Interesting community initiative in Detroit: Marygrove Conservancy

The Detroit News reports in "How partnerships revitalized Detroit's McNichols corridor," about commercial and neighborhood revitalization initiatives in the 6 Mile Road corridor--also named McNichols. (Subscription required).  From the article:

A decade ago, a stretch of storefronts along McNichols on the city's west side were in disrepair, open to the elements and left to deteriorate. 

During the past few years, developers have either revitalized or made plans to rehab several of the buildings to provide amenities to the community: restaurants, a brewery taproom, apartments and retail. Geneva Williams, executive director of Live6 Alliance 

“We are thrilled, delighted and walk with those developers hand in glove as they do some incredible work,” said Geneva Williams, executive director of the Live6 Alliance, a nonprofit serving communities surrounding the McNichols and Livernois area. “You know, this whole aspect of having Brown and Black developers working in neighborhoods that they have connections to — many of them were born and raised in the area. ...

Several of the development projects are funded in part through Invest Detroit and the city of Detroit's Strategic Neighborhood Fund, the public-private partnership with the goal of improving 10 neighborhoods in the city. Among the projects are the Enclave at 7400 McNichols, which will house the brewery taproom, two restaurants and a small business incubator space after a $3.4 million renovation.

It's relevant to two different blog series from 2020 on commercial district revitalization

-- "Basic planning building blocks for urban commercial district revitalization programs that most cities haven't packaged: Part 1 | The first six"
--  "Basic planning building blocks for urban commercial district revitalization programs that most cities haven't packaged: Part 2 |  A neighborhood identity and marketing toolkit (kit of parts)"
--  "Basic planning building blocks for urban commercial district revitalization programs that most cities haven't packaged: Part 3 | The overarching approach, destination development/branding and identity, layering and daypart planning"
-- "Basic planning building blocks for "community" revitalization programs that most cities haven't packaged: Part 4 | Place evaluation tools"

and neighborhood revitalization:

-- "The need for a "national" neighborhood stabilization program comparable to the Main Street program for commercial districts: Part I (Overall)"
-- "To be successful, local neighborhood stabilization programs need a packaged set of robust remedies: Part 2"
-- "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisance programs: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)"
-- "A case in Gloucester, Massachusetts as an illustration of the need for systematic neighborhood monitoring and stabilization initiatives: Part 4 (the Curcuru Family)"
-- "Local neighborhood stabilization programs: Part 5 | Adding energy conservation programs, with the PUSH Buffalo Green Development Zone as a model," 2021

The article is more about commercial districts than neighborhoods, but it does both. It's part nostalgia that I list it, because when I was a child in Detroit (early 1960s) when my father was still alive, we lived a couple blocks from McNichols Avenue, although the area mentioned in the article is a few miles away from where we lived.

In my day the major Detroit arterials like 6 Mile, 7 Mile, Greenfield, Livernois, etc. were lined for miles with block after block of small retail stores. Today many of the buildings have been demolished.  So it's hard for me to give credence to today's efforts at revitalization, because they will never bring back the city I remember.

From an urban revitalization standpoint, I've had to sluff off those memories, because that kind of revival is not possible.  Detroit had almost 1.7 million residents then, now it has fewer than 700,000.  The thing is that the city was in decline even then, but we didn't realize it.  Now the point is to rebuild based on the opportunities present today.

A noteworthy element mentioned in the article is the "Marygrove Conservancy," which is separate from the efforts to revive the commercial corridor.

 It's a nonprofit with foundation and corporate support ("PNC Bank and Kresge Foundation Fund $57.3M for Marygrove Conservancy Renovation") that has taken over the deaccessioned Marygrove College campus ("Conservancy builds a place for community, learning on site of former Marygrove College," Detroit Free Press).

The school shut down (I don't know why they didn't try to merge with the University of Detroit Mercy, where earlier the UD merged with Mercy College, all three are Catholic related schools of higher education), but instead of redeveloping it (not that there is that much demand to do so), the campus was turned into a community-serving nonprofit.

The Conservancy is focused on a variety of community focused initiatives including housing a charter school and community development programs.  From the Detroit News article:

Allen said the conversancy’s involvement goes beyond the campus. For example, it has art projects planned along the McNichols corridor and plans to partner with the Enclave on its business incubator. 

The sprawling, 53-acre campus includes The School at Marygrove, a high school that opened in 2019. There's also an early education center that opened in 2021, and an elementary school will open in the fall. 

The campus is also home to 60 organizations, including nonprofits and small businesses. For example, the owners of the Detroit Pizza Bar occupied space on the campus while construction for the restaurant was underway, Allen said. Other organizations on campus include the Detroit Youth Choir and Shakespeare in Detroit. 

“We provide space and access to our facilities, but we also aim to be a convener, a resource for the businesses and for the residents of the community as a way of really just leveraging our resources in ways that benefit the community,” Allen said. “And that's a unique role for us.

Another initiative, Neighborhood HomeBase, is relevant to the entry yesterday on community space and facilities planning:

-- "Community facilities: it's not just building them, it's making the program better when you do so"

where the McNichols-Livernois improvement group has created a storefront community space.  From the article:

The Live6 Alliance recently reopened its Neighborhood HomeBase, a storefront community space at 7426 W. McNichols, following a two-year closure due to COVID-19. The space first opened in 2019 and down the street from the Detroit Sip coffee shop that opened in 2017.

-- "Neighborhood HomeBase: A new model for collaborative community revitalization," Medium

There are equivalent efforts here and there, but they aren't very frequent.  I need to start keeping a list.