Like many Detroit neighborhoods, Gratiot Woods boasts pockets of development, including the Gratiot Woods Cooperative Apartments for senior citizens, which opened in 2008. But the area also suffers from vacant lots and burned-out homes. / January photos by PATRICIA BECK/Detroit Free Press
BY JOHN GALLAGHER
DETROIT FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
- Filed Under
- Business
- Real Estate
As Mayor Dave Bing strives to reinvent the city, a small neighborhood on Detroit's east side illustrates the complexity of that challenge.
Gratiot Woods runs south of Gratiot near I-94. Signs of distress include vacant lots and burned-out homes. Yet pockets of renovation include new houses and the popular On the Rise Bakery run by Capuchin friars.
So is the district going up or down? Will it be a winner or a loser in Bing's plan? It's hard to say. Like many Detroit districts, Gratiot Woods is caught between decline and revival.
Signs of hope
Edward Collins Jr. served 33 years in prisons for a mix of crimes -- breaking and entering, armed robbery -- before getting out in 2006. Now, he's staying out of trouble, thanks to a job at On the Rise, a nonprofit venture run by the Capuchin friars in the district.
Taking a short break from baking bread last month, Collins called the bakery a miracle that has saved him.
"We were advised by some of the businessmen to put up bulletproof glass" in the bakery, Collins said. "But the Capuchins were so keen on helping the community and also having a warm atmosphere and serving people, they went against that. It's a spiritual-type environment, and it just worked."
Stories like Collins' are clearly signs of hope in the district. But the challenge in Gratiot Woods, as in most of Detroit at large, is to string together enough such miracles to truly revitalize.
Like many Detroit neighborhoods, Gratiot Woods is a district of single-family houses within walking distance of a commercial strip. It has suffered from foreclosures and abandonment. There are dozens of vacant lots and houses.
Yet, the district also features a 62-unit residential complex for seniors that opened in 2008. Several in-fill houses have been built, and vacant commercial buildings along Gratiot have gotten new life and new tenants, such as On the Rise.
Christopher Bray, director of housing and development for the nonprofit Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, oversees redevelopment in the district. He contends that Gratiot Woods should be one of the eventual winners in Bing's Detroit Works process, neighborhoods that receive lots of new assistance for redevelopment.
Bray points out that about $17 million already has been invested in Gratiot Woods recently, for projects like the senior residences and the bakery.
"I'd like to think that we're favored," Bray said. "There's been quite a lot of money invested in this neighborhood recently, and there's still some fabric left."
Hard choices
Experts in redevelopment suggest that Detroit must make hard choices about where to put its reinvestment dollars. Only by concentrating efforts in key areas -- the "winners," such as the thriving Midtown district -- will those dollars do the most good, said Douglass Diggs, the city's former director of planning and development who is now a development consultant.
"If somebody wanted to put 20 houses in an area where there's very little investment and there's a significant amount of blight, that's not going to have an impact," Diggs said.
Tim Thorland, executive director of the nonprofit Southwest Housing Solutions agency in southwest Detroit, estimated that about 80% of the single-family affordable housing built in the city in recent years was built in areas that have a perceived lack of strength today.
"Why? Because that land was what was most available and most affordable at the time that the folks acquired it and built their product," he said.
"If we continue to follow that pattern and allow real estate to be developed because it's available and affordable, we're going to be working against what the Detroit Works is trying to achieve."
That's the challenge posed by districts such as Gratiot Woods. When the Pastoral Alliance started working there in the late 1990s, the nonprofit group chose the area both because it saw a strong tradition of homeownership but also a growing problem with vacancy.
Since then, foundations and other supporters have bankrolled projects such as the senior residential complex and On the Rise. The alliance will start work in the spring on a new commercial building to rise at 8900 Gratiot on what is now a vacant lot.
The idea of concentrating sparse redevelopment dollars on a handful of key areas most likely to thrive is a tough sell in Gratiot Woods and similar districts that may or may not be dubbed winners. But Kathy Makino, a private developer who has worked in Gratiot Woods to rehab buildings, said tough choices have to be made.
"The mayor's in a terrible situation because he's going to end up hurting people, and people aren't going to like the decisions he makes," she said.
"But he's got to do it. Somebody has to be strong enough to make the decisions on what areas we need to focus on."
Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher99 @freepress.com
