Hamtramck : Detroit Development News

From the Paris of the Midwest to the New Orleans of the North: Detroit is getting a taste of the Bayou with Beignets. 
 
After many years of travelling to the Big Easy and enjoying late-night beignets with chicory coffee at the famous Café du Monde, Michele Pearson and her partner Mark Hausner launched Beignets to bring the dense French doughnut to Detroit. "We just loved the fact that when people were together eating beignets all hours of the night, listening to zydeco, they were happy," says Pearson. "We figured with the French influence in Detroit, why doesn't Detroit have something like this?"
 
They started introducing Beignets to Detroit with a food truck currently operating Saturdays at Eastern Market and at various food truck meet-ups. "From the warm welcome we've been getting from the beignet truck, the opportunity presented itself (to open a store) in Hamtramck, where both myself and (Hausner) have roots," says Pearson, who is also an interior designer and owns the Yoga Suite in Hamtramck. "We want to do what we can to bring business to Hamtramck."
 
Beignets will be located on Joseph Campau next to the soon-to-open Flavor Restaurant. The two businesses are open to each other through their shared wall, and will also share a kitchen.
 
Beignets will serve the namesake pastry as well as chicory coffee (another New Orleans specialty) and regular coffee. The café will be open both early morning and late evening hours to capture some of the nightlife crowd. It will seat 30-40 people with free WiFi, and also has an outdoor patio out back where there will be more café seating and live music during the spring and summer.
 
Renovations are underway inside and Beignets will open by early summer. The truck will continue to operate at local events and farmers markets.
 
Source: Michele Pearson, co-owner of Beignets
Writer: Nicole Rupersburg

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Hamtramck is definitely experiencing a growth spurt. Another new food business is set to open, a cupcakerie and gourmet ice cream shop called Cupcak’n located at 2756 Evaline St.
 
Owners Faness and Anthony Gray will debut their interactive cupcake bar concept this spring. Like a Cold Stone Creamery where you pick your own ingredients, they will offer eight different cupcake flavors with 14 kinds of frosting and over 20 different toppings so you can build your own cupcake. Chocolate cupcake with cream cheese frosting with Oreos and fudge on top? No problem.
 
They’ll also offer their own line of 23 different signature cupcakes with names like "Coconut Crazy for You" and "Peanut Butter Passion." Everything at Cupcak’n (which itself is a term of endearment) is all about love, including the love Anthony, the master baker, puts into his baking.
 
"He wants everything to be perfect, all made from scratch, all natural," says Faness. "We’ve both been in the kitchen every day for the last two years. We have baked more than 5,000 cupcakes in our test runs."
 
Cupcakes will be baked fresh on-site every morning by Anthony and his assistants. They will also carry premium ice creams in funky flavors like spicy chocolate, sour cream cinnamon, and avocado, made for them by Ruth and Phils in Chicago.
 
The 584-square-foot space was previously an ice cream shop. Interior renovations were minimal, but they did add an additional counter for their cupcake bar as well as a wall ledge where people can stand and enjoy their treats.
 
Faness is excited to bring a new kind of bakery to Hamtramck, where there are no bakeries that specialize in cupcakes, as well as a new kind of concept to Michigan. "There is no place that I know of in Michigan that has an interactive (cupcake) bar."
 
Source: Faness Gray, co-owner of Cupcak’n
Writer: Nicole Rupersburg

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Following in the footsteps of fellow 2012 Hatch Detroit finalists Detroit Vegan Soul and winner La Feria, Rock City Pies will become a brick-and-mortar reality later this year.
 
Rock City Pies owner Nikita Santches has formally signed a three-year lease for the space that was formerly home to Maria's Comida in Hamtramck. Maria’s, which closed late last year, is moving into a new facility around the corner on Caniff to focus on production of their Maria’s House Made Salsa label.
 
Because the space was previously a restaurant, Santches has very little work to do on the interior but plans on making the bathrooms more accessible and aesthetically revamping the dining room area with new floors, booths, and other updated design details. Construction will begin immediately upon floor plan approval from the city, which he and his father will do themselves.
 
Through the course of the Hatch competition Santches didn't think Rock City Pies would end up in Hamtramck. He remembers Hatch Executive Director Vittoria Katanski asking him if he would ever consider the city-within-the-city and he dismissed it quickly, but after being introduced to Jason Friedmann, Hamtramck's Director of Community and Economic Development, and learning more about the city first-hand he felt an immediate connection to it.
 
One of the most appealing aspects of Hamtramck for Santches was the cultural and ethnic diversity of the neighborhood. As a Russian immigrant himself, he felt an immediate connection to the many Eastern European immigrants who live and own businesses in Hamtramck. "That aspect of it is very appealing to me," he says. "I'm surrounded by people who grew up eating the same kind of food I ate and living the lifestyle that I lived. People around me have the same mentality and view on things."
 
He hopes to be open by this summer. He will also start wholesaling Rock City Pies to local markets once situated in the new space.
 
Source: Nikita Santches, owner of Rock City Pies
Writer: Nicole Rupersburg

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Downtown Hamtramck is now a part of the National Register of Historic Places, a designation that should help the commercial district leverage more redevelopment dollars and maintain its classic character.

The historic district runs the length of Jos Campau Street between the GM Poletown plant to the south and close to Carpenter Street on the north end. "The historic district is a couple of streets short of that," says Jason Friedmann, director of community and economic development for the city of Hamtramck. "This is the area with the oldest buildings with the most character are located."

The Jos Campau Historic District encompasses about 200 buildings that are about 100 years old. Most of the them were constructed after the old Dodge Main Plant was built in the early 1900s. It joins the historic district around St. Florian Catholic Church near the intersection of Jos Campau and Holbrook streets.

The Jos Campau Historic District is only a national historic district. That designation allows it to leverage national historic tax credits for redevelopment but doesn't come with the strict restrictions and oversights commonplace in local historic districts.

Source: Jason Friedmann, director of community and economic development for the city of Hamtramck
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Hamtramck's non-motorized transit plan -- think pedestrians and cyclists -- has been seven years in the making but city officials expect to see some tangible rubber hit the road later this year.

Hamtramck is working with collaborative-design-studio livingLAB to finish the plan this year. The end result will be designs for more and better pedestrian paths, the groundwork for connecting Hamtramck to the Dequindre Cut and 25 miles of bike lanes.

"This would be all new bike lanes installed throughout the entire city," says Jason Friedmann, community & economic development director for Hamtramck. "The goal is to be done by next fall."

Hamtramck's new bike lanes would be along its major commercial corridors, such as Conant, Gallagher, Holbrook and St. Aubin streets, along with Hamtramck Drive, which circles the General Motors Assembly Plant. City officials are still debating the feasibility of putting bike lanes on Jos Campau because of already tight space for vehicles and pedestrians.

Friedmann says the non-motorized plan will make the city eligible for funding for the installation through the State of Michigan. He also hopes it will open Hamtramck up to more funding to extend the Dequindre Cut north from Eastern Market to the city, a stretch of about 3.5 miles.

Source: Jason Friedmann, community & economic development director for Hamtramck
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Hamtramck is taking a lead role on Metro Detroit's fledgling home deconstruction industry. The inner-city suburb commissioned one of the first deconstructions last year from Reclaim Detroit and now has six more in the offing. The city is also applying to have another 40 homes deconstructed through the Michigan Land Bank.

Home deconstruction is an alternative to demolition for buildings beyond repair and renovation. When a building is razed, it only takes the efforts of a handful of unskilled workers and all of the byproducts goes to a landfill. Deconstructing a building creates more jobs (about 10-12 for a single-family home) and ensures that a vast majority of the building's materials are recycled.

"That's something we have been pursuing for a while," says Jason Friedmann, community & economic development director for the city of Hamtramck. "It helps keep the valuable materials out of a landfill. Some of these materials can't be found anymore, no matter what the price, like the old-growth lumber."

A house on Carpenter Street was one of the first to be deconstructed by Reclaim Detroit. That project created 18 jobs and the materials from it generated $40,000. Some of those materials ended up in places like the Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Co cafe in Midtown.

The 40 homes in line for deconstruction next year are a combination of leftovers from last fall's Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction, city-owned houses beyond repair and privately owned homes that are either condemned or fire-damaged and have no insurance. Friedmann hopes to leverage the current six deconstructions set to happen this winter and 40 next year to help create more jobs in the city.

"A lot of skills that can be used to take apart a building can be used to put one back together," Friedmann says.

Source: Jason Friedmann, community & economic development director for the city of Hamtramck
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

The Hamtramck Recycling & Transfer Center is getting close to opening and expects to create a few dozen jobs when it begins operations in 2013.

The green business is refurbishing an old waste-transfer building at the corner of Hamtramck Drive and Denton Street. The 32,000-square-foot building will pick out a number of recyclable materials from industrial waste, such as metal, cardboard, paper and plastics. The idea is to profit off of the wasted commodities that too often end up in the garbage.

"There is not really anybody who specializes in industrial waste," says Seth Kruger, president of Hamtramck Recycling & Transfer Center. "A lot of manufacturers are looking for ways to find less of their material end up in a landfill."

The Hamtramck Recycling & Transfer Center is a family owned business that has been in the works for the last year. It currently employs 11 people and expects to employ as many as 42 when its going full steam. The company hopes to begin operations in early 2013 and is looking to hire primarily local residents. So far about 50 percent of the firm's current workforce calls Hamtramck home.

"We're ramping up our employment to operate our system," Kruger says. "We will be hiring as the intake of material increases."

The project received $470,000 in brownfield tax credits last year from the state of Michigan. When the project began, the building had been vacant for several years and had fallen into significant disrepair.

Source: Seth Kruger, president Hamtramck Recycling & Transfer Center
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Development of all kinds in Hamtramck is about to take a few major steps forward now that the city is close to putting a federal housing lawsuit behind it.

Hamtramck is at the tail end of putting the nation’s longest-standing housing discrimination court case behind it. The city is partnering with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority to build or rehab 200 homes, leveraging federal Neighborhood Stabilization Funds.

So far 130 homes (both for sale and rentals) have been finished and the rest are on schedule to be done by the end of 2013. The city and its partners (Wayne County, Michigan Association of REALTORS, Michigan Home Builders Association and Huntington Bank) are launching $50 million construction program plans to build or rehab 100 homes in that time.

Hitting those goals will clear the way to lifting the court-ordered ban on the city for selling municipally-owned land. Hamtramck has about 500-600 vacant city-owned residential lots that will soon become available for sale and additional new home construction when that happens.

"Being able to sell those lots is a fantastic opportunity for us to plan what can happen in this city," says Susie Stec, community & economic development coordinator for the city of Hamtramck.

Traditional development (both commercial and residential) is an obvious candidate to take off in Hamtramck. However, urban agriculture is another avenue that could benefit from the ban's lifting. While plans for large-scale, commercial urban agriculture have stalled in recent years, smaller community gardens in side lots have flourished.

Hamtramck's bevy of potentially available lots could be a boon for that sort of community garden agriculture. Stec sees concentrations of vacant lots in the city, such as the area on the south side of the city between Holbrook and Denton.

"There is a lot of interest in urban gardening, and doing more intensive types of agriculture," Stec says.

Source: Susie Stec, community & economic development coordinator for the city of Hamtramck
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced that it will provide Link Detroit with $10 million to improve bike and pedestrian connections between the Eastern Market, the Dequindre Cut, Midtown Loop and Hamtramck greenways.

The funds are coming from the TIGER Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program.

(Editor's note: check out some photos and renderings in this week's Buzz item. 
 
Senator Carl Levin made a statement regarding the grant saying "It will help generate construction jobs immediately, and more jobs in the future as it spurs development in and around Detroit."
 
Speaking of Eastern Market, Senator Debbie Stabenow says she is excited for the added improvements, especially since "Eastern Market is already a hub for economic activity."
 
For Eastern Market, planned improvements include streetscape enhancements, improved bicycle and transit facilities, landscaping and pedestrian lights. It’s also the city’s goal is to replace the Adelaide and Division Street bridges just east of the market. 
 
Source: Jonathan Oosting
Writer: Leah Johnson 

Detroiters now have a new way to shape the future of their city. By means of a new mission-based online competition called Detroit 24/7, Detroiters can share their ideas while competing to earn points, badges, and prizes. People of all ages are called on to participate in challenges such as Detroit Trivia, Community Mapping, and Role Playing Exercises.
 
"Detroit 24/7 is another tool we are using to engage city stakeholders to help in shaping Detroit’s future," said Dan Pitera, civic engagement co-lead for Detroit Works Project Long Term Planning (DWP LTP). "It’s a fun, interactive way for Detroiters to share their knowledge and think about the types of factors they consider most important to improving the quality of life in the city."
 
Starting May 7 at 12:01 a.m. Detroiters can begin playing Detroit 24/7 through three time-based missions at no cost. Any smart phone, computer, or tablet with Internet connection allows people to access the game. Mission #1 is Share your Detroit, Mission #2 is Living In Detroit and Mission # 3 is Getting around Detroit.
 
The top point earner, the top youth point earner, and one other member of the 50 players will win an HD Flip Video Camera. Players earning the most achievement badges will be entered into a drawing to receive gift cards to local Detroit businesses.
 
The ideas and input gathered through Detroit 24/7 will be utilized by DWP LTP to help inform and shape the Strategic Framework Plan that’s scheduled to be completed before fall of 2012.
 
This evening, the community is invited to attend the Detroit 24/7 launch party at Wayne County Community College District (WCCCD) Downtown Campus, 1001 W. Fort Street, from 5:30 to 8 pm. Attendees will learn more about the game and register to play. Refreshments will be served and there is no cost to attend. To RSVP email here or call 313-259-4407.
 
Detroit 24/7 was developed in partnership with Community PlanIt and support from the Knight Foundation, making Detroit one of only half a dozen cities that will be using this type of platform to help plan the city’s future. Other partners include WCCCD and Excellent Schools Detroit.

Writer: Leah Johnson 

The Jayne Field recreational complex is receiving some major upgrades this spring, including refurbished baseball diamonds and a renovated recreational center.

The massive recreational space on Conant near the northern border with Hamtramck is having its main baseball diamond, Field No. 4, refurbished thanks to a collaborative effort led Chevrolet to renew baseball fields in urban areas. The volunteers cleaned up the field, painted the dug out and bleachers and prepped it for a professional makeover by Ripken Design and Scotts Miracle-Gro.

Chris Perry, vice president of global marketing for Chevrolet, says this will be the first field makeover the automaker takes on this year. The bottom line is wants to "turn this into a field of dreams for Detroit" and the 1,400 kids who will play on it this summer as part of the Think Detroit PAL's summer recreational baseball league.

Think Detroit PAL, the city's Recreation Dept and the Detroit Economic Growth Corp also are aiding in the renovation of the field. The Detroit Tigers Foundation also lent a hand because it regularly uses the baseball fields at Jayne Field for its Detroit Tigers Hometown Championship series in August for the youth baseball teams in the city.

The Detroit Recreation Department is also in the midst of other renovations to the recreational complex, which hasn't been extensively upgraded in about 20 years, and planning for more. It recently received a $300,000 grant from the state to renovate the other fields in the complex next year. It is also spending more than $1 million upgrading the Lasky Recreation Center on the complex and adding other things a climbing wall.

"We're trying to make this a true recreational complex," says Sue Norander, general manager of operations for the Detroit Recreation Dept. "We'll be adding walking paths and replacing the playscape."

Source: Chris Perry, vice president of global marketing for Chevrolet; Jordan Field, director of the Detroit Tigers Foundation; Sue Norander, general manager of operations for the Detroit Recreation Dept
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Record Graveyard has a new home on Carpenter Street in Hamtramck, where the vintage record store has created a white, minimalist new facade in the house-turned-storefront.

"It's all fixed up and it has a tin ceiling," says Jeffery Garbus, president of Record Graveyard. "We're looking to create a19 50s, old fashioned record store."

The 10-year-old business has moved between a handful of locations in Hamtramck over its lifetime. Garbus moved to the 1,000-square-foot space earlier this year because the 1920s-era building at 2610 Carpenter was well kept and ready for a move in. Garbus also liked that a number of its vintage features, such as the tin ceiling, were preserved.

He also liked the simplicity of it so he could make changes to the building in case a film crew wanted to rent out the storefront.

"I can always change the colors," Garbus says.

Source: Jeffery Garbus, president of Record Graveyard
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Marianne Burrows likes to say her little artists enclave is "hidden in plain sight" over a dollar store at the corner of Jos Campau and Caniff streets in Hamtramck. She and a small group of artists took an old apartment flat and turned it into Urban Fable Studios.

"It was totally a crazy mess when we moved in," says Marianne Burrows, co-founder of Urban Fable Studios. "Now there are six artists in there."

Burrows, a sign maker for Great Lakes Beverage Company, and her fellow artists found the 1,500-square-foot space last fall, leasing it in December. The six-bedroom apartment was filthy, in need of electrical work and plumbing repairs and a fair amount of other TLC. The group has now turned it into a studio and gallery space for themselves and other local artists.

"I want it to be known as a place that kicks out a lot of work and hosts some great events," Burrows says.

The space was originally a doctor's office in the mid 20th Century and later an apartment.

Source: Marianne Burrows, co-founder of Urban Fable Studios
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com

The signature home of Hamtramck has traditionally been split between the single-family house and a two-flat. A new townhouse development near city's post office promises to make an impact in a different way.

The Mitchell Street Townhomes promises to create high-end urban living with more than $1 million of new construction, big-ticket green features and luxury touches. "They're going to be high-end," says Jason Friedmann, director of community & economic development for the city of Hamtramck. "They will be the nicest units on the block."

The 7-unit development is going up on Mitchell Street near the Hamtramck Post Office, turning a former parking lot into dense urban living. Each home with come with a plethora of sustainable features, including comprehensive insulation, Energy Star appliances, tank-less water heaters and geothermal heat, the holy grail of green building.

"The energy savings will be substantial," says Mark Lewis, developer of Mitchell Street Townhomes and a member of Community 1st Development. "We know the customer will see at least 40 percent in savings."

The Mitchell Street Townhomes architecture will match the early 20th Century style of the surrounding area. They will also come with some high-end finishes, such as granite countertops and hardwood floors. "We made sure these units would knock people's socks off when they go inside," Lewis says.

The project is part of Hamtramck's $15.5 million neighborhood stabilization funding provided by the federal stimulus package. Friedmann estimates the developers are spending about $210,000 per townhouse, but the units will be marketed as affordable housing for people with low-to-moderate incomes. Prices will be in the range of $70,000-$80,000. Construction is set to wrap up by this summer.

Source: Jason Friedmann, director of community & economic development for the city of Hamtramck and Mark Lewis, developer of Mitchell Street Townhomes
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

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