Detroit's North End: Testing ground for a new Detroit

[animatedmartian]

Testing Ground for a New Detroit
Mayor Mike Duggan’s Pledges Echo in Detroit’s North End
By JOHN ELIGON. JULY 6, 2014

Inell Byrd’s house has a leaky roof.

Walls are cracked, sections of ceiling are missing and the concrete porch is buckling. Most of the furniture is gone and random belongings like Christmas lights and a bicycle are scattered about, the result of preparations for a redecoration that Ms. Byrd has not been able to manage.

The front room is bare, its only contents a low-slung futon and a large flat-screen television. With her family finances in shambles, she briefly tried to sell the house.

And beyond her walls, she worries that her street — which still has handsome colonials, Tudors and other sprawling homes — abuts one that looks bombed out.

“You got these two beautiful blocks,” said Ms. Byrd, 41, a home health aide, referring to Arden Park Boulevard in the city’s historic North End, “and everything behind you is, I ain’t going to say Beirut, but basically it just fell off.”

But there is also immense potential in this shattered urban landscape, despite more than a half-century of government mismanagement and residential and industrial flight.

Mayor Mike Duggan, who took office in January, promised immediate improvements after the city hit a low point last year, becoming America’s largest to file for bankruptcy. The North End captures both the hope and challenge of the mayor’s pledge. So tracking what happens in this neighborhood this year and next will tell a lot about whether this metropolis, with nearly 690,000 residents, can rebuild.

“The North End is an area that has real potential to come back,” the mayor said in an interview. “It’s got a proud history in this city.”

Annexed by the city in the late 19th century, the North End once was the northernmost point in Detroit, bordering on the cities of Highland Park and Hamtramck. It quickly became a haven for the upper class.

These days it still has some of the city’s most glorious homes bordering some of its harshest blight. While it counts judges, doctors and other professionals in its ranks of homeowners, its remaining residents are mostly low-income blacks who bear the brunt of Detroit’s economic decline because of a legacy of confinement to the lowest-paid, least-skilled and least-mobile jobs.

Older residents remember when Oakland Avenue, the North End’s main north-south drag, was a crowded strip of businesses and bars, such as Phelps Lounge, where some of black music’s hottest acts, like the Temptations, performed in the 1960s. Or when the likes of Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross lived in the well-to-do neighborhood alongside Detroit’s black elite, who migrated there after World War II, exceptional for a time when racist policies generally kept black residents crowded into the city’s most tattered sections.

Now there are more open fields than buildings along Oakland. And the most notable concerns operating on the street are a liquor store, a few churches and an old Jewish bathhouse.

“I drive over occasionally just to look at the old neighborhood,” said Ms. Franklin, who lived in the North End in the 1950s when it was thriving with affluent blacks. “You wouldn’t even recognize it now.”

Still the city has targeted the North End as among the first neighborhoods for renewal. Situated just above the city’s vibrant Midtown and Downtown corridor, the North End is a ripe location for commercial and residential development.

....

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/07/us...north-end.html

[hudkina]

I would love to see the North End revived, however, I hope that doesn't mean putting low-end housing (think Core City) in. First, I'd try to focus on the existing housing, while maintaining the empty lots. Later, if the neighborhood does see a true middle-class revival (and maybe a stop on a Woodward streetcar extension) then I'd like to see the type of modern mid-scale and upscale housing that is truly reflective of the current housing stock.

The city of Wyandotte, in Downriver got an $8 million federal grant to purchase certain homes with the idea of renovating them and then selling them. It's amazing what some of these houses look like after the renovation.

Detroit got $40 million from the same program, but I'm not sure where the money is being spent.

Here's a couple before and after pics of the renovations in Wyandotte:







I'd love to see these kinds of results in the North End.

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by hudkina

Detroit got $40 million from the same program, but I'm not sure where the money is being spent.

You mean this?

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...ring-2-million

It's a good idea in theory, however, Detroit's housing prices have a long way to go before the cost of investment breaks even. Either demand skyrockets or the wait is going to be a long time before price are at where something like that is possible. Although the way they talk about North End does make it sound like it'll eventually join in the resurgence occurring in Downtown and Midtown.

[LMich]

The North End is kind of a microcosm of residential Detroit. When employment became divorced from location of where one lived, it followed suit of so many other neighborhoods. The North End is exactly the kind of once-middle-class, single-family residential neighborhood that would have been nice to keep. I'd love to see nice infill on the narrow lots, but there is really no need or demand for it. I'm sure the streetcar will have some effects along the fringes, but I don't see much immediately east of Woodward in that area of downtown evere really reviving barring some unforseen demand for housing in Detroit. Things look much better for the west side of Woodward around Virginia Park and Boston-Edison and even the areas west of hospital, because for even as much as employment has been divorced from your immediate location, there are still some benefits.

On a personal note, my grandparents raised my dad and his brothers in the neighborhood. At the time, it was one of the few neighborhoods in the city outside the core where upwardly mobile black people could really buy houses. When my grandfather died, my grandmother kept the house up until the 80's until it didn't make sense for her to be alone in such a big house and she moved out. When she sold the house, the new owners divided it into three apartments and with the area having declined so much it didn't attract the most savory tenants. It was demolished sometime in the late 90's/early 2000's. I remember returning to the site with my dad soon after it was brought down. They'd basically just bulldozed the thing into the basement. Just next door, their neighbors still lived in their house and had kept it up, but the tenants were two sisters in their 90's, and are since long gone. Some of the corner lots were overgrown with weeds.

I'm very glad that folks have gotten very creative with reusing land in the city. It will at least make these old neighborhoods mode livable for the folks who are willing to stay or can't leave. But, I have to admit to sometime thinking "what's the point?" when I see how far these areas have gone. The most frustrating thing about Detroit and what will make it hard to rebuild is that the collapse wasn't all at once or in a neat fashion. With little rhyme or reason to the collapse, it's going to be hard for city planners to ever get their arms around where to start at least outside the core.

My dream is that the general population and not just the hipsters start to revive the idea of living close to where you work and coupling the two, again. It makes repopulating certain neighborhoods easier. Perhaps there should be a program by local businesses supporting marketing employment opportunities, first, to the folks in the neighborhoods around them, and then to anyone else and seeing how many prospective employees they might have. In the case of the North End, then, perhaps businesses in New Center could really place a heavy emphasis on recruitment from places like the North End. Short of that, though, if I'm a Detroiter working in Southfield or Oak Park or Livonia, you're going to have to make places like the North End exceedingly special or exceedingly cheap to become an option.

[hudkina]

Originally Posted by animatedmartian

You mean this?

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...ring-2-million

It's a good idea in theory, however, Detroit's housing prices have a long way to go before the cost of investment breaks even.

That's the point of the grant. Essentially Wyandotte takes control of houses that have been foreclosed on or that owe back taxes and then spends the grant money on either renovating or demolishing the housing. It then sells the renovated housing at market rate. It doesn't necessarily have to turn a profit.

In the case of the North End, the city would focus the renovations on properties that it already has clear possession of. It then spends the grant money to fix up the property. (Let's say it costs $40,000 to properly renovate a typical unit). It can then sell the housing at market rate. I'd bet that the city could easily get $40,000+ for a newly renovated North End home, particularly if A. Dan Gilbert and friends incentive living in the neighborhood, B. The city makes a clear effort at policing the neighborhood, C. the city makes a clear effort of providing city services (bike lanes, lighting, parks, street repairs, attracting businesses, etc.) for the neighborhood.

[LMich]

Originally Posted by hudkina

That's the point of the grant. Essentially Wyandotte takes control of houses that have been foreclosed on or that owe back taxes and then spends the grant money on either renovating or demolishing the housing. It then sells the renovated housing at market rate. It doesn't necessarily have to turn a profit.

This is not a new idea. In fact, this is the whole purpose of land banks. Ingham (2003) and Genesee (2004) counties a two of the more successful and notable ones. Land banks are only as strong as their county treasurers, though. They've got to want to be in the real estate business for them to work.

In the case of Detroit, the city was skeptical of the whole idea for years until very recently. It wasn't until literally this year that the Detroit Land Bank was formally empowered. I have very high hopes for it, however. Duggan really seems to get the potential for the land bank. And despite being years behind other counties in the state in effectively using these to stabilize cities and neighborhoods, Duggan has jumped into this head first. His use of the concept to start up Building Detroit, and just a few days ago using the concept to concentrate on snatching away drug houses from slumlords is a sign that he's going to be moving at warp speed. His first huge coup was getting Detroit to transfer 16,000 properties to the land bank back in May.

It's better late than never. Though, it is kind of disheartening to realize just how many neighborhoods could have been stabilized between 2005 and now. As we know, over that time period, there were blocks-upon-blocks in the city that were intact neighborhoods (if even teetering on the edge) that then completely collapsed within the matter of a few years. An example that comes to mind is the area around State Fair.

[detroit_alive]

Originally Posted by hudkina

Detroit got $40 million from the same program, but I'm not sure where the money is being spent.

I'd love to see these kinds of results in the North End.

It looks like this program has begun on Philadelphia west of Woodward.











Photos from Detroityes user PCM: http://www.detroityes.com/mb/attachm...0&d=1399507886

[LMich]

Originally Posted by detroit_alive

It looks like this program has begun on Philadelphia west of Woodward.

Wow, I really wish they wouldn't have done that. lol But, seriously, I'd hope that we'd get out of this "lego house" trend in the renovations of historic homes where everything ends up looking like it could be a house on The Simpsons.

[hudkina]

I actually don't mind that particular style. At least they're not using cheap vinyl. It doesn't help that it isn't completely finished or landscaped.