Knowledge Center

Planning July 2015

Is Midtown the New Detroit?

A turnaround may be in the works.

By Keith A. Owens

For years, Detroiters have become bitterly accustomed to the perpetual onslaught of negative news about their city. Whether it was the soaring crime rate, political corruption, the 2013 bankruptcy, or the infamous "ruin porn" photos glorifying deteriorated structures, the only news that seemed to interest outsiders was the news that made Detroiters look bad. There were even T-shirts proudly proclaiming "Detroit vs. Everybody."

That perception, of a once great but now irredeemable American city, is beginning to change. Midtown, the vibrant neighborhood that grew out of one of the city's toughest areas, is perhaps the single biggest driving force behind Detroit's latest headlines.

Everyone likes a comeback story, and Midtown, with its trendy coffee shops, restaurants, yoga studios, gardens, and dog park, represents one of the best turnaround tales ever for a city desperately in need of a fresh narrative. An article in the February 25 edition of the New York Times focusing on the critical difference the Wayne State University police department has made in the positive development of Midtown is evidence of that shift in perception.

But whether or not Midtown can honestly be crowned as the New Detroit, or even the direction of wherever Detroit may be headed, seems a bit premature at this point. Most of Detroit is still struggling to get by.

This aerial view, taken from the southern end of Midtown, shows the neighborhood bisected by Woodward Avenue, Detroit's 21-mile-long 'Main Street' and home of notable educational and civic institutions including Wayne State University and the Detroit Institute of Arts

At the center

The 3.3-square-mile community now known as Midtown is wrapped inside the larger 7.2-square-mile Greater Downtown Detroit area, which has become a magnet for revitalization. It is the area that will benefit most from the Woodward Avenue M-1 Light Rail, currently being constructed; a look at the Greater Downtown Transit Oriented Development Strategy, prepared in 2011 for the Downtown Detroit Partnership and the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, gives details about what is in store.

But of all the seven neighborhoods contained within this portion of Detroit (Downtown, Corktown, Woodbridge, Eastern Market, Lafayette Park, Rivertown, and Midtown), Midtown, with 18,388 residents, is by far the most successful and advanced in terms of overall development and appeal. It is bounded by the I-75 freeway to the east and the John C. Lodge Freeway to the west. From the south it begins at I-375 and heads north all the way to I-94.

One of the city's most walkable communities, Midtown is home to the Charles H. Wright African American Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Michigan Science Center, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Max M. Fisher Music Center, Wayne State University, the College for Creative Studies, and the Henry Ford Health System.

The rental occupancy rate in what is now Detroit's highest rent district is 97 percent. And, according to an October 2011 article in Bridge magazine, $2.4 billion had been invested in Midtown over the preceding decade.

Downtown, Midtown, and Woodbridge are home to the city's highest concentration of young and college-educated residents, with 82 percent earning less than $50,000 annually in Midtown. African Americans represent 61 percent of the Midtown population, compared to 83 percent citywide.

Midtown Detroit Inc. helped design the space for Great Lakes Coffee's Midtown location. Its open floor plan can be curtained off for community events

Rough spot

Midtown wasn't always like this. It used to be the Cass Corridor, and depending on whom you ask it was either the gutter of Detroit, full of hookers, drug dealers, pimps, and drunks, or it was a culturally diverse and eclectic neighborhood, home to all sorts, including a widely respected community of artists who spawned the internationally acclaimed Cass Corridor Art Movement in the 1960s.

The truth can probably be found somewhere in the middle, but even during the Cass Corridor's bleakest hours there was still something special about the area. It attracted the near fanatical devotion of a core number of developers, builders, and other enthusiasts who saw what the corridor could become and acted on that belief.

Sue Mosey, who has led Midtown Detroit Inc. for nearly 30 years, is one who saw the potential early. Many of her fellow Midtown boosters single her out for leading the Midtown transformation. Without question Midtown has been the beneficiary of various important contributions, but Mosey is the one who managed to stitch all those unique visions together into a singular objective designed to attract the sort of funding and investment that converted the dreams into something tangible.

Midtown Detroit Inc. was born in 1976 as the University Cultural Center Association. According to Mosey it was originally founded by Wayne State University as an advocacy planning group for nearby organizations. Mosey joined the group in 1987.

"When I joined they were in a mode where they wanted to expand their membership, expand their geography, expand their work, and really focus on community development," she says. "A little over four years ago we merged with New Center Council and we became Midtown [Detroit] Inc."

When Mosey describes the planning process that ultimately led to the Midtown of today, it appears much more methodical and strategic than organic, although she insists the overall planning phase of Midtown began only about five years ago. It was basically a three-step process. The first step was to focus on the need for "rebuilding a residential base," which meant redevelopment and the construction of new housing. But there was a big barrier: The smaller local developers who wanted to invest couldn't get financing. That led to the second step.

"We worked with the Hudson Webber Foundation and Detroit Renaissance [reorganized in 2009 as Business Leaders for Michigan], and we set up a funding program for predevelopment, which allowed a lot of small developers to get into the game," Mosey says. The funds were spent on property acquisition, environmental studies, and "all the work that needs to be done to put a deal together and go to a bank to get financing," she says.

After that, the group established historic districts by placing every building possible on the National Register; that, in turn, provided access to historic tax credits for rehabilitation projects. Then it began reaching out to appraisers and banks, persuading them to consider Midtown as a viable investment choice. The institutions started freeing up capital for bigger projects, and an influx of new people followed, Mosey says.

Midtown Detroit Inc. is largely funded by the Ford, Kresge, and Hudson Webber foundations, and only recently by the city, Mosey says. "What a lot of people don't understand is we get next to zero money from the city of Detroit," she says, adding that Midtown Detroit Inc. got its first city grant last year, after almost 30 years. It was a $4 million grant for affordable housing units in the Strathmore, a $28 million project still under construction that will include 129 residential units overall, 40 percent lower income and 60 percent market rate.

Where the city has been most helpful, says Mosey, is in funding mixed use projects and in working closely with Midtown Detroit Inc. to rezone Midtown as a special district, to ease the more rigid restrictions of traditional zoning classifications and make it easier for Midtown to continue to grow and develop as the more unconventional area that it has become.

In addition to the Strathmore, the city has helped fund the Woodward Garden Apartments, a $12.6 million, 61-unit apartment development that includes mixed income housing and benefited heavily from an $8 million grant received from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Art Center Community Garden in Midtown grows vegetables for local families

Local reflections

Gary Sands is a retired professor of urban planning who worked for the city's urban renewal program in the 1960s; he left to join Wayne State in 1971. He credits not only Midtown Detroit Inc. but Preservation Wayne and the Cass Corridor Neighborhood Development Corporation as leaders in Midtown's restoration.

"They stuck it out, and for a lot of years it was a losing battle: Take one step forward and three back," he says.

Still, Sands has some concerns. "I think it's good that people are moving here and are willing to invest, but if you dig a little you'll find that a lot of the people moving here [are temporary]. So folks are here, they're renting a place, but they're not connected. They're not exactly putting down roots yet. So it's not the un-alloyed blessing that people want to see. "

He adds: "Between 2000 and 2012, the central functions area, which is basically New Center area to downtown, between the freeways, has lost eight percent of its jobs. In the rest of Detroit, we lost 40 percent of our jobs. That's like 120,000 jobs gone in 12 years."

Tom Brennan, who with his wife Peggy owns both the Green Garage, a Midtown coworking office space housing more than 50 independent businesses, and the El Moore, Midtown's newest residential development (originally built in 1898 and scheduled to open this spring), knows well the precarious position Detroit still occupies. Still, his experience working with the city in bringing the Green Garage to life after more than five years of planning makes him believe momentum is building in the right direction.

"When we got our plans done [for the Green Garage] and we did all of our homework, we took them to the city and we got a building permit within seven business days. Now any professional who is in the industry [will tell you] — and I've worked in cities and gotten a number of permits all over the U.S. — nobody can do that."

"So here's my point about Detroit: Detroit is a big small town," Brennan says. "And so if you try to work as if you were in a small town, you'll make a lot of progress in Detroit."

Keith Owens is a freelance writer who lives in Detroit.

Resources

Images: Top — This aerial view, taken from the southern end of Midtown, shows the neighborhood bisected by Woodward Avenue, Detroit's 21-mile-long "Main Street" and home of notable educational and civic institutions including Wayne State University and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Photo by Pat Haller. Middle — Midtown Detroit Inc. helped design the space for Great Lakes Coffee's Midtown location. Its open floor plan can be curtained off for community events. Courtesy Great Lakes coffee. Bottom — The Art Center Community Garden in Midtown grows vegetables for local families. Photo by Pat Haller.

Maurice Cox, Detroit's New Planning Director, says Midtown is Just the Beginning of 'New' Detroit

WEB-ONLY EXTRA: The View from the Top

By Keith A. Owens

Detroit's newly appointed director of planning and development, Maurice Cox, has only been in his job full-time for a few months, but he has been in the city since February when Mayor Michael Duggan first announced his appointment and he began serving immediately on a part-time basis until he was confirmed unanimously by Detroit City Council in March.

In conversation he expresses a comfortable familiarity with many of the city's more renowned neighborhoods, and he has some ideas about how to make them as successful as Midtown has become. Midtown represents what many envision as the "new" Detroit, but as Cox is quick to point out, it's not where most Detroiters live — or can afford to live.

People are asking whether the city can replicate Midtown's success in other neighborhoods, he says, "and the answer is, yes we can." He adds: "I think the challenge is to take that success and spread it [out]. You might say Grandmont Rosedale [or] Brightmoor could be that kind of place."

Cox says he is impressed by the progress that Midtown has made, and readily acknowledges that in many ways it is heading in the right direction for where the city needs to go in terms of growth and development.

"People want in. Developers want in. At this point, they're willing to play by some additional rules to get in," says Cox. "I think Midtown is a great success story and a great example of the overnight success story that took 20 years to create. A walkable district where the scale of residential is just right."

Cox, who moved to Detroit from New Orleans and recently closed on a townhouse in the city's Lafayette Park neighborhood, emphasized his commitment to his new city and his vision to create a more livable urban area that is much more walkable, bike-friendly, and supportive of sustainable communities with easier access to basic services and amenities such as restaurants, cleaners, and grocery stores.

An avid biker and walker, Cox lived in Florence, Italy, from 1983 to 1993; while there, he walked his children to school and walked to work. "Every linear foot of that was an extraordinary walk," he says.

From Italy Cox moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he ultimately became mayor of the city (1996-2004) and spearheaded the creation of "literally hundreds of miles of bicycle paths" in a community already known for its walking culture.

He also lived in Boston and in Washington, D.C., both highly walkable cities, before moving to New Orleans just off of Magazine Street, "where every single thing you want, you can walk to: grocery stores, shoe repair, cleaners, pharmacy, variety of restaurants. That's the thing I'm going to miss the most about my former location, and aspire most to recreate here."

But perhaps most importantly to many struggling Detroiters who are eager for the city to rebound, Cox acknowledges fears of gentrification and cautions that Detroit's comeback should not welcome newcomers while kicking longtime residents to the curb.

Is that happening in Midtown?

"I don't want to say anything that is negative," Cox says, "but I went into a coffee shop in Midtown, knowing full well the demographics of Detroit, and I was shocked that I could be the only African American in the business. I never thought that could happen. And so I started asking some of my colleagues here, 'Can you take me to a place where African Americans eat? Because the places that I've been going to, I don't see many.'"

Despite that initial shock, Cox says he still feels good about Midtown, and believes that it's possible to change the growing perception among some Detroiters that the area is exclusive. He notes that conversations between his office and Midtown's leaders are already in process

"I think those fears are real [about gentrification], and oftentimes gentrification means new people coming. Detroit has to be super-conscious of that phenomenon" by making sure economic revitalization benefits everyone.

"So if we can produce a Midtown on Livernois — a commercial corridor — and you can walk into a majority of those businesses and find African American business owners, then we'll have something to show other Detroiters — [namely] that it's possible to have a vibrant African American–owned, –anchored district that thrives. That's the goal."

Keith Owens is a freelance writer who lives in Detroit.