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February 23, 2012 - Image 8

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 2012-02-23

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metro >> on the cover

Neighborhood

One man is helping to bring a block
in North Corktown back to life.

D

etroit's North Corktown is a sparse
neighborhood. That's what struck
20-somethings Jon Koller and his
wife, Hannah Lewis, when they moved
there in 2009.
"Imagine an older neighborhood with
about 50 houses on the block and then
take away 98 percent of the houses:' Koller
said.
Each block had only one or two stand-
ing houses with one exception: Spaulding
Court, the name of a street that runs
between a pair of 99-year-old long, low
townhouse buildings. Well-built with solid
stone masonry, these centenarian struc-
tures with 20 apartment units persisted in
the face of widespread decline.
All was not well on Spaulding Court,
however. Shortly after Koller moved in,
there was a big firebombing. People were
running guns and drugs out of the build-
ing. "There was an owner of the building,
but he didn't want to get involved:' Koller
said.
Koller decided he did.
"My first involvement was to figure out
who was living there and assess the situ-
ation," he said. "Should we call the cops?
Kick them out? Find them another place
to live? After talking to the people living
there, we found out that just one unit was
the heroin house where people were selling
drugs. The other two units were occupied
by a family that had been living there for
10 years. They had some trade skills but
zero resources and were doing what they
could to get by. We were able to keep them
there'
Koller belonged to the Corktown
Residence Council, which had identified
Spaulding Court as a major blight on the
community. The council filed a nuisance
abatement claim with Wayne County.
Friends of Spaulding Court, a nonprofit
formed by Koller in January 2010, grew

Jackie Headapohl I Managing Editor

Jon Koller rolled up his sleeves and got to work improving his historic neighborhood.

out of the work of the Corktown Residents
Council. The goal of the nonprofit was to
identify and implement a community-
based solution at Spaulding Court.
Shortly after the council was successful
in getting a grant to board up the build-
ing (including the heroin house), Wayne
County seized the property and turned
around the next day and sold it to Friends
of Spaulding Court. The 20-unit apartment
complex cost the group $1,000.
There are 10 board members of the non-
profit, the majority of whom live within
150 yards of Spaulding Court, including
Koller, who lives in a house two doors
down.
"These were people who had been com-
plaining about this building for the past 30
years, and now they were responsible for
it:' Koller said.

Getting Started
The board members went into the project
blind, Koller said. The Spaulding Court
units were in bad shape. The structure had
a leaking roof, no electricity and no run-
ning water. "We needed to keep the build-

ing from deteriorating and keep it safe
Koller said.
All told, the building needed about
$50,000 in improvements and had $15,000
in back taxes due — not to mention a
hefty insurance bill. They started by plac-
ing some used billboards on the roof to
stop the leaks and getting the water and
electricity flowing safely. Six months later,
they began work on rehabbing two of the
apartments.
Koller, who currently works as a
structural engineer at Shymanski and
Associates in Farmington Hills, has
bachelor's and master's degrees from
the University of Michigan. He quickly
morphed into contractor for the Spaulding
Court project and ended up getting his
contractor's license.
Koller chose to live in North Corktown
because "there was a lot of interesting
agricultural and arts stuff going on he
said. "It was close to Downtown, and I was
working at Wayne State at the time, so I
could bike to work."
Friends of Spaulding Court raised
$50,000 through private loans and fund-

raising events to begin the long process of
renovation.
With the help of occasional volun-
teer crews (including many teens from
J-Serve), a group of local laborers and con-
tractors drew on the loan money to start
rehabbing the units.
The first task was stabilization. "It was
like a triage situation:' Koller said.
Koller's background is in Labor Zionism.
"I grew up as a hardcore socialist:' he said.
"My value system is based on Jewish val-
ues of social justice. I'm also very involved
with the Downtown Synagogue, where a
lot of the Jewish energy in Detroit is work-
ing toward social justice'
Koller caught wind of a group called
Resource Generation from Chicago that
wanted to set up headquarters in Detroit
for the U.S. Social Forum in June 2010. The
group had a plan to buy a house, fix it up,
use it for a few months and then sell it to
a co-op.
Koller had a better idea.

Help From The Windy City
Resource Generation is a group that orga-
nizes young people with financial wealth
to leverage resources and privilege for
social change.
"They were looking for ways to invest in
a more responsible, impactful way:' Koller
said. "So we said, 'Why don't you give us
a loan instead of buying your own place?
We'll fix up a unit, and after we're done,
we'll rent it out and use it as a community
space:'
Kristen Cox, a community partnership
builder in Chicago, thought it sounded like
a good idea. "What Jon proposed to me
sounded more like a solidarity community
investing idea than buying property from
a city over 280 miles away:' she said.
Within weeks, Friends of Spaulding
Court received a $6,000 construction

Neighborhood on page 10

8

February 23 n 2012

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