Urban planner Bernice Radle had us at her opening sentence: "You have stolen my heart, Detroit," begins the Buffalo resident's latest blog post about "36 hours in the Motor City."
Bernice Radle: "The entrepreneur spirit is alive and well in the Motor City."
The 28-year-old visited recently with three friends "who love planning, cities, buildings and the rust belt." They stayed at a "kick-ass industrial loft space" with 6,000 square feet, booked via airbnb.com.
Stops included the obligatory (Campus Martius, Fox Theatre, Eastern Market, Slow's, Michigan Central Station, Shinola) and the imaginative (an Arden Park mansion, Gaelic Irish Center, UFO Factory social club, City Bird gallery in Midtown and "urban prairie" in sight of downtown).
The travelers from western New York's Niagara Frontier -- who also included Susan Cholewa, Chris Hawley and David Torke -- had heard and seen glowing reports from Detroit architect Mark Nickita, whom they met last June when Buffalo hosted the annual Congress for the New Urbanism.
They reunited with him at the Guardian Building downtown, site of Nickita's 36th floor office at Archive Design Studio. The architect also is a co-owner of Pure Detroit and Cafe Rowland in that 1929 landmark on Griswold Street, which dazzled the urban preservationists. "My heart and eyes just exploded," Radle says of the "Art Deco masterpiece" in an Instagram caption and tweet.
Radle, a 2011 urban planning graduate from the State University of New York at Buffalo, is managing member and co-founder of Buffalove Development, which rehabs vacant and underused Buffalo properties. She was particularly smitten with a former Kresge family mansion in the Arden Park/East Boston Historic District off Woodward.
"This place is incredible," she says of the 16,000-square-foot home with century-old tile floors and other details. The current owner, Paddy Lynch, gave the visitors a look inside the gem he bought for $125,000 and is restoring.
Like other out-of-towners seeing Detroit for the first time this decade or ever, these road trippers find a gap between conventional wisdom and their sidewalk-level reality check.
The visit is "all we've been talking about since we got home," Cholewa tells Deadline in a message. "I can't wait to come back with more friends!"
From left: Susan Cholewa, Bernice Radle, Chris Hawley, David Torke and Mark Nickita at the Guardian Building. (Facebook photo)
For her part, Radle posts: "All the articles you’ve read about the vacancy and decline are true. However, many fail to notice or mention the incredible amount of life that Detroit has."
Detroit is alive. . . . We saw signs of it everywhere – from a 30-year-old buying a Kresge mansion to the emerging Michigan Avenue retail corridor.
The entrepreneur spirit is alive and well in the Motor City. The downtown is beautiful – the storefronts are lit up with lights, the ice skating rink was packed at midnight. . . .
With slogans like “Detroit Hustles Harder” and “Detroit Vs. Everybody”, it is clear that Detroit has embraced their true grit and entrepreneurial spirit and that nothing, including their steep decline, will stop them. A rising tide raises all the boats was the mentality from many of the local folks we spoke with.
Sure, there is a long way to go and a lot to accomplish, but we left feeling a great deal of confidence in the future of the Motor City. Detroit is tough and resilient!
The Detroit Institute of Bagels, open since November 2013 on Michigan Avenue in Corktown, was among the New Yorkers' stops. (Instagram photo by Bernice Radle)
