Sunday, July 16, 2006

Article in July 15, 2006 Detroit News

This is cool stuff. It's no secret that one of the long-time knocks on Detroit is the absence of a vibrant, upscale inner-city residential scene, ala Chicago or New York. I for one hope that the trend described below continues for years, because we need this type of option, regardless of where you live or want to live.
Heart of Detroit is on a roll

Downtown real estate bucks trend, lures those willing to take a chance

Louis Aguilar / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- A year ago, Bloomfield Township native Neil Greenberg bought a fancy loft in Birmingham, not far from a small, comfortable downtown district full of cafes, boutique stores and tidy eateries.

The 24-year-old lived there for a week before deciding to sell his loft and flee Oakland County. Too pleasant and predictable, he says.

"Birmingham will probably appeal to me 30 years from now," said the recent University of Michigan graduate. "Right now, I need a place with soul."

For Greenberg, who next month moves into a new loft on Woodward Avenue, and a growing number of suburbanites, that place is the emerging 21st-century downtown Detroit -- a place starkly different from the rest of the city, its suburbs and the region's recent past.

As it adds more upscale housing by the month, downtown is attracting the educated, the young and empty nesters to a community that looks much more diverse than the rest of Detroit. A large number of the newcomers are white, according to Realtors and others, in a city that as a whole is 80 percent black.

The new downtown is a key ingredient in the city's revival, many contend, but academics warn it takes more than a glittery core to turn around a city that's losing 10,000 people each year or to cure Metro Detroit's deep racial divide.

But for now, no one denies the heart of Detroit is on a roll.

Roughly bordered by the New Center area to the north, Detroit River to the south, East Jefferson Avenue near Belle Isle to the east and the Corktown neighborhood to the west, the core of Detroit is experiencing growth that runs counter to trends in other parts of the region.

Last year, Detroit led the area with 1,039 building permits for houses, condos and apartments, according to data compiled by the city planning agency. It was first time the city was tops in housing permits since 1982. Officials credited downtown for much of that growth.

In a lousy real estate market where housing can languish on the market for months, downtown real estate is red hot to moderate, say eight real estate agents and developers who have sold a total of more than 400 properties since 2000, many of which were new dwellings. Some of the housing, like Crosswinds Communities' Garden Lofts at Woodward Place, sells out in days, and prices keep rising. Several $1 million-plus luxury condominiums will be for sale by end of year.

Its clientele is anywhere from 40 percent to 60 percent white, say the agents and developers.

Downtown Detroit is following national trends that began emerging in the 1990s, according to academics who study U.S. demographics. Downtown populations grew nationally by 10 percent on average the last decade -- even in some cities with shrinking populations overall.

"Detroit has the same ingredients to emulate those downtowns," said Eugenie Birch, professor and director of Penn Institute for Urban Research at the University of Pennsylvania, who has authored several studies about new downtown populations. "There are museums, there's beautiful architecture, a waterfront, a sense of deep-rooted history. It all says great culture."

Friends plot Ellington move

Next month, Greenberg joins two other friends from Oakland County who are moving into The Ellington, a new loft development on Woodward Avenue. They will be able to walk to major cultural institutions, big-league sports stadiums, and the Majestic Theatre, as they enjoy a street life that can include a fair share of panhandlers.

Pleasant and predictable it's not. Vigorous and chaotic, with stark contrasts in race and class, it is.

About the same time the guys move into The Ellington, another young suburbanite, Leah Voytal, will move into a historic building a few blocks away. It has been renovated into upscale condominiums that sell as high as $300,000-plus. Many residents are either single young women or empty nesters.

Voytal grew up in Northville, a small, affluent town in Oakland County. After graduating from Michigan State University with an economics degree three years ago, Voytal started to hang out where many young people from her neck of the woods hang: Royal Oak and Ferndale.

That got tiresome fast, the 25-year-old said. "I see the same people I saw at Michigan State."

That's why she often drives 30 miles one way to downtown Detroit to enjoy the range of highbrow to lowbrow offerings: Openings at the Detroit Institute of Arts; Detroit Tigers games (she's been to 15 so far this season); Corktown dives like the Lager House, where she can see Detroit garage bands like her current favorites, the Paybacks; and new martini bars like Pulse and Proof.

"A big city has so much more depth," Voytal said. "It's so much more challenging than a homogenous, predictable suburb. It's a blast."

Schism stirs resentment

It's all great news for Detroit, academics contend, but it's not the only essential ingredient needed to save Detroit.

"The health of a city depends not just on a relative small percentage who are wealthy," said Thomas Sugrue, a University of Pennsylvania historian, and author of "The Origins of Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit."

"It depends on the working class and middle-class residents of the city whose
quality of life is essential to a city's health. We can't expect the kinds of development transforming Wayne State to downtown to trickle down to the rest of Detroit."

Kurt Metzger, director of research for the United Way of Southeastern Michigan, said he often hears concerns from various Detroit neighborhood activists about the rise of the new affluent downtown.

"Often times you hear: 'Here come the white suburbanites taking all the good stuff,' " Metzger said. "Everybody wants to see Detroit come back. When you have a city that has a population where 33 percent live below the poverty line; have a high unemployment rate, a lot of people say. 'Wait a second, you have all these people with needs and you are taking care of people with money?'

"You have to keep paying attention to the neighborhoods, rewarding people and businesses who stuck it out during tough times to pull off a real comeback."

Groups chisel stereotypes

Many new residents are aware they are challenging long-held stereotypes about living in the middle of Detroit.

Austin Black II was born in Northwest Detroit but went to Seaholm High School in Birmingham after his family moved to Troy.

"A lot of people talked about Detroit in terms of stereotypes and there was a smaller group of people who knew that was not the reality," said Black, 26.

Enough people were in the latter group that the Cornell University graduate believed he could make a career selling real estate in downtown Detroit. He was right. He's sealed 20 deals in just more than a year ranging from $170,000 to $400,000.

He also formed a nonprofit group called City Living Detroit that promotes the urban lifestyle.

The growing lure of downtown Detroit and the return of suburbanites is a step forward, supporters say.

"Overall, it's a good sign." said Dwight Belyue, owner of Belmar Development Group, which is behind a number of high-profile downtown projects, including the upcoming @water lofts along the Detroit Riverfront.

"We need the balance," Belyue said, who is African-American. "Detroit is one of those unique cities that lost an entire segment of the population. I'm happy to help bring it back."

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