Matt Helms

Detroit Free Press

An effort to bring residential and business redevelopment into three Detroit neighborhoods is getting a boost from JPMorgan Chase, the mega-bank that has committed to investing $100 million in the city.

Chase announced that Detroit won a competitive $5 million grant for the Detroit Strategic Neighborhood Fund, a $30-million project that will boost inclusive development in three areas of the city: The West Village neighborhood on the city's east side, the Clark Park area in southwest Detroit and the Livernois-McNichols area in northwest Detroit.

Construction on the first of what will be at least 12 projects funded through the neighborhood fund is set to begin in November. Called The Coe at West Village, the $3.8 million project will build eight new townhouses along Coe Street and four apartments with first-floor retail along Van Dyke near where the two roads connect, with 20% of the residential property set aside as affordable housing. The development is by Woodborn Partners, whose managing partner, Clifford Brown, said construction is expected to be finished by mid-September 2017.

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The Strategic Neighborhood Fund is a collaboration between the city and the nonprofit community development organizations Invest Detroit, the Detroit Development Fund and Opportunity Resource Fund.

"We are making progress on something Detroiters have waited for for a long time, and that is redevelopment in our neighborhoods," Mayor Mike Duggan said at a news conference announcing the grant.

Duggan said the Strategic Neighborhood Fund fits in with the city's strategy to rebuild the city's neighborhoods on the 20-minute neighborhood model. The model calls for densely populated, walkable and safe neighborhoods where residents have easy access to shopping, groceries, restaurants, recreation, transit, parks and schools within a 20-minute walk.

Duggan said the three selected neighborhoods already have some of the basic elements needed for such a neighborhood and only need "an intense effort where everybody comes together" for redevelopment.

Peter Scher, Chase's head of corporate responsibility, said thriving neighborhoods are critical to Detroit's comeback, and while redevelopment in downtown and Midtown should be celebrated, too often that means pushing out people on the lower end of the economic scale

"Too many people are being left behind," Scher said.

Detroit's award was one of several granted to efforts in cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Miami and New York. They money is part of the bank's 5-year, $125-million neighborhood development initiative.

David Blaszkiewicz, president and CEO of Invest Detroit, said the Strategic Neighborhood Initiative will bring residential and business development projects in the three targeted neighborhoods with input from residents and others in the communities. He said about 60% of the projects will be new construction, but there also will be an emphasis on adaptive reuse of existing properties.

"What we're trying to do is match the needs of the neighborhoods with the real estate," Blaszkiewicz said. The size and scale of the projects will vary, but "most of them are going to be mixed use projects, meaning we've got both housing and commercial, and in most of them, they'll house first-floor retail as part of the developments."

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @matthelms.