DETROIT – It’s taken about 20 years and $200 million, but the transformation of Detroit’s Riverfront has been completed.
The RiverWalk now goes from where the Joe Louis Arena once stood to the Belle Isle bridge.
It was 20 years ago when work began on Detroit’s RiverWalk, but Mayor Mike Duggan remembers it being something many dreamed about well before 2003.
“It’s been a lot longer than a 20-year-old dream. My generation, my father’s generation growing up in Detroit, we didn’t have a riverfront. Detroit’s riverfront belonged to factories and warehouses and cement silos,” Duggan recalled. “It’s a historic day because now the Detroit Riverfront truly belongs to the people of the city.”
A ribbon-cutting celebration was held Saturday, Oct. 21 to mark the completion of Uniroyal Promenade, which completed the 3.5 miles of walk the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy once dreamed about.
“Just seeing so many people to see families, children and dogs on the riverwalk is a promise, a dream, and we made it happen,” said Dianne Hinton, with the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. “People came and people wanted to be a part of it.”
Residents who came out to celebrate at Mt. Elliott Park got to see the convenience of being able to walk all along the river to the Belle Isle Bridge.
“It connects everything. It was like that last little piece that was blocked all of the progress. We really have three and a half million visitors a year and they couldn’t get to Belle Isle and now it’s going to open the whole thing up,” said Matt Cullen, Detroit Riverfront Conservancy Chair.
While this marked the completion of the original vision of the Detroit Riverfront, that vision has since expanded. The west riverfront is currently being worked on and the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Centennial Park is expected to be completed within two years.