A decade ago in Detroit, a million-dollar residential real estate listing would have had an agent laughed out of town. Nowadays, million-plus listings aren’t frequent, but it’s no longer an eye-popping surprise when one pops up. And if anything goes for more than six figures in this town, it had better not skimp on the details.
That’s why
one recent listing on Michigan Avenue is in focus now. As described by Homes.com, a recent seven-figure entry has everything that matches the price tag: A $30,000 copper vestibule, marble windowsills, a 20-foot-long kitchen island, and a custom mural. One might ask how big this residence must be to house all these amenities, which is a blank we’ll fill in now: This home just down the street from Michigan Central is actually a former bank, and depending on your point of view, is one of the most famous or one of the most infamous pieces of real estate in Detroit in recent history.
If “bank house on Michigan Ave.” rings a bell, you might remember that a decade ago when
restaurants like Bobcat Bonnie’s were starting to crop up, a couple purchased a former bank near where Interstates 75 and 96 cross. What ensued was one of the bigger — if now overlooked, if the real estate listing is any indication — citywide gentrification debates at the time.
At issue was the name of the neighborhood where the couple settled. The couple first went on record here on Model D as dubbing the area West Corktown, and got the official stamp of approval from Curbed Detroit, then the all-knowing authority on real estate and neighborhoods, a few months later.
From our archives:
Whether you know it or not, there's a new neighborhood being dreamt up for an area west of downtown just beyond the I-75 and I-96 interchange. Its epicenter is the corner of 23rd Street and Michigan Avenue, where a nearly century-old bank building was recently purchased by Lynne and Mike Savino. It will become their new home as the couple works to adapt the old bank into a loft-style building.
They're calling the area West Corktown, "a neighborhood within a neighborhood," and they're thinking that as Corktown's storefronts continue to fill up and become unavailable, the stretch of Michigan Avenue between I-75 and W. Grand Boulevard is the next logical place for development.
As Lynne tells it, the West Corktown name started as a joke and, rest assured, there's still a good deal of humor involved in the branding. But when she and her husband decided to leave the Green Acres neighborhood, Lynne found herself constantly telling her friends that she was moving just west of Corktown. It just grew from there. It's a way for the Savinos to draw attention to -- and, they hope, find some buyers for -- the vacant buildings along that stretch of Michigan Avenue.
And later in Curbed:
Is West Corktown the new Corktown? The renovations have taken about a year and are finishing up now. The building was about 2,200 square feet as a bank, but with the addition of a loft it is now about 3,000 square feet.
At the time, per most maps that floated around for years, there was Corktown, the city’s oldest neighborhood that had known and rigid boundaries, and North Corktown, the area on the north side of the intersection of Rosa Parks and the I-75 service drive. West, East, South, name a direction — it did not exist in Corktown.
There are, of course, a handful of Detroit neighborhoods that borrow the name of a neighboring neighborhood and add a directional marker. North Corktown to the north of Corktown for sure, but also West Village to the west of Indian Village and North Rosedale Park to delineate from Rosedale Park. Those names have been included in city records for decades upon decades, have identities tied to them that have also evolved within their respective time frames, and are generally recognized and universally agreed upon by civic leaders, city planners and residents alike.
There are processes in place to have a block club recognized by the City of Detroit, but establishing an entirely new neighborhood was — and still is — an unclear rigmarole. A new neighborhood name generally came with new construction; the residences beyond the gates at Shorepointe Village and Grayhaven Marina Village off of Jefferson Avenue, for example, comes to mind. New construction in Detroit, however, was scarce a decade ago, and the decade prior. So, too, were new neighborhood names added to the rolls.
Much like a lot of things a decade ago, like park maintenance and neighborhood watch networks, neighborhood naming became one of those things left in the arbitrary hands of residents. Except in 2014, it was well known in other cities that renaming neighborhoods was one (of many) signs of gentrification. The long, drawn-out secession of nomenclature around Cass Corridor seems like ancient history now, but stalwarts who refused to give in to Midtown were very loud about ringing the alarm about it happening elsewhere in the city, and nowhere were fears of gentrification growing faster than the neighborhood where a former underwear model-turned-barbecue maven was now its unofficial mayor.
Which brings us back to the bank house.
West Corktown. Where did that come from? That was the question raised by Cornetta Lane, a native of the neighborhood she reminded everyone already had a name: Core City.
The unspoken part of redubbing the area as West Corktown were the fact that the Savinos were a white couple from the suburbs leading the charge, building their own network without being in dialogue with the mostly Black neighborhood — and city at large — around them. And sure, some could argue that Corktown, a historically Irish neighborhood predating Black migration to the city that very much maintained its history as a destination for white European immigrants well into the 20th century, was unique in its demographic compared to the areas around it. But at issue wasn’t Corktown; it was the area west -- lowercase -- of it.
As Lane wrote in a Medium post at the time:
The vision for this area was to replicate the success of Corktown, an adjacent neighborhood, by transforming empty storefronts into profitable businesses. The couple purchased a 2,200 square feet unoccupied bank on Michigan Avenue and converted it into an luxurious living space.
Eventually, they gave the new neighborhood a name, ‘West Corktown’.
Super cool, right? Except families that have lived in the area for generations call it “Core City”. A place where underground canals supply water to beautiful weeping willows. A place where neighbors help each other with small home improvements. A place where I first learned to ride my bike without training wheels.
Core City is home.
To call it by another name is to disregard the historical and cultural identity of a place. And in a city like Detroit where life-long residents feel disenfranchised and new-comers feel unwelcomed, “blank slate” thinking drives further disconnection between the two.
As I read an article lauding the couple for “creating a new neighborhood” that will “draw attention to…buyers”, I was surprised to learn that I was living in prime real estate. Our neighborhood has been long ignored by basic city services. And by our own volition, we not only maintain our property but the unowned land around our homes. We take pride in our community.
Each of us has a story to tell.
Lane went on to have a conversation with the Savinos and said the couple told her that the idea of West Corktown was a joke. “But, when a joke leads to the development of a website, a Facebook following of over 1,200 and a seat at the table with the Mayor of Detroit about redevelopment in the neighborhood — that’s power,” Lane wrote.
In the decade since, Lane (and full disclosure, a friend of the author) had continued to champion the mission of Core City, founding Core City Stories and Pedal to Porch as ways to amplify the stories of the residents there, and tracing her own path to Michigan Central, where she is now director of community development.
West Corktown never quite took off as a neighborhood name, however. When the City of Detroit established a storytelling department in 2017 (ahem, another full disclosure here) with a detailed map of the city, West Corktown was nowhere to be found, and by then the Core City-West Corktown debate had largely cooled.
Where does West Corktown still live, however? On the real estate listing where the Savinos are primed to earn more than quadruple their original $60,000 investment.
“From the beginning, I always told my husband that it’s a space that should be shared. It’s big, it’s cool, it’s a great Detroit story,” Lynne Savino said.
A great story, indeed. One that just needs a little more context.