"20 Minute Neighborhood" initiative

[DetroiterOnTheWestCoast]

I posted this on the UDM housing thread, but as another posted suggested I think its worth its own thread.

This is a link to Mayor Duggan's presentation earlier this month at the Mackinac Policy Conference, where he discussed a "20 Minute Neighborhood" initiative. The idea is that you should be able to get all you need within a 20 minute walk or bike ride.

The city is rolling this new initiative out in three neighborhoods - Fitzgerald, West Village and Southwest. It involves clearing blight, restoring houses and vacant apartments, new retail, greenways and gardens, etc.

I do like how this administration continues to launch new initiatives, and the approach of concentrating resources in specific areas where they can have a noticeable impact as far as turning an area around.

The presentation is about 47 minutes but well worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2hJ_IQ_rFc

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/...r_20_minu.html

[royce]

Saw most of the presentation. I commend the mayor for the initiative. I must say and I have said this for years that the areas that consists of UDM at McNichols and Livernois and Seven Mile have been and will always be a clusterf**k. And here's why: Livernois should never have been designated a commercial strip. The side-streets on either side of Livernois don't pour into it. They pour into McNichols and Seven Mile. Anyone not living near the corner of Santa Rosa ,west of Livernois, or Warrington, east of Livernois, have to walk more than a block to get to any commercial/retail establishment on Livernois. It's especially bad at Seven Mile east of Livernois. Unlike Meyers, Shaefer, Hubbell, Greenfield, and Lahser, which are residential streets, Livernois is a north-south street that has commerical/retail establishments on it instead of residential. All commercial/retail establishments should be on the mile roads, which occurs west of Wyoming [[which unfortunately is just like Livernois) and east of Woodward. The need for a pathway south of McNichols and west of Livernois is a good solution to the problem that Livernois creates.

Commericial/retail establishments exists on McNichols, west of Livernois but to the east they are few and far between mainly because UDM takes up several blocks along McNichols and east of UDM there are only a few commercial/retail buildings heading towards Woodward, and they're only on the south side of McNichols. My solution would be to put a number of Ellington-type developments along Livernois so that you could have both commericial/retail and residential. Also, build some commericial/retail where the UDM parking lot is on McNichols and build a parking deck behind them to make up for the lost spaces due to the retail. In addition, a restaurant at the corner of Livernois and McNichols, on UDM land that's not used, would greatly help improve that intersection. That's my two cents.

[royce]

Stoepel is the first street west of Livernois, not Santa Rosa.

[royce]

Bump. This is good stuff.

[Junjie]

Some relevant links via Curbed:

http://detroit.curbed.com/2016/7/6/1...d-housing-land

http://www.fitzgerald-detroit.com/background/

[DetroiterOnTheWestCoast]

Some relevant links via Curbed:

http://detroit.curbed.com/2016/7/6/1...d-housing-land

http://www.fitzgerald-detroit.com/background/

Thanks for those links. I found it interesting how the Fitzgerald initiative is part of a larger Livernois/McNichols Revitalization Initiative. It really seems to me that the city is starting to focus on some of the neighborhoods, now that the bankruptcy is taken care of and things in Midtown and the CBD are so well underway.

[mwilbert]

Saw most of the presentation. I commend the mayor for the initiative. I must say and I have said this for years that the areas that consists of UDM at McNichols and Livernois and Seven Mile have been and will always be a clusterf**k. And here's why: Livernois should never have been designated a commercial strip. The side-streets on either side of Livernois don't pour into it. They pour into McNichols and Seven Mile. Anyone not living near the corner of Santa Rosa ,west of Livernois, or Warrington, east of Livernois, have to walk more than a block to get to any commercial/retail establishment on Livernois. It's especially bad at Seven Mile east of Livernois. Unlike Meyers, Shaefer, Hubbell, Greenfield, and Lahser, which are residential streets, Livernois is a north-south street that has commerical/retail establishments on it instead of residential. All commercial/retail establishments should be on the mile roads, which occurs west of Wyoming [[which unfortunately is just like Livernois) and east of Woodward. The need for a pathway south of McNichols and west of Livernois is a good solution to the problem that Livernois creates.

This doesn't seem logical to me. Most of the houses in University District [[or Bagley, or whatever) are going to be several blocks from any commercial strip, because they are in the interior of the neighborhood. If you are at Curtis, even if you are on Parkside you are as close or closer to Livernois as to McNichols or Seven. It it significantly shorter for me to walk to Savon on Livernois than it would be to walk to anything on the mile roads. And it isn't as if the shop you want is necessarily going to be right by the corner of your street anyway.. If you are going to walk to shops from the existing neighborhoods, you have to assume that you are going to have to walk a number of blocks, and that is true wherever on the edge of the neighborhood the businesses are.

That said, I wouldn't have any objection to putting some housing on Livernois. Ideally I'd like to see it above ground-level businesses. I'll be interested to see what the demand is for the proposed development at Livernois and Seven.

[MSUguy]

My favorite quote from Duggan in that presentation was 'we can't out suburb the suburbs'. Looking the create dense, walkable, unique neighborhoods really so big shift in thinking about development in the city.

[royce]

This doesn't seem logical to me. Most of the houses in University District [[or Bagley, or whatever) are going to be several blocks from any commercial strip, because they are in the interior of the neighborhood. If you are at Curtis, even if you are on Parkside you are as close or closer to Livernois as to McNichols or Seven. It it significantly shorter for me to walk to Savon on Livernois than it would be to walk to anything on the mile roads. And it isn't as if the shop you want is necessarily going to be right by the corner of your street anyway.. If you are going to walk to shops from the existing neighborhoods, you have to assume that you are going to have to walk a number of blocks, and that is true wherever on the edge of the neighborhood the businesses are.

That said, I wouldn't have any objection to putting some housing on Livernois. Ideally I'd like to see it above ground-level businesses. I'll be interested to see what the demand is for the proposed development at Livernois and Seven.

Well, that gets back to the design of the neighborhood. Notice that west of Livernois between Fenkell and McNichols [[Six Mile), you have commercial/retail activity on those mile roads. Notice that Puritan is 5 1/2 Mile and Curtis is 6 1/2 Mile. Puritan has commercial/retail activity, Curtis does not. With the exception of Midtown and Downtown Detroit, those living between Fenkell, Puritan, and McNichols have the most walkable neighborhood in the city. That's because Detroiters in that neighborhood only have to walk two blocks at the most to get to a commerical/retail strip. That can't be said of many places in the city, especially on the west side. For whatever reason, those who developed the Bagley, University District, Sherwood Forest, Palmer Woods, and Green Acres neighborhoods didn't want commercial/retail on McNichols, Curtis, Seven Mile, and Eight Mile. I'll assume it was because they were more mobile through the access of the car so they reasoned that they could drive to whatever stores that they needed.

Now, mwilbert, you mentioned the distance from Curtis and Parkside to the Savon grocery store on Curtis and Livernois. From that location, a walk to the Savon store is about seven blocks. However, if you live on Parkside between Seven Mile and Clarita, that's a hell of a walk to make. Even if the Savon store was at the corner of Livernois and Seven Mile, that's still a hell of a walk from Parkside. Again, residents living along Livernois between McNichols [[Six Mile) and Seven Mile have longer walks to commercial/retail activity than those living in the Fenkell-Puritan-McNichols area or Midtown or Downtown Detroit. This fact might explain why it's been so hard to maintain retail on the Avenue of Fashion section of Livernois.

[mwilbert]

Now, mwilbert, you mentioned the distance from Curtis and Parkside to the Savon grocery store on Curtis and Livernois. From that location, a walk to the Savon store is about seven blocks. However, if you live on Parkside between Seven Mile and Clarita, that's a hell of a walk to make.

The east-west blocks in the University District are only roughly half the length of the north-south blocks, so "seven blocks" isn't very far. Walking from Parkside to Livernois is not a long walk if you are someone who walks. But my other point was that just getting to the commercial street isn't sufficient--you have to get to the place you want to go, which generally involves walking some distance along the commercial strip as well. If I want to go to the CVS, I not only have to get to Livernois, but I have to walk north a few [[normal-length) blocks as well. In fact, I have to walk considerably farther north than I do west. Being closer to the strip wouldn't hurt, but it wouldn't make that much difference either. When I was a kid, and there was more stuff on Livernois, we walked up past Livernois and Seven all the time to shop, certainly as far as St. Martins. The distance to Livernois was really an insignificant factor.

[royce]

Another problem that I have with the Livernois-Seven Mile area is with the building on the northwest corner of Seven Mile and Livernois. It's too close to Seven Mile. A new building set back from the street could vastly improve that corner, especially if it was a restaurant with outdoor seating. Also, to improve the Avenue of Fashion, some residential needs to be incorporated along Livernois as well as some well placed parking lots which would come from tearing down some of the buildings on the west side of the street. That would allow for the removal of on-street parking on the east side of the street with the idea of widening the sidewalks so that you could have outdoor seating. Well, that's my two cents.

[MSUguy]

This is off to a quick start the first West Village project will break ground next month.

An effort to bring residential and business redevelopment into three Detroit neighborhoods is getting a boost from JPMorgan Chase, the mega-bank that has committed to investing $100 million in the city.
Chase announced that Detroit won a competitive $5 million grant for the Detroit Strategic Neighborhood Fund, a $30-million project that will boost inclusive development in three areas of the city: The West Village neighborhood on the city's east side, the Clark Park area in southwest Detroit and the Livernois-McNichols area in northwest Detroit.

Construction on the first of what will be at least 12 projects funded through the neighborhood fund is set to begin in November. Called The Coe at West Village, the $3.8 million project will build eight new townhouses along Coe Street and four apartments with first-floor retail along Van Dyke near where the two roads connect, with 20% of the residential property set aside as affordable housing. The development is by Woodborn Partners, whose managing partner, Clifford Brown, said construction is expected to be finished by mid-September 2017.

Duggan said the Strategic Neighborhood Fund fits in with the city's strategy to rebuild the city's neighborhoods on the 20-minute neighborhood model. The model calls for densely populated, walkable and safe neighborhoods where residents have easy access to shopping, groceries, restaurants, recreation, transit, parks and schools within a 20-minute walk.

Duggan said the three selected neighborhoods already have some of the basic elements needed for such a neighborhood and only need "an intense effort where everybody comes together" for redevelopment.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/loca...hase/92413142/

[masterblaster]

That West Village project is absolutely awesome. The project is Multi-family and mixed use, which is representative of that particular neighborhood's historic make-up.

[DeLemur]

That West Village project is absolutely awesome. The project is Multi-family and mixed use, which is representative of that particular neighborhood's historic make-up.

Except that it is ultra modern design. Which I don't mind, others who have been abiding by the historic commission and picking certain paint colors for their house might. The key will be the finish on this new building. Will it be of high quality? or a slap me up structure? Know what I mean masterblaster? Please no Studio One on Woodward in West Village.
This contemporary building must be done right. Set the precedent for quality structures in an historic district.

[DetroiterOnTheWestCoast]

This project is moving forward in the Fitzgerald neighborhood; I am glad to see that the Platform group is involved.

http://www.freep.com/story/money/bus...ent/100079082/

Also covered in Crain's this week.

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...-be-led-by-the

[mwilbert]

The most heartening thing about the article is that the people doing this seem to realize you have to do this one neighborhood at a time. First, because the city doesn't have enough money or planning resources to do this in a lot of places at the same time. Second, because if you want to rebuild and repopulate a neighborhood, you need to attract businesses and people, and there is a finite supply of people who are interested in moving to or running a business in a peripheral Detroit neighborhood, so you want to make it clear where you want them to go, in an area small enough that it makes a difference. Third, because even if you had the resources to do more, you probably want to see how things work, and perhaps learn something, before you do a lot of it.

I'm not optimistic that this will actually accomplish a lasting improvement; there are structural reasons this neighborhood suffered such a high level of disinvestment, and I'm not sure how much those underlying reasons no longer apply. But concentration of resources on a particular area is the most likely way to get a persistent change.

[professorscott]

The most heartening thing about the article is that the people doing this seem to realize you have to do this one neighborhood at a time... I'm not optimistic that this will actually accomplish a lasting improvement; there are structural reasons this neighborhood suffered such a high level of disinvestment, and I'm not sure how much those underlying reasons no longer apply. But concentration of resources on a particular area is the most likely way to get a persistent change.

I will be unusually optimistic here. First, you are absolutely correct; you can't tackle the whole city at once because the resources are insufficient, and to quote Frederick the Great [[albeit in a different context), "he who defends everything defends nothing". The particular neighborhood suffered relatively less disinvestment than much of the rest of the city, still has a good amount of stable housing stock, and has decent transit service such as that is anywhere in the city. Also, U of D Mercy provides a good anchor at one end of it. If this is even decently successful, it may prove a good model for tackling several areas of the city, albeit one at a time.

[mwilbert]

The particular neighborhood suffered relatively less disinvestment than much of the rest of the city, still has a good amount of stable housing stock, and has decent transit service such as that is anywhere in the city.

I agree with that; by Detroit standards the neighborhood has held up pretty well. Nonetheless, I still think it is going to be an uphill climb to make permanent improvement, even though I'm glad to see the attempt.

[MSUguy]

Before the end of last year state law was changed to allow private university police depts to patrol off campus. You can pretty much guarantee that Fitzgerald will be in that expanded patrol area and that is going the have a big impact on the desirability of the area.