 where 50% of all jobs were from manufacturing. 50% of everybody at work was in manufacturing. 37% of all jobs were the auto industry, so that's where we work. In the 40s, we became the arsenal of democracy, and our plants here produce 70% of all war materials. That went to the Russians, the British, all our allies. 70%, that's a phenomenal thing. So all our factories that were making cars were converted into war, to war armament. And so we played a major, major role. After 1940s, it started the FHA programs, the housing programs, and what happened was that you saw the highways being built. You started seeing the freeways being built. You started seeing housing in the suburbs being built. You started seeing that happening. But by the year 50, there were two million people who lived in the city of Detroit. It really, the explosion into the suburbs really hadn't taken place. So you had two million people within the confines of the city of Detroit, very dense. You know, these houses that we have, the older homes, you have lot of frontages at 25 and 30 feet. I mean, they're very narrow, lots. But everybody was packed in here, and there was a lot of home ownership. Along with the 50s came the urban renewal, and you had urban renewal that wiped out urban renewal and highway construction, like where I-75 is, is where Black Bottom was, and you saw the elimination of a lot of poor homes, more modest homes. It also wiped out a lot of things that people didn't realize had value. Like for instance, you know, I'm Greek, right? Or I can make an announcement, but you know, in Greek town, there was a very vibrant area, as vibrant as any other kind of neighborhood. And what happened with urban renewal wiped out the church, the community center, a lot of the businesses, and they continued to diminish what you see in Greek town right now. It's like one block that's been taken over by casinos. But in one time, it was a neighborhood like many of the other neighborhoods. So that urban renewal actually destroyed a lot of neighborhoods in the city. But that was what happened. So you had federal stuff coming down. You had federal laws that ended up impacting on the city. You know, public housing came along at that time because we had, we had this, not just here, St. Louis, Chicago, where the wells had public housing because the population was squeezed down so much in these cities. And so you had this federal government that came in here. And then at the same time, you had, you know, you had local government. So we have Cobal Hall, the civic center that's there. That all came along in the 50s. You know, so there was the city beautiful kind of thing. And let's be a great city and let's invest in our riverfront. And so we saw some of that happening in the 50s with the Cobal Hall complex and things like that. You know, also in the 50s was probably the last time you saw housing being, you know, any significant housing being built in the city. There were little pockets of places that were filled out on the east side and west side. Also in the 50s, you know, the private sector made a huge impact. So Northland and Eastland. And if you're in Northland and Eastland, they're built to cross this tree from Detroit, right? Once it crossed eight miles, other ones crossing from Detroit on the east side. So they went there, the taxes were low, they could bear the advantage of accessing all the people that lived in the city of Detroit. So that started impacting on downtown, you know, and people talk about Hudson's, people talk about the Avenue of Fashion on Rivernoy. All those places were impacted tremendously by these, you know, the shopping centers. And don't ask where they are now, because I guess they aren't, you know. So I don't think Northland, does Northland still have the stores in there? How much longer? How much longer? How much longer? Okay, so it comes around, goes around, I guess. Goes around and comes around. So that was a big thing. The other thing that happened in the 50s, and we think it just happened, but in the 50s, huge amounts of industry left this city. You know, there's articles in Business Week in 1957 and they're talking about all these factories that were closing up and they're going to Macomb County, they're going to Oakland County. So this march of industry, leaving older plants, going to new plants and building new plants, that started way back in the 50s. It's certainly accelerated by the time you get into the 60s, you know, we had on the east side, we had the Chrysler, Chrysler Quarter, Mount Elliott, you know, there's these bad plants. They had the eight mile stamping, Mount Road stamping, you know, Mount Road engine plant, Huber Foundry. You had the legendary Dodge Main. The Dodge Main was 30,000 people working in that plant. Can you imagine a small city like that? And it also had the neighborhood around there. So Dodge Main got old, you know, they were dealing, and by the time you got to 1970, you're dealing with plants that were built in 1914, 1910. And it wasn't working because, you know, you had Toyota coming in here and kicking their butts in auto manufacturing and their prices were much lower than our prices on cars. And so they started losing things. So these plants became tremendously obsolete. So you found large parts of the city that were abandoned, came to be abandoned in the city. So what happened also at that time, you started seeing the, you know, the government, the federal government, you know, in terms of renewal or urban renewal and other programs were preeminent. By the time you got to the 70s, Richard Nixon passed this program called Community Development Block Grant Program, which resulted in cities having, you know, a great amount of say over what they were going to do for their cities. So Detroit in the first year got $60 million. That's back then $60 million. It was a lot of money. So Detroit had the first, for the first time had the ability to take public action on their own in significant ways. And they did that. There were also other kinds of tools that came along. That, you know, that, you know, you started seeing this, an urban policy emerge and culminated in the Carter years. And Carter originated a lot of programs that helped put cities like Detroit and helped them to do things. So there was a UDAG program. So all these programs were there. And what it did, it enabled a public-private partnership in a way of commercial revitalization. So you saw things like downtown Millender Center and you saw Trolley Plaza. And, you know, most of all, you saw the General Motors Motown Plan. Enormous effort, huge effort. Couldn't have been done without the cooperation of the federal government, but it was really directed by the cities, right? But it was also, you know, General Motors could have left. A year before General Motors decided to build there. Ford came to the city and said, we want to build a plant in the city. And then people in the city looked at one another and said, how do we do that? How do we do that? We're locked in with our built environment. Where do we put them? How do we do it? We can't do it. Well, you know, then years later when General Motors decided they wanted to do a plant, it was like a birthday cake to here city. We're gonna build a plant here. It's gonna be here for the next 30 or 40 years. We want to do it here. Can you do it? Well, at that time Coleman Young was the mayor and he said, we have to do it. And it was a great inconvenience to many people in the city. 3,000 people had to be relocated. That's pretty tough. People that were 80 and 90 years old living in those homes had to be relocated. It was pretty tough. Nobody wanted to do it. But you know, it was a decision that had to be made. Shortly thereafter down the road from General Motors closer to the river, Chrysler renewed their plan. They had their Jefferson plant was built in I think 1910. It was five stories high. Nobody makes cars like that. So that had to be all redone. So now that's the plant where they make jeeps. Another plant over on Mack Avenue. So you started seeing, you know, I guess a conscience on a part of industry to work. We also, like in the 70s, in the 80s, you saw a imagination maybe born out of desperation in the city because what happened here, there were, you know, the downtown development authority was adopted in the city, state legislation adopted in the city. Second one in a nation, California's first, we were second, thought it was a great idea. And then there was Detroit Economic Growth Corporation because there were problems in cities, you know, working in traditional ways. That is cleaning streets, safe streets with police and putting out fires and all that stuff. It was clear that with the depopulation of the city and what was going on in the city, that something more had to be done. And so this Detroit Economic Growth Corporation kind of blended both the public and the private sector and they undertook some pretty important activities and they continue to do that today. So it was like that was, it was not just the projects but it was the organization that was put in place to help move the city forward in commercial ways. So we started seeing things like that and aggressiveness on a part of the city. And again, in partnership with, you know, with Washington that kind of came, that kind of dried up when Reagan became president because there was no urban policy. And you started seeing another thing. You started seeing a kind of a difficulty in moving forward. You had, there was a lot of, you didn't have the momentum you had before, you know, either on the public sector or you didn't have it on the private sector. We did do some great things. You know, we had a couple of stadiums. We had Comerica Park, Ford Field. Those were monumental projects. But in terms of like commercial things, you know, the stuff that was done earlier in the 80s like Melender Center and Trolley Plaza, you know, that kind of disappeared. So you move forward from there and you started seeing planning coming into play. So you started seeing slowly and quietly in downtown and in this midtown area, planning was being. And you know, I know, you know, people, you know. Pass, but you also have to think about your going. So planning came about. And so this overnight success that's midtown really started happening in about 1990. Started looking at what we have to do and what had to be done here was to repopulate this area. What had to be done here was to attract commercial. So now you're seeing the last five years, you're seeing all these restaurants and bars and businesses that have come here. That was not serendipitous. That was really the result of a lot of planning. And also the, you started seeing coming to the four foundations. Foundations started taking the place of the federal government in many ways. That's 60 million that Detroit got in 1974 is now I think around 30 million in today's money. So what has happened is the foundations came in and they saw the potential. And in fact, they started investing very heavily in this area. You also started seeing some magic happening down downtown. You know, you had compuware come in there, the blue more or less. You saw campus marshes come along. These were kind of like messages that maybe were not as bad as we thought they were. And you started seeing efforts to redo things. So the book Cadillac Hotel, the Fort Shelby, these magnificent old structures that were sitting there baking for 30 and 40 years with the trees growing out of the top of the roof. People undertook them and they redid it. The Cales building, a lot of stuff started happening that way. And then, you know, out of, again, during that era, you started seeing, you know, while we had great public private cooperation in the 80s and in the 70s, that kind of appeared in a different way. We used to have an organization called Detroit Renaissance. Detroit Renaissance was a planning organization as well. I mean, if you went to a meeting in the 70s or 80s, you would be sitting there and you'd be sitting with people from Detroit Renaissance. National Bank of Detroit, you know, we had hometown banks here. You know, we had Detroit Bank of Trails, National Bank of Detroit, we had all these banks. And so when you were at a meeting, you almost had to elbow your way to the table to get in between where the banks were because they were so involved with the city and its future. That kind of disappeared. You don't have any hometown banks anymore. You know, you can't go down in your corner bank and ask for money to get money in here. But what's happened is you started seeing an evolution of other kinds of atypical lending that came in and you saw a lot of people getting assisted in creating businesses and being held. It's not enough, but it's something. And there's a lot of local initiative that's been happening as a consequence of the, maybe the maturity of the population of Detroit, or maybe it's also the recognition on a part of the city and the state and everybody else that, you know, we've underestimated the city for a very long time and the market potential here is really is good. It really is great. And you have a lot of people that can work. Now, you know, what has not happened is we haven't gone into the neighborhoods, you know, this model that's here in Midtown or in downtown, how do you package that and how do you take it out to the east side or to the west side? I mean, so how do you now take this and take some of the same, and maybe it's not gonna be the same here where you got Wayne State University, we got the Medical Center, we're not gonna have the same factors, but you can't say that we don't have some of the same, you know, market, you know, things that can impact the market as we have here. I think, you know, we haven't really, we haven't developed a leadership nor develop the potential of some of these neighborhoods. What's happened over the years is, you know, we've declined the population. We're 750,000 people, you know, where we were 2 million. And the thing is, one time I, right here at this restaurant back here, and I'll stop after that, at this restaurant I'm walking by and it was a particularly busy day at Savah here. If you haven't been there, you should go there. And some of the guys were outside, you know, that were smoking cigarettes that were, you know, cooks or washing dishes. And so they're outside and I said, boy, you guys had a busy day. And this one guy said to me, he says, you know what? He said, we buy houses, we buy cars, we go to restaurants, we're just like everybody else, you know, we're 750 people here. And he said, and he said, that's not bad. Anyway, that's it, that's my history. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Ernie, for that really amazing history. I want to first thank George and Omni for convening this series of panels and for asking me to moderate them. My name is Stephen Henderson. I'm the editorial page editor at the Detroit Free Press, the host of American Black Journal and My Week on Detroit Public Television and also the host of Detroit Today on WDET radio. So I have a lot of jobs, I need fewer. I want to introduce our panel. I will ask them a few questions and then we're going to let the audience ask questions. The way that we're going to do that is we're going to have this first note cards. And if you've got a question, write it down and we'll pass them up here. And then I will read the question and you'll get a chance to stand up and interact with the panel if you want. I'm not reading your question, but you don't have to. So with that, I will start with our distinguished panel. Chris Jackson is to my immediate left. Chris is a Detroit native who once served as a Detroit City Council staffer. He also worked extensively on casino regulations in the city. And most notably, he was a former partner in the development of the Green Town Casino. Chris now serves as a partner alongside Jim Jenkins of Jenkins Construction and Queen Lillian LLC at the Drake-based development. To his left is Lauren Hood, who's a community development professional in native Detroit. While studying for her master's in community development at University of Detroit Mercy, she developed a passion for creating engagement strategies recognizing that longtime residents like her are often left out of the redevelopment process. By day, she serves as the community engagement manager at Love Land Technologies, a civically engaged data and technology company. She also develops programming and facilitates dialogues around race and equity issues for her LLC, Deep Dive Detroit, where difficult conversations are at the core of every interaction. Clients have included local fellowship programs, foundation staff and various justice-centric community groups. Recognizing Detroit's rapidly changing cultural landscape, she has also become active in the presentation arena. She serves as a mayoral appointee to the Historic District Commission and is on the board of directors for preservation of Detroit. To Lauren's left is Ken Cockwell Jr., who in 1997 became the youngest person ever elected to the Detroit City Council. He would go on to serve 16 years in Detroit City Government, including four years as council president and a nine-month staff as mayor after the resignation of Armico Patrick. He's been an integral figure in Detroit's development. Currently, Ken is the executive director of Detroit Future City, which seeks to implement a comprehensive, long-term guide for planning and development in the city. And to Ken's left is Charles Beckham, more commonly known as Charlie Beckham. Now, I'm gonna stop here and talk a little bit about that. He's my uncle, my mother's younger brother, and this Charlie Beckham is his Detroit name. In our family, nobody calls him Charlie. He's either Uncle Charles or Charles or Dad or Grandpa. We're here with you, we'll be Charlie, I guess. He is currently the group executive for neighborhoods for Mayor Duggan. He served in the point of capacity for six mayors of Detroit, starting with Mayor Coleman Young in 1974. Charlie has held numerous executive positions in city government, including department director for water and sewage, recreation, chief public lighting, general services, et cetera. He's also been the city's chief administrative officer and chief operating officer along with numerous boards and commissions. Along the way, he also had time to hold several engineering executive positions in General Motors for 14 years and operated his own management consulting firm, The Enterprises. He currently serves as board secretary for Black Family Development and is chairman emeritus of the Michigan Black Chamber of Commerce. So I'm gonna start with you, Chris. And I'm gonna ask each panelist to give us just sort of an overview of what the historical, commercial, business and economic development looks like right now in Detroit and talk about it from the perspective of inclusion. Who's getting an opportunity? Who's not and how is that all working? Thank you, Stephen. Yeah, you need the mic. Good evening to everyone. Couple of things I just wanna mention. One, I am a lifelong Detroiter born and raised here and I currently still live here within the city of Detroit. So I love this city. I love the city for its past. I love the city for where we are now and I will continue to love this city as we continue to grow and even change. As it relates to economic development and where we are as far as inclusion, which is something that's very important to me. Detroit, we do not in Detroit, I should say, Detroiters and I'll preface that by saying Detroiters and not necessarily putting a race tag on it. We do not control economics in this city. We do not for the most part own the grocery stores. We don't own the convenience stores. We don't own the gas stations. We do not own major industry for the most part. There are some African-Americans and other Detroiters, I should say, who may own some industry manufacturing but Detroiters for the most part do not control economics in Detroit. And so that is pretty much controlled by non-Detroiters. And so Detroiters are for the most part, we are patrons, we're customers, we are consumers, we are renters. We are not necessarily really in control of the economic fabric of the city. There are pockets and there are other opportunities that are there where we have developers like Jim Jenkins and myself, George Anoddy. You have George Stewart and Michael Byrne on Woodward. We have the development group that developed the gateway, development on Eight Mile. There are many of those individuals I mentioned are also Detroiters. You have Ernie Zachary, who's a Detroiter who is a major developer and has some control over the economy and economics. So one of the things that I believe is that there needs to be more Detroiters engaged in the economy and controlling the economy of Detroit by owning property, owning businesses, which in fact, if they are Detroiters, they give back and they pay to property taxes, they pay income taxes that then become part of that engine of this re-growth of the city of Detroit. I think that part of the reason is is that we have many of our, we have many middle class Detroiters who left the city of Detroit. They moved and they set up stakes in other parts of Southeast Michigan for a number of reasons. Either they wanted better education opportunities for their children. They felt that there was a safety issue and crime was an issue. And so many of the entrepreneurs, they kept businesses here, but they don't necessarily live here. And I think that truly though, for this city to be a great city, we need those entrepreneurs, we need those owners and business people to be Detroiters because there's a different sensitivity then and a connection to the community when you own a business here and you also live here. So I think that there needs to be some type of incentive that for people who are Detroiters, that when you start talking about incentives and you start talking about some of these programs, I think there should be a preference to people who first make that commitment to move here, live here, engage here, pay taxes here. Yes, maybe have to put their children here. Those individuals should have some type of level of preference when it comes to incentives for business and economic development. I think that we should reward those who are already here or who have made the conscious attempt to come and live here. Regardless of what your race is, I think it's about being a traitor when it comes to those type of incentives. Okay, that's what I'm gonna ask. Well, that says after I didn't prepare what I wanted to say. So we read the questions, but I knew based on what other people were talking about, it would change my direction. What is interesting now about development in Detroit, people act like there's just one movement. Not everybody wants to go to Hotcat. Not everybody wants to work at Quicken. Not everybody wants to live in downtown and Midtown. Like I just got reminded about the rest of the city. I have a friend that does poetry and I'm like, oh, you better get a property fast downtown if you want to have a space where you can do that at. And he's like, property's always fast downtown, but not up where I want to have the space. Like there's a whole other set of economies that are happening here. So this is also what is happening here. I live in Brush Park. I moved downtown because I was attracted to, I don't know, lights, energy. I just, I grew up on the Northwest side and I would always come downtown to hang out on the weekends. And I always was like, I want to live downtown. So that's why I live downtown. It had nothing to do with all this rebirth that is happening right now. I'm excited about it. But it's not for everybody. Not everybody, we talk about programs being inclusive. Not everybody wants to be included in that mess. To some people that is so foreign and different and not what they're into, but there are all these alternative economies. There's stuff going on on Six Mile and LiberNoise now. Well, we're closer to Eight Mile and LiberNoise, but there are programs up there. There are programs that initiated at DGC, which is down here, but there are programs that are happening in neighborhoods and people can participate in those economies without having to change what their culture is. There's a particular culture of development that is happening down here. It appeals to a certain audience. That audience isn't everywhere. That audience is in most of the city. So people talk about, oh, the city's emptying out. So we have 650,000 people here. At least 600,000 people like something different than what's going on right there. So there are just a lot of different types of economies. And I hate that there's just like one story we always got to talk about like Dan Gilbert and Hopcat. Meanwhile, I just went into a new restaurant today. I wish I could remember the name of it. Oh, Chef Gabriel on LiberNoise, Joe's something cafe, but I had never heard of it. Cuzzo's, Cuzzo's. No, not Cuzzo's. See, you wanted to be Cuzzo's. I went there, it wasn't Cuzzo's. It's across the street and south from where Cuzzo's is. There are all kinds of new businesses up there that nobody's been talking about. And the people up there could give you crafts about being included in what is going on right here. And I know that in general, it seems like just one group of people is in it. There are lots of different kinds of people in this economy. If you want to get in, there are ways to get in. You do have to have a certain kind of education, I think. You need to have a certain kind of capacity to socialize with different types of people. There are certain things you need to have going on for you to get to participate in that. But you can find out what those are and who the people are to connect you to those resources if that's the game that you want to play in. But I actually just, I don't know, I'm more excited about what's going on other places now, even though I live right down the street. Yeah, I think Chris and Lauren really did such an outstanding job laying that out. There's really not a whole lot that I can add to that. I will share though, the perspective that I bring to the table is kind of interesting. Speaking not as a former elected official or speaking as the head of Detroit Future City, but really speaking as a resident, the neighborhood that I and my family live in is actually Woodridge, which is a historic district just to the west of Wayne State University. So some people actually consider us a part of Midtown, but we're really not because we're on the west side of the large freeway. So we're close, but not really Midtown. And it's interesting being in that area because we've lived in that neighborhood now for over 20 years. And when we first moved into the neighborhood, there really wasn't a whole lot around us. But one of the things that attracted me and my wife to it was the fact that it was a very, very diverse community. It was diverse ethnically, it was diverse economically, diverse even. I mean, it was the kind of neighborhood that still remains very much to a certain extent. It's the kind of neighborhood where you got straights, you got gays, you got doctors, lawyers, you got garage bands, college students, crackheads, police officers. And in some cases they're all on the same block, literally. I am not joking. And it's an interesting dichotomy too, because on the one hand, we've watched as Midtown has just kind of exploded just to the east of us and seen how that area, well, this area really has grown and developed. And yet by the same time, our neighborhood, we are in very close proximity to some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Detroit. As a matter of fact, that zip code, which is zip code 4-8-2-0-8, at least according to some information, and a friend of mine emailed me a couple of years ago, which I was surprised because here's actually one of the poorest zip codes not just in the city, but in the entire country. So it's really interesting to kind of see, depending on which direction we go, the differences in neighborhoods. And some people would say that that really points to what's going on in the city of Detroit right now. And I'll tell you that Detroit right now is a tale of two cities. One, which is thriving and booming, which is very rich and well-to-do. And another, which is very poor. But I don't even know that that really tells the whole story about what's going on in Detroit. Because when we just break it down as saying, well, look at Quarktown, look at Midtown, look at Downtown, which is booming, but then you've got all these other communities which are suffering. Well, that also ignores the fact that you've still got a number of neighborhoods in the city of Detroit, which tend not to get the level of media attention that some of these other areas get, but which have been very stable over the years and which continue to be very stable, like your Indian villages or your Sherwood Forest or your Grandmont, Rosedale. So just break it down to the tale of two cities is not really telling a complete story about the city of Detroit. I think what we've really got to work towards is the day when we're really just telling the story of one city, which is doing well, doing well for all people of all races, all economic backgrounds. We've still got to get to that point. There's a lot more work to be done. I've also got some thoughts on the incentive issue which Chris touched upon, but I'm not going to go there right now because I have a feeling that Steve has that on his list of questions. So I'll hold off until then. Appreciate that. So one advantage of going last, everybody takes all your points. So I'll try to be quick. I certainly agree with pretty much everything that everybody said. Let me just start out by saying a couple of things. First of all, Detroit is going to come back. It's going to be revitalized. There's no question about it. We have here in Detroit a chance that most of us would like to get even in our own personal lives, a chance to do it over, to start again. We've gone down to the depths. We've gone through bankruptcy, emergency management, and we're now coming out of that with a clean slate and a chance to do things differently and light for Detroiters. And it is going to change. People are coming here from literally all over the world to be a part of this revitalization and this rebirth. What Mayor Duggan has chose to look at first and how the shoe is, because the question is, well, what are Detroiters going to get out of? What are those that stayed and couldn't leave or stayed because they just love Detroit? What are they going to get out of this revitalization? So the mayor chose, well, let me give them, first of all, better services. We've not gotten good services here in Detroit for a long, long time. So we looked at trash pickup. We looked at clinging up the illegal dump sites. We're changing the street lights. We're not where we want to be with police response time, but it's down to when we took office a year and a half ago. Fire Department response is down. EMS response is down. We went into the neighborhoods where the number one complaint after public safety was abandoned homes and fire and burned out homes. So we're doing demolition. Last year, we demolished 4,000 homes. And the mayor likes to tell the story. Of course, as Steven said, this is my sixth mayor, so I've heard every mayor, from going young on down, make promises about how many demolished homes are going to tear down that. All of them promise 10,000 houses a year. Clue, not a good friend, and I see Donald Robinson over there, go in young. So tear down 10, nobody ever got close to that. 4,000 houses the most we've ever done in 40 years in Detroit would probably get close to 5,000. But what you think about it, that's a lot of demolition. We've got a lot more to go. There's probably 25 to 30,000 houses that need to be demolished in Detroit, but this is a good start. We've also looked at it from the standpoint that every house doesn't need to be demolished. We have some great housing stock here in Detroit. Ken talks about Woodbridge, other areas and neighborhoods that have absolutely outstanding homes that we don't need to tear everything down. So what we're doing is, demolishing those that are demolishable, those that aren't, we're trying to put people in those houses and do rehab, reconstruction of those houses. I program the horn very well, there may be some questions later about that so we can go into detail. We wanted to fight the blight. That's exactly what we did. We talk about neighborhoods. Two things in there has done there. And I have the pleasure of serving him as a group executive for neighborhoods. Everything I do every day is about the neighborhoods. Even though downtown is a neighborhood, midtown is a neighborhood, they're taking care of themselves. We're concentrating on the neighborhoods. And so we have district managers and each of the council districts in their daily job is to make sure that the needs and the wants and the desires of every citizen in each one of those districts is taken care of. So we have a district manager and a deputy district manager and that's their number one job. Through the Jobs and Economy Force, which Ken Cockrell's a part of, Tom Alana was my counterpart as any other, we've targeted several neighborhoods to do all of these things to clean up the blight, to fix up the residential, the commercial strips and put dollars and economic development in each of those areas. So we talked about living over seven mile, having to do a fashion, east to war, six mile corridor going over from Illinois to Wyoming to Shaffer and out Grand River Greenfield, Grand River Southfield, Grand River Rosa Parks, which is a little butt up to the Woodbridge area where George has some property over there. We're doing some development things there. Gratitude six mile, Gratitude seven mile. There are economic development activities in those areas that are targeted right now. They just don't get the news stories yet. But it's all coming. And so that's the approach that the mayor should do. Let's start from the bottom and go up. We've got a clean balance sheet. If we in fact can balance our budget for the next two years, we'll even be out from under the financial review commission, which means we'll really be free to do a lot of the things that we want to do. So I think Detroit is going to come back. There's no question about that. There are a lot of good things that are happening outside of the traditional downtown midtown and things that you hear about. I'm sure we'll get more into the details of the whole economic inclusion piece. Chris made a lot of good points there. And there's even activity that we're doing there with respect to the Dougan administration, the whole conversation of community benefits agreements, which is pretty controversial right now. I think we're all on the same page that we believe there should be community benefits agreements. The question is, what's the mechanism by which we get there? And I hope we've got some time today, Steve, to really get into the details of that. But there is a sensitivity to, from at least the Dougan administration, to really make sure that everybody in Detroit benefits from revitalization of what's going on. And so far, there's a lot of data that supports that. Okay, next question. The literal definition of gentrification is the replacement of one population with another, usually with a market difference in the economic status of those two people. And in a city like Detroit, that's majority African-American, it's almost impossible to discuss something like gentrification without talking about the disadvantaged natives who are simply not benefiting from recent developments. We're starting to hear that word be used when we talk about Detroit and when we talk about new things that are happening here. When I ask each of you whether you see gentrification in Detroit right now, and if so, what is it that we should be doing about it? What are the things that government should be doing? What are the things that businesses should be doing to try to reverse that? We'll start at the other end, please die. Good point. You're right, Stephen. That's a popular term now, people are throwing it out. I don't see the massive gentrification that's going on as example in Harlem. That's going on in Northeast Washington, DC, in Southwest Washington, DC, where people literally are being driven out of their neighborhoods and cannot get back into housing and some of the developments that are there. I think to some degree that's gonna happen and it's inevitable, because you just have old housing stock, but for the most part we're making a very concentrated effort here in Detroit to make sure that doesn't happen. As an example, for any new housing project that comes up in Detroit, the mayor has mandated that a minimum of 20% of it, I don't care what it is and where it is, has to have affordable housing as a part of it. That's unique, it's new, that didn't happen in DC, that didn't happen in Atlanta and some other places, it's happening here. People living up to it, we've had some proposals presented to us that did not have that percentage and they were rejected or they were told to go back restructure their proposal and come back with that in there. So there's a sensitivity that the other piece is that we are a city of neighborhoods and so we're not driving people out of those neighborhoods. Our policy is to try to keep as many people in there and in their homes as we can. To give you an example of how difficult that is, as you know the Wayne County Treasurer does foreclosures on homes pricey. And so in the fall of last year, which would bring those houses from the time schedule to foreclosure in January of this year, 40,000 homeowners in Detroit were moving into Wayne County tax foreclosure. So that means those people were not being pushed out by gentrification, it's high unemployment, no jobs, a whole lot of other reasons. And so we've made some concentrated efforts in working with the Wayne County Treasurer to try to keep people in those homes. So the mayor went to Lansing, one of the things you can enter prior to the latest bill being passed, you can enter into a payment plan on back taxes. But by law, Wayne County Treasurer had to charge you 18% on the payment plan. We got that reduced to 6%. We also got to put a cap on how much they could charge you for the outstanding amount that was more than the value of the house. We're able now to bring that down to 50% of the value of the house. So efforts are being made to keep people in their homes, to keep people in the neighborhood so that we're not pushing people out. We targeted those commercial areas in each of those areas I mentioned so that they don't leave those neighborhoods to go other places to have to shop. A lot of times people move just because there's no support services there, can't go to the cleaners, can't go to specialty shops, can't go to a sit-down restaurant. We're changing that on Mr. DeRals to keep residents in the neighborhood. So I see a little bit opposite from what other people see that I don't think there's this outward full gentrification. If you look at what the Illiches are doing with the new estate they're building down there, there's very few people still down there. And so the people that are, if there is housing, which there will be as a part of that project, 20% of it's gotta be affordable. So a lot of those people in fact can move back into that area, which is I think gonna be thriving if you talk about Brush Park. Everything that Sue Mosey had to do here in Midtown had to have 20% affordable housing. It just doesn't get the story. The press just isn't going there. They're living in there. There's people in affordable housing in there. We got some section eight people in Midtown. It just doesn't make the news. It doesn't make the story because it's not sexually good. It's better to talk about justification who got moved out. And so there's a more complete picture as Ken said earlier of what's really going on in Detroit. We unfortunately are segregated town. And so as I always tell Steven's friend, Nolan Philly, he said, I don't see where the black people are. That's cause you don't go where the black people are. Telling that every time I see him, I can take you all around town. You can do stories all day long. I see nothing but African-Americans are taken down in Southwest Detroit and Hispanic. There's people down there that don't even speak English. They don't go down there and write the story about that. They have good communities, strong communities, great restaurants, good food all down there. Are they downtown, Midtown? Actually not, but it's because they don't walk to beat not because they've been excluded. So I think you've got to look at a bigger picture of Detroit. See, when we start talking about gentrification and if we're going to hold it true to the real definition of gentrification. Ken, I want you to start by talking more about your neighborhood, which was my neighborhood 20 years ago. And I can remember, for instance, when the Woodbridge Tavern was a liquor store. I think it was for a while. You called it a second store. I grew up in Midtown. I grew up right up the street from here. You know, it's changed and some of those changes, I think, lead people to believe that the people who were there for a long time can no longer afford to be there or are not welcome. Is that the case? Yeah, so I think as it relates to my neighborhood, as I mentioned earlier, I mean, our neighborhood still continues to be very diverse even from an economic standpoint. Now, I think there are some concerns and some fears about how long that's going to last, particularly as some of the development that was talked about earlier and which Charlie just mentioned. As that starts to move along Grand River, you know, I think there are some concerns about rising property values. And I guess I disagree with Charlie to a certain extent because I mean, I do think, I think we'd be fooling ourselves if we didn't admit gentrification is happening. In a couple of key areas. I mean, in downtown, it's definitely happening. I can remember even reading an article in your paper, which I think ran either late last year or early this year about some of the rising property values and rising rents in downtown, which now we're resulting in what are really being called third wave new Detroiters, where you kind of had this phase of, initially you had some of the poor folks, they got moved out to make way for young professionals. And now some of those young professionals are getting priced out because the rents are going up even more. And the people that are now coming in behind them are, they're the executives. They're the people that own the companies that they work at. So I think in downtown, yeah, it's definitely happening in certain areas. I can remember even, even as far back as about two years or so ago, shortly before I left city council, there was a senior citizen apartment building in the Capitol Park area, which was purchased by a private developer who wanted to go in a different direction in terms of going market rate. And a number of us on council were able to hold that development up in committee until certain commitments were made to preserve a certain number of those units for the senior citizen. But at the end of the day, most of those residents still wound up getting displaced. So that is real. Now, having said that though, where I do agree with Charlie is I think you've got a couple of things that are going in Detroit's favor. While this may be happening, it's very early stage. And I think the real impacts are really only being felt in a couple of areas right now. And that really gives us the opportunity to try to do some creative things to address it. And I think that Charlie is absolutely right that one of the things that Detroit has working in its favor right now, in addition to the fact that this is still a fairly early trend right now, is also the fact that I think city leadership recognizes it and is already taking proactive steps to deal with it. I mean, he talked about 20%. I know of one particular development right here in Midtown, just a couple of blocks away, which is the Strathmore development on West Alexandria, just west of Woodward Avenue, where that was a project that got a certain amount of city incentives. And as a component of that, the city actually advocated that a minimum of 40% of the units in that building be priced affordable. So I think when you have city leadership that recognizes the need to protect Detroiters, people who are already here, that's a big help. You've got a mayor that gets it. I think you've got a city council that gets it. And that gives us the ability to really start being creative, given a lot of this stuff is early on to start thinking about creative approaches to protect longtime Detroiters. So I took on so many notes. I feel like gentrification is a term over-simplifies it. It makes it something that's just for academics and people to pontificate over. It's easy to dismiss, oh, that gentrification thing. But talking about displacement, like as you were talking, that building's called the Alfred, if anybody wanted to Google that story where the senior citizens were forced out. There are legitimate stories of housing developments where actual human beings had to leave to make room for new, higher-paid human beings. Like it's actually happening. And to say that gentrification isn't a concern for us, to me, ensures that it's gonna happen. Like, don't pay attention to that. Nevermind that tidal wave over there. Like it's going to get to us. We're not at a DC level yet. We're not at Brooklyn yet. We're not at Portland yet. But if we don't do anything about it, we will be. And I just, I don't think it's completely okay. Everybody needs a little piece of this action. Like all the native Detroiters that are here aren't here because we got stuck. I know that my parents, for instance, stayed. They've been in, they were in their same house on the northwest side of Detroit for 50 years. They stayed past several waves of flight to the suburbs. And they didn't leave because they couldn't. They wanted to stay. Home ownership is like a linchpin of intergenerational wealth. They're like, we own this. Why are we gonna start over and start paying rent somewhere else? We're gonna give this to you. So people stay because they wanna stay. Everybody that's here isn't trapped or shackled or beat down so much that we just can't go nowhere. No, we could go. A lot of us really stay because we like it and we wanna see this place get better for everybody. Other notes. We were talking about how, bless your heart. We were talking about how the stadium is coming and how, oh, there are no people down here. That's because the illiches were playing the long game. They held onto those properties and kind of made sure that nobody else would live down here so that they could foresee a place where they could put a stadium. It's not like it just happened. People just cleared out. No, the developers were playing a long game and they got what they wanted. Um, what else do I have? Oh, in brush track, my rent has gone up twice in four years. So I could get priced out. I'm a young urban professional. I would like to stay, but I may get priced out gentrification. I don't know. I could go to one of those new hot neighborhoods on the northwest side, back to where it came from, I guess. Oh, and I think that gentrification is not the only thing that's clearing out neighborhoods, but cleared out the neighborhood that I grew up in is fear. So I said my parents left their neighborhoods two years ago, they got held up in their house. That was the last draw. They're like, we stayed here past everything, but the gun to the head in the living room was just like the last thing. And they were the second to last long time residents in the neighborhood. The people that live there slightly longer than they did, like 52 years, also moved out. So there went the whole neighborhood. You drive by that neighborhood, now it looks like Beirut. It is not like the urban Pleasantville that I grew up in. So when we're talking about things that clear out neighborhoods, it's not just like the G word is also fear and crime and just people neglecting a place. And we talk about retention and attraction all the time. I think there's so much more attention paid to getting people to come here from somewhere else. My neighborhood was full of people that had paid property taxes and income taxes for half a decade, the city didn't care about that tax base. Like those are some legitimate people that were paying their bills, paying their dues. They were good stewards to the land. The guy next door to my parents died. They raked the lawn, they cleaned the snow, they shoveled the wood, they were good citizens and those are the people that were losing in exchange for getting, I don't know, a hopcat. We just got to think about what we're putting our attention on. Chris, you sort of work both sides of this issue. You're a native Detroiter, been here your whole life, but you're also a developer who's interested in taking properties in the city and improving them, either with commercial or residential properties. How does displacement play a role in that? And is that ever okay? Or is it always something we should fear? One, just sort of breaking this gentrification term down or at least putting it in two silos. There is the one component where we talk about ownership and so it's about owning the land. And then there's the other component as to what happens on that land or who resides or who owns a business or runs a business on that particular piece of dirt. You know, I give you two case studies to some extent that I'm directly involved in. My partner and I, we built a 63,000 square foot office building right in Mackinac 75. We own the land, we own the building. I would dare say that the majority of the people who work in that building probably are not Detroiters and they're certainly not African-American. And so it is certainly was an economic development that a very positive economic development is providing a tax base for the city, created construction jobs, and you have two African-Americans, one who actually lives in the city of Detroit who owns the property. But the jobs that were created, the 200 or so people who work in there are for the most part because they're sort of high skilled positions that is part of Wayne State School of Medicine. So you have students that are in there which the vast majority of students at Wayne State School of Medicine are not African-American. And you have the professors and others, professionals who are highly skilled people who many some may live in Detroit, but a lot who don't. Another case study is a development we're working on in mid-time, working with Mayor Duggan and his administration. We have acquired and have been approved and we purchased a piece of land on Woodward, probably one of the last Woodward frontages that's here in mid-time. And we will build a 68-unit market rate apartment building. We will have 20% of that building that will be affordable. But unfortunately, this is from the economic development side as a developer, I can only afford 20% of that building to be affordable or my numbers won't work. I will not be able to secure the financing or nor will it be a profitable business endeavor. And so I have to have market rate rents at $1.82 a square foot, which I mean anything to anybody here, really in order to do that development without any city or state initiatives or incentives, I need to be able to charge $2.20 a square foot. I'm basically performing the project at $1.80 and I'm still short and so I need city incentives. And so I can only afford the 20%. That's another situation where we will own it, but I would dare say based on, and this will get to my last point, based on sort of where Midtown is, what the amenities in Midtown are, who is attracted or who will be attracted to my building? And so it will probably not be, and although I will not try to steer, I want a good tenant. You don't, you have, as we talked about, this little talk about hot cat and some other, you know, which are great businesses, but do those type of businesses, are they attractive to a certain demographic? And so do certain people even want or would want to be necessarily in Midtown? And so when you start talking about the gentrification, you start getting into the neighborhoods, as we start, now I heard, this was years ago, working in city council. There was some, there was a council member who was very upset and said, we had too many wig shops on Liberty Hill. I know who that was. Well, the reality of it is those wig shops, they're there because they are, they're viable businesses and there's a certain demographic that go into those wig shops and buy those wigs and the weeds and everything else. So to the extent as these neighborhoods change and those type of businesses start to go away, you know, that there is no motor city soul food like you have a Myers or Seven Mile, or there is no wig shop, and then the different businesses are not necessarily makes that neighborhood not really attractive to a certain demographic of people. And I saw this, I lived in Washington, D.C. for five years. I saw that happen in my old neighborhood that when I go back to 12 MP Logan Circle, there is not the type of things, you know, that really were, you know, really germane to or attracted to a certain demographic in the Washington D.C. community. And so that is something I think we have to keep our eye on the ball as relates to that, that ultimately as you have certain people come in, they buy homes, they fix the homes up, they make this investment, they want that community also to have the very amenities that they like and that many, a many may be a micro brewery, that many may be a yoga studio, the amenity may be something truly dynamic, but does it then fit the amenities that some of the people who live there or other people who may want to move there may say, well, that is, they don't necessarily have the things that I like, they don't have Teresa's, which some people might know about Teresa's on six months, or the board room. For some people, that is their neighborhood or tavern is Teresa's in the board room. And so as, it's a lastly, I think we gotta look at this in the context of what happened in what you saw in the South, where you had a lot of people who own large tracts of land and you had developers who came and gave them what they thought was a fair market value or price for some land and they gave up that land. And so in fact, they gave up opportunity, they gave up the ability to build something and then something was built there that they could no longer afford to move into or back into. And so, we have a situation here where I think there's still a lot of Detroiters, a lot of African American Detroiters that still own property in this city, but certainly they're seeing an opportunity that someone will come and say, well, we wanna buy your property. And it looks like a good deal. They don't have a wherewithal to develop it themselves. And so I think one of the things that certainly the government can do is in certain situations versus somebody that's selling for the cheat and then now they don't have land ownership, they can't develop it. You know, there needs to be, and I think Charlie has really been involved in this where there are mentor ventures or joint ventures on the development side where you have people who own land, they are then teamed up and partnered up with people who wanna come and co-develop these properties and then making sure that you keep some amenities that in that development that makes it attractive to everybody. Chris, you touched on it a little bit in your last answer. I wanna stay there for a second on incentives. Incentives to do development, we also are now seeing incentives to come live in Detroit, the Live Detroit program that has people moving into Midtown and downtown with subsidies from their employers and some other nonprofits is attracting new people. And what's the proper role, though, of incentives in development, both in terms of trying to make sure people are included and attracting new residents to the city? Well, as a developer doing residential development, I appreciate those incentives because that will help to ensure that my tenant base that will be, that my building will get filled up. Those incentives are being offered to people who they're living, they're working here. And I think it's a great program, live Midtown, live downtown. They're giving incentives to people who wanna purchase as well as people who want to rent. And so it is part of helping to repopulate the city, build our tax base. I think in that regard, I really have no qualms with it for the exception that the people who actually work for those businesses who are participating certainly are people who are the Detroiters. And to the extent that if these are Detroiters who are not working for those institutions or those businesses, then many Detroiters will not have the opportunity to take advantage of those incentives, right? Yeah, Stephen, if I might, I'm glad to get that. Certainly don't want to take any food off his table. We have to be real careful about those kinds of incentives because he's actually right. I mean, if you look at Quicken Loans, if you look at the Little Caesars organization, you look at some of the larger employers downtown that in fact were offering these incentives, ain't a whole lot of Detroiters that are part of that. In fact, they moved from the suburbs into Detroit and of course a lot of them came kicking and screaming which is why they had to do the incentives. So if we're not careful, we don't keep a close eye on those kinds of incentives, then we're going to perpetuate the issue of Detroit being the young white professionals at White International. And the bottom line is that's who's moving back to Detroit and out of reality is folks that's still more people leaving Detroit than it's coming into Detroit. So let's not get carried away here. We're still losing population. But the people that are coming in are young professionals and empty nesters for the most part. We're trying to keep those who, as Lauren says, who really want to stay and then those who have no choice but to stay to improve their city services, to make their neighborhoods better, to provide them with more services and ultimately jobs so that they can participate in the economic activity that goes on in Detroit. But we've got to be careful about incentives who gets them at what level. Yeah. I was second a lot of what Charlie said on all those incentive programs. I was opportunity begets opportunity, right? So the people that qualify for those incentive programs already have a really good job at a really stable organization. You had to be at a certain level in the organization and have been there for a certain amount of time. So you've already got a lot of things going for you. Then on top of that, we're like, here's some money to move downtown or to live in midtown. But I would like an incentive. I've been here for 43 years, what do I get? I had to work for everything, for really hard, really hard overcoming a great many obstacles, being a woman, being a black person. I had a lot of privilege. I was middle class and pretty stable middle middle, but having to overcome personal challenges, like just to get somebody, I would like help staying in my brush park apartment. Where is my incentive? That's all I'm gonna know. Where's the incentive for the people that have been here and toughed it out? And again, maybe for the people that couldn't leave, can they have an incentive too? But the ones that wanted to stay, why do I have to go work for Quicken or Henry Ford Hospital or DMC or whatever the short list of why should only those people be valued in living around here? It should just be open up to everybody. Yeah, I agree with a lot of what's been said. So I'll try not to be redundant. I think the thing that we do have to keep first and foremost is that the ultimate incentive to either entice someone to come to a community or to stay in that community is to provide a high quality of life and a high standard of living. And I think we have to be candid and admitting that part of the reason why you see some of these incentive programs being created and being offered is because we ain't quite there yet. Charlie really hit the nail on the head when he talked about the city's population situation and Ernie really kind of covered it in his intro. The reality is Detroit at the height of its population back in the 1950s was home to nearly 1.8 million people. Well actually it was 1.8 million people. Now Detroit, at least according to some of the pre-census mid-decade census numbers I've seen, we're at below 700,000 people. And yet we've still got a service delivery model that is very much still structured to service nearly 2 million people. So the reality is that part of how we can better serve our population is by growing that population. Because when you grow the population you grow the tax base. So incentives can actually be an important mechanism for doing that. So from that standpoint I really don't have a problem with them. However I do agree with much of what's been said here and recognize that the discussion of incentives really needs to be broadened. At Detroit Future City we have a steering committee and an executive committee. And at one of the meetings one of those bodies about a week or so ago one of our members actually said something in response to a comment that was made about attracting new Detroiters. And his point was very powerful and it stuck with me. I'm gonna repeat it with you which is that when we talk about bringing in new Detroiters that tells me as a long time Detroiter that I'm not important. And you know that's a real settlement that we have to recognize and acknowledge and deal with for what it is. So this discussion of incentives does in fact need to be broadened in such a way that we talk about doing things for those that have stuck it out through the high times, the low times and all the times in between. And in some respects those folks not only do they have equal value you could argue they should be valued more. I just have one more thing on incentives. I always think of that like Sears AI campaign like take a look at us now whenever I hear about an incentive program I'm like oh there's Detroit doing that shuffle and sample take a look at us now. Why if you are not ready for Detroit the way it is then don't come here yet. Why do we need to get you here? Stop hemorrhaging people from my neighborhood who are a tax base. I don't need you here if you are not ready for us as we are is my opinion. Our fan club here. I wanna quickly turn to community benefits agreements that's been a subject of real argument in Detroit for not just recently but for a very long time we've had community benefits agreements for a long time in Detroit with the most big projects. A lot of them have not done what they should to keep communities intact. But the question I wanna ask is whether community benefits agreements are a foil to gentrification. Is that one of the ways that we make sure that people who have been here for a long time are taken care of and that when new people come in that there is some benefit, some direct benefit to them from that influx of new people and money. We started the other end here with Charles. Good, that's a hot topic that's going around lately. There's a huge discussion of course at city council now on whether or not A, we should have community benefits agreements and then what form that they take. Let's make one mistake about this. I think most of the council people now certainly know the Doug administration believes that every major deal that happens in Detroit there should be a benefit to the community. No question about that. But the challenge comes in as to how we implement that. And so there's a camp that says that it should be an ordinance which in fact is close to a law. So that every developer that comes through here has to negotiate with every single group and interest group that is in the area that this development is going to happen. What developers will tell you, Chris knows this from around the country and around the world they're not coming here if they have to do that. If they've got to sit down with six or seven different groups with different ideas, different approaches, different CDC here, a neighborhood association there and that's what's being proposed. It will add sometimes six, eight, nine, 10 months. You need Marvin Beatty to tell you about what he had to go through to do the development at eight mile and miles. If you all go how long it took that thing to go on that's cause he was busy having to negotiate with every separate equal. So what we want to do is to be competitive in bringing major developments to Detroit. And part of what that is for developers is how can they come in and put their deal together quickly and get up and running and start some cash flow which then helps the economy for us. And so what the administration's side of this proposal is that let's have a community benefits agreement. Let's make sure that it's a part of the deal once it comes to city council but let it be a policy, not an ordinance. And let me give you an example of that and Donald and his wife left but 30, 40 years ago when Coleman Young was the mayor. We had a, it wasn't called that then but it was a policy. And the point was is that it was a policy that he instilled every time that developers were afraid to come to Detroit and not put a proposal together when there wasn't significant community benefits for the wrath of Coleman Young because it came from the leadership. It came from the president of city council who was Carl Lemon at the time where it was a policy that that's what you had to do. And that worked. Some of the developments that you see around town now were all done without having the community benefits ordinance. So all we're saying is community benefits are very important and are must quite frankly but it's how you implement it. If we put something together that makes us less competitive with Columbus and Toledo and Chicago and Pittsburgh and other those other places we're not gonna see the kind of development that we need to see that creates the Chris Jackson and the Jim Jenkins and the others because they're not coming here. They've been very clear about that and Chris may want to deal with this point. So that's really what this whole community benefits arguments about. It's gotten skewed and everybody thinks it's one side or another saying that there shouldn't be benefits for the community. That is not what we're saying. It's how we implement it and how we maintain our competitive nature with other cities who are trying to get those same developers to come to their town to do housing and plants, construction and everything else. And so I want to say it loud and clear that government administration is all for community benefits. There's no question about that. And I'm actually glad to hear that because I personally support community benefits agreements and everything that Charlie says consistent with what I've heard, which is that both generally the mayor and the council are on the same page and everybody wants community benefits agreements. It's just a question of what's the best way to get the train to the destination. And that's the fact that there's at least a general agreement I think is huge to the heart of your question, Stephen. I do think that community benefits agreements are important and I do think it's part of the solution because community benefits, what they will do and what they can ensure is that on some of these big ticket projects that not only do you have a certain amount of the contractual work associated with the construction and development of these projects going to Detroit based businesses and firms, but also that the long terms created as a result will also accrue to Detroiters. And it's important because we have seen a number of instances over the years where some of these projects have come to Detroit. You know, you hear the promises made and discussion about reasonable best efforts and the reasonable best efforts don't really yield a whole lot. Case in point was the marathon project the refinery down in Southwest Detroit which a lot of people don't know but that at the time that project was announced you look at the amount of money that's being put into it it is actually the biggest economic development project not just in the cities but in Wayne County's history in terms of the amount of dollars that are being spent there. And they were promises made to not only hire Detroiters but to hire a certain number of people directly from that zip code 48217 and they haven't been delivered on. They have not been met. So from that standpoint I do think that community benefits agreements are a partial solution. This is a bigger issue. I mean there's other matters out there that we gotta deal with like concentration of poverty. Charlie talked earlier about the educational challenges that we face in DPS and here in the city of Detroit. But I do think that one of the important things that we can't lose sight of and I'll just say I'll try to be as quick as possible. And I think part of the reason why I wanted to be invited to actually speak at this panel is because I participated in a similar forum back in January and prior to participating in that forum I had actually called up George who's the reason we're all here tonight. And I wanted to kind of just sit down and pick his brains on this subject of gentrification because he's always somebody that I have respected in terms of his business acumen and the way he does things. And his take, I hope you don't mind me sharing it, is that he talked about how he developed this place and how he basically saw or rather foresaw what was coming and then positioned himself to take advantage of it. So I do think that at the end of the day when we talk about gentrification, George's lesson is one that we should really all learn from all too often the discussion of gentrification it starts from a place of fear. And that's really not where we ought to be starting it. We should be starting it from a standpoint or from a place of curiosity about how we can maybe seize the opportunity that it presents. Because that's how you really begin to get things like what George has developed here, like what Chris has done with Queen Lilia. More of our people need to be doing that. We need to be trying to foresee where's gonna be the next hot area that's gonna pop and start thinking in terms of buying and acquiring property there. I mean, the way I look at it is if you know that the wave is coming, you got two choices. You need to get drowned by it or you can surf it. Ooh, Dr. Mike walks off. What did she say? I said Dr. Mike walks off. Um, CBA. I'm saying clubbing, yeah. How have you come? Um, it's so multi-layered. So I was working with the Group Corridors Alliance in the CAS Corridor to get a CBA with the Illages over the development of the arena. But there are other organizations that are doing so much more work like Linda Campbell at People's Platform. We should talk to Reverend Ross in the North end. Like those people have been at the forefront of trying to get this ordinance passed and I totally agree and yes, we should have it. And I feel like if there are developers that wouldn't wanna come do business here because we have that ordinance, then maybe we don't need them either. Can we think of a new model of development and not just maybe we don't need that kind of big box development? Maybe we can think of something else. We're just so programmed to think about development in one way, can we challenge ourselves to unplug from the matrix and like be creative? Maybe there's a different way to do it. Just maybe. I guess, yeah, I think it's, oh, there you go. You know, I'm actually accustomed to in this community benefit agreement term, is you know, people think that this is something that is new. But as Charlie had mentioned, development agreements between a developer and the municipality is something that has been taking place, you know, over 30 or so years or more here in the city of Detroit. Ken, former councilman Ken Cockrow has, was involved in two projects, major projects that I was part of, where we had development agreements. One was Greek town casino. It was very successful. We had a requirement of hiring 50, at least 50% of the employees had Detroit residents, current Detroit residents. We had some requirements relative to construction, relative to hiring or hiring minority-owned and women-owned businesses. And so those development agreements, it had teeth in it, it had punitive damages. In fact, if we did not, you know, abide by that agreement. My Queen Lillian project, in fact, we had a development agreement, which was very similar as far as it focused more on the construction jobs. I do agree with Ms. Hood in that, I mean, I think developers don't need to come to the table. First of all, instead of having their arms twisted, people do need to come here wanting to help the city, wanting to provide opportunity for Detroiters, wanting to hire Detroit-based architectural construction companies and engineers. I mean, that should not be something that you should have to be brow-beated in order to get them to come in here to take advantage of these various incentives because the development agreements are tied to incentives. The city council is saying, if we're gonna give you the tax breaks, if we're gonna give you the brownfield and the operas and all these things, then you have to make a commitment of which you're gonna give back to the city. We have been fortunate in that when we came to the table with Greta Casino, with Queen Lilian's development, I had an African-American contractor, African-American architectural firm with Queen Lilian. We use engineering firms, Detroit-based women-owned companies that we already had selected day one before we even signed a development agreement, and so I agree that there needs to be a new attitude that when developers and business people come to Detroit, yes, it needs to be profitable, but also, I mean, you gotta hire somebody to build it. You gotta hire somebody to do the architectural. You gotta hire an electrician and a plumber and a carpenter, and why not use Detroit-based companies? I mean, we got plenty of them here. As relates to it being an ordinance or it just remaining as a development agreement, I mean, I really don't, I think that the development agreement model has worked. You know, I think there are some things that are part of the ordinance component relative to hiring people within the certain zip codes that in order to have them working on the particular job, I think there's a direct conflict with the unions because the city makes us as developers hire or hire union companies, be it a carpenter or electrician, but the people who are in that union don't live in that zip code where I'm building my building. And so at some point, you know, I think the people who are pushing the ordinance has to make a decision. Do they want to please the union or do they want to have, truly have people from that zip code working on that job or they gotta get the unions to hire or bring into their union membership people who live in that zip code. That's one of the things that's sort of missing in a discussion. And so you don't hear, and I'm not anti-union, but I prefer to hire somebody where I'm building my building near Mack and Woodward. But is that person in the carpenter's union? Are they in the electrical union? They can't just walk off the street and come get on our job. They gotta come through the union. And so is the union doing the outreach in that zip code at Mack and Woodward, bringing those individuals into their union so they can participate. So I just think that's something that needs to also be part of that discussion. Okay, we're gonna start with the audience questions. And I'm gonna read the question. If it's your question, if you want, you can raise your hand and say it was yours and dialogue with the panel if you want. If you don't wanna do that, you don't have to. So the first one is there's a lot of overpopulation in Midtown and CBD. Developers in these major markets are almost asking Chicago rates without density. If you want the independent and not changed, they need to be more creative with build out and with rent. Who has questions? Who wants to address that? It's not really a question. That's kind of a comment. It is, but we're at work leaders. If you want like, you heard about businesses, Chicago independent businesses, which can happen. And sure you're gonna have a national change. It's gonna be a typical of the growth in Detroit. But I think, and having had a small business in Midtown for 10 years and we were successful, we had the Atlas Bees drill. I think there needs to be an understanding of what the small businesses need. They need to be more creative incentives for really unique businesses to stay within. And that can be retail and that can be anything art. But in order to have like the sole hoes and the interest being like Andersonville in Chicago, you need to have, I think, more incentives. And I think some, and nothing against developers. I think some of them are missing the market. And I just, it's an opinion, but I just think the rates are accessible right now. And I can just agree back on what you're saying that, in my development, for instance, we have 15,000 square feet of retail space that'll be on the first floor. Well, based on the numbers of my project, I have to charge X rent to a retail establishment in order to make my performer work. Well, that X number is way too much for the independent retailer who wants to come and be intended in the building. And so there does need to be something to help equal out that playing field because then I can only really talk to some of these major corporations who have the ability to wear with all of them to pay those higher rents. I think that's... If I can add too, a lot of the foundation and there's nothing to no emotion here go directly to the developers with a lot of these funds. And I think they should get down on the ground now. They're 10,000 feet above. We've come down a thousand feet. We should be walking on the ground with these. And not even us. We actually, we're not really interested in reopening, but just other people I talk to as a commercial broker, they need incentives. I mean, some of these people don't have the capital. They have capital to get in, but they don't want to sign personal guarantees on their life. And so if we can get some of the foundations to get on the ground with these independence, I mean, I think it would really help keep things diversified. Not necessarily an incentive, a subsidy. Right. Okay. Next audience question. What's being done to promote awareness to communities that will soon have developments in their areas? Whose question is that? What's the city doing to promote awareness? Well, we've got a few things we're doing. I mean, obviously the capacity of the city is limited just coming out of bankruptcy, but this mayor is pretty, pretty innovative with the things he's doing. And so if anybody frequents the city websites and kins from me with it, DetroitMI.gov, we're doing a lot of things there. I mean, it's certainly way above my technological understanding, but there's all kinds of applications in that website, marketing, the auctions that we do. You can go on that website and I'll find out just about anything that we're doing in what area economic development opportunities that are coming, the purchasing and job opportunities that are coming. You can look at every house that's coming up for auction. You can look at every house that may be next door on your block when it's gonna be demolished, to what date. So we're trying to get the word out as much as possible about what we're doing in the city, both good and bad. Very soon you'll be able to lodge your complaints and concerns. If it's an inoperative, a fire hydrant, somebody didn't show up to pick up the trash, whatever you'll be able to go to an application, put it in the system and it'll come back to you with the date on which that's gonna get done. You can always check on that. So we're doing some of those kinds of things, but again, they're limited just based upon the capacity of the city, but it's much more than we used to do. And then the media's gotta start jumping on some of this stuff. And there's no offense to my nephew down there. They do what they do. But they're only going after the stories that they think are popular for them. I mean, there's some good stories. We haven't got them yet to go down to Cusles on the Living noise, something I'll do a story down there. Or my man who was at the Addison building there. I mean, there's a new restaurant back in there since he left. How about a story on that? How about a story on Hot Sam's downtown? It's one of the oldest retail stores that happens to be African-American only in downtown. No story on that. How about floods, barn grill, African-American business, middle class folks going down there for years. No story on that. I mean, there's all kinds of things that the media could help us with marketing on if they just really wanted to and started pushing Detroit. We hear all about the bad stuff and that's good, but how about some of the good things that are going on? We've targeted Living noise seven mile in the commercial area down there. I'm hoping that we'll bring some stories there. I for one personally decided that it's an embarrassment to have the most affluent area of our city, the most solid tax base. And we had the University District, Sherwood Forest, Palmer Woods, Green Acres and they have no decent retail strip down there. So we're gonna change that. So we're making a concentrated effort to do it. I'm hoping that the media will talk about that so that nobody knows that. So it won't be a secret anymore. So marketing is, it's expensive if you have to do it yourself, but we've got some of the best marketers around Detroit News and Free Press, Michigan Chronicles. Just come down, tell the story. Well, my response to that question, I would say in my advice to anybody that wants to get a sense of development trends, particularly within your respective neighborhoods. And I'm actually kind of surprised you didn't mention this. And I hope you're not selling yourself and your colleagues short, but is the Department of Neighborhoods. The mayor's created the Department of Neighborhoods and now every city council district has a district manager and deputy district manager. And those folks are very, very plugged in about what is going on within their district, including development trends. And I found, at least in our dealings with them at Future City, that they really can be an excellent resource in terms of if you wanna know what development is happening within my district, how does that impact me? Something else I would also recommend is get to know the various organizations in your community. And I'm not just talking about block clubs or community associations, but in particular, if your neighborhood or your area has a CDC. And by CDC, I'm not talking about citizens district council, I'm talking about community development corporations. You do have a number of nonprofit community development corporations throughout the city who have been, and in many cases, continue to be active players in development projects within their neighborhoods. One example, for example, is the core city neighborhoods, which is on the near west side, which developed a number of housing properties in that particular part of town. Another example is they used to be Warren Conner Development Coalition, they changed their name to E-Site Community Network shortly before the end of last year. That's another organization that has actually developed both commercial and residential projects over the years. So I'd suggest also finding out if there are such entities in your neighborhoods, getting to know them, find out what they're working on. Another really good example, I'll just say this and then I'll stop, is Vanguard, which is a CDC, which is, their headquarters is actually on East Grand Boulevard, just a couple blocks to the east of Woodward Avenue. I know, I was in a meeting with them last year where they were actually talking about plans that they had to redevelop and preserve that area, especially because of their proximity to Midtown. They were thinking in terms of, look, not everybody's gonna be able to get into Midtown and as rents and property values continue to rise, folks are gonna be looking for the next area. And they believe that they were well-positioned and were already developing a plan to take advantage of that. So find out if there are organizations like that within your respective neighborhoods. I just want to just add, and Charlie and the administration are doing so many things, but there's one major initiative that is really gonna touch the neighborhoods and I think anybody in here who's an entrepreneur who's looking at doing a business within one of the major commercial corridors in the city is called the Motor City Match. I sit on the EDC Board of Economic Development Corporation for the city and Ernie talked about these block grants that we used to get from the federal government and a lot of that money used to go into the big projects like the Chrysler Plant and the General Motors Plant. Well, the mayor has actually been reprogrammed. It's not a big number, but it's four and a half, $5 million of that money every year committed for the next five years that comes to the EDC just to spur economic development along the major business corridors, commercial corridors throughout the city. So that's seven miles, six miles, Connor, Harper, Grand River and it is for that independent entrepreneur who either has a building but may not have a business and is matching up someone with a business who doesn't have a building and is giving technical assistance and support to get a business be it a coffee shop or a print shop or something like that off the ground. And so I actually applaud the administration. That's a major initiative where it's now moving out of the city core into these commercial corridors where most of the Detroiters really live, where we don't have the retail, where we don't have the commercial retail. So Motor City Match, it is on online. It is something I think at least a step forward. Now I will caution, as we're talking about gentrification today, is that who will take advantage of that program? And that is, I think that's where the rubber meets the roll that at some point that if you have people who are not necessarily the Detroiters that are already here who go and take advantage of that, then that to some extent is a shame on Detroiters but we need to educate ourselves, get involved in that because those are a type of programs that are there and you want to be getting in and be a part of it. And so I'm certainly going to push for that as a member of the Economic Development Corporation Board making sure that Detroiters first are the ones who are participating in that program. Okay, before we go to the next question, I'm going to push back a little against my uncle, Charles. I just did a little doodling and there's a story, just January 30th about Kuzos at Six Mile Lube. All right, all right, all right. I'm still the director. I say it correctly. A little glimpse of what it'll be like at our Thanksgiving day. The next question is, I hear about reserving 20% of affordable housing, but we spend, can we spend some of that money to help people raise their incomes? Obviously poverty is a big driver of the problems that we have in Detroit and it's one of the things that's affected by gentrification is the ways that people get left behind. What are some of the things you do policy-wise to deal with that end of it? Whose question is that, by the way? That's the question I was asking because I hear a lot of the conversation and I think things are being done as well to raise people's income, but in the conversation, I hear about affordable housing. We're gonna reserve 20% for affordable housing and sometimes I think, I don't know, I would love to hear more conversation about how to raise people's income so they can afford to live. Right, so they can afford to live in these places. We also have the mass movement of the black middle class that lived in Detroit who moved to the suburbs and they don't see the value that other people are seeing. That's also a source that sometimes is not tapped into because they moved. And so, yeah, I think there are other avenues. Yeah. Well, and I'll just briefly say just to have, so everyone is clear when you say affordable housing because a lot of people always are thinking vouchers or you're thinking, you know, to some people it may come to mind the projects or something like that. Affordable housing is based on 80% of the median income in Wayne County. So, in fact, you can have a, you know, maybe, unfortunately, a Detroit police officer, maybe a school teacher at a charter school because they're not paying a lot, with a couple of kids who very well could fit into that demographic as far as affordable housing based on what, you know, the federal government and these incentive programs. So, it's not necessarily a low income. I agree with you. I mean that, and that is something that, you know, is way above us, you know, there's a discussion taking place in Washington about increasing wages and that kind of thing. I wish, you know, from a selfish perspective that we had higher incomes in this region where I could charge more rent, frankly. Even people who are considered middle class, can only go to $1.82 a square foot, which is still, you know, 50 cent way below where I need to be in any other middle class community even around the country. And so, you know, to the extent that incomes do go up, I think it's better for everybody. And, you know, and that's, you know, I think that is the dance that everybody is doing now. I mean, you have the unions pushing for that. You know, and, you know, it's something that I think is, I don't know any of us up here that we have any control over it. Yeah, and simultaneously we have high-end jobs that aren't being filled because you can't find people to fill them. And so, some of this money that goes into subsidizing, and it's long term, you know, this is shorter term, but also when you try to solve problems and you're just thinking the short term as opposed to the long term, then the problem still will reoccur. So, that's, you know, they can't fill certain jobs and then we're still looking to subsidize. It seems to me, yeah, the math is interesting. You're absolutely right. But, you know, there's another group that works very closely with Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation, headed up by Pam Moore. She gets $60 million a year out of the federal government to do job training. She's running thousands of Detroiters through that program every day to train them for some of the high-tech jobs and more complex jobs that are coming. That's been one of the big problems. I mean, particularly, and Chris knows this in construction, it's all skilled trading. We don't have a lot of Detroiters in our Americans in skilled trading. So, we need to break into that part of the area and get more apprenticeship programs and more journeyman programs to that. So, we're trying to address it, but, you know, you're talking about a city that depends on which day you're counting. It's 25 to 30% unemployment. Young folks from 18 to 24 is probably closer to 50%. And so, there's a massive training effort that has to go on. But we're addressing it person by person as well as we can. But Pam's doing a great job over there. She's got installations all around the city, east side, west side. So, nobody can claim that they can't get to where she is because they're on every side of the town. So, we're coming. Again, it's something that you wouldn't necessarily know about and we need to do a better job of getting the word out. She does do good marketing. She's got a lot of partnerships with Wayne County Community College and some of the things that we're doing. So, slowly but surely, we're getting there. I know that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and Mike Finney has done a lot of training programs, a lot of initiatives. They've been working with Detroit manufacturing systems over on the west side. They're hiring the chronically unemployed with training. We were over at Brunner, Rosa Parks the other day and the young lady over there was the name of the group. Can't remember now, but the ladies make jewelry. All the ladies make the jewelry out of graffiti. And she only hires welfare bumpers around the court, folks. What is it? Yes, yes. And so there's efforts like that, that are going on to hire folks who even traditionally haven't had a consistent job. So we're addressing it, but it's a massive problem. But again, with the help of a lot of folks at the state and the feds and foundations who want to chip in, we're knocking away at it step by step. Okay, we're going to take one last question I think before we adjourn. What development apprenticeships, internships programs are offered for youth? That's a good question. How do you get more people who are living in the city, who are natives involved at the development level in the cities to come back? Well, I'll just say real briefly, my partner and I, we hire Detroit public school students to be intern in our office throughout the whole year. Even in the summer, we have at least two kids, pretty much all throughout the year, and they get an opportunity to see both what we do as development, what we do in construction, allowing them to, you know, have this, even if they somewhere down the road have no idea or don't want to be involved in construction or development, they're at least exposed to it in the various components of it. So I think certainly that's something more, hopefully more Detroit businesses would do that. I know the mayor has an initiative that Charlie will probably talk about, matching up a lot of corporate entities with Detroit youth. Yeah, you're absolutely right. We have a youth employment program that's coming up this summer, and I forget the acronym for it and what the name is, but Ken talked about my district managers that are out there. One of the things they're being evaluated on is how many businesses, both downtown and in the neighborhoods, that they can get to hire Detroit youth. And it's a great program because if they agree to do it, we've got money in a pile. We pay half the cost. So the corporations are jumping on that. Our aim is to have over 500 this year and add another 500 every year for youth employment in Detroit. So again, step by step, we're really trying to get there. I wasn't going to mention any programs specifically, but I was going to say if you want more people in the neighborhoods to be civically engaged, you have to meet people where they're at. So I love that this event is here, but like the collective knowledge in this room, everybody in here knows about all the programs. So if each one of you would take a trip to another neighborhood and share that with some other people, then you can get people in the neighborhoods to know about things. Everybody down here knows about all the stuff. We just have to spread the knowledge. Okay. I want to thank our panel for their insights. And I want to thank George for being here last year. Thank you. Thank the panel. Very lively discussion there. I want to add one thing though. You know, I have to do this right now. Is that a lot of things you can really just do yourself. I'm a trooper. I'm a believer in not getting stuck on like what kind of program I can get in, who's doing or who's not doing something. I would say like 10 of you get a neighborhood and say, there's 10 vacant houses here. We're all buying for a thousand. Everybody get a house. You have changed that neighborhood just by y'all working on that house. So you can do your own revitalization plan without spending months and time going through some type of program that you may not ever get the money for because you're not going to be solid enough. So always think about yourself. Think ahead. I'm just wanted to kind of note something. When I talk to people about gentrification, I always say it's revitalization, not gentrification. You want to focus on that because revitalization doesn't exclude anyone and you don't need as much capital to make your neighborhood better. Well, thank you very much for coming in. And just for one minute, we have Aldrich here to give a couple of announcements. Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming out today. We really appreciate your attendance. Can you hear me? I'm new to this. I'm not a public speaker. I'm Taylor Aldrich. I'm the program coordinator here. So I've coordinated this event. I really appreciate your attendance. Next Friday, we're going to have an opening in conjunction with the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo show at the DIA entitled Mundo Americas. So we have our opening. It's going to be from 6 to 9 p.m. So please come out for that. We'll have refreshments, drinks, chips, some food for you to nibble on. And there's going to be the third and final installment of this panel on April 16th from 6 to 9 p.m. as well. So we look forward to seeing you all there again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, how are you? Yes, good to see you. Thanks, George.