“Detroit is the place to be”

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but this is lousy news:

Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr on Tuesday scrapped a scheduled bus tour for Wall Street creditors of the city’s worst areas.

Several creditors decided against taking the tour Wednesday and said they would rather spend time researching the city’s financial condition, the emergency manager’s spokesman Bill Nowling said.

Initially, 25 people — mostly bondholders, insurers and other unsecured creditors from New York City and New Jersey — signed up but several have canceled in the wake of media attention and interest in covering the tour. The tour required creditors to sign a waiver indemnifying the city if anyone was injured or killed during the roughly three-hour trip.

“The creditors are pulling out — they don’t want their pictures taken,” Nowling said. …

The tour was conceived after some financial creditors balked at agreeing to concessions that would keep the city from filing the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Some creditors also questioned whether Orr’s restructuring plan cuts deep enough and pushed the emergency manager to sell city assets, such as the Detroit Institute of Arts’ world-renowned collection.

Henri Matisse, The Window, 1916. Detroit Institute of Arts

The plan was to have bondholders ride a Detroit Department of Transportation bus — not a chartered coach — and likely be shadowed by armed security as the bus traveled through some of the city’s worst neighborhoods.

Bankruptcy experts said the tour was a novel approach, but unlikely to sway creditors who are focused on numbers, not emotion.

Meanwhile, Fodor’s offers one of those why-you-should-visit-now lists of the sort Houstonians are getting used to retweeting about our own city, padding out Detroit’s arts-and-foodie offerings with others such as year-round sports teams, Motown and “living history,” ending on this plucky note:

Once word gets out that Detroit is the place to be, you’ll have missed the best part. Show the city some early love and you’ll have a front row seat for one amazing comeback.

Don’t wait for a biennial. If you love art, it shouldn’t take one to lure you to Detroit.