Neighborhood Strategy

To support the vision for Greater Corktown, the City has identified Critical Community Improvements and additional projects that will enhance public spaces, create safer and more accessible streets, increase resident access to services and community supports, and position Corktown to become one of the City’s most sustainable and resilient neighborhoods. 

The City has identified four key neighborhood objectives: 

• Ensure safe, healthy streets and improve pedestrian connectivity

• Increase access to community amenities and resident services

• Create new and improved public spaces

• Strengthen and ensure community environmental resiliency

As part of the City's Choice Neighborhoods plan, neighborhood projects will include: 

• Developing the Ash Street Ecological Corridor with street tree plantings, installation of bike lanes, enhanced pedestrian crossings, and the tactical installation of vegetative planters 

• Improving the 14th Street Cultural Corridor, Rosa Parks Boulevard, and Bagley Street 

• Enhancing pedestrian safety along Michigan Avenue 

• Developing a Community Empowerment Center at the former Owen School site that will serve as a neighborhood anchor in North Corktown and provide supportive services for residents, such as early-childhood education, extracurricular activities for school-age children, and health and wellness resources 

• Unifying Roosevelt Park to create an 8-acre, contiguous public space that will provide needed amenities and serve as a gathering space for residents

• Integrating green infrastructure and developing active landscapes within all proposed critical community improvements 

Transformation Plan Neighborhood Improvements 

Pending approval from HUD, the City's Choice Neighborhoods Critical Community Improvement projects will include:

Owen Community Empowerment Center

A 20,000 square-foot multi-purpose, flexibly designed Community Empowerment Center. This space will provide vital resident amenities such as a formal childcare facility, youth-serving amenities, the creation of community space, economic development and workforce opportunities, and the repurposing of vacant land.

Street Calming and Pedestrian Connectivity

Light-touch, streetscape interventions such as traffic calming, intersection, and pedestrian improvements to Ash St., 14^th St., and Bagley St., and overpasses/bridges along I-75 at 14^th St., Rosa Parks, and Trumbull. The specific design solutions create linkages to tie Greater Corktown together and promote a sense of neighborhood. Placemaking efforts will work to activate these streets and promote walkability and pedestrian circulation, while interventions at the three highway overpasses will be implemented to reduce safety concerns that exist for pedestrians and beautify the neighborhood.

10^th Street Greenway

The 10^th St. Greenway Connector will be a traffic-calmed path that prioritizes pedestrians and people riding bikes that promotes neighborhood beautification through art and culture installations and is a direct North/South connector to Wilson Centennial Park and other public amenities along the riverfront.

Neighborhood Green Infrastructure

Place-based installations of green infrastructure adjacent to housing developments, along streetscapes and open space to strengthen neighborhood sustainability, and community resilience and improve the ecological health of the area

Other City Projects

Roosevelt Park

Roosevelt Park sits in the center of a vibrant and culturally diverse Detroit community.  In the heart of southwest Detroit’s Hubbard Richard and Corktown Neighborhoods, Roosevelt Park is most well-known as a green space next to the iconic Michigan Central Station. Construction has begun on July 19, 2022.  Work should be substantially completed by Spring 2023.   For more information, please contact Shamori Whitt at [email protected] or visit https://detroitmi.gov/departments/detroit-parks-recreation/parks-and-greenways/roosevelt-park for monthly updates.