Community Revitalization Newsletter
494 Lakewood - Detroit, Michigan 48215
Cool Cities Means Great Places
Upcoming Appearances: Let's Do Lunch Duluth and Ideas Before Dawn
Detroit’s Mistake in Excluding Home-Based Businesses
Behind the Tattered Fabric of the Iron Curtain: A Legal Week in Cuba by an American by Michael Boettcher
Celebrating the Music that Moved Detroit and the World
Seven Mile Project Celebrates Detroit Middle Eastern Community by Veronica Yono-Hindo of the Arab American and Chaldean Council
As
we wait to see which communities will receive the first Michigan
Cool Cities Catalyst Grants, we are excited about the opportunities
uncovered by the various elements of the Governor’s Cool Cities
Initiative. Certainly, at a minimum, the Cool Cities effort cast a spotlight
on the importance of cities and their impact on economic development.
While many of Michigan’s cities will never be really “cool,”
they can be great and with some luck, the debate will evolve from the
“Cool” cities spin to serious discussion about “Great”
places.We’ve heard Richard Florida suggest, “Members of the creative class demand a lifestyle built around creative, rich, multi-dimensional experiences, not conforming to the strict separations of work, home and leisure.” Naysayers call Florida’s theory a “coffee shop development strategy.” It’s not. The real physical expression of “cool” and Florida’s Creative Class, is vibrant, diverse, mixed-use, urban, historic districts - where work, home, art, culture, and community collide in a dynamic, high quality of life - A HIGH QUALITY OF PLACE.
Great places – the districts that will make Michigan’s cities cool – are a collection of buildings, sidewalks, streets, views, and parks that provide the canvas for cool cities. Physical elements define cities regardless of the nation or state in which it presides. Places are far more than a collection of buildings. The public places, plazas, parks, views, homes, and places of work contribute to the unique experiences that define great places. James Kuntsler articulated this notion in the “Geography of Nowhere”, “it expresses itself physically as connectedness, as buildings actively relating to one another, and to whatever public space exists, be it the street, or the courthouse square of the village green.”
Therefore, revitalization occurs as the result of a series of real estate developments within a revitalization strategy re-knitting the fabric for cool cities. However, there are often gaps in specific real estate development expertise. Building owners, local governments, DDAs, and Main Street Managers often don’t have the expertise to shepherd a building(s) to a higher and better use. This isn’t a critique of local officials. Real estate development is a difficult and complex process that can take up to two years just to pull together financing.
But, the overwhelming majority of professionals engaged in economic development have little to no experience with the complex forms of land control and financing that are necessary to help make downtowns and neighborhoods come alive. As a matter of fact, most only know about the antithesis that is industrial parks and Industrial Revenue Bonds.
At the Michigan Conference on Affordable Housing, Taylor Mayor Greg Pitoniak, remarked that the city likes to have one or two new projects in the pipeline each year because it takes so long for a real estate deal to mature. The City of Taylor has proactively developed a number of real estate deals, including a large-scale rehab project in the southwest corner of the city, largely because the city wasn’t getting the kind of development offers that the city wanted.
The lesson can be applied to many of Michigan’s cities, large and small, that are frustrated by the lack of investment in their communities. If the kinds of investments that the community seeks, are not happening, they may have to take the process into their own hands, and create the vehicles necessary and become the developer to facilitate the type of investments that make cities great places.
Let's Do Lunch Duluth/Ideas Before Dawn
Jay
C. Juergensen, President of Juergensen & Associates is scheduled
to speak before the Duluth
Area Chamber of Commerce's Let's Do Lunch Series
on Tuesday, June 8 at 11:30 am. Jay
is giving a talk on how historic preservation can be an economic benefit
and improve the quality of life in a community. Jay was asked
to speak as a result of his work with the Preservation
Development Initiative, a program of National Trust for Historic Preservation
and the John and James L. Knight Foundation.
If you are interested in attending the speech, please contact the Duluth Chamber of Commerce at 218.722.5501 or by emailing inquiry@duluthchamber.com.
Jay
is also schedule to participate in a panel discussion entitled, "A
Tale of Cool Cities" sponsored by Detroit Downtown
Inc. and Crains Detroit Business. The subject of the panel discussion
is how Detroit can change its image and attract young professionals
to the city.
The discussion, which includes breakfast is scheduled for Wednesday, June 9 from 8 to 9:30 am at the Courtyard Detroit Downtown, 333 East Jefferson (click to see map). Tickets are available for $25 by calling Detroit Downtown Inc at 313.961.1403
Detroit’s
Mistake in Excluding Home-Based Businesses
The
Zoning Ordinance is the legal expression of a community’s Master
Plan, and therefore absolutely essential for communities to imagine
their future in the regulations contained in the Zoning
Ordinance. So why is it that home based businesses are zoned out
of communities, haven’t local zoning officials heard of “Ebay.”
Come on, we spend millions of taxpayer dollars supporting massive infrastructure
investments, tax breaks and abatements to encourage a few large manufacturers,
when most of today’s entrepreneurs start at home, not in an industrial
park.
After four years of hard work by numerous citizens and public officials,
a handful of residents in a couple of Detroit’s historic districts
appear to have effectively lobbied to discourage positive changes in
Detroit’s new Zoning Ordinance that would have provided these
economic opportunities while also creating regulations that protect
neighborhoods.
Consider this tidbit from the history of computer giant Hewlett
Packard, “Dave
(Packard) and his wife Lucile move into the first floor flat of a house
at 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto, California. Bill (Hewlett) rents the
cottage behind the house, and Bill and Dave begin part-time work in
the garage with $538 in working capital. The $538 consists of cash and
a used Sears-Roebuck drill press.”
Had
Dave and Bill lived in Detroit, the city would issued a cease and desist
order as violation of the city’s Zoning Ordinance and we might
still be using manual typewriters and America would have never learned
the lyrics to My Girl, because Motown could not have grown up in the
houses on West Grand Boulevard (see Motown article
in this issue).
A healthy city is rich in activity, which includes a vibrant and diverse
population that is active during all hours of the day. This means daytime
as much as is does nightlife. Today, ideas are the currency of a 21st
century Information Age economy. The new “creative” economy
and the creative class, as proposed by author Richard Florida, not only
includes artists, researchers and technology professionals, but also
entrepreneurs that CREATE businesses and jobs.
The days of abundant high paying manufacturing jobs are over. Recent
media attention on the country and Michigan’s loss of industrial
jobs is duly noted and over the last several years, we have been told
that the US economy was in a recession. As major corporations continue
to "downsize" or "rightsize" a lot of people are
out of work and desperately trying to find another job.
At the same time, according to a recent Gallup survey, seven out of
ten new businesses are started at home, which means that the home is
the launching pad for new products and businesses--the engine of the
American economy. In 2001, firms with less than 10 people created over
12.3 million jobs and it is likely that the overwhelming majority of
those were likely in home-based environs.
The Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration,
tell us that
• 9.3 million Americans spend at least one full work-day at home,
and
• 21.5 million at least some portion of their work-week in their
residence
Home workers are more likely to be female and the proportion of minority
ownership of home-based businesses is growing at a more rapid rate then
their white counterparts. Also, with more single heads of households
and dual income families, neighborhoods are often emptied of most working
adults during the day and home-based businesses provide activity and
security for a neighborhood.
A significant factor effecting the decision to create a business is
start-up costs and working at home allows the business owner to cut
overhead and conserve resources earlier in business evolution.
Given all these factors wouldn’t it be a shame if people who might
begin exploring the option of a home-based business would be discouraged
when they find out that antiquated zoning ordinances limit their options
in operating or growing a business from their home?
Throughout the country 24 million business tax returns were filed by
operators of home based businesses. There are literally millions of
businesses operated in the U.S. out of homes in violation of local zoning
ordinances. If all zoning laws were strictly enforced, all of these
businesses would be forced to shut down and the entire U.S. economy
would be dealt a significant blow.
So despite the growing number of home businesses in the country, most
neighborhoods remain unchanged. In order to effectively respond to this
growing trend, we need to adopt a fair and effective ordinance that
recognizes:
• People work from home whether the zoning permits it or not, and
making it unlawful turns otherwise law-abiding citizens into violators.
• If people hide their home businesses, they're not marketing it as
effectively as they could, and they're limiting what they earn, dampening the community economy.
• Home businesses that are allowed to be visible are more apt
to obtain
business licenses, which helps hard-pressed local governments balance their budgets.
• Home is an incubator for many businesses that grow out of the
home
and sometimes become major employers. What community wouldn't like to be the headquarters for the next Apple Computer or Ben & Jerry's?
• Home-based self-employment is an important safety net for Americans
who have lost their jobs. The best route to pulling out of a bad economy is enabling people to support themselves.
In order for more people to have the opportunity to legally operate
a business from their homes, it is necessary for us to move the zoning
ordinances out of the industrial age and into the technology age. Knowledge
about whom and what home-based businesses are along with some sensible
guidelines for the new zoning ordinances would be helpful. Here are
a few lists to help make the case for home-based businesses though you
will have to stay tuned to next month for my suggestions.
Seven Reasons to Allow Home-Based Businesses to Operate
1. Makes neighborhoods safer for every one, including latchkey
kids.
2. The comings and goings of strangers can be observed and suspicious
activities reported to the authorities.
3. Less traffic on our highways during the "normal"
rush hour.
4. Money earned is spent in the local neighborhood helping to
boost
local economies.
5. Keeps jobs in the local community.
6. Decreases unemployment.
7. Provides a wider volunteer base for our communities.
Next Month…10 Zoning Ordinance Suggestions
Behind the Tattered Fabric of the Iron Curtain: A Legal Week in Cuba by an American
by Michael Boettcher
Nothing in Cuba is quite what it seems. Havana is a crumbling Paris,
at once a gorgeous “city of colonnades” thanks to its unrivaled
collection of Spanish Colonial architecture, and a testament to an apparently
failed system. Neglect is visible across the city in buildings that
look like they haven’t been painted in decades and others that
have simply collapsed, there being not enough money for basic maintenance
on buildings, all of which the Cuban government owns.
That failed system has nonetheless produced a society with some of the
highest literacy and life expectancy rates in the world. Higher education
is free, HIV rates remain among the world’s lowest and the resilient
and resourceful people, plenty aware of their own poverty relative to
the brimming wealth of their northerly neighbors, seem genuinely happy.
It’s good to have gotten to see it before western influence ruins
those areas of Cuban society that truly work well.
The Urban Land Institute sent its third and, for the foreseeable future,
last study tour to Cuba early last December. Having organized a similar
tour the prior April, ULI put this trip together in a hurry, as the
Bush administration announced heightened travel restrictions at the
start of 2004. My partner, Steven Pejuan and I went with more than 40
ULI members, mostly hotel and multi-family residential developers prospecting,
on this tour that proved to be perhaps the most eye-opening trip we’ve
taken.
For more than a generation, Cuba stayed isolated from most of the rest
of the world. It only traded with its Communist allies and frowned upon
tourism. The US sanctions against the government of Fidel Castro further
suffocated the Cuban economy by penalizing US trading partners engaging
in trade with Cuba. With the loss of its Eastern Bloc trading partners
in the late 1980s, the Cuban economy sunk. In 1993, Castro lifted restrictions
on Cubans trading in dollars and eased tourism restrictions. Canadians,
Europeans and others began visiting new, all-inclusive resorts being
built around cities like Varadero and Trinidad.
Cuba’s
tourism industry runs exclusively on dollars, creating essentially a
dual economy of tourism dollar haves and peso have-nots, including professionals
previously considered well paid, like doctors and engineers.
Travel to Cuba by American citizens remained restricted, however. Non-Cuban-born
US citizens required State Department approval and could only go for
charitable, missionary or educational work, with something to show at
the end of their trips. Unapproved Cuban travel by Americans could result
in fines in the thousands of dollars.
The sanctions remain in place, now Cold War-relic policies against an
enemy long ago economically crippled. Nevertheless, Bush decided to
further tighten travel restrictions to Cuba. Half a century of pressure
from Florida’s largely Republican Cuban-American community lobbying
to crimp Cuba’s trade hose had not removed Castro, but had dried
up the country’s economic prospects nearly to the point that it
could no longer feed its own people.
Cuban agriculture has transformed itself, however. Small collectives
of farmers have created agropónicos, village- or neighborhood-scale
organic farms in Havana’s undeveloped areas and around the country.
Renewed interest abroad in Cuban music has resurrected the careers of
many of its best musicians from before the revolution, and is producing
new stars at the same time. Cuba has also begun to relearn the value
of its cities.
Careful
historic preservation is evident throughout Habana Vieja (Old Havana)
and elsewhere. We visited a former convent converted into a hotel, a
paladar (a privately owned restaurant; a recent innovation) in a former
upper apartment that doubled as a movie set, and an arts school, built
on a former golf course nationalized in the revolution, where tourists
purchase inexpensive, high quality work from budding artists in Cuba’s
burgeoning arts community. In fact, Cuba’s best artists make such
high incomes that they are its new aristocracy!
Seems as if Cuba has as much to teach the US as vice versa.
Michael Boettcher works in Advance Planning in the City of Detroit's Planning Department.
Celebrating
the Music that Moved Detroit and the World
Last
month, we discussed the importance of Gospel music in Detroit’s
arts and culture scene. There is little doubt that Detroit’s most
famous contribution to our national musical culture was Motown. Motown
is America’s music. Don’t believe me, who doesn’t
know the lyrics to “My Girl”? The impact of Motown was reaffirmed
for me at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference
last year as everybody was dancing, tapping their feet, clapping their
hands and singing along with The Four Tops.
Started in a few homes (see this month’s article
on Home-Based Businesses) just west of Detroit’s New Center,
Motown boasted the countries best musicians, singers, producers and
entertainers of the day. And no one can dispute the impact of Motown
as a cultural phenomenon, though it seems as though we can’t seem
to capture the Motown magic in our marketing efforts.
A
few days following April’s newsletter feature on Detroit’s
under appreciated Gospel scene, Luther Keith’s column in the Detroit
News trumpeted our “rich musical heritage” and our inability
to promote the city’s music (see
article). This was never more evident than last week, during the
“Motown 45” gala on ABC. Not that the program wasn’t
entertaining, the Temptations are still a hot ticket after forty years,
but why was it filmed at the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium in California.
Wouldn’t the Fox Theater or Cobo Hall been more a more appropriate
venue for an event of this magnitude.
The
Motown Museum is a great
example of what Detroit should do to promote itself. It alone (and its
modest $8 entrance fee) is well worth a trip to Detroit. Though much
more can be done. The Museum, not unlike the Gospel Hall of Fame was
looking for a downtown location to provide greater access to the music
and legacy of Motown. The current location on West Grand Boulevard needs
to expand.
The Museum folks developed a clever idea for a Motown Center to be located
on Woodward near the Fisher Freeway at the site of Motown’s former
headquarters before it’s move to LA (the stone building boarded
up with blue panels). The proposed $28 million project would rival Cleveland’s
overrated Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Seattle’s famous Experience
Music Project, based on the music of Jimi Hendrix and sponsored by former
Microsoft executive Peter Allen. Keep your fingers crossed. Construction
is expected to start sometime this year and the Center is expected to
be open by the Super Bowl. The preservation of the building would send
another important message about Detroit’s architectural and cultural
history.
Plans
haven’t formally been announced though it has been suggested that
the real tab could be as high as $60 million. How much is too much?
If we spend $125 million or so to keep a vacuum cleaner factory, can’t
the state and private sector find the resources to preserve one of our
city’s greatest cultural legacies?
If arts and culture are going to drive economic development, it’s
about time we put our money where the arts are. I can see no better
start than a salute to the music that moved this city – and the
world.
Seven Mile Project Celebrates Detroit Middle Eastern Community
The
Arab American and Chaldean Council
(ACC) is making impressive strides to reinvest into and reinvent
a long-neglected community in the City of Detroit. ACC has expanded
its mission to improve the overall environment of the community. ACC,
in collaboration with the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Commercial
Revitalization, initiated an exciting community development project
to revive the Seven Mile Corridor between Woodward and John R in Detroit.
The project, developed to address the pressing needs of the community, will result in a safe, healthy and more dynamic community while encouraging tourism and “destination” shopping rich with cultural, Middle Eastern icons and common design motifs.
ACCs
most recent construction project is the new 19,200 square foot ACC Youth
Leadership Training and Recreation Center located on Seven Mile Road
in Detroit. The new center, slated for completion in summer 2004, will
include a fully-equipped gymnasium, locker/shower facilities, 30 offices,
Board/conference rooms, classrooms, and computer lab. The new ACC Youth
Center project underscores our commitment to revitalize Seven Mile.
ACC is the largest non-profit human, health and social programs and
services organization to the Middle Eastern Community in Southeast Michigan.
Dr. Haifa Fakhouri, ACC President and CEO is recognized for her expertise
and leadership in ethnic human services. For more information on ACC
or the Seven Mile Project, please visit www.arabacc.org or contact Isa
or Veronica Yono-Hindo at (313)893-5269.
The article was provided by Veronica Yono-Hindo of the Arab American and Chaldean Council. We appreciate their contribution to the Juergensen Report and wish to congratulate Dr. Fakhouri on her appointment to the Board of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.