A handsome 100-year-old, two-flat in North Corktown for under $1,000 looked like such a deal at a Wayne County tax auction Jon Zemke couldn’t resist buying it on the spot. He was a third-generation home-rehabber and landlord, already flush with six properties in his Detroit portfolio. What could possibly go wrong? Practically everything, he says […]
Margarita Barry, a renter and entrepreneur extraordinaire, bought her Land Bank and County Auction house to gain a stake in the city on the move. She bought cheap and dug deep into her savings to make it home. “I bought my property for $6,000 in 2012 near Old Redford, on the northwest edge of the […]
The neighborhood that patrols together stays together. That’s how James A. Ward, volunteer commander of the Green Acres Citizen Patrol since 1992, accounts for the steep reduction in crime and a spike in neighborhood stability. At least 115 volunteers patrol the slender Green Acres neighborhood that’s a half mile wide and a mile long just […]
After a night of revelry in the Grande Ballroom, dancing under psychedelic lights cast by colored vegetable oil, playing Twister and skipping merrily around the perimeter while Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes sang of the journey to the center of the mind, I gathered my girlfriends and headed for my dad’s Galaxie. The asphalt […]
Where do women of many hues and many sizes go to shop to look smashing? The first answer from a fashionista is “The Peacock Room,” owned and delightfully stocked by Rachel Lutz. Lutz delivers on price, fashion-forward style and ambiance in her store inside the Park Shelton, next door to the Detroit Institute of Arts. […]
If you thought the Packard Plant, a crumbling monstrosity on East Grand Boulevard and Mount Elliot Street would never amount to more than a tragic example of Detroit’s automotive manufacturing decline, you likely don’t didn’t know a retail company – Pure Detroit – and its 18-year mission to promote and uplift the city. The Packard, […]
Angel investors and mission-driven developers are helping Detroit bolster its economic base, according to a recent series of reports from the Urban Institute. “Coming Back from the Brink: Capital Flows and Neighborhood Patterns in Commercial, Industrial and Multifamily Investment in Detroit” and “Mission Finance in the Motor City.” suggest the least trumpeted story is the […]
The largest historical venue in Monroe will host a day-long rally on Saturday, September 16, to help support some of the most promising youth of Detroit in sustaining a summer kayak and ecological exploration program through the Youth Connection in Detroit. The River Raisin National Battlefield, a national park, where a major battle of the […]
When young couples come to Detroit searching for the perfect Tudor in Green Acres or a Victorian house in Corktown they often face bidding wars, bringing prices up to the edge of their budget. “What makes the city appealing is its beautiful housing stock, its strong neighborhoods and that edgy sense of community,” says Austin […]
When it comes to equal wages and equal respect for equal work, just about every professional woman has a story to tell. A recent series on Amazon Prime, “Good Girls Revolt,” recaps such misadventures. Mine involves a green bikini and a press conference for a major auto maker in Omaha. I’d flown into Omaha with […]