Judy Davids is a relatively rare thing in Detroit. She's an entrepreneur. And it's pretty new to her.
DAVIDS 22:35 "You know, I was an employee all my life and quite happy to be an employee. But after I got laid off I realized quickly I had to completely reinvent myself."
Davids' work as an environmental consultant dried up as the auto industry circled the drain. And at 49 years old, Davids found herself out of a job.
Her skills were outdated. She had a mortgage, and two kids who would soon be off to college.
But she had just enough guts to believe she could launch a new business of her own.
DAVIDS 1:00 " And then this is where all the Post-E-Gram magic happens…." <>
Davids signed up with Bizdom U. It's a bootcamp that provides office space, training, laptops, and a living stipend for people who want to become entrepreneurs.
People with promising business plans win financial backing from Bizdom. But only if they locate their businesses in Detroit. That's important in a city with a jobless rate stuck above 20 percent, and where the mayor, Dave Bing, is looking at shutting down whole sectors of the city.
Judy Davids' company is just one very small step toward the city's economic health. Its entire operations are squeezed into one corner of an office she shares with two other start-ups.
Davids' company, Post-E-Gram, takes the updates and pictures people post to their Facebook pages, and prints them in full-color newsletters.
DAVIDS: "So this is Jenny, and in this case there are pictures of a fourth birthday party, and some presents…<>
Her customers are mostly people who buy subscriptions for older parents or grandparents who don't use the Internet.
Bizdom is the brainchild of Dan Gilbert. He's a native Detroiter, and the owner of Michigan-based Quicken Loans - although he's probably best known as the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Gilbert is trying to create a culture of entrepreneurship in a city that didn't really need entrepreneurs in the decades after Henry Ford became the most famous one in history.
Gilbert says he's trying to create Detroit 2-point-0.
GILBERT 14:30 "Instead of having two, three large mega companies employing thousands, the idea is you'll have the reverse, you'll have hundreds or thousands of companies employing maybe 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 or 200 people or even larger, and hopefully it does get larger in some cases."
Gilbert's own companies employ 17-hundred people in downtown Detroit. He relocated Quicken's corporate headquarters from the suburbs in August.
Gilbert says there's a buzz in the city that translates to energy, ideas and innovation in the workplace.
Across the street from Quicken's new headquarters is a busy park that has lunchtime concerts in the summer, and ice skating in the winter. <> And having your office downtown is especially convenient when you want to catch a show or a ball game after work.
Vikas Relan works close to the entertainment district, where he stopped in at the Hockeytown Café before a recent Red Wings game.
RELAN: "It's always fun coming to a stadium, and being able to do it in a close proximity of where you work is just awesome."
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And it's looking like more businesses want to locate close to those urban amenities. Advertising and marketing firms, call centers, and an insurance company have all decided to stake a claim in downtown Detroit in recent months. Many are businesses whose fortunes are un-tethered to the auto industry.
JACKSON: "Let's face it. This certainly wasn't happening with us 10 years ago. Ten years ago businesses were still running away from the city."
That's George Jackson, Detroit's chief economic development officer. He says things really started to pick up steam once Detroit was chosen to host the Super Bowl for 2006.
CBS NEWS CLIP: "Detroit has all the trappings of every other Super Bowl. But for the Motor City, it is a super-sized opportunity to shrug off its rustbelt image, and find its future…." <>
The city spruced up streets and facades. It set up an entrepreneurial fund and a small business loan program. Jackson says the first thing he noticed was that most of the new businesses that opened were bars, restaurants, and clubs.
Dominic Yono owns a restaurant on Grand Circus Park - near the city's ballparks and theaters.
YONO :30 "Here's the pork that's been in the smoker…How many hours has it been… // 14 hours. // It's just falling apart in the smoker."
Pulled pork and brisket are the specialties at Rub BBQ. Yono opened in July. But he sat on the building for eight years before deciding it was the right time to open.
YONO 3:46 "It was scary to do anything out here. There was a lot of problems with the city, and the economy wasn't well. So…just waited for the right time."
This also seems to be the right time for the neighborhood just up Woodward Avenue from Yono's restaurant. Like Pittsburgh, Midtown Detroit has the "eds and meds." Wayne State University is a major job provider, with a law school and the nation's third-largest medical school. Two big health systems - Henry Ford, and the Detroit Medical Center - are both planning expansions in the neighborhood. And all those students and employees have helped spur new businesses, like boutiques and coffee shops.
MOSEY 5:55 "This is just an example of one of the developments that's been done in the last couple of years."
That's Susan Mosey. She's the president of the University Cultural Center Association. That's a non-profit development group in Midtown. The coffee shop she's sitting in is part of a development that's a mix of retail and housing. It would look right at home in a Chicago neighborhood.
MOSEY 5:28 "I'm currently working with over 25 small businesses, and it's just a tremendous shift in terms of the commercial environment here."
The trick for Detroit is to figure out how to replicate this kind of success in neighborhoods where there are no universities or hospitals. Detroit is 140 square miles, and there are neighborhoods where whole city blocks have turned to prairie.
One strategy that's working in Midtown and that could be copied anywhere is that businesses, non-profits, foundations, and city government are all working together.
And that's another lesson from Pittsburgh, whose Allegheny Conference is an example of that kind of collaboration.
Charles Pugh is the president of Detroit's city council. He just returned from Pittsburgh to see which of its revival strategies Detroit might copy - including the Allegheny model.
PUGH "Pittsburgh is what Detroit can be. They have been through a major downturn of their major industry. They have rethought who they could be, they have made the necessary partnerships inside Pittsburgh, but also the necessary outreach to bring in new industries."
But Pittsburgh is also a much smaller city than Detroit. And it never had to contemplate what Detroit faces: some 40 square miles of vacant land, and 60-thousand vacant buildings.
Mayor Dave Bing is working on a plan to deal with that problem - which could include radical ideas like asking people to move out of their homes, and cutting off city services to the most blighted neighborhoods.
So Detroit has some wrenching decisions to make in the next couple of years. But the city's optimists believe Detroit could see a revival at least as dramatic as Pittsburgh's.
They take hope from the city's motto. It was written in Latin after a fire wiped out much of the city in 1805.
The English translation? "We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes."
For Changing Gears, I'm Sarah Hulett in Detroit.
(Changing Gears is a public media collaboration between Ideastream, WBEZ in Chicago and Michigan Radio. Support for Changing Gears comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting).