Friends of Detroit & Tri-County
"There Are Enough of Us to  Help the Rest of Us."

Projects

CLUB TECHNOLOGY

HOPE GARDENS

LITTLE EGYPT

MUSEUM OF HIP

• Provide a Friendly Environment
• Provide a Pleasant Experience for Volunteers
• Provide Work Readiness and Skill Training using Technology
• Provide Business Opportunity in Construction & Technology
• Provide Housing Assistance and Jobs to Recent Immigrants
• Provide Relevant Community Resources and Assistance
• ProvideOne Major Annual Fund raiser a Year

Values: The organization will be courteous, treating everyone with equal friendliness, and encouraging businesses to have a workforce reflective of the community.

First, the project would help develop and implement the City of Detroit’s D.O.C.T.O.R. Project, a program dedicated to reinvigorating local commercial strips. Area storefronts would begin the redeveloped process and ultimately be transformed into a grassroots cyber district, where area grassroots entrepreneurs use their creativity with technology to produce wealth in soft media technology. The project entails starting to get residents, businesses, police and others to work towards revitalizing the commercial strip and surrounding
housing stock. This includes clean up efforts, facade improvements and regular police patrolling. The residential component would follow a similar track.

Second, the City of Detroit is providing technical consultants in the development of the research and analysis of the community. Friends of Detroit & Tri County is working to turn this area into a grassroots cyber district called Club Technology. The area would reuse the commercial strip for technology-based companies. The project would use land maps, aerial photos, community knowledge, Sanborn Maps and other devices to help compile information. Seattle (Microsoft); San Francisco (Silicon Valley); and the Research Triangle serve as examples of how cities use technology to reconfigure themselves as formidable competitors in the global market place. This is a push to make our community bustle and highly livable.  

Third, green space parks and gathering places all with an emphasis on vibrancy will also be enhanced. These enhancements were done in conjunction with the Greening of Detroit. Greening received an Empowerment Zone grant for designing and purchasing plants and flowers for these types of projects. Greening and Friend of Detroit & Tri County will help mobilize as many as 80 volunteers for our project. Area volunteers, including the Michigan State University Extension Master Gardeners and the Detroit Agriculture Network. The City of Detroit Parks and Recreation Department will provide further assistance through its expertise and stock of seeds, trees and shrubs. For Michigan to be competitive and prosperous, it must develop, nay, exploit all of its talents and showcases its assets as a livable and vibrant city.

Michigan lost an estimated 150,000 manufacturing jobs in the last few years. Central city areas fight an even bigger battle because of quality of life issues, including distant retail outlets, suburban jobs and aging housing stock. The project is designed to create new central city vibrancy and employment along the commercial strip and through residential construction work. The Clinton Administration agreed that this area needed help. It was designated part of the Empowerment Zone.

The project is planned to give our agency a comprehensive plan to build and manifest hope. The commercial and residential revitalization plan for the Hope District will be developed in the form of a blue print outlined by the City of Detroit through its Office of Neighborhood Commercial Revitalization program. The Five Point Urban Approach is as follows:

Organization
Building consensus and cooperation among the many groups and individuals who are stakeholders in the revitalization process and  
managing the process for addressing and solving the district’s issues and problems

Clean and Safe
Addressing existing crime and blight issues that plague a neighborhood commercial district through cooperative partnerships between  
the police and the community, repeated and consistent focus on blight removal, and proactive actions to lessen the likelihood of crime  
and blight

Design
Enhancing the physical appearance of the commercial district by rehabilitation of historic buildings, encouraging supportive new construction, developing sensitive design management systems, and long term planning

Promotion
Marketing the traditional commercial district’s assets, potential investors, new businesses. Local citizens and visitors

Economic Restructuring
Strengthening the district’s existing economic base while finding ways to expand it to meet new opportunities – and challenges from outlying development

The outcome will be a plan and partial implementation of the Five Point Approach by the end of the experience. Emphasis will be placed on promotion and economic restructuring

The project goals are for the establishment of a framework that will allow area central city residents the opportunity to acquire construction and technology skills. This will allow them to live and strive in the computer world. It will help further efforts to make Michigan a more competitive state. This will provide a valuable benefit to the project by allowing tasks to be done in concert with stakeholders, community residents and city officials. Tasks will include administration, research and focus group sampling.

The following is a list of what the Hope District is expected to do:

• Assist with project design and set-up
• Monitor budget and assist with tracking expenses
• Researcher and evaluator of community-based concepts
• Complete a plan for establishing model commercial retail strip and surrounding residential
• Encourage area stakeholders to participate in process and implementation
• Assist with the Parks and Green Space Concepts
• Maintain an Upbeat and Positive Attitude