Downtown redevelopment leader Beebe to go back to private consulting

Excerpts from the article:

Beebe, an architect and urban planner, has proved adept at herding cats — oops, downtown property owners and city bureaucrats — to get consensus on plans for fagade improvements, streetscapes, loft housing projects and demolition of eyesore buildings. She was president and CEO of the Greater Downtown Partnership, a privately funded group that worked with city officials to improve Detroit’s tattered downtown, from 2001 until it merged in July with Detroit Downtown Inc., an association of downtown business owners, to form the Downtown Detroit Partnership.

No cockeyed optimist about the gritty challenge of urban revival, Beebe has brought a sober diligence to what she called Phase 2 of the effort to bring Detroit’s downtown back from the dead.

Phase 1, she said, was highlighted by the demolition of the giant abandoned Hudson’s department store building in 1998, which paved the way for the building of the new Compuware Corp. headquarters and the preparation of Campus Martius Park and other development sites along Woodward.

Phase 2, the last four years, brought a spurt of loft housing development to complement new restaurants and retail spots springing up along the Woodward corridor.

Phase 3, the stuff that needs to happen next, Beebe said, should include creating a business improvement district — funded by a tax on downtown businesses — to keep momentum moving by constantly upgrading the look and feel of the district and branding and marketing the downtown.

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