Detroit Public Schools wants you to redevelop one of its historic schools into neighborhood mainstays that will serve as community assets for the next century.
The school district recently held a redevelopment conference at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Boston Edison promoting the redevelopment of the dozens of closed schools across the Motor City it wants to see redeveloped. The underlying theme of the conference centered around words like flexibility, solutions and thinking outside the box.
"We hope the next class of buyers are in this room today," Roy Roberts, emergency manager of
Detroit Public Schools, said at the event.
The school district has already sold 25 of its buildings, creating almost $11 million in new revenue. Some of those success stories include the
Burton School on Cass Avenue in Midtown which became creative space for entrepreneurs among other uses. Old Redford High School is also in the process of being redeveloped into a new Meijer superstore.
Detroit Public Schools currently has 85 properties (both old schools and vacant land) that are available for redevelopment. Those properties represent 863 acres of land and 45 million square feet of space. There are four large parcels that are each larger than five acres. The
Archdiocese of Detroit also took the opportunity to promote the redevelopment of the closed schools and churches it is trying to sell in Detroit.
City of Detroit officials are working closely with both the school district and archdiocese to find viable futures for these buildings. The city is open to a number of uses as long as they compliment the surrounding community (no industrial parks in the middle of a neighborhood) and is ready to be flexible to find a solution.
"We are so flexible and open at this time." Karla Henderson, planning and facilities group executive for the city of Detroit, said at the event. "We want to think outside the box."
For information on the properties available at Detroit Public Schools, click
here, and for information on properties available at the Archdiocese of Detroit, click
here.
Source: Roy Roberts, emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools and arla Henderson, planning and facilities group executive for the city of Detroit
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.