MLK was GREAT!!!!

WE NEED JOBS NOW!

Got Jobs? Demonstration, Washington D.C. Sep. 24, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyeEqv_gwwg

Today: Above and Beyond September 22, 2011 10:00AM

MailChimp Newsletter

Using the function of print as a pdf, you can turn a MailChimp newsletter into a pdf.

MailChimp also makes it very easy to link to social media; Google +, Facebook, Twitter, RSS.

Meeting: 10 AM Rivertown Lofts 9-22

Continuation of our discussion on 9-12.

We will be focusing on the October 29th Event.

- setting the vision (how does it flow?)

- deciding on what residents might be told in advance about the event

- potential sponsors/volunteers etc.

- survey (ready to send?)

Architect

I gave Ms Chandra Moore the contact info for Monica.

She attempted to contact you (Mocheezy :) yesterday from her California number and left a message.

She asked that someone call her at 313-416-4354, she is interested.

keshonna is hired kpatlodc@gmail.com

Housing Stock in Midtown Detroit

Cash incentives have "absorbed" a lot of housing stock in midtown Detroit
By Jennifer Guerra









Three Detroit businesses earlier this year began to offer up to $25,000 to encourage their employees to buy a place to live in Midtown Detroit. But the "Live Midtown" incentives have created a new kind of housing crisis in the city: a housing shortage.

Austin Black is a realtor with City Living Detroit in midtown. He says in 2007 - 2008, the area was flush with unsold units. But he says now many of his clients have become frustrated looking for housing in the area.

"I think there was an expectation that there was a lot of supply when the program was announced," explains Black. But he says the incentives "absorbed a lot of that supply," which he believes is ultimately a good thing. But now, he says, "we're at the point where there's jut not a lot available."

Black says currently there’s only one loft building in Midtown with units for sale, the Willys Overland Lofts near Avalon Bakery. Black says there are six condos for sale and even fewer single family homes:

"There’s about three ... single family homes on the market. And most of those are mansions, like in Brush Park for example, that would need a significant amount of money to get them in livable conditions."

Black says new developments in Midtown won’t be available until late next year. He says developers should address the new housing demand by offering smaller developments with "a diversity of price points and housing types."

Another LEAP of Faith to ADD to our Understanding

BUILDING BLOCKS

Group has detailed plan to improve lower east-side Detroit neighborhood

By JOHN GALLAGHER FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

   Call it the great LEAP forward for Detroit’s lower east side. Over the last year, community activists struggling to revitalize their neighborhoods have engaged in a block-by-block, almost house-by-house, planning project, surveying thousands of residents and engaging teams of experts in architecture , planning, demographics and other disciplines.

   Known as the Lower Eastside Action Plan, or LEAP, the effort has developed a set of initial recommendations pegged to a given block’s condition, said Khalil Ligon, LEAP project manager.

   In LEAP’s vision, stronger districts may remain a mix of residential and commercial, while more vacant areas could be converted to urban farming or other nature-scapes.

   Having produced initial recommendations, members of the LEAP team of volunteers now hope to have their work adopted by the City of Detroit as part of whatever plan emerges from Mayor Dave Bing’s broader, citywide Detroit Works effort.

   “What we’re hoping now is that we can have more detailed discussions about how we can begin to integrate LEAP into the larger city plan,” Ligon said.

   Marja Winters, Bing’s deputy director of planning and development and a leader of the Detroit Works project, said the city appreciates what LEAP has done.

   “I like the fact that they have engaged residents, given them a voice in deciding the future recommendations for their community,” Winters said. “We appreciate neighborhoods taking ownership, thinking about solutions.”

   She added, “How do we bring that to the table and incorporate that in the (Detroit Works) process? I think it will definitely get addressed there, but right now, I can’t exactly say how.”

   The LEAP project grew out of a desire of three nonprofit community groups — Warren-Conner Development Coalition, Jefferson East Business Association and Genesis HOPE Community Develop- ment — to find new uses for rapidly expanding vacant land on the east side. The LEAP project area now has a population of about 39,000, down from more than 60,000 in 2000.

   “Of course, everybody wants a traditional residential neighborhood, but the reality is, that’s not going to happen,” Ligon said. “Our population went from 60-plus thousand to 30-plus thousand in 10 years. So we’ve been on a continuing decline.”

   Maggie DeSantis, president of the Warren-Conner Development Coalition, said, “Everybody else seems to want to abandon it. Do we just walk away or do we get our arms around it and get ahead of it?”

   Over the last several months, LEAP volunteers have surveyed thousands of east-side residents at community meetings and in door-to-door campaigns. Dozens were invited to meetings to pore over neighborhood maps and suggest what type of future uses might be appropriate.

   With about $300,000 in funding from the Erb Foundation and other backers, the LEAP team worked with severaloutside experts — landscape architects from Ann Arbor-based JJR, demographers from Data Driven Detroit, legal help from Community Legal Resources and more — to help guide the discussions.

   Among the ideas being considered for the area’s most vacant expanses are storm water retention ponds, reforestation, urban farms, wineries and green zones, as well as using decommissioned schools as food processing plants.

   Those are merely concepts now, but DeSantis said the LEAP project hopes for solid plans to emerge, not just fanciful ideas.

   “We don’t want pretty pictures,” she said. “We want a set of strategies that work.”

   The LEAP meetings were running roughly parallel with Detroit Works public sessions, and LEAP volunteers said they hope that their more fine-grained study of the east side can become part of the city’s broader, and more high-level, plans for Detroit.

   “You’re actually talking to the neighbors and you’re talking to the people that live in the community,” said Ayana Rhodes-Ako, an east-side resident and LEAP volunteer.

   • CONTACT JOHN GALLAGHER: 313-222-5173 OR GALLAGHER99 @ FREEPRESS.COM  

ANDRE J. JACKSON/Detroit Free Press

   Khalil Ligon, project manager for the Lower Eastside Action Plan, at an abandoned store in Detroit. LEAP’s vision is that stronger districts may have residential and commercial areas. More vacant areas could be converted to urban farms or other nature-scapes.

Add this Vision to our Vision

Start of Uniroyal cleanup sharpens riverfront vision

26 years after factory demolition, plans for housing, retail in focus

By JOHN GALLAGHER FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

   Promises made, promises kept.

   Detroit’s once-industrialized east riverfront took another huge step toward a hoped-for future Friday as a long-awaited environmental cleanup began on the old Uniroyal site near Belle Isle.

   The Uniroyal work is part of the decades-long transition of the riverfront from a place of factories and smokestacks to a place of recreational, residential and retail uses.

   That transition remains a work in progress, as it will for many years to come. But cleaning up the Uniroyal eyesore marks a huge milestone. It will allow for the future expansion of the city’s RiverWalk and the eventual development of shops and waterfront housing on one of the most prominent sites in the region.

   “Detroit has been fortunate in recent years to experience several developments that are considered both transformational and historic,” George Jackson, president of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., said Friday. “But this development could be the granddaddy of them all.”

   “This was an eyesore for so many years,” added Detroit native and former NFL star Jerome Bettis, who will help redevelop the site. “We feel this can be a flagship site.”

Detroit Free Press

MIKE BROOKBANK/Detroit Free Press

   Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, right, greets Gladys Bettis, mother of Detroit native and former NFL star Jerome Bettis, center. Jerome Bettis will help develop the site of the former Uniroyal factory on Detroit’s riverfront and was on hand Friday as Bing announced the $20-million cleanup.

WILLIAM ARCHIE/Detroit Free Press

The factory was demolished in 1985, but a long dispute over who would pay for a cleanup delayed it. Now, many trees and scrub vegetation are overgrowing at the site. The cleanup will remove contaminated soil.

City hopes to make eyesore a gem

Long-delayed cleanup starts as big riverfront plans lie ahead

By JOHN GALLAGHER FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

   A quarter century after the old Uniroyal tire factory came tumbling down in the mid-1980s, an environmental cleanup of the prized riverfront site has finally begun.

   Mayor Dave Bing and other civic leaders announced the $20-million cleanup Friday morning at Mt. Elliott Park, on the edge of the 42-acre Uniroyal site, which is just west of the MacArthur Bridge to Belle Isle.

   Long delayed by disputes over paying for the work, the cleanup will unlock the potential to redevelop a site that, like Michigan Central Station, has become one of the symbols of Detroit’s decline.

   The cleanup will remove huge volumes of contaminated soil and otherwise prepare the site for redevelopment. Mich-Con, Michelin — which bought Uniroyal — and other corporations that once did business on the site or owned companies that did are paying for the cleanup.

   “Our riverfront real estate is some of the most valuable land that I think we have in the city of Detroit, and for years and years it’s been totally underutilized,” Bing said. “But I’m pleased today that we’re taking a major step forward to clean up the prime example of promises that have been made over a long period of time.”

   “It took a long time and a lot of work for us to get here,” said George Jackson, president of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., who over several years brokered the cleanup agreement with the corporations.

   The cleanup of the western third of the site will take about 18 months. Jackson said the DEGC is negotiating for the cleanup of the rest of the site.

   Faye Alexander Nelson, president and CEO of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, said she expects to begin construction next spring to extend the Detroit RiverWalk from Mt. Elliott Park across the Uniroyal site to link up with the piece of the River-Walk at Gabriel Richard Park, just east of the MacArthur Bridge.

   Meanwhile, former NFL star and Detroit native Jerome Bettis — working with Pittsburgh-based developer Charles Betters — has been planning to redevelop the site as a series of mixed-used residential and retail projects.

   The Bettis-Betters plan for the site was announced seven years ago by then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Known as Belleview, the plan at one point called for as many as 2,000 residential units to be built along with retail. But the plan fell apart in the recession and real estate crash.

   Jackson said Friday that Bettis and Betters still will control the site in exchange for working to get the cleanup going and for working with other developers to take on pieces of the site. Jackson said it is likely now that several developments will rise there.

   Despite the long delays, Jackson expressed confidence that the Uniroyal site will one day become a great asset for the city.

   “I think this site will sell itself. A 42-acre site on the waterfront I think will be attractive to a number of investment” groups, he said.

   “This has been a long time coming,” he added. “When I started this project, my kids were in middle school. Now they’re college graduates.”

   Although known primarily for the old Uniroyal tire factory that once stood on the site, the now-vacant parcel saw a wide variety of industry operate there. The contamination and debris left by a century or more of industrial use is a brew of ammonia, mercury and cyanide, all of which are in the groundwater at the site, as well as other industrial by-products.

   Besides the chemical contamination, debris from the demolished tire factory was buried, rather than hauled away, creating further complications for future use.

   After the Uniroyal factory was demolished in 1985, hopes for the site surged repeatedly. When Donald Trump inspected the site by helicopter in the mid-’80s, Detroiters buzzed for months with speculation that he would build a hotel or casino there.

   In recent years, nature has begun to take back the land, with many trees and scrub vegetation overgrowing the site now.

   • CONTACT JOHN GALLAGHER: 313-222-5173 OR GALLAGHER99@FREEPRESS.COM  

1985 Free Press photo

The site is primarily known for the Uniroyal tire factory that once stood there, but it was home to a variety of industry.