Detroit's Virginia Park Historic District gets house-by-house makeover

When Jeff Cowin first moved into his Virginia Park Historic District home in 2010, he said the street was marred by abandoned, blighted structures that made the area a hot spot for scrappers, squatters and crime.

Today — a little more than seven years and $2.9 million later — the street just off Lodge Freeway near the city's New Center area is completely transformed.

With the support of his neighbors, investors and community partners, Cowin said the feat was accomplished one house at a time. The process meant tracking down property owners, anteing up cash to buy the homes and renovate and finding stable renters who, in some cases, turned into homeowners.

"We just started to chip away at the issues that we could," said Cowin a former BMW master technician turned master home rehabber.

"I've personally managed renovation of 12 of the homes, other folks have come in and renovated ... and there are at least eight other homes. What you have now is a historic district that sort of rejuvenated itself."

The financial risk-taking and hammer-swinging has paid off for Virginia Park's homeowners and investors — who have watched crime move out and new neighbors move in.

"The progress in Virginia Park is a great example of what is possible when residents take an active role in the revitalization of their own neighborhood and work closely with the Department of Neighborhoods to address certain strategic needs in and adjacent to their community," said Marshall Bullock, District 5 manager for the Mayor Mike Duggan's Department of Neighborhoods.

"This kind of collaborative approach to neighborhood redevelopment is how it always should be."

Calculated risks and revamps

Cowin used his savings from a decade of working at BMW dealerships to purchase and renovate his first home on the street, but he said it was the revenue from a start-up service center he operated out of his garage, called Midtown BMW, coupled with loans from neighbors that funded the second and third homes he purchased.

After revamping 130, 100 and 140 Virginia Park in succession, Cowin said he closed his service center to focus on fixing the remaining homes.

"I bought and renovated 159, 919, 888, 866, 874, 110, 645, 830 and 149 Virginia Park. Every one of those homes needed extensive maintenance and repairs before placing them into service as rentals or selling them. 100, 130, 919, 645 and 830 have been sold. 110, 140, 159, 866, 874 and 888 are currently rented," he said.

Acquiring homes on Virginia Park Street meant searching for property owners, asking whether they'll sell, taking on financial risks, putting large investments into each individual home and staking it all on a return, Cowin said.

"Working with funding in the form of loans from mostly neighbors, but, more recently, loans from Detroit Development Fund and Chemical Bank, I’ve invested over $2.9 million into the homes on Virginia Park Street," he said.

Cowin said he usually ends up buying the house and taking personal responsibility for any loans.

"People trust me to repay them," he said.

House-by-house, Cowin said his neighbors have stepped up and offered to help him with the financing.

Looking at 159 Virginia Park, one of Cowin's neighbors loaned him $20,000 to buy it, another loaned him $50,000 for the renovation, then Cowin matched that loan with another $50,000 and they got it purchased, fixed and rented.

Cowin said most of the loans have come from folks who live in Virginia Park ,but also nearby neighborhoods like Boston-Edison, with subsequent renovations powered by a myriad of Detroiters with skills, resources or tools to lend.

"Now we've grown the team, so the same neighbors, when they get repaid, they loan the money to us again, because they like what they see," he said.

Cowin said Chemical Bank has been a vital partner.

"Once we get the house renovated and tenants are in there, Chemical Bank has been able to come and refinance the loans, so that the neighbors get repaid and I get a new mortgage on the house," he said.

However, their biggest challenge often has been trying to track down the property owners of the vacant properties. One home was owned by a guy in Australia who purchased it in a tax foreclosure auction, another was owned by a couple from California who would come out and check on the boarded-up house every once in a while, he said.

It's been a matter of finding these owners, making the case for revamping the property and asking whether they're willing to let Cowin take it off their hands.

In one example, Cowin said they've bought a house for $80,000, put $250,000 into renovations and ended up selling the home for about $395,000 — which he said is still the highest anyone's paid for a house in the neighborhood, so far.

The Virginia Park Historic District is both a national and state historic district, and Cowin said their rehabbers have kept this in mind and stayed within the guidelines locally enforced by the Detroit Historic District Commission.

Established in 1893 and designed to be "an upper-middle class enclave," many of the homes in Virginia Park were built between 1893 and 1915, according to the Detroit Historical Society.

A number of prominent Detroit architects designed the homes on the street, thus a number of architectural styles are represented, according to the Detroit Historical Society, including: Colonial Revival, Neo-Georgian, Tudor, Bungalow and more.

During their renovations, Cowin said they've worked hard to respect and maintain the history of the homes by using the correct original materials.

"We spent over $35K reinstalling the cedar shingle roof on the main house and garage of 874 Virginia Park, in order to restore the exterior correctly," he said. "I've spent over $20K restoring the French tile roof on 159 Virginia Park."

Half a million dollars and 149 Virginia Park

The latest home that's been revamped — 149 Virginia Park — may garner even more on the market. Cowin said more than $458,000, to date, has been spent on modernizing the 3,250-square foot prairie-style home built in 1914, which he purchased for $100,000.

Not only has the home's basic nuts and bolts (electrical wiring, plumbing, flooring and radiators) been renovated, but Cowin's team also worked to modernize the space, with granite counter tops in a kitchen with updated cabinetry, spacious showers with Bluetooth-connected shower heads and more.

The home features four bedrooms and five and a half bathrooms and is currently for sale, listed for $599,000, but is also available for lease at $4,000/month.

"It has all new wiring and plumbing, it's really spectacular. ... It's got brand new kitchen and bathrooms," Cowin said. "It's a complete transformation."

Welcome to the Block Club

When Cowin first came to Virginia Park, his desire to wrangle a team of home rehabbers turned into the formation of a new block club — one had existed prior, but had fallen dormant.

Cowin said the group has achieved a number of milestones that mobilized local leaders and ended up transforming the street.

Cowin said they tackled crime on Virginia Park by hosting Detroit Police Chief James Craig at his home to discuss neighborhood policing, and ended up with a neighborhood patrol officer plus extra police patrols.

After sending along a note that Craig was headed over, Cowin said he also received a response from the Department of Neighborhoods, which sent over then-district manager Vince Keenan, who addressed the vacant Detroit Hope Hospital, once the Renaissance Hospital, that sat on Third and Virginia Park.

"I gotta give (Keenan) credit for getting the hospital torn down," Cowin said. "What we have there now is a big green space."

According to the city, federal funds via a Community Development Block Grant were used to take down the hospital.

The block club also worked with the Public Lighting Authority and Sue Mosey of Midtown Detroit Inc. to replace the underground wiring and historic black metal street lamps that light up Virginia Park, he said.

Cowin said that what has evolved over the years is an effective, organized and diverse block club made up of neighbors who have seen the street transform before their eyes.

Every summer they throw a block party and another annual tradition is the winter progressive dinner, where the neighbors open their homes to enjoy food and cocktails with one another, Cowin said.

Aarin Pesko-Morales is a founding member of the block club and one of Cowin's business partners.

He said one of the projects the club is working on now is re-creating the neighborhood's treeline as part of the 10,000 UP Tree Initiative by the city's General Services Department.

"It looks very stark when you come down here and there's so many trees missing, because of the Dutch elm disease and ash borer disease that wiped through the city,” he said. “I don't know how much I'll see in my lifetime, but again, it goes back to leaving something for the next generation to enjoy."

A people-powered project

Paul Mack, a human capital consultant at Deloitte, and his wife, Linsey Higgins, a social worker, are two Virginia Park homeowners at the root of the people-powered home transformations.

Mack said he bought a fixer-upper on Virginia Park Street in 2011 for $7,900, because he loved that it felt like a family neighborhood.

Higgins said they bought the house before she'd even seen it, her husband took a gander, offered the list price, it was accepted and she walked into a home that needed a lot of work.

"It was a beautiful house, even the disastrous things about it," she said. "But it's a giant house, it's beautiful. I was always able to see the potential in it, I guess. It had all the things we wanted."

The house had undergone a number of half-baked remodels, parts of the ceiling were hanging down in most rooms because the lights had been ripped out, and "literally everything needed to be done," Mack said.

“We tackled first, being able to live in the house, which meant getting a bathroom and a place to sleep,” he said. “We just started working our way through the house room by room, and prioritizing what we needed next."

Mack said he and Higgins went on to invest about $200,000 into the renovations, plus "a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears."

"We bought a floor sander and we refinished all the floors ourselves, which that really transformed it significantly, the floors are beautiful now. We repainted everything, we re-did all the stuff you can't see, the plumbing and the electrical and all of that," Higgins said.

While revamping their home, Mack said they were cognizant about leveraging various financing options. Over seven years, Mack said he and his wife dumped any extra money in their incomes into their home, but they looked at the process as "a rolling investment."

"Home Depot's zero interest for two years credit line has been a lifesaver for making this happen, a couple of different home equity line of credit and we actually now have a full mortgage on the house," he said.

Looking at how far they've come, Mack said he has trouble not getting choked up while talking about how much work they've put in.

"In terms of that house itself and the work that we've put (into) rebuilding community and creating a space where people want to live because of what it's like to live on that street, and because of Detroit, because of the work that so many people are doing to make this city the place that it is becoming and rebuild it and care for each other. It certainly brings me to tears," he said.

"When you create value in community, you create economic value. ... It's been really powerful to see that happen."

918 Virginia Park

Cowin said there's just one property left that they haven't gotten to: 918 Virginia Park, an abandoned Dutch Colonial-style home at the corner of the street near the freeway.

In 2014, Cowin said he had just finished renovating 919 Virginia Park, directly across the street, when he hired First American Title Company to research the chain of ownership for 918.

The result turned into a goose chase. Cowin said he tracked down an owner in Cleveland who had sold the home on eBay to someone in Pennsylvania, leading Cowin to negotiate a May 2014 purchase agreement for $4,750 with the Philadelphia-based owner.

His title company was given the documents and began preparing the transaction for closing, but Cowin said the process was projected to take weeks because of the property's history in foreclosure, giving the city time to sue the Philly owner for nuisance abatement and gain official ownership of the property.

"I was told that the home would eventually be sold by the Detroit Land Bank to someone who must renovate it. Since that was our goal and we seemed to have an ally in the Land Bank, I backed off," he said.

An auction for the property was posted on buildingdetroit.org in May 2015 and Cowin said he won the place for $1,000, but the Land Bank ended up canceling the auction and returning his money.

Since then, Cowin said, no progress has happened with the deteriorating house, leaving its neighbors wondering about its future.

Senior Advisor to the Mayor on the Planning, Housing & Revitalization team, David Williams, said in a statement to the Free Press that the property is part of the Herman Kiefer Revitalization Project, a venture by New York developer and architect Ron Castellano to revitalize the Herman Kiefer health complex (which closed in 2013), the Hutchins and Crosman schools, plus smaller buildings and properties in the area.

The developer is now responsible for the site, Williams said, and per the closing requirements, now has access to more than 100 vacant Detroit Land Bank Authority Homes in the project area and will be responsible for boarding and securing them over the next several weeks.

"The developer expects to complete their renovation of homes in the project area over the next three years. And 20% of the renovated homes must be developed by or in partnership with a local community partner. The house at 918 Virginia Park will be one of the first renovations and is expected to be completed within 6-8 months," he said.

Williams said the developer is also working to recruit community members and provide employment for local residents who want to work on spring cleanup in the neighborhood, plus securing, maintaining and rehabbing the properties.

"The City expects that taking a holistic approach to neighborhood revitalization will help stabilize the neighborhood directly adjacent to the Herman Kiefer site and strengthen and support the momentum that has been building in the Virginia Park neighborhood," he said.

Greater Midtown Property Management

Cowin's block club-based rehab team has since turned into the Greater Midtown Property Management, LLC, and they're now eyeing properties beyond Virginia Park.

He said they're just waiting for their most recently completed project at 149 Virginia Park to sell and they're going to get everybody renovating again.

Pesko-Morales, whose been working with Cowin since they renovated their very first house, said the LLC came out of the desire to begin rebuilding surrounding neighborhoods.

"It necessitated, because we got larger and after a while you have to start structuring and Jeff wants to go forward in a larger capacity, so we have to take this very seriously as a business," Pesko-Morales said.

Contact Aleanna Siacon: ASiacon@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @AleannaSiacon.