COMMUNITY
Recommended By:
University of Michigan,
Providence & Karmanos Cancer Centers
JEWFRO
`I'm Glad I'm Not In The Triangle'
ith the philosophical posture of a
too-tired-to-sleep kindergartener,
my son Judah asked me the other
night,"What places aren't there anymore?"
Tempted as I was to share my first reaction
—"Disney World. Go to sleep.
Also Disneyland:'— I conjured
and tried to describe Pompeii,
Atlantis, Utopia, Shangri-la
and the Bermuda Triangle, to
which he responded,"I'm glad
I'm not in the Triangle:'
No sooner had I extricated
myself from his racecar bed
(ironically asymmetrical, espe-
cially considering racecar is a
palindrome) than something
occurred to me on the brink of
my own bedtime: We have all
those places in Detroit.
Pompeii. With the ferocious
indifference of an erupting
volcano, concrete from interstate freeway
and urban renewal projects buried some
of Detroit's most dynamic areas. Fifty years
ago, 1.062 mile(s) of 1-375 paved-over Black
Bottom, a historic neighborhood whose
name described the rich soil that greeted
the French and foreshadowed the rich
African American culture that took shape
there in the '40s and '50s. Now, MDOT is
considering replacing the freeway with a
boulevard, improving pedestrian access
(Downtown, Eastern Market, the River and
Lafayette Park) and liberating 12 acres of
unprecedentedly valuable land. Stake-
holders debating its future — mixed-use,
mixed-income, entrepreneurial, empow-
ered and artistic — should remember that
the future once happened there.
Atlantis. Belle Isle captures Detroit's
imagination — always has, always will. In
1944, Arsenal-of-Democracy Detroit pro-
posed building the United Nations there.
In his 2013 book, Belle Isle: Detroit's Game
Changer, real estate developer Rodney
Lockwood imagined a future in which the
island is a sovereign commonwealth of
35,000 citizens who share a zealous belief
in "individual freedom, liberty and free
markets:'
In 2015, the Free Press (by way of the
Belle Isle Conservancy and New York-based
Biederman Redevelopment Ventures) asks
us to"imagine Belle Isle State Park with
restaurants, a hotel, kiosks and camping
lodges for overnight or weekend stays:'
Or imagine a volume of development,
visitors, racecars (actual cars, not car-
shaped beds), ever-larger koi and giant
slides that ultimately cause America's Larg-
est Once-City-Owned Park to sink to the
bottom of the Detroit River.
Utopia. Courtesy of University of
Michigan Ph.D. candidate Katie Rosenblatt:
"On Friday, March 10, 1950, Detroit Com-
mon Councilwoman Mary Beck called to
order a hearing regarding the zoning of
a piece of property in northwest Detroit.
Eight policemen were on hand to maintain
order among the 600 people crowded
into the Council Chamber. At issue was
a 72-acre tract of land on the corner of
Schoolcraft and Lamphere purchased by
Detroit architect Philip Brezner in October
1946. Brezner successfully petitioned the
City Plan Commission in the fall of 1947 to
W
rezone the land from single-family dwell-
ings to multiple dwellings to allow for a
cooperative development comprised of
spacious townhomes.
"In December 1949, just as construc-
tion was to begin, an article in
the Michigan Worker publicly
noting the cooperative's open-
occupancy admissions policy
that welcomed both African
Americans and Jews sparked a
firestorm of controversy.
"The Tel-craft Association,
an organization of white
homeowners in northwest
Detroit, called into question the
legality of the 1947 rezoning of
Brezner's property and demand-
ed that the City Plan Commis-
sion change the zoning back to
single-family dwellings. Despite
the outpouring of support for
the development from a wide swath of
labor, leftist and religious communities in
Detroit, Mayor Albert Cobo ultimately ve-
toed the site plans for Schoolcraft Gardens,
effectively killing the project and dashing
chances for future cooperative housing
development in Detroit:"
Shangri-La. According to the Dalai
Lama, no one knows where Shangri-La (or,
properly, Shambala) is or was. Such may ul-
timately be the fate of Detroit's Chinatown.
Hundreds of Chinese families were evicted
from their Downtown neighborhood in the
early 1960s to make way for office develop-
ment and what is now the regal tiger (and
4,000 slots and video poker machines!) of
the MGM Grand Casino. Chinatown never
fully rebooted amidst the mean streets of
the Cass Corridor; Chung's, favored by Jews
on Christmas and famous for its egg rolls
and almond boneless chicken, closed in
2000, before the streets became less mean.
And the failure of Asian Village by the Re-
naissance Center showed that districts like
this can't just be dreamed up and dropped
down. Unless they can ...
Bermuda Triangle. A quarter-billion
Michigan taxpayer dollars are sailing into
the triangle between Woodward, Grand
River and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
And it's not entirely clear what will sail out.
"The District Detroit" (districtdetroit.
corn) promises to be"a walkable, livable
sports and entertainment district" made up
of five made-up neighborhoods: Columbia
Street, Columbia Park, Woodward Square,
Wildcat Corner and Cass Park Village.The
Metro Times describes not merely"market-
ers selling something that doesn't exist
yet, they're selling something that may not
exist at all:'
Beyond the Fisher Freeway fog, Cass
Park Village (alone) may (or may not) some-
day (sooner or later) boast: independent
shops, local markets and galleries, a relaxed
atmosphere with a free-spirited attitude,
close-knit community, cafe start-ups, visi-
tors, conversations about neighborhood
happenings and current events, comfort-
able and casual surroundings, informal
get-togethers, pickup softball, local bars
and galleries, poetry slams, local garage
bands and full-out launch parties.
Gotta agree with Judah on this one —
I'm glad I'm not in the Triangle. RT
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