Not even six months into his second term, Detroit Mayor Kwame
Kilpatrick has seen the city through a wintry blast of partying, and
then a spring storm of heated debate over the Detroit Zoo, the water
system and the pangs of paring down the budget.
Kilpatrick, however, says that through all the ups and downs, he and
his administration have not lost their momentum or focus on their
mission to grow Detroit.
The Motor City needs to transform from just “a casino industry and a
car industry” to a more economically diverse and globally vital place,
he says. “People from the city of Detroit are very proud people,” the
mayor
says. “But we do need a victory. There’s a pent up demand for a win
here — kinda like the Lions.”
To that end, Kilpatrick’s brought together a team of advisers, a
“Transformation Team” of leaders focused on creating a growth and
economic development plan.
The mayor sat down with Model D to share his ideas on revving the Motor
City’s economic engine, and to discuss his vision for what he’s been
calling the “Next Detroit” — from growing new industries and
revitalizing neighborhoods to making Detroit a place where creativity
thrives and the world takes notice.
Model D: In your State of the City
address, you said, ‘We either transform or die.’ That’s a pretty tough
statement. What do you think we need to do to transform? What’s key to
transforming?
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick: The key to transforming is growth. The
key to growth is changing our heavy reliance on the manufacturing
industry. This is Motown. All of us remember our first time in a Ford
or Chrysler or Cadillac or GM, but that history is not ever going to be
the way it was. So we need a new future.
We set up this transformation growth committee, and the ideas that come
to it are excellent. I mean, there’s everybody on it from [Midtown
developer] Colin Hubbell to [
Detroit Renaissance president] Doug
Rothwell. … What we’re talking about doing first, our first task, is to
link
Wayne State University with
Tech Town, NextEnergy, the
Detroit Medical Center and the Detroit Economic Growth
Corp. to do a joint application to Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s
21st Century Fund for $400 million. We want to go after that pot of money to immediately
grow emerging industries — to grow that corridor as a corridor for
innovation, technology, global resources, … and service-oriented
businesses like marketing. We want to start to grow it as a corridor
for innovation, so that from downtown to New Center you have this sort
of hub or nucleus of activity in new emerging industries.
To diversify our economy — that’s the key to our survival. We call it
transformation instead of transition, because Detroit really does need
to be made over. But to get there we have to transform from what we are
today. We can’t just close shop and build up something new. This is a
pivotal moment for us.
MD: You also need to play to what our assets are. We have a city full of creative people, the music is one thing …
KK: … Art, culture, fashion,
technology — it’s all here. And for years, people had to leave to do
their thing. What we want people to understand is that you can do your
thing right here in the city of Detroit.
So, the city also has to be more agile in its approach to business, as
well. As you start to have these new types of creative, cultural,
ethnic type businesses, you want to be sure the city is agile enough to
respond to their needs, and even be proactive to market certain areas
of the city to those culturally sensitive businesses, to those ethnic
businesses, to those different dynamic businesses.
MD: As far as retaining the kids
coming out of CCS and Wayne State, or wherever they went to college,
can the city play a role in giving them a reason to come back to or
stay in Detroit?
KK: Absolutely. Detroit is only
not
hot to people who grew up around here. When you get out of Detroit and
you have people who have been here to create or do some different
things in Detroit, they make you aware of how hot certain things are
that you thought were just run of the mill — which is why Model D is
important. It’s a fresh perspective on the city. It’s a balcony view. A
lot of people are toiling in the day-to-day grind of the budget and not
looking at where we’re going next. There are a lot of just built-in
gems here that we could use to attract. …
My sister,
my
younger sister lives in Brooklyn. She’s there because she wants to be
an actress. My thing is, we have to figure how to get some of that
creativity back here in Detroit.
MD: Just look at how many theater seats we have …
KK: Exactly. So why are we not marketing those small playhouses
and getting people more access to some of the places and venues that
allow creativity to blossom? I think that it is starting. I think the
smaller playhouses, the smaller coffee shops are doing things, and that
kind of vibe is what helped New York. It’s what helped Chicago. It’s
what helped Seattle. And I think it’s here and we can do it.
MD: So what can the city do to foster that creativity, to create a critical mass of creative people in a community?
KK: One of the things we’re
doing with this
Office of Neighborhood Commercial Revitalization
is going into the
community and getting the community to buy in. We’ve picked eight
communities, and I’ve negotiated some dollars from the casinos to throw
to those communities, to really start developing plans for what those
communities want to see — whether it’s from streetscaping and lighting,
to redoing some of the businesses that are there, to changing some of
the businesses that are currently in their communities. And that is
producing some really good fruit.
Down here in Jefferson East, which is way out Jefferson and Alter,
they’re starting to do some things there. You see it going on up in
Chaldean Town, over at John R and Seven Mile, and they are working with
us, as well. We’re about to pick three new communities — Seven Mile and
Livernois is a place we think will be real hot, that whole Avenue of
Fashion.
MD: What neighborhood do you think is poised to be the next thing, the next Brush Park?
KK: Eastern Market. Mark my words right now, but I think that
it’s the next big thing that Detroit is going to do. This whole Eastern
Market Partnership — first of all it’s going to be a seven-day market,
then the loft development, the work/live community they want to put
there, and just the whole design, how it’s a free-flowing, marketable
place. It’s going to be a real hotbed of culture, restaurants, eating,
entertainment and then convenience for people who want to live there.
Eastern Market is an international statement. It’s kind of like what
Philadelphia did to its market — put people around it, have it open
seven days.
MD: Coming off the Super Bowl, everybody had the warm fuzzies, and then
came the zoo, the budget. (Kilpatrick shakes his head and says, 'the
zoo.') What do you do to keep on task, to see the bigger picture?
KK: Through
all of the zoo stuff and the water stuff and the things that come on
television, Roger Penske kept meeting and staying engaged. The Next
Detroit growth committee, they stayed focused and issued their report.
You have a lot of people that are still coming to the table to develop
— we got two development deals on the riverfront done. In the midst of
all that, that was getting done.
So, underneath all of the hoopla, there was still the movement going in
the right direction that didn’t get a lot of attention. [Oakland County
Executive] L. Brooks Patterson and Kwame Kilpatrick are meeting to talk
about how we can do this transportation thing. We’re focused on it.
We’re trying to put the final period on the agreement. He and I are
totally 100 percent in sync to where we are right now.
So, a lot of the important conversations were going on while people were grasping at this zoo thing and the water thing.
MD: Over just three or four years
before the Super Bowl, there’s been a complete makeover downtown. How
does that move out to the neighborhoods?
KK: The Super Bowl served as the catalyst to move people together.
MD: The kick in the pants …
KK: Yeah, it was. It was the kick in the pants. But I think now
with the growth committee’s plan it is now time to move to some of the
neighborhood developments, and start to figure out how we makeover a
lot of our neighborhoods and make them smaller living communities. And
I think you are about to see that really grow in the city. There’s a
lot interest in doing it, from Tiger Stadium to Corktown to Bagley, to
Eastern Market, to places in southeast Detroit. You’ll start to see
that hub of activity start to happen.
There were 17 buildings in downtown Detroit that I call our dinosaur
buildings. Fourteen of those buildings have deals on them. Two have
been demolished — the Statler and the Madison Lenox, I took a lot of
heat on that. And one we have no deal on. That’s a tremendous
statement. The train station’s the only one. It’s just sitting there
with nothing happening on it, but everything else, from Lafayette to
600 Vinton to Book-Cadillac, to all these other buildings, are moving
forward.
So you are going to see a different Detroit. And that’s going to start spreading out, from East Side to West Side.
MD: That spreading out from downtown is how you have to look at it, then. You had to start somewhere, right?
KK: People always say,
‘Oh, you do too much downtown.’ But you got to start where the interest
is, and then you start filling in the gaps. So now New Center started
developing, downtown is developing, and Wayne State has done a
tremendous job with UCCA and all the other groups. And that whole vein
now, those gaps will be filled. It’s coming together.
MD: It’s the same idea as with your
‘downtown dinosaurs’ — you drive around Midtown with a developer like
Colin Hubbell and you can point to every building and say, ‘They’ve got
a deal there, and they’ve got a deal there.’
KK: And people will start to
see that coming to them. But, you know, Detroiters, they’ve just got
pent-up demand. ‘It’s got to happen now. It’s got to happen now.’
There has been a lot of inactivity in a lot of neighborhoods for a
number of years. But you know, Chicago, Philadelphia — all the cities
that get a lot of accolades for turning around, it didn’t happen
overnight. There’s got to be a plan put in place, and I think it’s
happening now.
MD: Is there a master plan for redeveloping the city, is that what the Transformation Team is all about?
KK: Yes, the growth strategy is
what we want to be a master plan. … There really hasn’t been a solid
master plan in the city since 1992. We have the capability from a
technology standpoint, now it’s time to take the growth report and
overlay it. … That’s exactly what we gained from this process, is not
just to have a report, but also to have something people can touch and
see and feel.
MD: When you talk about making over
neighborhoods, and making them into smaller living communities, how
will the city address land-use?
KK: That issue is even bigger
than our strategy issue looking at new industry and growth and economic
development. I think the whole land-use plan is even harder. You have
to go into some communities and say, 'We're not building over here.'
That’s hard.
We have to go into communities where there are a hundred people where
there used to be 3,000 people and say, 'No more. Developers aren’t
interested here.' We may even have to move some people to make room for
light industrial or a park. It’s tough and it’s emotional to people.
I look at the neighborhood where my grandfather was when I grew up.
It’s half the houses that were there when I was a kid, and that’s just
from when I was a kid, not even 50 years ago. You gotta take a look at
that.
MD: If you could make one major change right now, what would you do help build the creative environment in the city?
KK: If there’s a single thing
that needs to be done to foster the creative environment it is the
absolute commitment from DEGC, Tech Town, the DMC, UCCA and the
university to join with the city of Detroit and co-market from the
river to the Boulevard and Wayne State University. That can create a
new cultural, ethnic and economic dynamic where people can see a lot of
different folks coming together to create a lot of different things.
I think the other thing is to make Wayne State, CCS and that whole corridor the nucleus of activity.
MD: Every city has its place where
everyone knows the cool kids hang out. So you see Midtown as where that
critical mass of creatives will be?
KK: I think that’s the place to
start it. Once you start it, you have all sorts of pockets — maybe out
in Corktown, Jefferson East. I think there are different pockets that
will emerge once people see the kind of people that come together.
But we need something to hold up and say, ‘Hey we won.’ People always
talk about the Super Bowl, but we need to win something that people can
see, that everyone can see every day.
MD: It’s that old adage — success breeds success.
KK: Exactly. We’ve been having
these collaborative discussions of activity, but we need a victory. I
think it would be a real sign for the whole region.
MD: The biggest population boom to the
city has been from immigrants coming into neighborhoods like Southwest
Detroit. The city was built on immigrants, how can the city once again
be more welcoming to newcomers?
KK: We’re looking at housing
trends, we’re looking at neighborhood-specific strategies, growing
Chaldean Town right here in the city of Detroit. That’s part of that
transformation strategy. We know that our future lies in becoming a
more internationally global place.
The Asian community, the Asian-Indian community, the Arab community,
the Hispanic community— we need that influx to be a more global-minded
community. It makes the schools better, our soccer teams better, our
recreational activities better. It makes for better restaurants, better
things to do on the weekends.
MD: Diversity makes a place more interesting to live.
KK: It’s part of what makes us
a city. For a long time, people wanted us to be a suburb. We’re a city;
we’re not a suburb. It’s OK to be rough. It’s OK to be funky. It’s OK
to be hot. It’s OK to have bricks and it’s OK to have sidewalks.
There’s been a running away from who we are. We’re a gritty city, but
all that can be marketed if we package it right.
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick photographs Copyright Dave Krieger