Once a poster child for Detroit’s urban blight,
Brush Park is emerging as a dynamic symbol of the city’s urban
residential renaissance.
Originally prime farmland and later the city’s
first affluent neighborhood, the small neighborhood off Woodward wedged
between Downtown skyscrapers and the Midtown hospitals was for decades greatly
abandoned, shuttered and rundown.
But now, Brush Park is coming back. Construction crews work on almost
every block — repaving, rehabbing and building from scratch. And,
slowly, like a geologic formation, a community is melding.
It hasn’t been pretty. After years of arduous
planning and conflicting interests by local stakeholders, a diverse
array of residential developments, anchored by scattered Victorian-era
houses in various stages of restoration, are creating a new urban
place.
The result has filled Brush Park with a variety of housing and institutions:
• Nearly 200 condominiums, townhouses and restored historic buildings;
• Lofts in former apartment buildings;
• Row houses, lofts, “live-work” townhouses and shops
planned for the center, which also includes a national historic
district;
• Two bed-and-breakfast inns in restored stately homes;
• A senior citizen apartment complex;
• Three social fraternity houses, two non-profit
human service organizations, a university theater, theological
seminary, and a law firm among other commercial properties;
• More than 20 original historic homes in various stages of restoration.
But is it a community? Maybe not quite yet. Different people with
different lifestyles are settling into Brush Park, redefining the area
once more. And, in time, residents say they’ll all come together.
Old and new
When Gail Phillips was a young girl, she participated in recreational
activities at the Detroit Urban League on Mack Avenue, in the onetime
Brush Park home of architect Albert Kahn.
“I didn’t know I would live (in Brush Park) but I used to think, when I
saw those beautiful houses, if this would come back this would be a
good place to live. Little did I know that 30 years later I would
actually live there,” says Phillips.
She especially admired one particular derelict brownstone row
house on John R. “Back in the ’60s it looked horrible… I used to
imagine, if they would spend some time and money on that, this would be
a really neat place to live.” Now, she says, “I am living right across
the street. That brownstone is beautiful.” And those six brownstone
units sold for more than $450,000 apiece.
Phillips moved from Lafayette Park to Brush Park to be part of the
excitement of the emerging downtown lifestyle. “I was looking for
something that I could drive in and that’s it. I didn’t want to get on
an elevator … I wanted to be able to come and go and do as we please.”
Together with her boyfriend, Ganesh Vedhapudi
, she purchased a condo in
the Crosswinds Communities development at the south end of Brush Park on John R
and Alfred streets.
After a while, she realized that her neighborhood
was distinct from the other activity in Brush Park. “In our end,
Crosswinds is an entity unto itself,” she says. “You’re in a world
that’s different. … You’re consumed with your own environment.”
Crosswinds’ planned community center is one way to remedy that, she
says. Phillips says that a community center promotes a sense of
belonging. “If it’s a sizable community center, we can come together,”
she says. “It would be an excellent meeting ground, instead of being
fragmented to go to different places.”
Dream home
Marilyn and Ghassan Yezbeck took a tour of Brush
Park out of curiosity in 1986. When they walked into the ruins of a
mansion on Adelaide, Ghassan proclaimed: “I want this house.” The house
was surrounded by other ruins – as has been documented in Web sites,
local publications and even the New York Times – which stood as a sad
testimonial to Detroit’s urban decline.
But the Yezbecks, who lived in
the Woodbridge Historic District, were optimistic. Little did they know
that Brush Park would get worse before it would get better. And little
did they know that their passion for that old house would become the
Inn on Winder Street, now a very fashionable address celebrated for its
architectural beauty and the envy of old house enthusiasts.
Like some other Brush Park residents, banks would not give them a mortgage.
“There was nothing here, nothing there, and everything was coming
down,” Marilyn says. The city wanted to demolish the house to clear
space for development. The Yezbecks and other homeowners fought the
city.
Then, in 1989, while staying at a bed and breakfast in Saginaw, it
occurred to the couple that they could convert their dream home into an
inn. It took them more than a decade to get the money and work
complete, but the Inn at 97 Winder opened last year. “This is still our
dream house,” Marilyn says. “We live here.”
Marilyn Yezbeck is now president of the Brush Park
Development Corp., and she’s uniquely positioned as a long-time
homeowner, whose property is integrated into the new Crosswinds
development.
“I would really like to see it evolve into a cohesive area
– neighborhood — again, even with the patchwork (development). I think
that when it’s finally developed and they get some green space in … I
really think that in five years, my vision is that this will be a
neighborhood.”
‘Location, location, location’
Michael Farrell’s once darkly comic observations on
the pathos of 25 years struggling in Brush Park have been replaced with
optimism, almost a romantic sense that Detroit is “becoming.”
Upon
seeing a young woman walking her dog alone one morning recently,
Farrell called to her from his Alfred Street house, “Do you know where
you are?” She calmly said she did, and continued walking. That’s when
he realized his neighborhood had changed.
When he moved to Brush Park, Farrell “fell in love
with it in about 20 minutes.” The “grit” and the “realness” of
Detroit’s urban landscape circa 1981 appealed to him. Twenty-five years
later, “it’s slowly coming back,” he says. “When I bought the
house, everybody laughed. They said, ‘Location, location, location.’”
Today he mocks them with his catbird seat in Brush Park: “Location,
location, location.” However, “I didn’t buy this house for that,” he
says. “I went to school in Europe and I loved that (Brush Park)
architecture, the detail, the spaces, and I loved the age … that’s what
I do, I’m an art historian.”
The location, even in 1981, was very good
for Farrell, who teaches at the University of Windsor. He’s 10 minutes
from work, 20 minutes to malls, and even closer to medical and cultural
institutions. Eastern Market is only a few blocks away, and the Detroit
River and cultural center are a short walk. “There’s no better
location,” Farrell says. “Detroit is perception, perception,
perception.”
Having watched a wealth of architecture crumble
before his eyes, Farrell now sees the potential of an upscale
neighborhood accented by what remains of these stately homes, “visual
apostrophes on the landscape.”
“It isn’t that we have so few buildings left, it’s that we have so much
left,” he says. In fact, he’s named his “Art House” and hosts monthly
lectures and tours (e-mail him at [email protected] for more info). “We have lost an incalculable number, but in the
history of domestic architecture we have almost every style from the
19th Century: Arts and Crafts, Tudor, Gothic Revival, Colonial Revival,
French Second Empire, Queen Anne. … The only thing we’re missing here
is the Federal Style.
“People who are going to buy here are the people we
have not had in the city of Detroit for decades – that is people with a
vision. … I think Detroit is now in the ‘becoming.’ It’s going to
happen. How it’s going to happen will depend on how these people are
going to decide – these voters with their money are the future of this
city. The people who pay taxes demand a voice and will demand services.”
Coming together
Kappa Alpha Psi is one of three African-American
fraternal organizations that have had a presence in Brush Park long
before the demise of its architecture. Located in the northern section
Brush Park, each fraternity has a development plan for the area
adjacent to their fraternity houses.
The Joint Fraternal Development
Corporation (JFDC) was formed to coordinate their efforts and
collaborate with the Brush Park Development Corp., established to
administer the Brush Park redevelopment plan.
Kern Tomlin, a Kappa and former JFDC president, has had an interest in
Brush Park since the 1940s, when he visited his uncle on Alfred Street
to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Tomlin, who remains an active
member of the JFDC and serves as chairman of the Brush Park Manor
Paradise Valley senior residence, has been involved in nearly all of
the current planning and development activity in Brush Park. The area
is slowly coming together, he says.
“By the time the complete mix
(of developments) comes together, we’ll have a community,” he says.
That includes the seniors living in Brush Park Manor, some of whom were
displaced by development projects.
He envisions “a community where
people know each other, take care of each other, speak to each other…We
don’t want to segregate one group against another. We don’t want the
people on Eliot not to know the people on Winder, and some of the
people on Alfred not to know the people on Watson. … We hope to keep a
mix and have a viable Detroit community.”
Family life
When Chuck and Margaret Squires bought their 5,200
square foot house in 1981, Chuck thought I would be a “good
fixer-upper.” A skilled construction craftsman, he’s invested an
estimated $500,000 of his own time and $300,000 in materials to restore
the house.
“The area had recently been declared historical,” he
says. “I was naïve enough to think it would come back rather quickly.”
Much of the historic housing stock in Brush Park would disappear before
development began in earnest in the 1990s. Ironically, today, seemingly
crumbling houses without roofs and, maybe, four exterior walls are
being reconstructed and are selling.
Their house, however, is only one aspect of living an urban lifestyle,
says Squires, vice president of the Brush Park Development Corp. “Brush
Park is a unique neighborhood within the city of Detroit… smack dab in
the middle of the urban fabric. We’re sandwiched between the central
business district, the medical center and (Wayne State) university.”
That location means Brush Park is naturally a “transitional”
neighborhood, he says. “It needs a mix of housing types.” This
residential diversity, he says, is one of the reasons why the
redevelopment of Brush Park has been so slow.
After 25 years, his family is grown and his house is nearly restored.
The neighborhood, Chuck says, has become “livable,” and walkable. Chuck
and Margaret walk downtown, to Campus Martius and Hart Plaza. It will
be some time, however, before a true community emerges in Brush Park,
Chuck says. “You still see divisions, especially Crosswinds, which has
its own neighborhood watch."
There’s a long way to go, he says, but “I think there continues to be
an influx of new people and new energy that will continue to grow the
neighborhood.”
Emerging market
One of the most graphic examples of the
transformation of Brush Park can be found in the Lucien Moore House,
104 Edmund Place. In a 2002 photo by Jan Kaulins, the house is
abandoned and in ruins. Three years later, it’s under restoration,
thanks to a $50,000 grant from HGTV’s Restore America program.
Other historic homes on Winder and Adelaide are in the process of
redevelopment and sale, largely the result of a market that Crosswinds
Communities helped cultivate more than 10 years ago. The development
company was the first to express interest in the area, launching a
massive new construction project of market-rate condominiums. With 160
sold – most before construction even began – they showed that the
environment is ripe for redevelopment.
“There certainly are people who want to be close or
in downtown Detroit, and want to be near restaurants and cultural
events,” says Ehrich Crain, vice president of land planning and
development for Crosswinds Communities. Those who believed
single-family homes aren’t feasible for the downtown area should take
note of a duplex that Crosswinds redeveloped into a 3,800-foot home and
sold for over $600,000.
Crain says that the market still requires
considerable assistance from tax incentives and city planners. But Crosswinds, along with the CDC and the
fraternal group — which collaborate as the Brush Park Planning Group —
have found a way to make it work.
Crain says the company’s market
studies and anecdotal information indicate a demand for living in a
diverse, urban community. Brush Park “has a historical perspective and
diverse architectural style of existing historical structures that
folks can look at and enjoy, as well as the new product that we were
providing.”
The historical character of Brush Park has appealed
to Dwight Belyue since he became aware of it in the 1980s. His company,
Belmar Development Group, is developing the last major parcel in the
center of Brush Park, a six-acre site, which also includes a National
Historic District. The mix of new row houses and carriage houses will
be accented by the rehabilitation of historic homes. Construction is
expected to begin this winter, pending infrastructure improvements.
Belmar is a partner in the Carlton loft development and plans an
ambitious redevelopment of the block bordered by Woodward, John R,
Watson and Erskine, including the M.W. King David Grand Lodge. Belyue
also plans to redevelop an existing building on Woodward to serve as
his company office, complemented by a residential/commercial
development.
Forging a diverse community
The diversity of architectural styles and
residential options is defining an eclectic urban community, Belyue
says. “If you have a variety of different types (of housing) you’ll
draw different people. … Some may want a townhouse, others may want a
mid-rise building, a conventional apartment or a hard-edged loft. Being
able to provide that is going to create a long-term community.”
This also ensures a variety of incomes, he says. “To
me, that’s what creates a community. You have people of different
backgrounds coming together to co-exist. I think it works. I think it
works very well.”
Green spaces also bring people together. Belyue is
developing a small park and other extensive landscaping as part of his
development “to create a community environment.”
Brush Park may yet become Detroit’s greatest success story. The
residential development alone is remarkable. What makes Brush Park so
intriguing is its efforts to create community among so many divergent
interests. From the pioneering homeowners of the 1980s, who withstood
the harsh conditions of neglect and crime in what was a barren
architectural wilderness, to the new urbanites living in bustling
developments throughout the area, Brush Park is a cultural laboratory.
If the people who have come to live in Brush Park
only claim to share an interest in protecting their habitat, advocating
for city services, keeping the area clean and defining a sense of
common place, they will have done what Americans have always done – lay
claim to land and call it a community. They just happen to live in
Brush Park.
New construction and a renovation project from Crosswinds development on John R
Victorian home undergoing renovations
Gail Phillips and Ganesh Vedhapudi
The Inn at 97 Winder
Interior of the Inn at Winder
Michael Farrell in his "Art House" on Alfred
Chuck and Margaret Squires
Law offices in a Victorian on Alfred
Crosswinds townhouses
The Carlton Lofts
All Photographs Copyright Dave Krieger
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Dennis Archambault is a Detroit-based freelance writer.