Just Below the Surface

For the last few days, I've been establishing the scope of work on some historic vacant Detroit homes.  Their insides always hold surprises.  Despite their decay, it's clear their beauty is just below the surface.  Like a tarnished piece of silver whose beauty is recovered with a little rubbing, these houses will once again be beautiful once loved again.

Building Green with The Value Guide

In partnership with WARM Training, we've developed a new Excel based tool for adding "green" value to your next residential renovation or new construction project.

We call it the Value Guide and its designed to:

1. Encourage incorporation of energy efficient and environmentally-friendly design elements.
2. Provide a checklist of design amenities that will maximize marketability.
3. Provide rough construction cost and cost savings information.
4. Provide a single source document for testing alternative design scenarios.
5. Create a marketing brochure for use with potential home buyers.

To download the FREE software go to:
Value Guide 1.1

Power Plant Physical Therapy

I had never been in a power plant until I stepped into Detroit's Mistersky power plant. Producing power at a fraction of its former capacity, it stands as a living monument to a city whose thirst for power has been quenched by a declining population.

As we tour the site, maps prove sometime useless. We walk through tunnels of wires and conduits. Row after row of control panels, throw switches and gauges sit dormant. Analog dials stand frozen, locking in measurements for equipment which has long since turned off. A crew of engineers monitors modern computers which sit interspersed among deserted consoles.

Mistersky power plant was the wind farm of its day. Mitersky is proof of the incredible technological heights achieved through Detroit's industrial might.  Can the might used to create Mistersky by redirected to build a new Green economy?

Housing Site Scavenger Hunt

Demolition is about to begin at this housing site, but there might not be anything left by the time work begins.  Like a turkey at Thanksgiving, the carcus of this housing site is being picked to its copper bones.





Care for a drink?



Stolen cooper hosebibs create a new water feature



The sounds of water cascading
from the 2nd floor soothe the senses





Continuously flowing water creates
a carpet of wall to wall water



Tobacco, Alcohol and ....

While driving down this section of Michigan Avenue, I noticed a billboard...

If one can ignore the message being sent to this neighborhood...

If we can accept that the tobacco and alcohol industries target black neighborhoods because "blacks have higher consumption indices for these products"...

If we accept the fact that lung cancer rates among blacks have increased four times faster than among whites in the last 30 years...

If we accept the fact that black men have a 70 percent higher death rate from cirrhosis of the liver than whites.

If we can tolerate that in 2010, 20.8% of African-Americans had no form of health insurance (as compared to 11.8% of non-Hispanic Whites)...

Then one should take notice of this Billboard's remarkable low price.

------------------------------------------------
"THE MEDIA BUSINESS; An Uproar Over Billboards in Poor Areas", New York Times (Business Section), May 1, 1989

US Dept. of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health

Phoenix Rising: Part 1-1/2

The Phoenix has begun to rise over Jefferies East.  The seeds of Cornerstone Estates have taken root. Water pipes and sewers are now charged with sustaining the new life injected into this mixed-income public housing townhouse development.

In the shadow of Motor City casino a reborn housing development springs to life.

Parkman Library Update

Parkman Library is rejuvinated as a 21st century library.
Opened on April 16, 1931 as the eighteenth member of the Detroit Library system, in 2012 it's new technology and literacy center serves 400 patrons a day with free Internet access and technology training.

Circa 1931

Circa 1931