Detroit’s neighborhoods, which in the early 1950s saw the start of what would become a mass exodus of residents to the suburbs, today are undergoing a remarkable revitalization led in large part by arts and educational organizations.
Across the city’s 139 square miles, the redevelopment of vacant structures and barren lots has been picking up speed over the past three years, as investors and developers see stability returning following decades of deprivation.
Detroit’s population peaked in 1950 at 1.8 million people, making it the fifth largest city in the United States at the time. But as the factories that were built seemingly overnight leading up to and during World War II were closed following the Allied victory, people began to move to the suburbs, where new communities were being built on what was often farmland.
The migration east, north, and west was driven by parents who didn’t want their children playing next to closed military industrial sites. The barren properties also brought down property values.
The late William J. Pulte, who built his first home near Detroit City Airport in 1950 and went on to establish his company as one of the nation’s largest home builders, said he, like other residential developers, began building in the suburbs after the freeways opened.
“Once 1-75, the Lodge, I-96, and I-94 were built, the builders just followed the people,” Pulte said. “That left Detroit in a pickle, because they were losing residents and tax revenue, and the city leaders, over time, didn’t downsize like they should have, which set the stage for the (city’s 2014) bankruptcy.”
Today, with an estimated 645,705 residents, based on U.S. Census Bureau figures, Detroit has roughly 36 percent of the population it had in 1950.
“Downtown Detroit lost most of its businesses and residents, and what brought them back, starting 25 years ago, was the arts — and now the arts are leading the recovery of the neighborhoods,” says George W. Jackson Jr., a private developer and the president and CEO of Detroit Economic Growth Corp. from 2002 to 2014.
“Just like downtown Detroit started its comeback with the arts when the Fox Theatre reopened (in fall 1988) and the Detroit Opera House opened (in spring 1996), now you’re seeing arts and educational organizations in the neighborhoods. And they’re making major investments, and are often the first to arrive.”
The redevelopment pattern in the central business district got its start in 1984 when the late Chuck Forbes, who formerly acquired land for factories and dealerships at Ford Motor Co.’s land division (now Ford Land), personally acquired the Fox Theatre (later sold to Mike and Marian Ilitch), the State Theatre (today The Fillmore), the Gem and the Century theaters, and the Elwood, among other downtown properties.
“Investors look for stability,” Jackson says. “When major projects open or are rejuvenated — like the Detroit Opera House, Orchestra Hall, the theaters, and today places like Michigan Central Station, Newlab, and the three stadiums — other development follows, like restaurants, shops, apartments, condominiums, and single-family homes.”
As downtown’s redevelopment accelerated after Dan Gilbert began to move the rst of more than 17,000 employees to the central business district in 2010, and since then has acquired and redeveloped around 100 buildings and brought them up to Class A standards, Jackson says the city’s closest neighborhoods — Corktown, Midtown, and Lafayette Park — began to attract new residential, commercial, arts, and educational projects.
More recently, the development has spread across the city’s other neighborhoods, from the emerging Little Village, a cultural corridor in the greater East Village neighborhood, to Islandview, West Village, and other neighborhoods on the city’s east side, and Russell Woods, Mexicantown, and Core City on the city’s west side.
Little Village, located two blocks west of Pewabic Pottery, is by most accounts the most ambitious renewal project in the city, where private investors, nonprofit organizations, and residents are working together to bring new life to a long forlorn neighborhood.
“After the city’s bankruptcy, things stabilized and you saw businesses coming back, but often the first ones in a given area that’s seen better days are artists and educational nonprofits that have a core mission of improving the quality of life in Detroit,” says Joel Martin, owner of 54 Sound Studios in Ferndale.
An avid art collector, Martin, whose studio along Nine Mile Road has produced countless hit records and songs, including Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” recently became a patron of PASC, or the Progressive Art Studio Collective, which is located inside the Lantern along Kercheval Avenue and is part of Little Village.
“The Lantern is like a magnet for the local community, but it also provides a space to curate artists with disabilities who have been marginalized and introduces them to an audience so they can become independent themselves,” Martin says. “You might look at it as a startup accelerator for emerging artists who might not otherwise have a chance to grow and become sustainable.”
The Lantern, originally Blue Bird Baking Co., was boarded up when it was acquired two years ago by Anthony and J.J. Curis, owners of the Library Street Collective, Louis Buhl & Co., and other businesses in downtown Detroit.
Since then, the couple has partnered with OMA, an architectural firm near Greenwich Village in New York City, on renovating the vacant 22,300-square-foot building into new spaces for arts education and commercial tenants.
As part of the renovation, 1,353 holes, spread evenly apart, were drilled into the building’s south and west exterior walls and filled with glass block cylinders to subtly reveal light and movement; at night, the community hub seems to glow like a lantern.
Joining PASC in Little Village is Signal-Return, a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to preserving and teaching traditional letterpress printing in Detroit.
Its programs include hands-on workshops, exhibitions, access to printing facilities for independent artists, and educational partnerships.
Together, the two nonprofits occupy roughly 8,500 square feet of combined space on the main level of the Lantern.
PASC, a program of the disability services organization STEP (Services to Enhance Potential), is the first art studio and exhibition program dedicated to supporting adults with developmental disabilities and mental health challenges in Detroit and Wayne County.
In essence, PASC provides the curriculum to launch professional art careers for what now encompasses more than 180 local artists with disabilities. It provides studio space, support from a staff of contemporary artists, and a gallery where participants can showcase and sell their work.
The art gallery hosts five to six shows a year. For each work of art sold, the artist garners 60 percent of the sale, with the rest going to support programming at PASC.
In turn, Signal-Return’s retail store offers exposure and revenue for 50-plus artists through the sale of prints, ephemera, and gifts.
“The core of our mission in Little Village is focused on creating an inclusive community centered around the arts,” says Anthony Curis, co-founder of Library Street Collective, who, with his wife, has acquired property in Little Village. Already the couple has renovated two dozen homes in the area.
“We didn’t tear anything down,” Curis says. “Our goal is to leverage the arts to create positive change in the city.”
Joining PASC and Signal-Return at the Lantern is a roster of local businesses, including Assemble Sound, a full-service music company and recording studio that works with musical talent in Detroit and beyond, with a residency program for artists, producers, and songwriters.
Founded in 2019 by Angela Wisniewski, Coup D’etat is a fashion boutique at the Lantern that offers an eclectic selection of independent designs catering primarily to women. It is joined by Collect Beer Bar, a family-owned and operated venue that serves a selection of rotating craft brews and operates an outdoor courtyard on the east side of the Lantern.
In addition, Cafe Franco, a coffee shop and gathering space from the owners of La Ventana, will open soon. Three artist studio spaces have been added to the top floor of Lantern, as well.
After viewing photos on Instagram of what was being planned at Little Village, Anthony Marcellini, program manager at PASC, which was operating in the corner of a warehouse in Detroit, took two years to raise the funds to move the nonprofit to the Lantern. The arts organization opened its new space in May, and on average works with 18 to 24 artists each weekday.
“One of our goals was to see that artists are celebrated in Detroit instead of being marginalized,” Marcellini says. “We have artists from the community, and because of a given disability, they can access Medicaid funds. It’s not crafts; rather, the artists are taught how to build a career and sell their work and keep going.”
On an open lot on the east side of the public studio and gallery, Scott Hocking, an installation artist, sculptor, and photographer, is using excess steel from Stanton Yards, a new waterfront development by the Curises that takes its name from the former Stanton Canal, to craft a sculpture garden. Hocking has completed other sculptures in the area, as well.
The development strategy for Stanton Yards, part of Little Village, will transition the storage and service-based marina into a 13-acre cultural amenity for the community, with more than 80,000 square feet of existing commercial and boat storage space, 85 boat slips, and programmed waterfront parks.
New York-based architecture firm SO – IL is leading the adaptive reuse of four existing pre-war industrial buildings at Stanton Yards to create a campus for arts organizations, creative retail, artist studios, independent hospitality ventures, and more.
OSD (Office of Strategy + Design), a New York-based design and planning studio, designed the plazas, gardens, and promenades that extend from the buildings that will create outdoor art destinations, social spaces, and an ecological habitat.
The transformation of the four buildings, which includes a former theater, marina showrooms, boat service shops, and a navy shipyard used during World War II, will introduce new facades on Jefferson Avenue with the goal of creating an easily accessible public entryway to programs and the waterfront.
Public access to the riverfront has been problematic since the 1750s, when Detroit first became a shipping and industrial powerhouse. As transportation transcended to railroads a century later, mills, brasseries, and foundries dominated the river’s edge.
Once completed, Stanton Yards will be a publicly accessible site with access to the arts, ecology, boating, and waterfront activities. Library Street Collective, alongside neighborhood stakeholders, will spearhead the cultural programming and initiatives, which will include exhibitions, public activations, and performances.
As Stanton Yards proceeds ahead, organizations like the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum, affiliated with Saginaw Valley State University in Saginaw, along with other schools, institutions, and museums will play a role in promoting arts and education at the site.
The Curises’ foray to the east side began in 2019, when the couple acquired the original Annunciation Church along Parkview Street, just north of Jefferson Avenue. Dedicated on Christmas Day in 1912, the campus of the Romanesque church included a rectory, a Catholic school, and later, a convent.
Serving families in the community, many of whom worked in the surrounding automobile and supplier plants, the church and school thrived for several decades. But as parishioners began moving to the suburbs starting in 1950, the congregation dwindled, and in 2000 the neighboring Our Lady of Sorrows became part of Annunciation Church.
Six years later, in 2006, the Archdiocese of Detroit merged another church, St. Anthony Parish, with Annunciation. At that time, the house of worship — three parishes in one — was renamed Good Shepherd Catholic Church. It lasted a decade before the Archdiocese deconsecrated the church.
By this time the school had been demolished, and the convent, located on the next block, was deteriorating; two walls of the facility remain.
Following a major renovation, the church was transformed into a community center called the Shepherd — a creative hub that now serves as a gathering point for arts organizations, creative retail, artist studios, independent hospitality ventures, and more. It offers publicly accessible green spaces designed by OSD, curated programming including exhibitions and performances, a public art library, artist studio spaces, restaurants, a cocktail lounge, and more.
Two new gallery spaces were added to the Shepherd’s central nave and a transept. The other transept houses the Little Village Arts Library, curated by Asmaa Walton of Black Art Library, where children and adults can access artist monographs, exhibition catalogs, and research materials centered around artists of color who have made contributions to the arts.
The Shepherd also provides space for live performances and larger installations throughout the central crossing, an apse, and a mezzanine above the main gallery.
In collaboration with Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), in 2024 the inaugural exhibition at the Shepherd was an expansive survey of the late Charles McGee, one of Detroit’s greatest artists. McGee created paintings, assemblages, sculptures, public works, and a sense of community with his artwork and teaching throughout the city.
The grounds immediately surrounding the Shepherd offer 3.5 acres of new, publicly accessible community destinations, including the Charles McGee Legacy Park and a new public skate park designed by artist McArthur Binion and skating legend Tony Hawk.
Located in the former rectory of the Shepherd is ALEO, a bed and breakfast that serves as a haven for artists and those seeking a cultural retreat. ALEO (a tetramorph depicting an Angel, a Lion, an Eagle, and an Ox) features works by nearly 30 artists based in Detroit, or with deep roots in the city, throughout the five guest rooms and communal spaces.
Directly west of the Shepherd is BridgeHouse, two former residential structures the Curises are transforming into commercial spaces geared toward the culinary arts. BridgeHouse is encapsulated within a two-story deck, which provides outdoor space for guests of ALEO and the East Village neighborhood.
One of the houses is occupied by Warda, a new pâtisserie operated by James Beard award-winning chef Warda Bouguettaya. The other house, to the south of Warda, will become a restaurant.
Behind Warda is a new cocktail bar called Father Forgive Me by Joe Robinson and Anthony Curis, which occupies the church’s former garage.
The former convent at the southwest corner of McClellan Avenue and Agnes Street, using what remains of two of the walls, will next year become the new headquarters for Louis Buhl & Co. It will feature a contemporary art gallery and an in-house production studio, among other offerings.
“Seeing how East Village is being transformed is nothing short of amazing,” says John Hantz, founder, president, and CEO of Hantz Group Inc., a financial services company in Southfield, who in 2013 bought around 2,900 parcels from the city spread across 190 acres in a roughly one-square-mile area of East Village bounded by Mack, Jefferson, St. Jean, and Van Dyke.
“We acquired the property from the city at a good price, and while some people say we got a sweetheart deal, that land went up for auction four times before we got it. We’ve also been paying the property taxes over the last 12 years.”
In turn, Hantz, along with his daughter, Lauren, formed the Hantz Foundation in Detroit to serve the local community. The foundation’s mission is to connect local students, as well as adults, to high-quality education programs, resources, and career opportunities.
The foundation’s school partners include Detroit Enterprise Academy, Hutchinson Elementary-Middle School, and Southeastern High School.
Given so much land was barren, John Hantz established Hantz Woodlands to plant trees on the vacant lots. The trees, which are harvested and sold to nurseries, lend a sense of stability to the neighborhood. The organization cuts the grass across hundreds of vacant lots, as well.
“It cost us $1 million to clean up all the titles,” Hantz says. “We’ve sold some of the land to the Curises and others, but we want to be careful of how the land is curated. We don’t want to sell it all at once and have home builders come in, for example, and the next thing you know, the builders go too fast and then you have new problems when the homes don’t sell or rent in a quick manner.”
Helping to drive development in the area are major employers like Stellantis, which operates the Detroit Assembly Complex, which includes the Jefferson North Assembly Plant and the former Mack Avenue Engine Complex that was converted in recent years into a new assembly plant at a cost of $2.5 billion. Some 5,000 new jobs were added, as well.
While the Shepherd may be the most ambitious arts-centered project in the city’s neighborhoods, other residential enclaves are being transformed by Life Remodeled, a nonprofit organization that, starting in 2013, began converting operating and closed public schools, along with nearby parks and other community assets, into multifaceted community centers offering skilled training, after-school activities, STEM labs, and health and wellness programs.
What’s more, Life Remodeled organizes thousands of volunteers each year to remove blight around the schools, board up vacant structures, and repair homes. In many cases, Life Remodeled spends a year or two working with a given community to renovate a particular school and the area around it.
From there, the organization leaves to focus on another area of the city, with the respective local residents working together to manage and sustain the recent improvements.
Across the city, the nonprofit Brilliant Detroit has acquired a network of 15 homes, each in a select neighborhood, that it redevelops. The newly restored homes offer a safe haven for early childhood development and family support for children under the age of 8, along with their parents and neighbors.
Living Arts, a nonprofit located in southwest Detroit, offers a wide range of arts experiences and arts-integrated educational programs for area children and teenagers (through 18 years). A related Teen Council and a Parent Council ensure entire families are involved in planning and operating everything from early childhood education to after-school arts programs.
In Corktown, Kintsugi Village is putting the finishing touches on a community center fashioned from the former St. Vincent Middle School that will offer an early childhood education center, an artist incubator, a culinary learning space, and an events center. It will have its grand opening on Oct. 11.
“Ideally, developers, whether for-profit or nonprofit, want clean title to land in places like Detroit, but often that doesn’t happen, which makes East Village and Little Village so unique,” Jackson says. “When Comerica Park and Ford Field were being developed, the title work was unbelievable.
“What Hantz did was remarkable. He acquired as much land as he could, he cleaned the titles, he maintains the properties, and when he sells the land, it’s that much easier for the new owners to get their projects going. If the city or someone else could follow that same pattern, redeveloping the neighborhoods would be that much easier.”
