If there was
such a thing as a
City of Wyandotte business
dictionary, a dictionary only of Wyandotte's business community
lexicon, the word "competition" would not be in it.
The business community, in the words of
Downtown
Development Authority (DDA) Chairwoman Patt Slack, is "welcoming
and excited" whenever a new business snips the ceremonial ribbon to open
its doors and frame its first five-dollar bill of business.
"They
don't see other businesses as competitors, they see other businesses as
offering more options for our residents and our visitors," said Slack, owner of the River's Edge Gallery in downtown
Wyandotte. Slack's gallery at 3024 Biddle, which exclusively represents
Michigan artists, has been in business for 29 years.
That was then …
Wyandotte has been in
transition for the last two decades or so. Mayor Joseph Peterson
remembers the days when he was a cop driving the "paddy wagon" on the
south side of town, a section of Wyandotte dotted with poorly maintained
rental units, tired housing stock, drinking establishments and
brownfields.
Peterson said there was a concentrated
effort back then on the part of the city and the community to remedy the
deteriorating situation. With federal grant dollars, new ordinances,
tougher enforcement and other mechanisms, they cleaned it up. Today,
there is the Wyandotte
Shores Golf Club, once a brownfield; the Wyandotte Boat Club; new
housing, and other investment.
"Talk about a substantial
improvement to the community and to the image compared to an old
factory," said DDA Director Brandon Wescott, referring to the golf
course.
Peterson said as mayor he's only applying the
model or plan of yesteryear when the city and community came together to
address the issues in the south end.
Wyandotte received
two rounds of Neighborhood
Stabilization Program (NSP) funds recently. The money will go to
demolish blighted structures and rehabilitate abandoned homes to help
revitalize midtown Wyandotte, Peterson said.
And for
years, the city has earmarked its Community
Development Block Grant (CDBG) monies, one of the best-run block
grant programs in Wayne County, for housing rehabilitation and street
improvement projects.
"Although nobody has been immune
to the economic stress that's been occurring in Michigan, there
continues to be private investment in the city," said Wescott. "The
housing market is still down but every once in a while you see a new
home built here, it's still happening. Jobs have left but in the same
breath the city has retained that vibrancy."
Officials
also point to businesses like White Furniture, Willow Tree, Chelsea
Men's Wear and others as establishments that have been around a long
time, family-generational in some cases, which have maintained a
stabilizing presence in the downtown while the city was transitioning.
This Is Now …
Slack, the
gallery owner, agrees the community is in transition. "We have come from
a blue-collar background, remnants still remain. But we have a new
population coming in. In many cases the children and grandchildren are
taking the homes of their parents and grandparents. And so we have a new
population that's young and vibrant who are here because of the new
things but are here also because they like the old fashion small-town
feel," Slack said.
Wyandotte's downtown, though it has
vacancies, still has a physical liveliness, a human vitality with all
the hosted events, a neatness like a Swiss town, and of course the
river, which puts it in its own league of destination places, anytime of
the year.
One of the more remarkably successful events
the city hosts is Third
Friday, an outdoor shopping, food, music and entertainment event
held every third Friday of the month, throughout the year. The idea
began about 15 years ago with Slack and the owner of the Biddle Gallery, an example par
excellence of collaboration rather than competition.
"It
started as a gallery crawl," Slack said.
There's always
a theme -- May's Third Friday theme was "Barbeque Ribs Throwdown,"
which was suggested by the mayor, who, for the record, relishes meaty
racks of ribs. Other themes from past Third Fridays included: Girls
Night Out and the Wine Crawl (which has raised nearly $50,000 for the
Josephine Ford Cancer Foundation through the years). This fall they will
have a chili cook-off and tailgate party.
"The streets
are packed on Third Fridays," said the mayor, who always brings along
his three grandchildren. "They'll remember that when they get older. In
fact they will ask me 'Papa, are we going to Third Friday again?' It's
really a great family-oriented event."
Third Friday has
been a success not only from a social-community perspective, but also
from a business perspective.
Many businesses piggyback
off Third Friday and keep the party going so to speak, said Lynn
Steffensky, executive director of the Wyandotte Business Association (WBA),
one of the key organizations in the success of Wyandotte's continued
downtown renaissance and an arm of the DDA. A cigar bar for example that
recently opened up, Belicoso Café, hires a band, serves food and has
what it calls the Backyard Bash, which starts around 9 p.m. as Third
Friday winds down. "So businesses are really starting to realize the
value of having events off of our Third Fridays," Steffensky said.
For Third Fridays, the city provides free trolley service and
horse and carriage rides for the residents and visitors. So even though
the pulse of Third Friday is at the intersection of Maple and Biddle,
the free, old-fashioned transportation expands the action and energy
around the entire business community.
"I have told both
the trolley and horse and carriage people that if there are people
standing in line at nine o'clock, keep the rides going, keep it going,
just bill me," Steffensky said.
Steffensky also said a
new eatery, Angelina's Mexican Restaurant, is opening up where Good Eats
once was and attributes that good news to all the foot traffic that
Third Friday brings to the downtown. In other words, entrepreneurs
visiting the city for an event, like a Third Friday, see a vacant store
front, see the potential, see the crowds of people and think opportunity
and investment.
"She [the owner of Angelina's] has
signed the contract. She's very excited and started interviewing for
jobs already," Steffensky said. "This will be her second location. She
has an Angelina's in Allen Park."
You can't talk about
this city in the summer time and not mention the Wyandotte Street Art Fair,
July 7-10, one of the largest in the state of Michigan. Celebrating its
49th year this summer, it draws hundreds of juried
artists and thousands of visitors.
"We've been able to
sustain ourselves with that art fair," said Mayor Peterson. "People save
up their money for that event."
The Next
Level
But Wyandotte doesn't rest on its laurels. You
get a sense when you speak with its leaders, city staff, volunteers and
business owners that they are always thinking and planning ahead,
reaching for more, never sitting back or content with what's been
accomplished.
Wescott, the DDA director, is awaiting
news from the Michigan
State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) on whether Wyandotte
will receive a Michigan
Main Street designation. The designation would mean approximately
$120,000 of in-kind expert assistance, including consultation in design
services for downtown private properties, instruction and training in
board and manager training and an intensive market study which would
help Wyandotte examine its strengths, weaknesses and untapped
opportunities.
"The professional staff that is available
is excellent," Wescott said. "This program is competitive and there's
no guarantee that we will get selected. But this will help us take it to
the next level in a real organized fashion."
Wescott
was emphatic about mentioning that the Main Street application to MSHDA
was completed by volunteers appointed by the DDA. "Those volunteers were
key," he said.
The city too has recently applied for a Michigan Department of
Natural Resources matching grant to construct a transit dock where
Oak Street ends at the water, the mayor said. It would enable a family
to board their craft in Grosse Pointe, travel down river, dock and enjoy
an evening in downtown Wyandotte. The city is awaiting the DNR's
decision.
The other project that Wescott points to as an
example of thinking ahead, of seizing opportunity, was the DDA-funded
rehabilitation of the old Masonic Temple building. Located at 81
Chestnut and most recently abandoned, it is now the new home for at
least the next five years for the Downriver Council for the Arts (DCA).
It's a walk-off home run for a city that hosts one of the most
successful art fairs in the state to land the DCA.
"We've
taken an old historic building that was previously underutilized and
now we're breathing some fresh new life into it," Wescott said.
Wescott would also like to keep supporting good capital
improvement projects, set up a business assistance program to provide
cash incentives for businesses to locate come to the downtown and begin a
façade improvement program in the coming fiscal year.
It Makes a Village
But
probably the most vital and most palpable piece of the Wyandotte
community is its volunteers, a point that re-surfaced over and over with
everyone who weighed-in on this article.
That's why
Wescott said he'd like to continue utilizing DDA monies to fund
volunteer initiatives like the Beautification
Commission which every spring plants flowers in and around the
downtown area, bringing color and beauty to it like a Raoul Dufy brush
stroke.
"There's no way we could pull that off for
$8,000 without the volunteers. I want to make sure those volunteer
relationships remain, and are kept strong," Wescott said.
Mayor Peterson underscored the value of Wyandotte's volunteers
and commissions. "What we really have here is a strong-volunteer,
weak-mayor form of government. Our volunteers do the work and make the
recommendations to us. We have some of the best volunteers in the
world."
"This is a very, very passionate community,"
said Mary Torok, a program coordinator with the city. "The residents in
this community, we have record numbers at our council meetings and who
view our council meetings. They are interested. They want to get
involved."
Pat Dostine is Deputy Press
Secretary for the Wayne County Executive and a regular contributor to
the EDGE newsletter.
Photos were provided
by James Wallace, who works in the Communication Division of the office
of the Wayne County Executive.