking lots for this thing because it was so popular. People were walking in people were self-appointing themselves to direct traffic because the cars were so packed, stacked back to back. That sounds kind of for me when I'm in that situation. I just park far, far away. But that's what we did. That's what we did. And I think next year, I'm going to either Uber in or we'll come down from work or something and not because... Maybe Mogo. Mogo.

9:17There's all kinds of options we could do. We probably will bike next year because this, that was wild. Wait, in fact, the amount of time that we walked from the center of East of Market after dark to our car, I think we would have been a shorter time if we had bike back. So do you just spend your time kind of walking around, did you go to any of the businesses were they open to? Well, no. It's been a while. It was all under the Sheds. Okay. And there was a lot of activations. There were some cool art pieces. There were stuff people from Move Detroit. Interestingly, it's the first time ever. I saw a bathroom vendor. So their advanced plumbing is part of... Like is in the city. It's down the street. They had a whole display all about their super fancy automated toilet. Their marketing game is pretty strong, I gotta say. Listen, if they want to give us a call, I feel like we could do a deal. It would be very great to pitch toilets on daily Detroit. Not to be underrated toilets are just very, very important in one's life.

10:18Have you ever tried a bidet? Yes. Fig only like, I can count on my hand. One should do it again. Yes. See? All right. I'm not touching with us about that. Anyway, do you know where I've tried it, Charlie? I was about to point out. Actually, as you asked that, I was not expecting that question. So I had to dig into my mental roller ducts here. You know where it has a lot of bidets? These Yemeni coffee shops in Dearborn. I don't know what it is, but... Oh, I know why. It's just fancy. I don't know. It's fancy. He's also very clean. That's where I've had bidets at the Yemeni coffee shops in Dearborn. Well, I am really... Can I... Amazing. That is amazing. I love it. So I'm not so great news that Red Hook in Midtown is closing. They're closing their Midtown coffee shop on Woodward on September 26, ending a three-year run in that former Great Lakes coffee space. Their Furndale shop and their Detroit spots on Agnes and East Jefferson are staying open.

11:20So this is not the end of Red Hook. It's not get overly freaked out about this. Devon, we don't have a ton of details, but I can't help but think about something that you and I have discussed on the show many times. That small is the new big. And that Great Lakes space, that former Great Lakes space, pretty big. And I don't think the last I look with their menu and Big Luchi went out and shot some photos. I don't think they were surfing alcohol. Great Lakes and Great Lakes did. But let's talk about it because it's on a spot on Woodward when you think you would do good. Yeah, I'm going to start this because I've got a few things to say about this. For those that know, Great Lakes coffee was my... For a time in the 2014 to 2017 era, Great Lakes coffee was my number one. I had a list of you know, I had a list of 500 bars in restaurants. Great Lakes coffee was starred because it was my favorite place to go. Having said that, Red Hook does coffee coffee.

12:21And I think that's a great concept. Certain coffee concepts are really good. I've been to the one on the Greenway and the Dinosarter Senior Greenway. That's a great concept. Love that concept. Perfect for Red Hook. Love that for you. This was not their kind. Like I'm not sad to see them go because they didn't do this well. They just didn't do it well. You said Great Lakes was such a big space. It was a multifunctional, multi-purpose space. And Red Hook in its iteration never felt complete, never felt finished. I would go in there and the tables are very sparse. I mean, I don't know if this is like a COVID thing or post COVID. Tables were very far apart. It seems like the two spaces are very different. So I go to that same Red Hook because both those Red Hooks I talked about in Detroit are on the east side. They're near me. Yeah. And sometimes I'll stop into that Red Hook near Breadless, which also huge news about Redless. They're expanding to different cities. They got some franchises. Great news for them. But that Red Hook is beautiful, beautiful by the Greenway over there. It's well-appointed. The seats are super cool. Like I really like it.

13:21The vibe at the one in Midtown didn't match. It was sparse. They didn't do enough with it. They had their, they had their coffees, sure. They had very light pastries. But Great Lakes coffee, that space was once as you said, a full bar. It was a, they did wine tastings there. They did sandwiches like actual lunch and, you know, did you know at one time that was actually an Irish bar? No, got it. Before. Before. So what did my uncles told me? Well, that would have been great. I love Great Lakes. I probably would have loved it as an Irish bar. But I digress. You know what I think it should be? Is I think it maybe sounds obvious, but it really needs to go back to the similar concept. It can't just be a coffee shop. The space is too dynamic. There's too much going on. It really needs to be either a full kind of breakfast, lunch, dinner, cafe, like a cast cafe, which we talked about recently. Or it needs to really just go back to the Great Lakes coffee concept. So on smart, I mean, we've talked about this, Jair. I know there's mixed feelings about Great Lakes coffee. I know you and I loved it.

14:24Basically do it. They did product. Yes, we did. I love the product. Fine, fine. You love being there. I love being there. I didn't love how the people were treated. Great. Exactly. So my point is just do that, but just be a better man. And basically call it, you know, something blank, blank, blank, blank coffee and just take their concept and do it. It was so good. That's what me selfishly saying that because I love Great Lakes so much, but I think we should call it Lake Ontario coffee. That's not bad. That's not bad. I'd love to hear your feedback daily to Troy at gmail.com or 313-789-302-11. Listen, training camp is underway with the wings. There's a ton of mess over there. The tiger season, huge disappointment. Sean Horcoff is now going to be interim GM for the Red Wings.

15:24Iserman pushed into a advisory role. Dylan Larkin isn't wearing the captains. The tiger captains see the tigers, you know, tariff school bulls gone. There's so much, I feel like there's so much disorder with the wings and the tigers. I want to talk to you because we both love the city. We both love teams and people are really frustrated because it almost feels like the illogic organization bite off more than they can do. Can they do both of these teams? It's just this like long frustration, especially for me. I'm old enough to remember the Red Wings Stanley Cup parades. I'm old enough to remember when we were the New York Yankees of hockey and this has been extremely frustrating to the point where people who I know were hockey fans are like, I am done with the sport. Goodbye. Yeah, I wouldn't blame them. I mean, the Red Wings don't even try anymore. We I remember having this conversation with you. You're not that long ago. And when I said, I think Norris might have been here.

16:25They're the fifth most relevant team. Like DCFC is supplanted them. They're the fifth most relevant team until further notice because they as a franchise, it's a dumpster fire. You have the situation with Larkin with the GM. They're not good. I think the illitches definitely overextended themselves. I think you're absolutely right in the sense that when you were talking about how much, you know, fond memories you have of the Red Wings being great, the Tigers were crap back then. So it would tell me is the illitches never could balance two good teams. And we live in an era now where things are so much more expensive and the owners and, you know, we talk about the where Tark's scuba went, the Dodgers. The owner is in world and all sorts of controversy. But at the same time, that team is worth $10 billion. The money in baseball is so, so huge that I just don't think the illitches can keep up. And they don't have a desire to spend these big contracts. And they've showed us such that they don't have the desire to spend on these big contracts anymore.

17:29And you're stuck kind of between a rock and a hard place. You know, there are two different situations the Tigers and the Wings, but it does come down to illitches don't seem willing to spend. They have a crappy product in the Wings. The Tigers at least I'll give them credit, man. They try, they traded schoolable and they're not going to make the playoffs this year, but they're not going to suck. Like they were okay. So I give them credit for trying, but with the Wings, it's kind of a, that's, I kind of feel how maybe your colleagues or your friends feel about the Wings. I was never even like, they've always been my fourth team. Yeah, I think we're back to the era of the dead Wings for a while. It is what it is. And like to be fair with baseball, they are definitely, I think considering doing some sort of salary cap situation in the next, you know, agreement, whatever and that'll help a little bit. But I can't help but wonder like should they sell one team? Yes, yes, they should sell one team. Okay. If you think they should sell one team, let me know which team. The Tigers, you think so? Why don't care enough about the Red Wings? And NHL doesn't matter as much. You know what I mean? So let's say they sold the Red Wings and they sold it to a rich owner.

18:34It's only so much you can do. You sell the baseball team to a really rich owner who can just throw money around a Dan Gilbert of sorts. He doesn't have baseball team yet. I don't think he does. So someone like that, I can do some stuff. You can own it with some liquid cash here. That can make a difference. So Tigers, sell the Tigers. All right, I would love to hear your thoughts. Should the illitches sell a team daily Detroit at gmail.com. This is a little bit of a local and a national story because listen, you drive by gas pumps, you use gasoline. So do I. What on earth the last like week things that whole fear that people had like a month and change ago all hit where I'm seeing gas prices go up 20 cents overnight. I go to different gas stations. There can be 30, 50 cents between them. But what I see is up, we have listeners telling me that there are places that they are literally paying $4.99, creep in near $7 for diesel.

19:37On two levels, this is extremely worrisome for the economy. One because diesel is everything that we buy, right? Everything that we get from a store, everything that gets shipped around, it's all diesel. And then gas is very direct to our pocketbooks. And in Michigan, it's not like we have, we do have some transit, but it's not like we have a ton of transit. So it's like we're kind of forced to drive everywhere. Like we have listeners, I know that go from like the east side of Detroit to like Saginaw. What was that guy supposed to do? I mean, I think there's like you alluded to, there's two levels to this. One of them is the like the actual reason and that's where you get into like the houthi attacks and the straight-of-war moves and the Saudi pipelines and the war in Iran and all the actual reasons and the tariffs in Canada and all the reasons why gas is so expensive, but nobody actually gives a crap about that. I mean, that's why. I mean, the reality is we have, you know, basically a president who is overseeing all this, who is six weeks or so away from midterm that are going to be an absolute bloodbath.

20:39So I mean, it defies logic at this point as to why you would be inflicting this upon your own constituency, but I think the people are going to, the people are going to let the America know how they feel about this in the election. I had to laugh because I know you're not the biggest Nate Silver fan. Although he's not, but I still listen to him. Right. And so he came out standing on business very tall that he actually thinks that this is going to be like you, when I heard him say it's going to be a bloodbath, I was like, not the exact word, but he basically said something similar. I was like, I wonder what Devon's going to think. And if he agrees with me, this is the one time you and Nate Silver agree. Can I, can you give me 30 seconds on Nate Silver? It's your show. My issue with Nate Silver, anyone who knows, if you don't get a Google and look up, my issue always with him is on the basis of what he pretends himself to be. He's either you are a predictor, you're a math genius, you're your models, but then if you say your models are, you know, plus or minus three points, plus or minus five points,

21:39that's like a six to 10 points wing. I can predict anything when that a five, it's almost like saying, well, Mike, oh, Abdul say at his up two points on Mike Rogers, but my margin of error says it's four points. So actually, Mike Rogers could win, but Abdul could also win. So if either one wins, I'm still right, right? Because I'm Nate Silver. It's like, and he never wants to accept the fact that when you say, well, wait, Nate, you predicted that someone's always going to win by three points. You lost, like, and they lost, like, you're wrong, right? No, no, no, no, that was still in my model and the prediction. Like, then, then what are you in? What are you in? What are you anymore? Like, you're not doing anything. Like, I'm a, I'm a betting person. I bet on sports. If it's very finite, you bet on something you say the lions are going to win. They don't win. You lost the bet. Nate Silver tries to work himself around where he's like, well, the loss was in the margin of error. So I'm still not wrong. And I got a whole big do more, but I just wanted to get that out there. That's the problem I have with him. Okay, so I got to say, I really like almost the re-ignition of the 538 pod on pod save. Bring it to the island. I'm a huge Clare Malone fan. He doesn't take responsibility. That's his problem.

22:40He sure, his responsibility when you try to call him out for being wrong. And to him, there's no such thing as wrong because it was within his model. But then what are we, what are we even doing? So-and-so could win or so-and-so could win. It's all within my model. So I'm right either way. I mean, look, you and I have taken some models. I'm not business. Stand on business and make a prediction. Like we do. That's what I want to say. All right, so take an L. Yeah, take that. Take that when you need to. All right. You were right a lot, but you were also wrong a lot, dude. Let me know dailydetroidedgmail.com. All right. Coming up next week as a conversation with some representatives from Bedrock. They're actually going to be coming on the show to talk about their $2.24 billion redevelopment plan for the Red Senn and the Riverfront. This includes the 30 acres next to the big building. This is up from 1.6 billion was the original number. They're looking for nearly $548 million in public incentives. So the numbers have gotten bigger.

23:41The scope's gotten a little bit bigger when we're talking about the Riverfront. I know listeners have a lot of questions they've sent me. I encourage people to send me more questions before this gets done. We talked with them next week, but I want to talk to you, Devon, because look, these incentives, especially the Brownfield, which is a big part of this. These are statewide incentives. I think a lot of people don't realize this is not city council writing a check. This is a state level thing where it's, you know, it's kind of complicated, but basically it's taxes off of future revenue that doesn't exist today. And that does impact not just the city of Detroit, but the state and the region. So what are your thoughts on this so far? Your quick thoughts before we get into the conversation because I know you won't be able to make it to it. Yeah, we got to keep it high level and we talk about this so much. I don't want to belabor too many points, but I'm in favor of this because for a couple of reasons, you don't have really any other option, not any other option. I mean, you could demo it. You could demo it. You could just let it sit. You could mothball it. If you want to see something happen to the rents and this is the only opportunity.

24:42There's no white night swooping in. There's no, you know, angel investor going to come down and like just pour billions of dollars or hundreds of millions into this. Like this is your chance. So that's my first part is do it because of that because this is the chance. This is your only chance. I'm people don't like to hear that. They have a visceral reaction when you say, listen, this billionaire, this billion dollar corporation, this is your only chance to make the rents and something. I know people hate to hear that, but damn it, it's true. First of all, second of all, real quick is as you said, people also sometimes get the wrong impression about how this works and they think that this is money being taken out of their pockets, taxes taken from their pockets, taken from their coffers and put toward this. That's not the case. As you said, this is future taxes that to be paid once this is up and running, once this is making money, once this is a taxable property, that's when they start carving it out. I know that they say that somehow tangentially some pennies from your tax dollars won't go to this, but it's not a one to one of like next year, I'm going to feel this in my

25:44taxes paying for the rents and you will not. Do you think that this matters regionally that this gets done? Yes, I do because of for I mean, a couple of reasons, but one, the riverfront is such a gem and two, just what we talked about. I mean, it's a gem for not only people of Detroit, but people of this entire region. I would argue people of the state, it's international crossing, it gets hundreds of thousands of visitors, it's getting a ton of investment from philanthropic entities and going back to what I said before, this city is alive again or however you want to call it post COVID, there are tons of people down here. I guarantee you, even if you're living out in Lake Angeles or you're living out in Brighton, Michigan, I know those people go downtown. I know those people still want to experience the riverfront, still want to go to the rents and so no matter where you live in Michigan almost, you're going to enjoy this. You're going to, you're going to get some benefit, I think is worth it to have this beautiful, you know, development on the riverfront. Okay. I'd love to hear what your thoughts in please, especially your constructive questions daily

26:45to tritachemail.com or 3137893211. Devon, I'm really so good to see you. Great to talk to you, it's always so much going on so much, but you know what, it's a lot of fun. This is what I think this is the best news town in America. Yes, I would agree. 100%. All right. Well, thank you so much for listening to your daily Detroit. I really appreciate you. Thanks so much for being a member of patreon.com slash daily Detroit. Local media needs, local support to survive and thrive. Devon, I really have a wonderful weekend. You too, Jared, should be beautiful and I will see you next week. Until next time, I'm Jared Stays. Remember that you are somebody and we'll see you around Detroit.