Wednesday, September 14, 2016 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, September 14, 2016 // The Statement
5B
When Shelby Oberstaedt was a kid, her sub-
urban family was hesitant to travel downtown
to attend Detroit Tigers games, fearing a reputa-
tion that painted the city as crime-ridden. And
while living downtown as her now-husband
played football at Wayne State University, she
said, those same feelings of insecurity remained.
“Living here was a bit scary,” she recalled.
“Fifteen years ago I don’t even think my family
would’ve come down here.”
However, Oberstaedt has chosen to stick
around in Detroit, as a general manager for the
Jolly Pumpkin Pizzeria and Brewery — one of
many individuals part of the rapid process of
gentrification Detroit has undergone over the
last two decades. Gentrification, a term popular-
ized in the ‘70s, describes the process by which
low-income communities are renovated and
rebuilt, attracting young professionals but also
usually driving up real estate prices and relocat-
ing pre-existing residents and businesses.
Cities such as Brooklyn, San Francisco and
Portland that have undergone this process are
hailed today as havens for young urban profes-
sionals seeking a culturally vibrant urban expe-
rience that comes with a hefty price tag — a far
cry from the affordable and even struggling rep-
utations once attached to these communities.
In Detroit, the area known as Cass Corridor
was rebranded as Midtown in the early 2000s,
in an effort to redirect a history of poverty and
blight. Following the city’s declaration of bank-
ruptcy in 2013, multiple large-scale efforts to
spur economic growth were launched, includ-
ing a $650 million development plan involving
the purchase of neglected buildings to be turned
into high-end retailers and luxury apartments.
Though many of these properties had been
vacant for years, wealthy enterprise and spikes
in rent are now characterizing the transform-
ing reality of Midtown, Detroit, in large part
because of those efforts.
The city’s crime rate also seems to be on
a steady decline, with the Free Press report-
ing a 23-percent drop in stolen automobiles, an
18-percent fall in robberies and a 15-percent
drop in burglaries since 2014, though Detroit
still maintains the number-one spot on Forbes’
annual Most Dangerous Cities ranking.
The city has also recently drawn national
attention for the widespread failure of its pub-
lic school system, magnified by a mass “sickout”
that made headlines last May, in which 1,500
teachers called in sick on May 2 after learning
their pay was not guaranteed past June. The
demonstration temporarily closed 94 of the
city’s 97 schools.
As Detroit continues to undergo changes
and face challenges, some residents and busi-
ness owners argue the gentrification of Mid-
town is largely positive, providing jobs for locals
and incentives for corporations to invest in the
economy. However, others raise concerns that
gentrification often overlooks the complexity of
poverty, paving over socioeconomic and racial
tensions with rapid real estate growth that
drives out marginalized communities. In addi-
tion to spikes in property values, such develop-
ments exacerbate the wealth disparity between
those in and outside of the area of gentrification.
In Detroit, inhabitants of the areas directly sur-
BY LARA MOEHLMAN AND MARIA ROBINS-SOMERVILLE
THE COST OF
LIVINGIN DETROIT
Photo by CAROLYN GEARIG/ Daily
rounding Midtown earn on average 25 percent
less per year than their central counterparts,
according to The Guardian.
***
The Jolly Pumpkin Pizzeria & Brewery,
where Oberstaedt works, is an upscale pub
located in Detroit’s Cass Corridor. President
Barack Obama reportedly ordered a burger,
salad and truffle fries there before attending
the North American International Auto Show
last January.
But Jolly Pumpkin, which opened its Detroit
location in April 2015, is just one of many high-
end businesses to open in Midtown within the
past few years. Shinola, a luxury watch, bicy-
cle and leather-good brand opened its flagship
store just down the street from Jolly Pump-
kin in 2013. The company boasts the return
of manufacturing jobs to the city, operating
out of an old auto lab owned by the College of
Creative Studies but also assembling watches
made of parts reportedly created overseas.
John Varvatos, a Detroit-born men’s fashion
designer, opened the doors to a new store loca-
tion on Woodward Avenue in April 2015 with
a star-studded black carpet complete with an
Alice Cooper concert.
“It’s kind of crazy, to be honest,” Oberstaedt
said of the neighborhood’s turnaround. “Now
I feel comfortable walking to my car and park-
ing nearby, and you see people from the sub-
urbs coming here, and coming here to go out to
eat or to go shopping and it’s not cheap shops
— they’re expensive shops.”
Oberstaedt estimated about 95 percent of
her employees live in downtown Detroit, most
within walking distance of the restaurant.
Some are Wayne State University students
originally from the suburbs while others are
native Detroiters. Some live in expensive new
lofts on Woodward Avenue while others live
closer to the restaurant, paying less than $500
dollars a month in rent.
Speaking to concerns of gentrification
and rising rents in Midtown, Oberstaedt sees
Jolly Pumpkin’s impact on the city as a largely
positive one, claiming it mainly promotes fair
workplace practices while renewing pride and
interest in the city of Detroit.
“I think there’s just, like, that appeal to be
something hip and cool and someplace that
people want to visit,” Oberstaedt said, not-
ing a boost in local morale following Obama’s
visit to the restaurant and after other excit-
ing events, such as an album release at Third
Man Records, Jack White’s record label, which
opened its Detroit branch in November 2015.
Oberstaedt added that Jolly Pumpkin also
provides its staff members with desirable and
much-needed employment opportunities.
“There’s a lot of people that were being paid
minimum wage — and barely that — and work-
ing in underprivileged work environments,
and they come to us and they’re like ‘Wow this
is a good company to work for,’ ” Oberstaedt
said. “You’re bringing jobs to their community,
where they don’t have to have transportation
to get to them, and they’re not the lowest paid
jobs either. It’s giving them the opportunity to,
first off, make a little bit more money but also
be treated a little bit better.”
Paul Green, assistant shop manager at
Moosejaw — a major outdoor recreation out-
fitter that opened a Detroit location in 2012 —
echoed Oberstaedt’s opinion of the impact of a
booming Midtown on Detroit’s spirit and self-
confidence. He noted that, in previous years,
international tourists visiting the city were
most likely there for the annual Auto Show
or business-related trips. Recently, however,
tourists visiting his shop from places includ-
ing China, Denmark, the United Kingdom and
South Africa said they were visiting Detroit
because they “just wanted to see it.”
Though he’s aware Moosejaw’s pricey out-
door gear may be out of reach for most Detroi-
ters, Green said he remains hopeful that the
economic successes of a booming Midtown
will eventually reach the city’s struggling
outer neighborhoods.
“The hope, at least from my end, is that
even though we can’t directly provide goods
to people who really don’t have the money to
buy most of our products, we are contributing
in the redevelopment of the city, which will
eventually benefit everybody,” Green said. “Or
it should. It darn well better.”
Green described the process of gentrifi-
cation — and more specifically rent hikes in
downtown Detroit — as frustrating. He main-
tained hope, however, that city officials would
prioritize the needs of the majority of Detroit’s
population when faced with issues of zoning
and urban planning in the city.
“When I think about it, I try and hope that
the right things happen — that people make the
right decisions in government,” Green added.
“They’re the ones who can decide whether
or not a vacant property becomes affordable
housing or it becomes a retail unit or an expen-
sive loft.”
***
For some residents, however, the perspec-
tive on the impact of new businesses is a bit
different.
LSA senior Elizabeth Gonzalez, who grew
up in southwest Detroit, said she finds the gen-
trification of Midtown problematic because
her community has not yet received the ben-
efits of the city’s economic growth.
“That’s the problem I have when I see arti-
cles that say things like ‘oh, Detroit is bounc-
ing back,’ because my side of Detroit looks the
exact same,” Gonzalez said. “My Detroit has
not changed one bit … Detroit is bouncing back
for people from the suburbs, the hipsters mov-
ing in, but the rest of Detroit is still the same.”
Art & Design senior Jessica Gray, who grew
up in Detroit’s Seven Mile area on the western
side of the city, specifically noted the racial
implications of gentrification in Detroit. She
said while the restoration of Midtown sends
messages of hope and progress to the pub-
lic, decades of neglect are felt by those who
inhabit the city — those who have been calling
attention to the city’s need for economic revi-
talization long before high-end retailers made
Detroit fashionable.
“It becomes a problem because, are we, the
Black people that are there, the hispanic peo-
ple that are there — are we not enough to have
good things?” she said. “That’s basically how
it makes us feel, as the people who have been
pushing Detroit this whole time. We’re not
enough to have a rail built before now? We’re
not enough to have all of these profitable busi-
nesses?”
Gray also pointed to racial divides poten-
tially created by rising rent prices downtown.
“Gentrification is a problem because they’re
not helping the people they’re pushing out,”
she said.
Richard Smith, a western Detroit native,
expressed concern over the disappearance of
Black-owned businesses in Midtown.
“The migration here and everybody mov-
ing back downtown is moving the Black people
out,” he said. “There’s this great New Detroit
but where are all the Black businesses? They
moved all the Black businesses from down
there.”
Smith’s concerns are reflected by research
from Brian Doucet, assistant professor of
urban geography at Erasmus University Col-
lege in the Netherlands, who wrote in an
article published by The Guardian in 2015 that
— while many benefit from the desirable trans-
formations produced by gentrification — those
transformations often depend on the displace-
ment of minority populations.
“Those able to afford to live there enjoy
great restaurants and bars, well-paid employ-
ment, safe and attractive neighbourhoods and
reliable public transit,” Doucet writes. “The
problem is most Detroiters cannot afford to
live here. And like everything else in Southeast
Michigan, race is one of the dominant factors.
In a city that is 85% African American, Greater
Downtown is becoming increasingly white.”
***
Ren Farley, a University of Michigan pub-
lic policy professor, specializes in the history
and future of Detroit’s social and industrial
landscape. He identified the flux of the city’s
history as complex, with the current state of
gentrification as neither purely positive nor
negative.
“It’s complicated. First of all, Detroit is close
to hitting bottom, so new investments com-
ing into Detroit, it seems to me, are generally
desirable,” Farley said, noting that the incom-
ing high-end retail, real estate and restaurants
will increase the tax-base of the city along
with employment.
“Shinola has made a point of hiring local
people to assemble their expensive products,”
Farley added. “Nike is one of a number of shops
that tries to emphasize that they are involved
in a community. When Whole Foods moved in,
they made a point of hiring local workers and
including some local products in what they
sell, so these are what seems to me, quite favor-
able signs.”
However, Farley noted that these benefits
come with drawbacks, as the jobs such com-
panies create are split between high-tech jobs
and entry-level labor.
“Certainly, many of those are high-tech jobs
and financial services jobs that require creden-
tials beyond those typically found for Detroit
residents,” he continued. “But still, the pres-
ence of those jobs generates a lot of other jobs,
providing the services those buildings need
and the services that people working there
need.”
Though Farley identified developments in
Detroit as something of an economic renais-
sance, he questioned the impact of revitaliza-
tion — and more specifically who it’s for. Farley
said these developments are so geographically
concentrated in Midtown that one cannot be
certain employment opportunities will open
up for Detroit’s outer neighborhoods, which
face high levels of poverty and unemployment.
“The major question is whether that revi-
talization will help the people who live in the
neighborhoods around Detroit or will the ben-
efits of revitalization primarily be for people
from outside who come into Detroit to work at
the new jobs that are becoming available and
make some profits in the investments in new
hotels, restaurants and apartment buildings
that are opening,” he said.
Gonzalez described Midtown as anoth-
er world compared to her own struggling
neighborhood, calling Midtown a “tourist
attraction” and suggesting the downtown
developments were an improper use of funds.
“That money is needed elsewhere,” she said.
“Our school systems are falling apart. I don’t
think it’s fair, because all that money is going
to places where it shouldn’t be, and it’s attract-
ing people from the outside. It’s not doing any-
thing for people from the inside.”
Kalaan Nix, who has lived on Detroit’s west
side his entire life, said he could see both posi-
tives and negatives — while he’s grateful for
the increased job opportunities presented by
the increase of businesses moving to Midtown,
he’s also hesitant to call the migration of peo-
ple into the city a success for native Detroiters.
“There’s always two sides to a coin, so if
there’s a positive there’s a negative,” Nix said.
“So, to some extent, people moving back into
the city isn’t helping solve the problem for
people who live in the city — it’s just making
it seem like ‘OK, well, we have people com-
ing back because the city looks nice, but what
about the people who are already here that
haven’t left or couldn’t leave?’ ”
Even amid her critique of the city’s rapid
gentrification, Gonzalez acknowledged that
encouraging people to move to Detroit was not
the problem, echoing some of Nix’s sentiments.
Rather, she said, an abundance of visitors who
fail to engage or take part in improving the
community from within instead represent the
problem.
“I think we really need to start with our
school systems because that is one of the main
reasons people who work downtown don’t
live in the city,” Gonzalez said. “I think start-
ing with that would be a good way to attract
people to move into the city and not just com-
mute in.”
For her, she said, Detroit is a city whose call
is waiting to be answered — in a way that is
more equitable and sustainable, extending its
promise beyond the boundaries of a luxurious
metropolitan epicenter.