Amplify

Time frame:
2017 – current

Key moments:

• Neighborhood meetings; being met with a lot of resistance and continuing to listen, slowly building trust

• Took Dexter Lock down 10 acres of contaminated site, developing it into a park

• Attracting stable businesses (MTC? / Gentex) that will provide jobs

• In collaboration with Corewell Health, converted a church into a two-story daycare

• Recreating the retail corridor on Kalamazoo Ave

Challenge:
The vision was ambitious – to revitalize an industrial zone that would provide walkable jobs, coupled with a lifestyle and retail corridor that provides fundamentals to the community – and was met initially with overwhelming community pushback.

Our approach:
Patience. Willingness to sit with the community and truly hear their concerns. Going above and beyond and doing the right things for the right reasons. Sticking with it until it could be proven it out.

Success factors:
This project took unwavering vision – and confidence that this was the right thing to do. Creating our own fundamentals, and often swimming upstream, is what it took to keep this project moving forward. Tenacity was – and continues to be – key.

Key characteristics of the project

• Purpose Built Model that provides: education, childcare, healthcare, jobs

• Clean-up of brownfield site

• DEI efforts with subcontractors: creating sustainable work for local companies

• Developed a Community Benefit Agreement (CBA)