Terry Parris Jr. Monday, February 01, 2010 – Model D

The French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, with a small group of settlers and soldiers, looked out onto the Detroit River more than 300 years ago and saw opportunity. From the position of the river to the fertile land, they imagined that a settlement could grow from this location.

“The land is very beautiful and appropriate to build a city later on,” wrote Cadillac in a letter to the French minister responsible for the Detroit colonies. “The various things one finds in this Land make it very pleasant.”

Three centuries later, Detroit has another Frenchman looking out at that same river, with that same vision. From the 17th floor of Spinnaker Tower, just off East Jefferson, Laurent Diemunsch is standing in the living room of his newly purchased two-bedroom high-rise apartment. The Detroit River and Belle Isle are beaming through a foggy sliding glass door to the balcony.

“I see that the future can be better here,” he says, slowly, looking for the words.

The apartment isn’t for him to live in, though. He bought it to rent out; he bought it as an investment. Diemunsch isn’t an investor in the sense that you might think. He’s not buying 100 foreclosures and selling them on Craigslist. He’s a flight attendant, who happens to own an apartment in the Spinnaker and another in New Center, on Pallister. And he already has a tenant.

Diemunsch may be less tuned in with honest to goodness investors and more in step with his compatriot Mr. Cadillac. The two Frenchman both saw not only opportunity but also potential and a future in the wilderness off the banks of a river.

“I can see what this city can become,” Diemunsch says, unknowingly paraphrasing from Cadillac’s letters.

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