Detroit’s new casinos: The MGM Grand

by Grant Martin on


Most people don’t think of Detroit when they think of a tourist destination. The city has suffered considerably in the last century – much of the population has moved into the outlying suburbs, crime has surged and empty buildings dot its cold, Michigan skyline.

The last several years have brought significant effort to revitalize the downtown area, however. Led by reconstruction of the Tigers’ and Lions’ stadiums, several pockets in the inner city are once again starting to flourish. Events like the Detroit Electronic Music Festival (DEMF) are perennial favorites among visitors while Hockeytown and The Old Shillelagh keep drinkers out late at night.

In addition to the new entertainment percolating in the city, several casinos have invested heavily in the downtown area, with two, the MGM Grand and the Motor City just finishing construction on two new huge, luxury casinos and hotels.

Beginning with the MGM, these articles will highlight the new properties, their features and impacts on downtown Detroit.

The MGM Grand Detroit – an introduction

A sister casino to the MGM in Las Vegas, Detroit’s new luxury casino was completed in the fourth quarter of 2007. It’s creators have designed the property with Las Vegas in mind – central to the entire experience is the 250,000 square foot gaming floor, around which are sprinkled several eating and drinking venues, from the posh Best-of-Detroit rated Saltwater restaurant to the sultry Ignite lounge just above the gaming floor.

Gadling will cover the main aspects of the casino in four categories: Gaming, Dining, Nightlife and Hotel.The MGM Grand Detroit — Gaming

Ninety table games and a lifetime of slots cover the circular gaming floor centered around a raised bar and lounge area. Standard blackjack and craps tables are laid out in pockets around the floor in a pleasant, warm atmosphere. Visiting on a Thursday evening, the minimum bet on most tables was about fifteen dollars.

A high stakes room is set off the main floor, where high-rollers can play the standard games at higher dollar increments. Local celebrities like Richard Hamilton are apparently often seen here, although none were around when Gadling visited.

Additionally a poker room with eight tables lies above the casino floor next to Ignite lounge.

The MGM Grand Detroit – Dining

Several dining options circumferentially ring the gaming floor hosting a variety of budgets and experiences.

Least expensive and most accessible is the Breeze (pictured) dining center, which is a dining-hall-esque combination of several stations serving up American, Asian and Italian cuisines. Visitors can quickly review, order and pay for selections then meet in the center of the section to dine together. This section is fairly small, perhaps because it is the least expensive (and therefore least profitable) dining location. A meal will cost approximately ten dollars.

A larger and more upscale version of the Breeze is the Palette Dining Studio, which is basically a Las Vegas style all you can eat high-end buffet. Selections cover a wider spectrum from the Breeze, with the addition of seafood and lighter fare. The Palette is laid out in a more comfortable, relaxing atmosphere, than its smaller cousin with sensible decoration and a sprawling floor-plan. Visitors here are more likely interested in enjoying and taking time through their buffet meal rather than immediately returning to the gaming floor. The Palette is also more expensive, with meals in the twenty five dollar range.

Wolfgang Puck Grille is the celebrity chef’s take on the typical “bar and grill”. Dark, wooden décor and furniture lit by warm ambient lighting makes the restaurant a cozy escape from the bustling casino floor not steps away. A large, mostly open kitchen lines the back of the section, where you can see the chef and his workers buzzing along at their jobs and apparently Mr. Puck himself stops in for a bite every now and then. Fare is standard bar and grill food, with an average entree costing between twenty and thirty dollars.

At the higher end of dining experiences, Bourbon Steak (pictured) is Michael Mina’s standard steakhouse with a twist. While one can order the classic prime rib or steak off the menu, small adventures like duck fat fries and truffle macaroni and cheese woo the diner with a little bit of off the beaten path adventure. Bourbon Steak is roughly divided from the bar in front to the main dining room in back. Between the two sections, large glass walls storing the restaurant’s extensive wine selection form a maze of corridors, in the center of which is an exclusive private dining room for VIPs. Entrees at Bourbon Steak start around twenty dollars a plate, with select cuts of meat costing significantly more, depending on the market value.

Similarly, Saltwater is Mina’s high-end seafood establishment at the MGM Detroit. The restaurant is designed in soft flowing waves of blue and glass, setting the diner at ease as she decides between entrees such as Lobster Pot Pie, Caviar Parfait, Tartare of Ahi Tuna and Mussel Soufflé. Arguably the most expensive restaurant on the premises, Saltwater plates range from twenty five dollars to well over fifty.

The MGM Grand Detroit – Nightlife

After a hard day of gaming and indulging at Bourbon Steak, many choose to unwind at one of the MGM’s five drinking stations.

Most accessible is U-Me-Drink at the center of the casino floor, where you can continue to gamble with digital games embedded into the bar surface. Surrounding the bar in tiers, several lounge areas sprawl outward from the core and into the casino floor. At the perimeter of the bar, large slabs of composite material silently slide around from the ceiling; combined with a low wall around the bar they are meant to partially enclose U-Me-Drink away from the gaming floor while still allowing one to watch over the gaming in earnest. This is a great place to get to get a martini, take a break from feeding the slot machines and relax on one of the plush couches circling the bar.

At the periphery of the casino floor is Agua (pictured), a Latin inspired bar featuring a shimmering, multi tiled, adaptable ceiling that moves with the volume of the crowd. Shotgun microphones run around the perimeter of the bar and as revelers shout in their direction, the ceiling flows to register the noise. This can quickly turn the entire bar into a shouting match as everyone stares at the cei
ling in delight. Waitresses in skimpy blue uniforms strut around the bar serving beer, cocktails or one of 20 different tequilas or 35 different rums.

At the other end of the casino, Int Ice hosts a piano-bar style atmosphere centered around a grand bar and floral arrangement. Live acts are scheduled daily starting at 8PM. When Gadling stopped by the MGM for a visit, one of the local owners was camped out at the end of the bar enjoying himself.

Across from the poker room was Gadling’s favorite bar on the entire property, Ignite (pictured). The interior is designed to symbolize the contrast between fire and ice and most adornments have something to do with either of the two categories. On entry, a bar covered with a sheet of ice greets every visitor, while against the back wall a bank of natural-gas lamps is routinely extinguished as icy water flows from the ceiling. Rows of linear natural-gas lamps are integrated into several of the walls, acting as much of the ambient lighting as well as atmosphere. At the edge of the bar facing the street are a series of large, circular, rotating couches that can easily fit two or three visitors as they stare out into the cold streets of Detroit.

Additionally, Ignite is host to specially blended Makers Mark Whiskey, exclusively made for the MGM Casino. On the way out, make sure to watch your feet as you get on the elevator as projected flames follow your footsteps around.

Finally, the nightclub V is on the main floor just off the casino. V caters to more of a drinking and dancing crowd with hired dancers stalking the floors and plenty of space to get it on. At the back of the bar is a private VIP room with bar, where celebrities like your favorite bloggers at Gadling can escape their fawning fans on the dance floor.

The MGM Grand Detroit – Hotel

One of the MGM’s main attractive points is the superior quality of its new hotel. The luxury property is host to four hundred guest rooms, including nine luxury suites and fifty six corner suites at the top of the building.

Each room is tastefully decorated with Wenge furniture, 42″ flat screen televisions and high-tech “concierge” telephones, where visitors can go as far as checking in for their flights with the advanced interface. Oversize bathrooms taking up almost 25% of each guest rooms feature walk in showers with double shower heads and 15″ plasma televisions integrated. Deluxe beds are outfitted with double-sided Serta pillow-top mattresses with more luxurious sheets, comforters and more pillows than you can shake a stick at.

The real jaw-dropping aspect section of the hotel, however, is the spa. Twenty thousand feet of the property are dedicated to the Immerse Spa, where visitors can retire do after a long day of gaming. In addition to the standard spa treatment with six bungalows, a salon, exercise facility and vanity areas, Immerse features a giant infinity pool on its bottom floor, tastefully surrounded with natural materials on the walls, giving the feeling of true integration with nature. Not something you would expect in the center of the casino.

Around the perimeter of the pool are small rotating couch-bungalows that are partially covered for privacy. Visitors can thus easily lounge around poolside and escape the hubub of the casino in complete tranquility, a truly admirable feat from a design perspective.

Rooms at the hotel run around 200$/night, while a small additional spa fee is required for guests.

Come to Michigan for vacation! Please?

by Grant Martin on

Things aren’t going very well in Michigan right now. We and the big three led the charge into the economic downturn. Unemployment is the highest in the country at 7.1% while foreclosure rates are in the stratosphere. The mayor of Detroit is a certified jackass. The Democratic National Committee hates us. Of the four people that have most recently left my small engineering company three have been forced to leave the state for work. I think it’s safe to say that we’re facing some hard times.

But we’re still truckin, and we’re still trying to figure out how to get our economy out of the dumps. You may have seen Jeff Daniels on the telly at night encouraging you to move your high tech or manufacturing company into our beloved state. Thanks Jeff. We appreciate your help.

We’re also trying to woo the tourist dollar, for while Detroit is pretty far from a hot vacation spot, there are a ton of quaint towns and beaches in the state. Last week, Michigan.org launched its redesigned website in a new attempt to reinforce this, complete with surprisingly thorough city guides and uber-slow flash java navigation.

From a person who has lived in the Wolverine State for the last twenty six years, it’s really not that bad of a place. It gets wicked, wicked cold here during the winter and the mountains and ocean are far away, but you can’t beat the huge sandy beaches of the Great Lakes, beautiful nature in the Upper Peninsula and amazing colors in the autumn.

When this recession of sorts is over and we start to pick up the pieces, I hope things come back together ok.

The Simpsons Movie: Springfield Challenge

by Justin Glow on

Since the exact location was never explicitly revealed in any episode of The Simpsons, fourteen Springfields across America are currently battling it out to decide which town should be the true home of Homer and family.

Each of the fourteen Springfields in the running — Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont — have created a video that showcases why they should be chosen, and each is now available on USAToday.com to watch.

The winning town will be awarded to the right to host the premiere of the movie before the U.S. release date of July 27th.

Log onto USAToday to watch the videos, and cast your vote for which town you think should win. If you have no particular interest in any of cities, cast your vote for Missouri, because…well, I live in Springfield, Missouri, and somebody has got to win, right?

Five Famous Forest Fires

by Justin Glow on

Rising temperatures and low humidity levels in Sequoia National Forest in California have done nothing to help firefighters who are currently battling to contain a blaze that has already burned almost 4,000 acres of beautiful forest. Authorities speculate the fire, which is now about 65 percent contained, was started by a camper in the Goldledge Campgrounds on June 3rd.

With camping season in full-force, it’s important to remember how easily a campfire can get out of hand. Who better than Smokey the Bear to lend a hand in teaching us fire safety? Only you can prevent forest fires, after all.

To really drive the point of fire safety home, I’m offering up some worst case scenarios from the past — from the great Michigan Thumb Fire of 1881 to Yellowstone’s largest fire in history, we’ll explore some of the most powerful and deadly forest fires the world has ever seen. Be careful out there!

Michigan, 1881. The state of Michigan is separated into two peninsulas: the upper and lower. The “thumb” of the lower peninsula (which resembles a mitten) hosted a number of fires in the early 1880s, the most violent and widespread of them being the great Thumb Fire. On September 5, 1881, the culmination of a severe drought, hurricane-strength winds, and the logging industry’s dried up leftovers, a scorching fire broke out somewhere in Tuscola County and spread over one million square acres (just over 1,500 square miles) in less than 24 hours. Almost 300 people were killed and over 5,000 were left homeless. Damage was estimated at $2.5-million (over $50-million according to this inflation calculator). The American Red Cross, which was founded a few months earlier in May of 1881, responded to the blaze which marked the organization’s first major disaster response.

Yellowstone National Park, 1988. What started as a single lightning strike in the United State’s first and oldest national park on June 22 turned into Yellowstone’s largest fire in recorded history. The fire was allowed to burn and spread naturally under the controversial “natural burn” policy which allows fires to continue burning as long as they were original sparked by non-human forces. Unfortunately, the summer of 1988 was “one of the driest and windiest since the park was established in 1872,” and before the winter snows fell and doused the flames, almost 800,000 acres were gone. Visitors to the park today can find seedlings growing amongst the charred remains. The National Park Services’s website for Yellowstone offers visitors the chance to be a fire spotter with their Mt. Washburn Fire LookOut Webcam. Though currently down for maintenance, the camera is located in a “glass house” on top of Mt. Washburn with panoramic views of the entire area. The fire lookout isn’t open to the public, but the same gorgeous, panoramic views can be seen from the top of the mountain anyway, making the 3 mile hike to the top one of the most popular trails in the park.

Georgia and Florida, 2007. On April 16, 2007, high winds blew through Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge — “one of the oldest and most well preserved freshwater areas in America” — causing a tree to fall on a power line, showering sparks on the drought-ridden land. By mid-May, this fast-moving wildfire quickly became not only Georgia’s largest fire in recorded history, but Florida’s as well. “As of today [Monday, June 11], there are 115 wildfires in Florida on 130,466 acres,” writes the Sun-Herald. The folks at NASA say that many of the extremely hot and erratic-behaving fires have been contained, but “smoldering and creeping fire will probably continue until heavy rain-possibly a hurricane-drenches the area.” To put it into prospective, the smoke from these fires is so immense that it has drifted hundreds of miles north and been spotted as far as North Carolina.

Victoria, Australia, 1983. Seventy-five people, including seventeen firefighters, died in what is known as Australia’s deadliest bushfire in history: the Ash Wednesday fires. The blaze was so massive and so incredibly strong that firefighters were unable to contain even small portions of it, and the fire only stopped spreading when it eventually hit the Southern ocean. “More than 3,700 buildings were destroyed, including 84 commercial, and about 1,000 farms,” according to the Australian government. Leading up to the fire, Victoria — known for it’s extremely dry climate — had been under a severe drought for over 10 months. Along with rainfall, the relative humidity was also extremely low which made vegetation brittle and powerfully flammable, and in under 24 hours, over 520,000 hectares (1.2-million acres) across two states were gone.

Colorado, 2002. Terry Lynn Barton, a U.S. Forest Service worker in Colorado, tried to burn a handful of letters from her estranged husband, but ran into a few problems. First, she set fire to love lost in an area where campfires had been outlawed due to drought — something a U.S. Forest Service worker, someone who enforces the no-fire ban, ought to know. This lead to the largest wildfire in Colorado state history — now known as the “Hayman Fires” — burning through 210 square miles of Pike National Forest, killing five firefighters, and causing nearly $40-million in damages. She was later indited on charges of “willfully and maliciously destroying U.S. property and causing personal injury by setting a blaze that has grown into a wildfire of historic proportions,” and authorities believe the love letter story covered up other reasons for deliberately
starting the blaze. She eventually pleaded guilty to arson, and is now serving 12 years in jail.

Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum

by Adrienne Wilson on

Thanks to Roadside America those wanting to pay homage to President Ford can head out to Grand Rapids, Michigan, home of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. Their write-up on the attraction is so superb I feel like I’ve already made the journey there myself. Seriously! According to their notes the museum was nothing more than a presidential bore up until 1997 (ten years back) when millions in cash poured in and enabled the place to get a much needed face-lift. Now visitors can experience light shows, surround-sound, and holographs. Included in their Sight-of-the-Week feature are some pretty nice photos from the inside which show shots of the faceless Betty Ford dummies modeling her hairstyles at the time and a picture of an ATM set into a wall. For those who do not know, Ford was the president who signed the legislation that made it legal to get money from a machine.

How my mind has expanded so much from just reading this piece! If you don’t have plans to go and don’t plan on making plans at least plan on visiting the Roadside America site sometime sooner than later. If you do plan to go or have been, please share your thoughts.