  Barnesfoto Member Username: Barnesfoto Post Number: 5547 Registered: 10-2003 |
about two neighborhoods where I lived... ....good things are happening at 1250 Hubbard. The newly renovated Whitdel apartment building, with an art gallery and ceramic studio, has become a national model for developing affordable housing and attracting the creative class. The 31-unit property opened in January and now has only five vacancies. Circled by wrought iron railing, it includes an outdoor courtyard, expansive lobby with ornate plaster and a foyer of copper-colored Pewabic tile. The building's fall and rise is a familiar story in this blue-collar city. When the Whitdel apartments opened in the 1920s, they provided housing for workers who rode the trolley to the Rouge factories. But the four-story brick building deteriorated as Detroit hemorrhaged population and jobs, becoming a run-down hot spot for drug sales and prostitution. It sat vacant after the Wayne County Nuisance Abatement Program shut it down four years ago. In 2006, Southwest Solutions bought the building for $450,000 and financed $5.7 million in renovations. Nonprofit housing developers bankroll their projects by selling low-income, historic and brownfield tax credits to private investors, including banks and pension funds. The federal and state tax credits enable developers to keep mortgage debt, and rents, low. At the Whitdel, sliding-scale rents for one-, two- and three-bedroom units go from $315 to $670 a month -- little more than half what they would cost with conventional financing. After buying the Whitdel, Southwest Solutions asked the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit to help restore the building. The exchange led to a partnership. CAID now uses the 1,500-square-foot Ladybug Gallery in the basement for exhibitions, including video art, sculpture, paintings and drawings. A ceramic studio will provide art education and workshops to neighborhood children and other residents. http://www.freep.com/article/2 0081114/OPINION02/811140355 September 29, 2008 Artistic stroke fights city's blight Artist Chazz Miller knows his bold and hopeful murals can uplift people. Small wonder his khaki-colored T-shirt proclaims: "I'm in a God State of Mind." Melding commerce and creativity, the founder of Public Art Workz in Detroit uses larger-than-life art to pull investments into some of the city's most blighted blocks. Art is not just for museums anymore -- it's a way to redevelop and redefine a city by changing its visual landscape. With city government support, for example, Philadelphia has become the mural capital of the world. The Mural Arts Project has brought together artists, neighborhood associations and charitable trusts. It has attracted tourists worldwide, and their dollars, to experience the city's nearly 3,000 murals. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has even made art the focus of one of its five '08 Action Forums, which challenge the next president to invest in cities and metropolitan areas. Like the throbbing beats of techno, Detroit art reflects the city's gritty flavor. The city's shot-callers should stop running from it and start embracing this edgy vibe as a catalyst for change. Since 2003, Miller has partnered with John George and his Motor City Blight Busters to beautify blocks with murals, benches and gardens. Miller has done two dozen murals in northwest Detroit, including "Up from the Roots" at 6 Mile and Lahser and "We Shall Overcome" near Lahser and Grand River. His latest project is a mini-park with solar lighting and a "Career Paths" mural on the vacant Guardian Bank building at Fenkell and Burt. Developers and community activists expect the project to spark housing and retail development in the Brightmoor neighborhood. Miller is one of many talented but unappreciated artists in a city that twice tore down parts of the internationally renowned east-side Heidelberg Project. Started in 1986 by artist Tyree Guyton, the Heidelberg Project has created a colorful, evolving urban artscape from empty houses and discarded objects such as painted car hoods, hub caps, gutted televisions and worn-out shoes. It draws nearly 300,000 visitors a year. Art vs. blight Like Guyton, Miller sees art, beauty and the face of God everywhere. He got hooked on murals at age 13, when his mother showed him Diego Rivera's famous work at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Educated at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio, Miller returned to his native Detroit in 1995, determined to use art to fight blight. "I'm a blue-collar artist and, for me, that's a good thing," Miller, 45, told me in his sprawling studio, the Artist Village, at 17340 Lahser, near Grand River. "My father was blue-collar, worked his butt off taking care of his family -- you know, Detroit. That's work. What we do is gravy." Miller's Artist Village serves as an unofficial community center for the comeback neighborhood in northwest Detroit. It includes a vegetable garden, exercise room, courtyard, gallery, silkscreen studio, computer lab, sound stage and soon-to-open coffee shop. This summer, Miller's nonprofit PAWZ put on art and other workshops for more than 100 students. On Saturday nights, the studio hosts "Creative Juicez," an open mic with local musicians and poets. Owners of nearby businesses on Lahser, including Sweet Potato Sensations, Paul's Barbershop, and Lahser Tire, which recently invested in a $350,000 expansion, said Miller's studio and murals, along with the cleanup efforts of Blight Busters, have helped bring the neighborhood back from squalor and drug trafficking. "When you have art and artists around, it changes the flavor," said Cassandra Thomas, owner of Sweet Potato Sensations, next to Miller's studio. She plans to expand her business across the street later this year. A cake shop will move into her building. "We hope this will continue to mushroom, and every building on the street will be occupied." Yianni Kopanakis, CEO of Good Faith Homes, has renovated about 60 area homes in the last four years. "People like Chazz and John inspire me with their positive energy," he told me. "When they reduce the blight on a street, it increases the viability of our projects." Miller's latest mural in Brightmoor on the Guardian Bank building is a small part of a two-year, $769,000 program called community plus public arts: DETROIT. Covering six neighborhoods targeted by the Skillman Foundation, the community arts project is funded by Chase and the Skillman and Kresge Foundations. It's managed by Detroit's College for Creative Studies. Community associations determine the projects; neighborhood kids and residents pitch in, beautifying and reclaiming their space. Through sweat and devotion, they develop a real stake in the upkeep of the mural and neighborhood. John O'Brien, director of Northwest Detroit Neighborhood Development and owner of the Guardian Bank building, hopes the revived three-story structure, along with a new post office and community health clinic nearby, will spur retail and housing development in Brightmoor. Built in the 1920s and later serving as a public library and police command center, the Guardian building has been vacant for 15 years. It will become the headquarters for Northwest Detroit Neighborhood Development, which has built 350 homes in the last 10 years, as well as the Brightmoor Alliance. more: http://www.freep.com/article/2 0080929/OPINION01/809290312/0/ OPINION02 |
