The Heidelberg Project, in the news this year because of serial arson attacks, also faces a familiar situation for homeowners in a tough economy -- property foreclosures.
"Underlying problems existed for the urban art nonprofit even before a string of arson fires," the Free Press reports in a Page One centerpiece display.
The Heidelberg Project has lost homes and empty lots to unpaid property taxes over the past several years — including its signature “Party Animal House” covered in stuffed animals that is now owned by the city, a Free Press review of city and county records found. . . .
The unpaid taxes and lost houses happened as artist and project founder Tyree Guyton’s street art gained renown, and grants from prominent foundations swelled the project’s revenues from $54,000 in 2008 to nearly $600,000 in 2011.
A Central Michigan University group visits the project last month. (Photo from Feet on the Street Tours)
The string of eight fires since May destroyed four of the seven art homes at the project site, a two-block area on and near Heidelberg Street on Detroit’s east side, write Keith Matheny and Tammy Stables Battaglia.
Guyton, who was on Heidelberg Street cleaning up burned wreckage earlier this month, declined to discuss the foreclosures. . . .
Heidelberg Project executive director Jenenne Whitfield — Guyton’s wife — in a later telephone interview said the Heidelberg Project’s goal now is “to find a way to pick up the pieces and keep moving.”
“We have risen from the ashes before, and we will do it again,” Whitfield said.
She links property tax problems to an “ongoing battle with the City of Detroit” over its refusal to grant the project tax-exempt status, the article says.
The project obtained that status in 2011, and it was made retroactive to 2007. But in some cases, homes and properties were already lost, or unpaid taxes went further back.
Here's what Robert Anderson, the city's planning and development director, tells the paper:
"We really need to at some point sit down as a community and think about what is the role of that art installation in the community. I know some people are opposed to it; some people support it. I think Mr. Duggan’s administration is going to have to probably have a conversation about that, especially with the recent arsons. I think it really brings into question what role is that going to play in the community.”
Mayor-elect Mike Duggan spokesman John Roach said the new mayor will review the matter after he takes office Wednesday.
Earlier coverage:
