A Long-Awaited Upswing For Downtown Detroit

DETROIT — Back in the bad old days, office workers in downtown Detroit staged a macabre daily sporting event. At quitting time there would be a mad dash to the parking lot — eyes out for muggers, or worse — then, quick, fire up the car and race home to the suburbs. As night fell, downtown turned into a ghost town.

Those days are a dim memory — and not just on sunny days like Thursday, when Game 4 of the American League Championship Series drew more than 40,000 Tiger fans downtown to Comerica Park, their eyes dancing with visions of sweeping the despised Yankees from the playoffs. Today, as often as not, people who work downtown don’t race home to the suburbs for a simple reason that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago: they also live downtown, in buildings that once stood empty.

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