Fight is on to restore Kronk Gym, community

BY STEVE NEAVLING

DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The famed but abandoned Kronk Gym in Detroit that produced world champions such as Oscar De La Hoya and Thomas Hearns may see new life under an ambitious, $60-million proposal to renovate the weathered two-story building and revive the area around it.

Behind the venture is legendary trainer Emanuel Steward, whose improbable feat of turning the dingy basement of the recreation center on McGraw into a world-renowned gym by the 1980s earned the city a storied and indelible spot in boxing history.

But after thieves stole copper plumbing in 2006, cutting off water supply to the city's first recreation center, Steward and young boxers have been working out of makeshift gyms, still unable to find the right spot.

"We want our home back," Steward told the Free Press. "It could become a highlight of the city."

The plan, dubbed Kronk Village, calls for resurrecting the gym, building urban farms and adjacent mixed-use housing and reviving the graffiti-marred Kronk Community Center with a boxing museum, basketball court, classrooms, senior activities and a restaurant featuring healthy foods.


Continued at: http://www.freep.com/article/2011040...0383/1001/news