It’s the people (and their attitude) that make the difference

By Joe Borgstrom, Director
Specialized Technical Assistance
& Revitalization Strategy
Michigan State Housing Development Authority
This week, I, and a number of my colleagues at MSHDA are attending the Creative Cities Summit 2.0 in downtown Detroit. We are joined by hundreds of people from around the state, country, and world hearing about a multitude of strategies and examples from communities across the globe who are integrating creative activities and people to help make their “places” more vibrant. There are a lot of topics from which numerous blogs could be written. Instead of expounding on one of the numerous topics this time out, I want to share a quick and telling story…

Monday night there was a networking reception at a wonderful 30’s era jazz club called Cliff Bell’s just behind the Fox Theatre across from Comerica Park (a location I didn’t know until I got there.) Unfortunately, I was not able to attend a vast majority of the event due to a prior commitment earlier in the evening that went much longer than I had anticipated. I got back to the hotel close to midnight and wanted to meet up with several friends who were still at the reception. I walked out the front door of the hotel and saw a cab driver who was unloading a passenger. What luck! A cab right when I needed it. I asked him if he knew where the jazz club was located. He apologized, stating he was “just an airport taxi.” He pointed me to a City Cab across the street and told me they should be able to take me there. I crossed the street and noticed there was no one in the cab. I turned around expecting the airport taxi to just go about his way and so I started to look for another cab. The airport taxi driver stopped and asked if there had been anyone in the City Cab. When I responded no, he told me to hop in and he’d try to take me there. I was astounded when he didn’t kick in the meter. We went to Greektown looking for the club with no avail. Instead of dumping me off and heading back to his appointed rounds, the cab driver flagged down a taxi with a passenger already in it and asked directions. He took me promptly to the reception and when I tried to pay him for his extraordinary service he refused. He simply stated, “This is my city. You are a guest in my city and I want to make sure you come back. It is my responsibility to make sure you get where you need to go. It was my pleasure.” I was completely dumbfounded. I was not wearing a name tag. He did not know I was with this conference or any conference for that matter. He did not know anything except that I was not from the city and he was. He was not anyone of particular note. He didn’t work for the city or as a consultant on customer service. He was simply making sure someone who was in his town was having a good experience.

I share that story because it made me wonder: what would our downtowns be like if everyone had that attitude? He was an airport taxi driver. What if every merchant and their employees, every gas station attendant, every resident in our communities had that attitude? No downtown is perfect. In fact, to those of us who live and/or work in them everyday we see a lot of the bad side. Sometimes that beats us down from dwelling on the positive. We see the “dog side” of our downtowns. To quote the movie Pulp Fiction, “A dog at least has personality. Personality goes a long way.” There are parts of Detroit that could be described as “a dog” (to be fair, there are many, many good parts too). The taxi driver didn’t focus on the dog parts. He made sure the personality shone through. The advice I give you today is to not dwell on the parts of your downtown that are "dogs" when people come to your town. Make sure you’re downtown’s personality is what it’s remembered for.