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A recent meeting in my office with a VIP, our senior sales director's beloved dog, Hunter.

There’s a subtle theme to this issue, and it happened without any planning on my part.

It’s spring, the sun is shining and the long Midwestern winter has finally ended in suburban Chicago, where our offices are located. Easter is behind us, flowers are blooming everywhere and we’re all feeling a touch of spring fever in our offices. There’s no mistaking it: It’s the time of year when people — especially those who are coming out of a long winter — feel renewed.

And that feeling is, oddly enough, expressed in page after page of this magazine, even though our team of writers worked on it well before spring fever took hold.

Our Design Market destination is Detroit — my old stomping grounds and a city that no one can deny is enjoying an unusual resurgence after decades of stagnation.

Senior Contributing Editor Dana Tanyeri writes about Eberly in one of this issue’s Project Profiles. We were attracted to the story because it features a historical New York bar that was lovingly disassembled and put in storage until it could find new life in a new home in Austin, Texas.

The story that most obviously addresses the idea of renewal is Dana’s feature, Coming Back from Disaster. It serves as a healthy reminder that even when it’s spring, we must remember that winter is coming, one way or another.

Looking forward, this issue will be in the hands of attendees at the National Restaurant Show in May, at our annual Tour the Design Trends event in June and at NEOCON in Chicago in June. I’ll be at all of those events, reaching out to our readers and finding out what makes them feel renewed.

In the meantime, I’ll be heading to the HD Expo and then to the national conference and awards luncheon for the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) with our Art Director, Anne LoCascio. We’ll be attending seminars in the hopes of making a better product for our readers — and taking a few minutes to be proud of the fact that rd+d is a finalist for Magazine of the Year.

Thanks so much for reading, and please reach out to me at any time with new or newly renovated restaurant projects — or just to tell me what it is that makes you feel renewed this spring — at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..