Nortown Community Development Corporation’s mission as a 501©3 organization is to restore, stabilize and develop the Northeast Detroit community. They work to do this through providing and advocating for affordable housing, business retention and attraction, educational improvement and job opportunities. Through this they aim to raise and stabilize the economic, environmental, educational and social levels of its neighborhood constituents. With these goals in mind, they head up a variety of projects for the Northeast Detroit community, such as a greenway planned to eventually continue down to the Detroit river, a possible inner-city apple orchard, and restoration and creation into an eco-educational hub for the community of the historically relevant Philetus W. Norris House, as well as through provision of affordable and Section 8 housing within the community. Last summer, even, they threw themselves into saving Lipke Park from being sold by the city to Salvation Army, and succeeded.
Nortown also plays a big role with artistic development within the community as well as business development, which are the sectors our 2-fold project falls within. Damaris and I will work to complete a directory of businesses in the area. The city recently divided Detroit into 7 voting districts, and Nortown widened the boundaries it serves to align with the expanded boundaries assigned by lying within District 3. This will serve as an extremely useful reference guide for the Northeast Detroit Business Association, one of the organizations within Nortown CDC. The second aspect to our work this summer (pending funding through an art grant) will include organizing artistic development (such as art fairs, murals, etc.) within the parks that last year’s DCBRP student Kali spent the summer researching, and in general expanding her database and coming up with future uses for each park to serve as hubs for the community.
My first week in Detroit has been spectacular. Since I also lived in the city last summer and have some further familiarity with the area through Detroit Partnership and because my cousin lives here, I am beginning to feel like I know my way around. I am looking forward to still learning more this summer, and to become familiar with a new part of the city, the Northeast community.
