On Belle Isle, where families have always come to fish off the bridge, walk the trails, or gather for Sunday cookouts, a new kind of landmark was unveiled this week. At first glance, it looks like an oversized wooden cone tucked off the path near the Belle Isle Nature Center. But it’s not just decoration. When you step inside the ten-foot structure, the park itself starts talking back. The birds overhead, the wind through the leaves, even the faint stirring of water in the marsh — all of it swells louder, amplified by what’s being called Detroit’s first “nature megaphone.”
What makes it stand out isn’t just the shape. It’s who built it. Detroit high school students, some who had never touched a saw before, took on the challenge of designing and constructing something that most adults would call ambitious. The advanced carpentry required sharp angles and clean alignment, the kind of measurements that don’t forgive mistakes. Yet, piece by piece, they put it together through Atlantic Impact, a Detroit nonprofit that runs skilled trades training for young people.
When the ribbon was cut — with the students themselves lining up to hold the scissors — the pride was visible. A few grinned wide, others tried to play it cool, but they all knew they had done something that would outlast them. In a city where too often young people are written off as problems to be solved, here was the opposite: a permanent structure on Detroit’s most iconic public island, built entirely by their hands…