With three of its four major franchises advancing deep into the playoffs, Detroit has been named North America’s top sports city by the Sporting News.

The magazine named the Motor City No. 1 in its 2007 annual ranking, which was published in editions that hit newsstands Wednesday.

“Although it didn’t bring home a title like some cities, Detroit benefits from having a full complement of very good teams and terrific fans to cheer them on,” executive editor Bob Hille said in a written statement.

Frequent fliers from Hillsdale County have a little–known option on how to save some gas and parking money.
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Take the shuttle.

Specifically, the Michigan Flyer shuttle, a bus that travels from Lansing to Detroit Metro Airport via Jackson eight times a day.
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The service averages around 15 people per trip, which Moore admitted is not much but also not bad for a new service. Shuttles travel south on U.S. 127 and then, when they hit Jackson, east on I–94 to Detroit. All buses come with wireless Internet access.

The U.S. government is proposing to help resettle several hundred refugees and immigrants from Iraq to Detroit. The Iraqi immigrants are coming from among former employees of the U.S. government or U.S. government-sponsored contractors. In addition, many of the new, legal immigrants from the Middle East are Chaldean Christians who have fled religious turmoil.
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Traditionally, new immigrants also bring with them new hope, new ideas and new economic activity and vitality.
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Today, Detroit has the second largest community of Shiites in North America. Only Los Angeles, which is the home of thousands of refugees from Iran, has a larger Shiite community.

Thus, the metropolitan area, contrary to the comments from the doom-andgloom brigade, is well-prepared to absorb the new influx of immigrants from the war-torn Middle East.

The fears about additional unemployment also are overstated.

DETROIT–General Motors Corp. reported a second-quarter profit of $891 million (U.S.), a huge reversal from the $3.4 billion loss it posted in the same period last year and the third-straight quarterly profit for the largest U.S. automaker.

Where do I find ancho chile powder and smoked paprika? — Keith Mixter, Lincoln Park

Ancho chile powder comes from dried poblano chiles. It is mild and on the sweet side. Smoked paprika has a sweet and smoky flavor and can vary from mild to hot. The mild variety is most common and the hot can be hard to find. You will find both in the spice or ethnic aisle at major grocery stores or specialty spice shops like Penzeys in Beverly Hills, 248-647-6177; and Rafal Spice Company at Eastern Market in Detroit, 313-259-6373.

Labor Day weekend’s Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix will have a Canadian flavor, even though Toronto’s Marty Roth is slated to be the lone Canadian competitor.

Windsor will host the Go Kart Windsor Grand Prix during race weekend at Riverfront Plaza.

The City of Windsor also will sponsor the event’s media center in the 100-year-old Belle Isle Casino building.

WASHINGTON — Shipping channels and harbors would be dredged at last. A new, supersize shipping lock would be built in Sault Ste. Marie. And the Great Lakes, presumably, would be saved from giant, voracious Asian carp.

As early as today, the U.S. House of Representatives could take up a brokered version of the Water Resources Development Act of 2007, a wide-ranging piece of legislation both chambers of Congress are expected to agree upon before leaving Washington on Friday for a monthlong recess.
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Close to home, the legislation would authorize spending $3 million for the Detroit riverfront project and $20 million on a management plan to address problems on the St. Clair River and Lake St. Clair.

The legislation also includes $35 million to address sewer overflows across Michigan, helping communities to work with the state to address concerns that the amount of overflow has been increasing.

Michiganians must think outside the box and take some calculated risks if Metro Detroit is going to be competitive in the global economy. Risk taking is part of entrepreneurial spirit, while entrepreneurs provide the creativity that spurs economic growth.
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The “Road to Renaissance” initiative to expand the region’s entrepreneurial capacity can be a game changer. If Metro Detroit supports and nurtures an environment where the next generation of business leaders can dare to dream, then we have just increased our region’s chances for being the next home for a company like Microsoft.

Samuel Zell and Robert H. Lurie recognized that fact and gave the University of Michigan $10 million to start an institute for entrepreneurial studies in 1999. It provides exclusive resources to help educate and create business innovators.

Yet dreams and ideas need more cash to take flight, and access to capital is one of the greatest challenges facing start-ups.

Many young entrepreneurs are heading to the East and West coasts, and it is no secret the region is losing top talent from our universities. The attraction for entrepreneurs just isn’t the lifestyle, as much as the access to venture capital.

Venture capitalists are showing young entrepreneurs the money in places like California and Massachusetts in hopes of unearthing the next Google. Southeastern Michigan must strengthen our investment sources to create a strong entrepreneurial environment.

I support the “Road to Renaissance” initiative to expand available funding to early- and mid-stage growth-oriented companies by forming a regional pool of funds. Pooling our resources would give the region a better opportunity to compete with the Silicon Valleys of the world.

We need to strengthen the Southeast Michigan Angel Network as well as increase access to Small Business Administration loans, small business innovation research and small business technology transfer research funds.
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Samuel Valenti III is executive chairman of TriMas Corp., president of Masco Capital and a board member of Detroit Renaissance. He is also on the advisory board of the University of Michigan’s Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.

Dow Chemical, founded in Midland in 1897, was extracting bromine from our soil. Upjohn, founded in Kalamazoo in 1886, was perfecting the first large-scale production of cortisone. Parke-Davis, founded in Detroit in 1886, was conducting clinical trials in the first modern pharmaceutical laboratory in the world, creating the first bacterial vaccines.

With all due respect for my friends in the auto industry (who make terrific cars and trucks), if lightning is going to strike twice for our state, it’s far more likely to be in science than manufacturing. The frontiers of biotechnology and life sciences have never been more promising. And we have much of the formula for success in place: great research universities; abundant natural resources (especially the essential and increasingly precious element of water); and a talented work force anxious to get back on the job.

Scientists scared away

Unfortunately, at a time we should be welcoming the 21st-century’s best minds, we’ve hung “Scientists do not enter” signs on our borders. Michigan boasts one of the most inhospitable environments in the nation for cutting-edge medical research. My friends in the medical community (at 83, I’m one of their best customers) tell me that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to recruit young chemists and medical researchers to our universities.

Why? In part, because embryonic stem cell research is essentially illegal in Michigan. Our researchers are permitted to work with stem cells from the tissue of adults, children, umbilical cords and developing fetuses. But the vast majority of scientists agree that stem cells from embryos, with the ability to reproduce themselves into any one of hundreds of cells found in the human body, hold the greatest promise.

What good reason do you have to not spend the late afternoon and early evening in a rare groove at downtown’s Campus Martius, where the Buzz Bar continues its free weekly summer music series? Bass vibrations and sweeping arpeggios bouncing off pre-Depression era and 21st century skyscrapers in a park in the middle of Woodward Avenue? Sounds like a Detroit techno and house party to us! If you hustle down today (Wednesday, Aug. 1), you’ll catch Buzz Goree (Underground Resistance), Mike “Agent X” Clark, E-Spleece (who’ll be part of Detroit’s Blank Records showcase in Berlin next week) and, topping it all off, funky nu-soul seven-piece band Exchange Bureau. Starts at 5 p.m. and goes until 8 p.m. at the Buzz Bar (546 E. Larned St., Detroit). For the full schedule, see myspace.com/buzzdetroit. Also, outdoors and just up the road the rest of the summer is Powder Blu’s patio party at La Dolce Vita (17546 Woodward Ave., Detroit). It happens every Tuesday with special guests and hundreds of house music lovers and dancing fools. It’s free — but dammit, only until 10 p.m., when a $5 cover takes effect.
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On the other side of town, something even stranger appears to be brewing. It’s an untitled event with politically provocative art and music held the first Sunday of each month at Atom’s Java & Juice (15104 Kercheval, Grosse Pointe Park). The program was conceived by Martin Anand, a self-described “technopunk,” originally from Düsseldorf but living in the Detroit area since the 1990s, when he jumped into the electro scene, which was then led by groups like Adult., Dopplereffekt and Ectomorph.

He began his own Kenaob label, releasing music by Detroit’s Andy Toth, Charles Preset and MANASYt, a Bulgarian producer who moved to Detroit for the music … and then moved back to Bulgaria when making records and corned beef and pastrami sandwiches at Hamtramck’s old Salvador Deli couldn’t pay the bills.

The Hispanic Business Alliance will hold its fifth annual Hispanic Business Alliance Expo and Economic Summit Sept. 27-28 at the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center downtown.

Started in 2003, the HBA’s Expo and Economic Summit brings together more than 1,500 businesspeople to discuss how to improve the Michigan business community through a series of dialogues on key issues, business matchmaking and high-level networking.

As everyone in the region talks about how Detroit and its suburbs can come together, how we can all build up this region as a world-class metropolis, etc., I think it would be a super symbol that we are making progress if there were a real push to bring the Woodward Dream Cruise all the way down to the turnaround at Campus Martius in downtown Detroit.

Why can’t we have a large sign near Woodward and 9 Mile that says: “Come on down!”?

EPrize LLC, the online promotions firm in Pleasant Ridge, doubled its sales in two years, from $18 million in 2004 to $36 million last year.

“We’re looking to accelerate growth,” Josh Linkner, ePrize founder and CEO, said Monday, with an eye toward annual sales of $150 million by the end of the decade. EPrize has added about 70 people this year and now employs about 350.

Another loft development, Twelve-25, is getting underway along the lower Woodward corridor. The 8-story building, formally known as the Fowler Building, will house 32 condominium units and one commercial tenant on the ground floor.

The condominiums will range from 760 to 1,800 square feet and from $190,000 to $490,000. Purchasers will select from eight floor plans and three interior design schemes. Additional amenities include a sub-level lounge and media room, a rooftop deck and workout facilities.

Derron Sanders, a member of the development team The Fowler, LLC, says that construction will begin this fall with restoration of the historic façade to be completed by the end of the year. He estimates that residents will start moving in next fall.

Sterling Howard, also of The Fowler, says what separates Twelve-25 from the pack is its “entry-level price points” considering that it is a for-sale loft product downtown, as well as the “cool, edgy design” that architects The Kraemer Group employ.