Detroit's privately owned parks make a big difference for their neighborhoods

This story is part of Equity in Our Parks, a series highlighting the people and organizations advancing equity through Southeast Michigan’s parks and related programming. It is supported by Oakland County Parks and Recreation, Wayne County Parks and Recreation, Huron-Clinton Metroparks, City of Detroit, and Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. 

Having been born and raised in Detroit's Northwest Goldberg neighborhood, Daniel Washington noticed the toll disinvestment was taking on the corner of 16th and Marquette streets, just around the corner from where he grew up. Washington says the vacant lot there was filed with "weeds as high as us," and surrounded by blighted properties scheduled for demolition. He envisioned the perfect solution for the corner – a park – and he built it himself on a budget of $14,000.

"Across the globe, a lot of people like the idea of waterfront property, and there's people in Detroit who'll never be able to experience that," Washington says. "But ... in a city with so much vacancy, with so much land, why can't every resident say, 'I'm living next to parkfront property'?"
Steve KossDaniel Washington at Spotlight Park.
6102 16th St. is now home to Art Park, an inviting spot featuring benches, a deck for events, public art, and a Little Free Library. It's just one of many parks that private individuals and nonprofits have established across the city to help advance equity, build community, provide services, and catalyze investment in underserved neighborhoods.

"We need parks for healing," Washington says. "When you talk about being outside, having fresh air, having programs take your kids to, ... just something that's free and accessible, that's what people need."

"I want this neighborhood to be known for its public spaces"

Art Park is one of four parks Washington owns in Northwest Goldberg, which also fall under the auspices of NW Goldberg Cares, a community development corporation he founded in 2017. He says he saw parks as a way to "spark some interest" in his neighborhood.
Steve KossArt Park.
"This is a poor Black neighborhood that has strategically been left out of the conversation of rebirth and revitalization for so long," he says. 

Washington says it's important to not just build parks, but to activate them through free programming tailored to each site. For example, his Spotlight Park at 5945 Linwood has a sizable concrete stage used to host musical programming ranging from Detroit Symphony Orchestra concerts to karaoke nights. Holland Maze Literacy Park at 6134 15th St. is home to a literacy program for kids in kindergarten through second grade.
Steve KossHolland Maze Literacy Park.
Rest. Play. Ride Park at 6326 Linwood takes a different approach to site activation. Washington installed the neighborhood's only covered bus shelter on the site, as well as play equipment selected by a youth advisory council, so that children and adults could both find enjoyment and relaxation while waiting for the bus.

Washington says he realizes that he has more privilege than many residents of his neighborhood, and he works hard to address the needs of those less fortunate than him rather than just "patting [himself] on the back" for building parks. He sums up his approach with the question: "What can we do to make sure that we're speaking to the community residents in a way that's impactful and meaningful?"
Steve KossPlayground equipment at Rest. Play. Ride Park.
Washington has observed considerable ripple effects emanating from the parks he's created in Northwest Goldberg. He estimates that the original Art Park has led to $1 million of private investment in homes directly across the street, and another $2 million further down the street, often in previously blighted homes. Similarly, he says the house next door to Holland Maze Literacy Park has sold four times since the park was established, and each new buyer has told him the park was an incentive for them.

Washington, who is also renovating Northwest Goldberg homes himself, says there's a lot of talk about gentrification in the neighborhood as Henry Ford Health's nearby Future of Health development ramps up. He says he hopes the work he's doing will give existing residents "a fighting chance at being able to stay in the neighborhood, have equity in [the] neighborhood, and gain back some of what was lost."
Steve KossArt Park.
"I want this neighborhood to be known for its public spaces," he says. "... I look at this, really, as a way of showing the city that this is a replicable model. If you build public spaces and you're intentional about them, and they're not just a block-long public space, you can start to see the private sector step up and say, 'Me, me, me, me. I'll pick up the bill.'"

"It's important to share it"

Northeast of Washington's parks, on the border between Detroit and Hamtramck, a delightfully chaotic free summer camp is in full swing at Carpenter Park, 2055 Carpenter St. in Detroit. The park, a collection of 13 land parcels purchased from the Detroit Land Bank Authority, is owned and managed by husband and wife Faina Lerman and Graem Whyte. They established Popps Packing, described on their website as a "home, studio, and experimental arts venue," just down the street at 12138 St. Aubin in Hamtramck in 2009. Lerman says that, shortly after the couple moved in, they noticed a car burning in the middle of the night in the field down the street on Carpenter.
Steve KossFaina Lerman.
"We always called this the fields of madness, because wild things just always seemed to happen here," she says. "Sometimes pheasants, sometimes random dumping, sometimes fires."

Lerman and Whyte began clearing out junk and maintaining plots on both sides of the city border near their home, then they began buying up the properties. Although they didn't officially name the expanse of mostly vacant land "Carpenter Park" until last year, they've been programming the space with an annual summer camp since 2017. They host 12-20 children for each of two one-week sessions, offering free registration for kids who live in the neighborhood immediately surrounding the park. Lerman says she noticed that families of means from elsewhere in the city were beginning to sign up for the camp, and she wanted to make sure recreational activity remained accessible for her less fortunate neighbors. She notes that the closest park is Jayne-Lasky Park, over a mile's walk away.
Steve KossCarpenter Park.
"Anybody here is not going there," Lerman says. "You know, kids aren't walking over. But, this neighborhood is so dense. It's just been nice that this is how we meet a lot of people."

Camp Carpenter participants don't have set daily activities. Instead, a wide variety of art and building supplies is made available to them, and they decide upon their own pursuits. Upon a recent visit, campers were rolling bocce balls down a Rube Goldberg-style machine they'd built, tie-dyeing shirts, and creating a chess board out of tiles and grout. Camp counselors, paid through grants and Popps Packing's fundraising efforts, amiably assist the campers as they create. Translators are also available for children who speak Ukrainian, Arabic, or Bangladeshi.
Steve KossA Camp Carpenter participant rolls a bocce ball down a Rube Goldberg machine created by campers.
Lerman says the camp offers participants the offer to experiment with chance, freedom, and risk – "all of these things that we, just as a society, are just not comfortable with, especially with our children."

"As artists, we're privileged to be able to live like that," she says. "We chose this lifestyle, we chose this life, we want to live creatively, [and] we want to have some sort of anonymity. We learned and had experienced playing with our environment or playing with the material, learning our craft, [or] whatever. And at this point in our lives, I feel like it's important to share it."
Steve KossCamp Carpenter participants tie-dye shirts.
Although Camp Carpenter is Carpenter Park's flagship program, the park also hosts other events including monthly free art workshops and an annual audio installation called Soundhenge. Lerman's main goal for the space is to offer her neighborhood the kind of support that she experienced when she immigrated here from Latvia in 1980.

"I feel like people helped us," she says. "There was always a sense of community. There was always a sense of somebody just doing something for somebody."
Steve KossA Camp Carpenter participant works on a project.
And as a female artist, Lerman says, "seeing young girls with a tool belt and a drill just gets my heart fluttering just a little bit."

"I think it's empowering," she says.

"A space for people to gather and call their own"

When George Adams Jr. started the nonprofit 360 Detroit in Detroit's Virginia Park neighborhood in 2014, he says his goal was to "be able to go anywhere in this community and do a 360 and it all looks good." Adams grew up just south of the neighborhood and remembers avoiding it as a child due to gang activity. When he held a block party to survey residents on their wishes for the community, he learned that many of the neighborhood's young people wanted to see a park that catered to them.
Steve KossGeorge Adams at 360 Park.
"There's a play field just up the street, but it was more adulty, [with] older teenagers," Adams says. "The concern was that the young people didn't feel safe or comfortable there, or the parents didn't feel comfortable with sending their young people there."

So Adams identified a vacant lot at 1404 Virginia Park St., which had been sold as part of the Herman Kiefer Development, and leased it from the developer. While he began putting together funding for a park on the site, he commissioned a neighbor to build a massive Adirondack chair on the site, creating an eye-catching preview of what was to come.
Steve KossThe giant Adirondack chair at 360 Park.
Adams successfully amassed $500,000 in funds from benefactors including the Kresge Foundation, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, and Wayne Metropolitan Community Action Agency. 360 Detroit eventually bought the site outright, and 360 Park opened in 2021. The park features a variety of playground equipment and park benches, and the Adirondack chair is still a fixture. The property also regularly hosts activities including yoga, Zumba, movie screenings, and overnight camping.
Steve Koss360 Park.
"It creates community," Adams says. "It's a space for people to gather and call their own and meet their neighbors."

Like Washington, Adams is also involved in redeveloping homes in the neighborhood. He's currently renovating duplexes that he plans to sell at around $150,000 to buyers who are interested in living in one unit and renting the other. Adams sees 360 Park as key to an overall revitalization strategy. He estimates that, outside of Henry Ford Hospital's West Pavilion expansion in 2009, the park is the first thing to be built "new, from the ground up" in the neighborhood since the early '90s.
Steve KossGeorge Adams in one of the Virginia Park homes he's renovating.
"I look up listings in the neighborhood, and they all refer to the newly opened park," he says. "So it's a selling point for realtors."

But Adams says he's happiest to see Virginia Park's residents enjoying a safe place to play.

"They hold hands, ... they ride their bikes over, or they walk over to enjoy the space.," he says. "You know, it gives you great joy to see that, because prior to that, they were playing on the sidewalks in front of the house. There was no playscape."

Patrick Dunn is the lead writer for the Equity in Our Parks series. He's also the managing editor of Concentrate and an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and editor.

Photos by Steve Koss.