Jefferson Avenue to get makeover at Detroit's border

Motorists on East Jefferson at Detroit's border with Grosse Pointe Park could see slowdowns this spring — starting this week — but the payback will be calming and green.

Landscaped center islands like those that grace the suburb's side of East Jefferson will be built for five blocks on the Detroit side, thanks to $650,000 in grants to Jefferson East, a nonprofit group that helps spur development. The islands, along with a narrower roadway, aim to deter speeders by creating a denser traffic flow in more attractive surroundings — a phenomenon called traffic calming.

And they'll make the area more pedestrian-friendly for shoppers and school kids, and safer for cyclists who'll ride in the project's protected bike lanes — a first for metro Detroit, said Josh Elling, executive director of Jefferson East.

"The goal is to push these protected bike lanes next year all the way to Belle Isle and connect with the Detroit Riverwalk," Elling said. In addition, improvements to pedestrian crossings should cut the area's high count of pedestrian injuries from traffic accidents and also make possible a revival of retail shopping and restaurant hopping in the once-bustling commercial strip, he said.

The project has been in the works since 2007 but lacked funding until now, Elling said. Construction is expected to start this month and being completed by late fall.

In Grosse Pointe Park, officials said they welcomed the greening of Detroit's side of East Jefferson as well as other signs that the two cities are fostering more collaboration after years of contention at their border.

"I'd say we're able to communicate with Detroit, and with Mayor (Mike) Duggan, better than we ever have" with previous Detroit mayors, Grosse Pointe Park Mayor Greg Theokas said.

Positive signs include a recent end to an 11-year stalemate with Detroit over whether to raze the empty and derelict Deck Bar building on East Jefferson, just inside the Detroit border — the lot will become a pocket park while the two cities decide how to redevelop the block — and last fall's removal of the suburb's controversial border blockade on Kercheval Avenue, created by Grosse Pointe Park's farm market sheds. The sheds were moved off Kercheval only after Detroit officials agreed to remove dozens of blighted houses and buildings from their side, Theokas said.

"They've really made a lot of progress on that. Quite a lot of the blight has come down," he said.

The hope for poverty-pocked urban areas like Detroit's east side is that small projects like the new streetscape on East Jefferson will trigger fresh development of all kinds, said Dan Burden, a national consultant on urban planning, based in Seattle and Minneapolis.

In the 1990s, Burden helped design the now-famous road diet in Ferndale, on West 9 Mile near Woodward Avenue. Ferndale eliminated one lane of traffic each way and restored on-street parking, turning a moribund business district of nail salons and empty storefronts into a thriving downtown hub of shops and eateries.

"In the same kind of way, this project (on East Jefferson) will make it clear that the corridor is open for business," said Burden, whose firm has projects under way in 26 cities, although none in Michigan. "This is a great demonstration project that says let's see about expanding it."

The East Jefferson project is limited in scope, covering only the five blocks from Ashland to Lakewood, in Detroit's Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood that borders Grosse Pointe Park.

Burden applauded the foundations "who were willing to make this financial commitment" in a region where city and county budgets can't fund it. Across the country, he said, hundreds of cities are building or considering road diets — that is, eliminating lanes of traffic to accommodate landscaping, bike lanes and safer walkways.

Eliminating lanes is easy to justify when traffic volumes shrink dramatically as they have done in much of Detroit, according to SEMCOG traffic analysts.

Although long-term comparisons of traffic flows on East Jefferson aren't available, according to SEMCOG, a Wayne State University study completed in 2013 for Jefferson East showed that removing one lane each way in the Jefferson-Chalmers area would not impede the flow, measured at about 7,000 cars per day. Giving East Jefferson a road diet, and shrinking it from three lanes to two each way, makes its width equivalent to that of Michigan Avenue at Oakwood, where about 20,000 vehicles pass without backups each day, according to SEMCOG.

The East Jefferson project will have metro Detroit's first protected bike lanes — defined as paved corridors that have a tangible border separating them from traffic, said Todd Scott, executive director of the nonprofit Detroit Greenways Coalition, which promotes cycling in metro Detroit.

By separating the two-wheelers from motorists, the lanes will attract a wider range of cyclists, "especially women, young riders and inexperienced riders who may not be comfortable riding in the street," Scott said.

In the East Jefferson plan, the bike lanes will be about 5 feet wide, adjacent to the curbs and bordered on the street side by a buffer of about two feet that is to be marked by white plastic towers called delineators, each about 3 feet high, according to Jefferson East. Next will be a strip running along both sides of the street in which cars can parallel park, and finally there will be two lanes each way for traffic flow, separated by the landscaped islands, according to the plan.

The bike lanes, if extended, could ultimately bring tens of thousands more cyclists each summer to Belle Isle, said Michele Hodges, president of the Belle Isle Conservancy. But Hodges, a member of the Jefferson East board of directors, said just as important is to see the project give an economic boost to the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood.

"I drive down East Jefferson every day to my office" in Indian Village, Hodges said. "The goal is for this to encourage private investment" in the storefronts and apartment buildings on East Jefferson, she said.

Gas station owner Moussa Bazzi of Detroit said he agreed with the installation of the islands because "beautification has to start somewhere."

Bazzi, owner of Mobil and Marathon gas stations that face each other on East Jefferson just inside Detroit, said in his years of business he had seen the area "devastated for the last 20 years."

He said he was pleased that the new street crossings "are going to be good for all the schoolkids here — safer for them."

Added Grosse Pointe Park City Manager Dale Krajniak, "I think, long-term, that the goal of creating a seamless border is going to happen."

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com or 313-223-4485