Detroit City Council approves plan to rename Chene Park for Aretha Franklin

DETROIT (WJBK) - As expected, the Detroit City Council approved a motion to rename Chene Park for Aretha Franklin. 

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan announced during Aretha's funeral on Friday that he planned to file a motion to rename the park for the Queen of Soul. Council President Brenda Jones said it would be passed as an ordinance so it cannot be changed in the future.

On Tuesday, Duggan hand-delivered the motion and it was passed unanimously by the city council.

"It's just amazing that the city has embraced her with so much love and so much admiration and the amphitheater is only befitting of my aunt - she was music, she was theater, she was television," Christal Franklin, her niece, said.

According to the resolution, the park will be renamed the Aretha Louise Franklin Amphitheater.

Chene Park draws about 100,000 visitors annually and Aretha performed there a number of times. It was also the site of a tribute concert in her honor the day the before her funeral.

Duggan said the renaming of the park is fitting, considering the park is on the Detroit River, which Aretha loved so much.