Big changes are on the horizon in Detroit’s New Center area. To the delight of many who live and work there, the leaking, rusting, cantankerous canopies along Woodward Avenue at Grand Boulevard are no longer.
When built in the 1980s the plastic and steel awnings were hoped to invigorate the 1920s buildings into a busy shopping strip. Instead, they nearly killed existing retail, hiding business signs and creating an eyesore. Now they’re gone, thanks to a planning grant from the Hudson-Webber Foundation and dollars from the state and the city of Detroit.
“Each week the canopies have been down our business snowballs,” says Vickie Nez, credit manager for Detroit Hardware at 6432 Woodward, a neighborhood retail magnet for over 80 years. “Some people thought we were closed because they couldn’t see inside to discern if we were open or empty.”
And that’s not all. The canopy removal was only the first stage of $4 million public and private improvement project for the area. The Woodward Gateway TEA-21 Project promises historic street lamps, new sidewalks with clay brick accents, trees surrounded by cast-iron grates, bike racks, benches and trash receptacles.
Michael Solaka, President of New Center Council Inc., says he fought for five years to get funding to tear down the canopies and restore the storefronts.
“The number one rule of urban retail design is creating a transparent storefront so people can see into the stores and merchants can see out,” Solaka says.
Solaka says he envisions a neighborhood alive with street traffic. A natural boon to the area will be the Comerica TasteFest, which his group sponsors, held every year around the 4th of July.
Nez, a 30-year employee of Detroit Hardware, says she remembers bustling pedestrians along the sidewalks when Demery’s Department Store anchored the southwest corner of Woodward and Grand. Workers flocked to Sanders, Tasty Barbecue and Louis Art Supply at lunch.
Now she sees hope again.
“The makings are all there,” Nez says.
A resurgence of street traffic could happen. Ask the walking expert. The Cool Cities Initiative brought Dan Burden, president of Walkable Communities Inc., to five communities last summer to teach them how to build pedestrian traffic by calming the pace of cars and designing gathering places for pedestrians.
Burden, a 60-year-old from High Springs, Fla., suggests shrinking intersections, constructing traffic roundabouts (think Campus Martius downtown), building flower-lined boulevards (think Nine Mile in Ferndale) with lots of tables and benches for people to sit.
Burden envisions urban villages with plazas, coffee shops, restaurants and clothing boutiques, perhaps a used bookstore.
“Planners are calling it ‘new urbanism,’” says Solaka, who gets more excited about the project with each sentence.
Motor Cities Heritage Area, the National Parks project that hopes to turn Detroit into a national tourist attraction as the birthplace of the automobile, cites New Center as a magnet of historical lore. Among the attractions are one of the first car dealerships, Dalgleish Cadillac, the first home of General Motors Corporation, now Cadillac Place, and the Fisher Building, a spectacular example of the English Arts and Crafts movement in a Gothic revival skyscraper.
What’s next? Solaka hopes the project helps connect New Center with Wayne State University and the Cultural Center a mile or two south.
“We can’t expect to create a more urban Ferndale unless we have a physical product that resonates with people (who are) young, fashion forward and diverse,” says Solaka.
Detroit Hardware - pre-canopies
Detroit Hardware with canopies
Detroit Hardware after canopy removal
"Pre Canopies" and "with canopies" photos provided by the NewCenter Council, copyright Randall Fogelman.
All other photographs copyright Dave Krieger.