The Downtown Detroit Partnership, a civic coalition, has an ambitious idea about how to have a cleaner, safer central commercial district in a broke city.
To make it happen, Kirk Pinho and Amy Haimerl explain at Crain's, at least 152 property owners in a defined business improvement zone would have to OK a new tax on themselves and other landlords.
The vision is "to fund an entity that would have a $4 million budget to pay for things like downtown cleanup, beautification and safety," the reporters write.
"These services have been paid for by the generosity of a few businesses and organizations, and now it's time to expand," said Dave Blaszkiewicz, president and CEO of the DDP. "We want to bring consistency across the entire district and add some new bells and whistles."
The zone's proposed boundaries would lie roughly between the freeways — I-75 to the north; I-375 to the east; M-10 to the west — and the Detroit River, and would impact the 253 commercial property owners in that expanse.
For the zone to happen, 60 percent of those property owners would have to vote to approve both the entity and the tax levy. The funds would be collected by the Detroit Treasury Division but could be used only for downtown improvements.
Owner-occupied residential buildings and sites owned by nonprofits or government bodies would be exempt. Large apartment buildings would be assessed, Crain's reports after a briefing by Eric Wilson, planning and development manager for the partnership.
A similar effort failed in 2003, but Blaszkiewicz said 10 years has made all the difference. . . . "We had 80 percent vacancy then," he said.
The downtown partnership, founded in 1992, describes itself as is "a private-public partnership of corporate and civic leaders." Public partners are public are the city and the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation.
