Sven Gustafson - Daily Detroit (Page 17)

Custom Built HomesDetroit North Corktown

Architect Plans Custom-Built Homes In Detroit’s North Corktown Neighborhood

Detroit’s North Corktown neighborhood will see its first new homes built in years starting next spring by an architect who says the neighborhood offers the right mix of vacant, land bank-owned lots and solid home appraisals. Grosse Pointe Park-based Christian Hurttienne Architects said Tuesday it plans to construct two custom-designed single-family homes, valued around $200,000 each, using traditional bank financing. The firm, which built several affordable-housing units in the neighborhood...

DTE EnergyFerndale Ferndale blackouts

DTE Promises New Ferndale Substation By 2017 As Outages Keep Rolling

Those of us who live in Ferndale are no strangers to aggravating summertime power outages. In fact, there was one earlier this week — more on that below. More recently, you may have noticed the presence of utility trucks and bare utility poles and other equipment stacked along certain streets waiting to be installed. Now we know why. DTE Energy announced this week that it’s spending $76 million to boost electrical reliability for more than 30,000 customers in Ferndale, Hazel Park and Troy. The...

BusDetroit Mass Transit

I'm Riding The New RefleX Bus To Work. Here's What It's Like.

I’ve spent the past couple days riding the new RefleX bus, a limited-stop, express bus service between the suburbs and downtown Detroit, and I’m here to tell you: The Duran Duran song by the same name totally keeps popping into my head. Also, the three-year pilot program is a welcome new transportation service. The RefleX (fle-fle-fle-fle-flex) is a new service from the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan that provides service between the suburbs and central business district se...

Crowdfunding Drive For The Historic Log Cabin In Palmer Park Closes In On $25K Goal

With a little more than a month remaining in its crowdfunding campaign, an effort to raise $25,000 to fix the stained and leaded glass windows in the log cabin at Detroit’s historic Palmer Park is less than $8,000 shy of its goal. The nonprofit group People For Palmer Park sent out the update about its Patronicity campaign Wednesday. Reaching the $25,000 goal would trigger a $25,000 match from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. The gro...

FerndaleFerndale Parks Martin Park

Ferndale's Biggest Park May Get Big Improvements Under Proposed Plan

Water features, a splash park, native plantings and a natural amphitheater for outdoor concerts are among the ambitious ideas Ferndale officials will be considering as part of a planned makeover of Martin Road Park, the city’s largest green space. The proposals are still in the conceptual stage and have yet to be reviewed by members of the city’s planning commission. They are outlined in a series of renderings prepared by Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson Associates. They’ll be discussed offic...

Avenue of fashionBike Lanes Detroit

Bike Lanes, Other Changes Are Being Tested On Livernois ‘Avenue of Fashion’

The City of Detroit is conducting a demonstration project on a roughly half-mile stretch of Livernois Avenue to test the idea of calming traffic, installing bike lanes and making other improvements to give a boost to businesses in the city’s so-called “Avenue of Fashion.” Crews have installed orange barrels, temporary signage and rubber crosswalk mats, with lines temporarily painted on the pavement to mark bike lanes and a barrier from the parking lanes, which take up one of two lanes of traff...

100.7 FMFCC Ferndale Community Radio

Team Behind Ferndale Radio Propose ‘An Alternative to Taylor Swift’s Domination Of The Airwaves’

A group of broadcast veterans wants to bring non-commercial community radio to the Rust Belt Market in downtown Ferndale and has launched a crowdfunding drive to help it get on the local airwaves. The group of friends recently launched Ferndale Radio on Indiegogo. They’re aiming to raise $15,000 from backers to construct a tower, antenna, transmitter, and studio and go on the air within the next 12 months. The group recently received a construction permit for a low-power FM station from the...

Back To The 80s: Check Out This Detroit Business Promo Video From 31 Years Ago

The 1980s were a pretty bleak time for Detroit. The auto industry was in crisis, and the city was firmly in decline, hemorrhaging jobs and residents. Children were being killed for their Air Jordans, crack cocaine was wiping out neighborhoods, and thugs were dropping cinderblocks into traffic from freeway overpasses. Broadly speaking, the era was better known for suburbia and new shopping malls than for today’s rush back to cities and urbanism. Not that there weren’t herculean efforts to rev...

Downtown FerndaleFerndale Ferndale Development

Ferndale Officials Would Like To See More Offices Downtown, Developer "Open To Suggestions"

Construction projects continue to reshape downtown Ferndale, with plans under way to build a two-story office and retail building on the site where a vacant residential structure was recently demolished. The roughly 3,700 square-foot site at 413 W. Nine Mile was recently cleared to make way for a two-story office and retail development that is currently in the building plan process, Ferndale city planner Justin Lyons said. It’s directly across West Nine Mile from the Ferndalehaus lofts develop...

Demolition project in Ferndale will bring huge new residential loft building

Demolition has begun on a vacant grocery store in downtown Ferndale where developers plan to build a four-story, $14.9 million mixed-use residential loft building. The Ferndale Downtown Development Authority posted photos and a video on Facebook of crews tearing down the former Save-A-Lot grocery store at 430 W. Nine Mile Road. The property has been fenced off for months. The city back in March approved a $2.24 million brownfield redevelopment proposal for developers Ferndale9 LLC. They...

Detroit running spotsRunning Where to run in Detroit

6 Great Places To Run In And Around Detroit

The Detroit area may not be many people’s idea of a runner’s paradise, but that doesn’t mean we lack for runners — or good places to go for a run. After all, we’re home to the Hanson’s-Brooks Original Distance Project, a program that trains elite athletes like marathoner Desi Linden in Rochester, an international marathon and one of the nation’s largest Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot races. If there’s a downside to running here, it’s that some of my favorite places to run in the area tend to be...

Ferndale's Business Boom Starting To Expand Beyond Downtown

The owners of Anita’s Kitchen, a popular Lebanese eatery in downtown Ferndale, have acquired two adjacent properties on Woodward Heights near Hilton where they are proposing an expanded new restaurant in an existing business and a new three-story residential and commercial building on a vacant lot. The City Council recently approved rezoning the vacant parcel, at 1201 Woodward Heights, from single- and two-family residential to mixed use to facilitate the plans. The city in September 2015 appr...

Detroit FreewaysFreeway

7 Scenic Detroit-Area Freeway Embankments, Ranked

Detroit is a city that, for better or worse, is defined by its elaborate network of sunken freeways. They’ve sliced and diced entire neighborhoods, destroyed others completely and generally played havoc with the urban grid. And like anyone who depends on his car to get around here, I spend plenty of time on ‘em. Which means that, like you, I spend plenty of time stuck in traffic, absorbing the scenery — such as it is. Because I appreciate good design in all its forms, and it’s summer and I’m...

Sprawl Is Still King In Metro Detroit And Other Takeaways From The Census Estimate

If it’s true that people across the country are once again embracing cities, then apparently the Detroit region missed the memo, as sprawl continues to reign supreme here. That’s my take on the latest annual U.S. Census Bureau estimates, released last month. Most of the media coverage focused on Detroit’s loss of 3,107 residents, a drop of 0.5 percent between 2014 and 2015. That was either the smallest population drop in decades and reason for optimism, or the first time Detroit’s population...

Great Lakes Coffee Eyes Vacant Detroit Firehouse For Tasting Room, Mixed Use Development

Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Co. is talking with city officials about purchasing and redeveloping a vacant, historic firehouse in southwest Detroit for its third location in the city, Daily Detroit has learned. The firehouse, at 3396 Vinewood St., is located just off Michigan Avenue in the Core City neighborhood, nearly a mile west of the rapidly revitalizing commercial district in Corktown. The project is at the center of the city’s effort to rezone 39 lots as mixed use in an effort to draw mo...

Jolly Pumpkin Adds Flavor To Detroit's Most Vibrant Retail Block

The block of West Canfield Street, in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood between Cass and Second Avenues, is practically its own zip code at this point. It’s home to a disorientingly vibrant cluster of high-gloss retailers, like Shinola and the new Third Man Records, and a trio of hip eateries. The newest in the latter category is Jolly Pumpkin Pizzeria and Brewery, where I stopped with my family for dinner the other night. This is the local outpost of the Dexter-based brewer of oak-aged sour al...

Gleaming New Football Field Rising From Detroit's Decimated Urban Prairie

Chene Street is one of those places you can go in Detroit if you ever need a reality check and want to experience a neighborhood in true despair. Over decades of abandonment and disinvestment, the crack epidemic and rampant crime, the once-vibrant working class community surrounding a retail and business strip morphed into a burned-out urban prairie, a place defined by poverty, emptiness and decay. So it was something of a shock to see a state-of-the-art football field taking shape on the site...

Here Are 8 Reasons You Should Ride With Me On Bike To Work Day Detroit

Bike to Work Day is Friday in Detroit, I’m excited and I’m putting on the full-court press for why you should join us. I previously wrote about how I’m involved in Bike To Work Day. As a reminder, please register so we have enough food and beverage and swag for you. Here are eight reasons to ride: 1. It’s a great way to kick spring into gear You’re sick of the cold weather and have suffered long enough from cabin fever. You could use some fresh air, you long to feel the breeze ruffle your...