This commentary by Kresge President and CEO Rip Rapson was originally published in Crain’s Detroit Business on the eve of the annual Detroit Homecoming, a three-day event created for Detroit expats — those who grew up, went to school, or built early careers in metro Detroit and now live elsewhere. The experience reconnects expats to Detroit through programming that showcase the people, neighborhoods, and ideas driving the city forward. and is designed to spark renewed connection to the city. 

The story of Detroit’s comeback usually focuses on the changes we see downtown: new and renovated office towers, arenas and theaters…in-demand restaurants…plentiful housing options…a popular light rail line…a gorgeous and inviting riverfront… an iconic arts scene…a hospital system dramatically expanding its footprint… a population on the rise. All contributing to a sense of vibrancy, renewal and hope…all permitting Detroiters to bear witness to a place seemingly deepening its vitality by the day.

It is an utterly remarkable story, one that is often met with awe – and a hint of disbelief – when described to those who don’t live here or who haven’t visited recently.

And indeed, central business districts are the economic heart of a city, generating necessary tax base, attracting talent, providing a density of entertainment options, diversifying the economy, projecting an image of inspiration to the rest of the world.

But no city can thrive on a downtown alone. In Detroit, our downtown revitalization is only the first chapter in the city’s continuing reimagination and renewal.

This positive trajectory would not have been possible except for the Detroiters who have remained committed to the city, through times good and bad. It is their grit and determination, their commitment to place, their unshakeable belief in future possibility that has been, and will be, the foundation stone on which a more stable, equitable and opportunity-rich future will be built.

These Detroiters remind us daily that their neighborhoods are not empty vessels waiting to be filled by outside rescue, but are instead filled to the brim with assets of every description – with block clubs working to improve the ebbs and flows of daily life…with faith institutions continually rekindling belief in grace and love…with small business owners employing neighborhood residents and providing goods and services that residents need…of community development organizations and nonprofits making the kind of investments in people and places that are marginalized by the mainstream economy.

Kresge is deeply, unalterably committed to fortify those assets and open even more expansive opportunities for every Detroit neighborhood to live into its full potential health and vitality. And we are tremendously excited at the knowledge that we will be joined in that commitment by Mayor Mary Sheffield’s administration – together with other partners across all the city’s sectors.

Just as we carved new channels through which capital could flow onto Woodward and Cass and Michigan Avenues, we need creative mechanisms to bring “last-mile” capital to the East Side, the North End, Southwest and Northwest Detroit.

Just as we enlisted the public, private, nonprofit and philanthropic sectors in common purpose for the redevelopment of Eastern Market, the rebirth of Brush Park or the creation of the Riverfront, we must join those sectors to conceive and deliver projects and processes that strengthen the people, institutions and businesses who have held together our neighborhood fabric.

Just as we took big, audacious swings at a new vision for the Motown Museum, the rebirth of Michigan Central or the redevelopment of the Hudson site, we need to retool our conception for creating the kind of complete neighborhoods – rich with educational, recreational, commercial and housing opportunities – that every Detroit resident needs.

This can’t be empty rhetoric. We need to demonstrate that it can be done and how it will be done, in the most concrete terms. Our investments in Livernois-McNichols, a neighborhood to which Kresge is relocating its headquarters, underscore one form that can take.

Kresge has invested deeply in Live6 for over a decade. The preconditions for those investments were strong. Livernois Avenue is home to the Avenue of Fashion, whose distinctive identity has been forged by generations of Black entrepreneurship and local ownership. McNichols Avenue serves as a vital commercial and residential east-west spine. The Fitzgerald, Bagley, University District and other Live6 neighbors have moored Detroit’s middle class housing stock for generations.

And Marygrove College served for a century as one of the city’s most historic and important anchoring educational institutions.

Marygrove has become the centerpiece of our work in Live6. When the college was forced by declining enrollments and revenues to close, we worked with the Detroit Public Schools Community District, the University of Michigan and Starfish Family Services to create a cradle-to-career educational community anchored by an early childhood center and a public K-12 school. We engaged in a complex workout of preexisting debt on the campus buildings, stood up a Conservancy to hold and manage the land, rehabilitated each of the six main campus buildings and constructed a state-of-the-art early childhood development center.

We have also sought to both retain and enhance programming that has long contributed to the campus’s identity: community meeting venues, artist workspaces, literature programming, offices for cultural institutions. Our intention is to animate a campus in which children can access exceptional educational opportunities without leaving their neighborhood.

The investments in the campus itself have been nested in broader investments across the neighborhood – housing, arts and culture, public spaces, commercial activity and the creation of the Live6 Alliance a neighborhood-based organization that serves as the backbone for community development activities. These investments have totaled more than $200 million.

And we are just getting started. In large part driven by a multi-year community listening and engagement process and in concert with multiple partners, we have developed an even more comprehensive map for sustained neighborhood investments, including:

• An agreement with the Detroit Land Bank Authority to maintain and beautify more than 60 vacant parcels, in partnership with The Greening of Detroit, and others
• Operating grants to 16 neighborhood associations to support resident-led projects and events
• Technical help and financial assistance for longtime homeowners to make critical home repairs, seek property tax relief and work through gnarly issues involved in passing title to property to heirs
• Completion of the Ella Fitzgerald Greenway between Marygrove and the University of Detroit Mercy.

What is emerging is accordingly not merely a school campus but a place-based model for how education, community development, adaptation to climate change, public health and economic opportunity are inextricably intertwined. For Kresge – and so very clearly for Detroit Mayor Sheffield – this recognizes that just as the challenges a family faces do not arrive one at a time, neither can the responses of philanthropy…and the public sector. A child cannot learn well in a home that floods during heavy rain. A parent cannot hold a job without stable housing, affordable childcare and reliable transportation. A family cannot travel the road to economic mobility without the chance to build equity in a home, launch a business or progress in a job.

On one hand, this represents the most daunting of public policy challenges – ensuring adequate investments of resources, weaving together disparate public systems, building systems that enable people to navigate among them. On the other hand, however, it can start more simply.

Take the Commons on the city’s East Side. Residents told us they lacked places to simply be together. At the Commons, a parent can wash clothes in a laundromat, buy a cup of tea at the coffee shop, find a table to let their kids do homework and serendipitously run into a neighbor for a talk.

Community is built and fortified in ordinary places. Places that give residents a reason to plan to stay…put down roots…build social and economic capital…and prosper.

I’m struck by how often, wherever I travel in this country, people want to hear about and learn from Detroit’s story. Not just how we navigated through the dark years of the economic recession or reset the table after bankruptcy or rebuilt our downtown. But also how we continually expand the reach of efforts to bring equity to every corner of the city. I’m eager to describe to these audiences the kind of sustainable equitable community to which we aspire over the long-term. And yet, I also have to reinforce that this is a challenge virtually every American city faces, and that no American city has yet overcome, Detroit included.

But we are on the right path. I have never been more optimistic about this city’s future. And it is a future whose chapters are being written both in the vibrancy of its downtown and in the elements of health, stability and vitality being set in place piece by piece in its neighborhoods.