Longtime home of great museums and theaters, Midtown Detroit is rapidly becoming the ultimate in refreshing urban cool and hip too. Big news came on Wednesday as Whole Foods announced they will be opening a new store in 2013 in the Detroit’s Midtown section.

Midtown is defined as the area along either side of Woodward Avenue, beginning I-75 and downtown on the south and extending up to I-94 on the north. Wayne State University, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Museum of

African-American History, the Detroit Science Center, and Orchestra Hall, the Masonic Temple, and the Detroit Historical Museum are all located in Midtown. Due to its artistic nature and home to the city’s cultural heart, the neighborhood has adopted the appropriate moniker of “where life is art.”

According to a 2010 report entitled Neighborhood Market DrillDown, prepared by Social Compact, Midtown Detroit has the city’s highest rate of resident income per acre at $231,961 and the highest average household income of new home buyers in the city at $113,788.

Whole Foods is the latest shot in the arm for Midtown and the whole city. Recently, the Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Hospital, and Wayne State University began a program entitled “Live Midtown” that offers incentives to their employees who move/live in Midtown.

Just to the south of I-75 in Downtown, several community-minded private sector employers are offering similar incentives in an effort to attract 16,000 new residents. Both areas will benefit from the upcoming Woodward Light Railproject. Phase 1 will link Downtown and Midtown and be 3.4 miles long.

Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan, Compuware, Detroit Medical Center, DTE Energy, Henry Ford Hospital, Quicken Loans, Strategic Staffing Solutions, Wayne State University, and now Whole Foods should be highly commended for their fine efforts at revitalizing this great American city. These are indeed exciting times for the great Motor City.