On Friday night, while serving at a restaurant in downtown Detroit, I talked with four ladies gathered for a friendly reunion dinner. They’d been schoolmates in Michigan but had since moved to New York, Iowa, Montana, and California. Detroit seemed to them the perfect central meetup spot for their girl’s trip.
“Did y’all know the Draft was going to be happening in Detroit the entire time you’d be here?” I asked.
Four heads started dramatically shaking, “Nooope…”
Apparently, they weren’t expecting hundreds of thousands of people to join in on their personal holiday. It was the second of three nights for the NFL Draft, and Detroit had already broken the event’s all-time first-day attendance record, with a reported 270,000 people drawn in for what was essentially one giant, all-day block party, where fans of professional American football could be there in person to find out which players their favorite team would pick. (By the end of Friday, that number would rise to 550,000, and by the end of the whole event, to 775,000+, according to the NFL’s official count. The previous attendance record was 600,000, in Nashville in 2019.)
For weeks leading up to the Draft, service staff downtown were mentally preparing for this. Every pre-shift meeting, our managers reminded us, “The population of Detroit is expected to double for the weekend of the Draft. All eyes are going to be on us. We need to be at the top of our game, so be sure to get lots of rest.”
As roads downtown started to get blocked off (to make room for block-party setup), reminders to “allow extra time to commute” were added to the meeting notes. The roads would remain closed for the week after the Draft, too (to allow time for block-party tear-down), so we’d need to adjust for quite some time. (Since I can walk to work, this was no major stress for me.)
In one last layer of routine change, the weekend before the Draft we were told the restaurant would have extended hours during the draft: While we usually close at 10pm on Tuesday-Thursday and 11pm on Friday and Saturday, we’d be open at least an hour later, open to seating tables as late as people were still coming. We were reminded, again, to rest, so we could “all benefit from the extra business.”
I was scheduled to work every night of the draft, coming in at 4pm with no idea how long I’d be there. I’d registered for a free online ticket so I could go check out the event on Saturday, when the event would start at 12pm, and with that registration came notification updates that came straight to my smartwatch during my shift. Though the first pick overall was scheduled for 8pm, before 6pm I got a notification announcing the event was at full capacity and would not re-open that night.
Several tables I had that first night were disappointed would-be attendees who’d driven downtown after work and paid an exorbitant parking fee, only to be turned away before they even made it to an entry point. (My own home garage, which I’ve seen charge anywhere from $13.75 for overnight parking to $50 max on a Lions home-game day, charged $100 during the Draft weekend.) I expressed my sympathies to them and thanked them for making us their Plan B, and I let them know it’d still be a worthwhile and memorable night.
To the four ladies on their reunion on Friday, too, I said, “You just know years from now, one of you is going to say in your group chat, ‘Hey, remember that one time we accidentally booked our vacation to be right in the middle of Detroit’s busiest weekend since the 60s?’ This is going to be so much bigger a memory now.”
“That’s so true!”
As it turned out, the Draft days were some of our least busy shifts at the restaurant. At least, for the first 75% of the shift, during the actual event hours. Then, around 9:30pm, presumably as waves of people started to leave the event, we’d start to get crowds. I got home well after midnight each night, my feet and knees sore, my body crashing like it hadn’t since I was hiking every day. I slept hard, and then I got up the next day and did it again.
On Saturday, I forced myself out of bed so I could go check out the event, and I’m very glad I did. It was a beautiful Spring day, with live music and food trucks and drink stalls set up all over the city, particularly in the public parks. Local artists and new pop-up shops were everywhere. Even a new Dunkin’ location “happened” to open that week near Campus Martius (the heart of the event).
Detroit really showed up and handled the event well, I thought. As I walked around and chatted with some of the vendors, I was proud to be a resident with them. The city was so vibrant, and everywhere I looked people were appreciating that. To put it simply, as Annelise Frank does, writing for Axios Detroit:
“Why it matters: The city is shining in the national spotlight after an attendance record-shattering stint as host of the NFL Draft highlighted a drastic downtown revitalization.”
A week later, there are still some roads closed. When I look out from my balcony, I can still see tents that housed pop-up bars, along with rows of portable toilet stalls. The tourists have gone home, and my home parking garage is back down to $13.75 for the night.
Where tear-down has finished, public parks now steadily fill up with locals (myself included) working remotely in the sunshine. It feels like we’re ready for a life-giving season ahead.
Detroit, Reformed. 
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