Keynote Address- Detroit’s History of Park Stewardship

5:58PM Dec 14, 2023

Speakers:

Keywords:

parks

detroit

city

recreation

organizations

system

archer

funding

working

park

renovated

public spaces

neighborhood

space

create

conservancy

money

riverfront

recreation department

foundation

Thanks, everyone. So before we introduce our first speaker, just a few quick housekeeping items, we will be having lunch shortly. When we do, we will call you by table. We will be eating into these first two sessions, so and then our district experts in service a couple of you've been asking.

So, I'm going to introduce you to Patrick Tanner.

And dissertation, on viral in our office and staff is worth getting grounded and commitment to meeting which common areas more equitable and sustainable. And when we first met him in person, we actually learned that he was part of the original. He's connected to your work. Today, he's going to share his students training, and ground us today on why it hasn't been and continues to be. So I'm gonna turn it over to Patrick.

All right, well, thank you very much. Bastion, thank you for thank you to the trademarks Coalition for inviting me to also want to say before I start, this is this is my take on the system. So I'm not speaking for the different parts coalition, I'm not speaking for the city. Speaking for me, it's also incomplete even though the stories of your own organizations much better than I do. So I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback, and really having a conversation. So there's a lot of history to cover. I'm gonna, for the sake of brevity, I'm going to talk about three periods. In talking about some organizations and initiatives. So to start, I'm going to talk about the period in the late 1960s, after the riot uprising, ended up organizing the initial demand for racially equitable system, because that really helps lead in to what happened in the young entrepreneurs, which I'll talk about next. Sorry, 20, a period in which to trade increasingly as a payment or budgetary pressure also opened up to the idea that sustaining a vibrant Parks and Recreation system was going to require working with nations working with community members soliciting governmental aid. But in that period, there was also a kind of concerted effort to keep municipal control over the whole system. In the 2000s, which I'll talk about at the end, you know, it's sort of splinters, where you have really severe budget cuts. But then that's kind of a flowering of organizations, both at the grassroots level and the corporate and foundation funded groups that actually took over management. And then I'm going to talk a little bit about where we are today, where we might be going, and hopefully we have some time for questions. So I would argue, the history of our stewardship, and you try, it really goes all the way back to 1966. And a woman named Olga AR, she was the first woman to serve on the executive board. And she was also a member of the Detroit recreation department. And she proposed in 1966, the form an organization, city wide organizing initiative, to demand a more equitable distribution of resources amongst the city's parks. And that effort of hers that idea of her is really gathered steam after the 1960s government values intuitive attention to the back in subsequent surveys, interviews with residents, that many people felt like the Parks and Recreation Department was not serving the inner city adequately. They were not hiring a sufficient number of African Americans. It just generally were viewed as an agency that sort of problematic and didn't have a good relationship with the community. And so you know, if you report after 1967 I'm trying to like diagnose what are some of the issues number one is police brutality. But number four on that list one, what are the communities they call the fire department and quote engross agencies with hostility by large standards in the community. This is not something you would expect at the parks and recreation. And so after the new Detroit committee joined with the UAW to form an organization, called the private areas recreation team worked hard, and inquired a black community organizer, Eric, and dark brought together 53 community based organizations in Detroit, mostly neighborhood representative organizations. And they formed a coalition to demand better workshops in our system. One of their major asks when they got this initiative at Waffle Brown, was that a city created pocket parks, and what were then very densely populated neighborhoods in the inner city. And they kept on ministration applied for federal funds. And they actually got money to build 10 of these parks, and gardens and work with the landscape architecture firm to meet with you on the blocks where these parks are going to be built. And to come up with a community based upon all of which we're going to include really nice features. Pools, like like small like reflecting pools, or splash pads, etc. Well, unfortunately, the director of the Parks and Recreation, Parks and Recreation agency at that time, manager may was entirely decided he didn't matter to build these marks because he was required to by the terms of the federal grant, but he did not follow the designs generated by the youth. He did not hire any any. And he said at the beginning, that the Parks and Recreation Department recreation would not maintain these marks with my directors and these marks. And so community members try that kind of their best to maintain these marks themselves. But as you would expect, they fall into disrepair relatively. Today on these 10 Best pocket marks, the only one that there's still any trace is actually that anyone's mentioned the word project. As part of the project, there's a little bit of playground equipment. That's one of these firearms. So after meeting with this resistance from the Parks and Rec Department starts next move was to go back to this landscape architecture that they were working in, they decided that they were going to create their own master plan for the city's parks. And it's really a remarkable documents include this, for example, this is a picture from a vision for a greenway running from the Detroit River, which is of course, you know, what, you know what the city ultimately pursued, but at the time, they were just met with resistance. In 1973, academic publishers in new Detroit decided to stop funding the initiative. And afterwards, this is a quote from a newspaper article after dark disbanded. This is one of the city's parks planners that most professionals in the department do not incur intrusions, which often demand partner that particular person is more money for recreation. Basically, we are the experts are not important that things change. And what is that voters pass a new charter, which turns the Parks and Recreation Department into just the renovating department. And it gave it a commission. So rather than being an agency dedicated to like maintaining landscape spaces as its primary purpose mean, that was supposed to serve the philosophy of the other thing that happened and I think, for voters and Americans. And one of the first things that Coleman Young did was he is he hired the director of DARPA to be the first director of recreation. Now, Americans did not actually stay in that role very long was kind of a whole history there. But the changes that she initiated for last thing and risk assessors to follow. So immediately, you know, she proposed holding meetings working with community groups. She hired grant writers in pursuit On many nations operations from other levels of government, she also expanded programs like mobiles, and mobiles to bring resources into underserved neighborhoods. The kind of priority for this appointment of Sarah Coleman Young in this administration, they came in with a racial equity agenda. But what they actually had to contend with was a never ending series of financial crisis. So they have these goals of integrating government and certainly more accurately, but they were doing it with less money. And so, one of the things that took place in the 70s is that the recreation department is rapidly turning more and more to external health operations in the late 1960s. recreation department actually has many as 2000 workers. By the time the youngest mayor was about 1500, and a third of those were funded through federal revenue sharing and provided temporary public workers. Young also negotiated with government and Milliken for what was called the state equity grant. It started with $35 million a year. And these were funds that compensated Detroit for providing regional amendments like the Detroit R, which was 100 City control.

So this grant funding, which was a key part in freeing up some money to put back into other recreational needs besides just a lot. The Kresge Foundation also became what I think was probably the first major foundation to donate

some of the improvements to funding for the major grants. And then in 1977, Detroit created the first adopter Park program in the city, which was also one

of the first programs nationwide. One of the ironies here is that every mayor of Detroit created, it's always been something that's been difficult to sustain. But this was the first one and I can tell you, Donald also introduced something called the partners catalog, which I think every letter that said for someone, but the gist of it was basically this was a kind of gift catalog to the immigration. So you could you could donate money to buy a park bench or a tree or basically any kind of amendment and it was bringing in about $300,000 in donations. The 70s also saw the first efforts by community based organizations and businesses to create their own public spaces knowing that a city was not well resourced. So for example, an organization corridor in 1977 Use a CDBG build which is still a park today managed by a gentleman motors also got involved in at the time they were still headquartered in New Center, and they built their own funding. Why don't we just still use Center Park today awesome.

On the one hand, you have a lot of people who are really pleased and happy to see you even respond parents in the city. But you know, this also sparked a lot of concern. So this is a quote here from kerchief as a journalist in Detroit. He said after all this promises to alter the way citizens deal with City Hall books as a patient is getting in the old days under a system known as democracy, the neighborhood picnic table, the citizens qualified and city council members and caller now citizens can stop yelling start on their own

young administration was also reluctant to give up its control over anything. So they said yes, basically that any money that came with no strings attached, but they also says Don't miss the number of opportunities for different reasons. Most famously, the Metro park system negotiated with the city throughout the seven years this proceeding over a plan to take over a mile a renovated according to a master plan. Notice the young administration also have a very frosty, maybe dismissive, even hostile relationship with a friend Have a lot of friends and a lot of formed in 1974 to my head with a mission like some other groups that formed at the same time cities restoring the island to its old steady and roots. Say you want to have this mission of seeing park space in the place of tranquility, nature peace. And they got funding from the Junior League basement to hire a national economic landscape architect and he has a master plan for the island. And in it he says Elijah's primary goal should be to provide an open space, biometric ability for the citizens of the city, essentially, wherever they might have saved the city enjoy the rejuvenation, quiet solitude and intimate contact with nature. In this plan envisions eventually phasing out our traffic, bringing people to the island ferries, increasing walking paths, and so on. This was not made a contribution. Jones proposals in the 70s and 80s included a commercial amusement

car bringing the Grand Prix to the island which ultimately did

you envision public slavery as a place for concerts, events, family get togethers.

It's just another, you know, food divisions and public space, but it's a very different one from the French. And so

with unlike, for example, the Central Park Conservancy which one does the same time and you are eventually home for something that didn't happen in any way in Detroit because of the vision that friends, promoting was completely agnostic the kind of public space administration I managed to create. Near the end of Delta ministration during yet another severe budgetary crisis. He went for very severe cuts to the recreation department, cutting its budget from $30 million down to 36. Close to while recreation sites, which at the time the city had 3545 recreation as well, which is as many takeout today. And you're organizing your business leaders to offer advice on how to go forward and they urge them to begin charging an entrance because a lot of loans costing me $12 a year in maintenance. And this was a proposal of shift costs to the drivers for the island that would free up space from this was not a popular proposal, city council opposes American friends oppose that they do not go forward. One kind of silver lining to the most American crisis of any magnitude. This is when occupy publishing and begun doing great things ever since but a good reaction to the budget.

When Dennis Archer became mayor, he kind of entered into this situation of crisis trying to figure out ways like how do we restore logic? How do we bring back recreation. Archer was a big proponent of charging an interesting fella. He put it before City Council three different times is rejected each time and eventually is Recreation Director quit and moved to Florida because he was so frustrated at the lack of funding that he was working with. Archer had been more successful working with foundations and he established relationships with Skillman Foundation, which launched a youth and recreation initiative that cover not just Detroit but also traveling and baby. Also the funding from Kresge Foundation reopened about four or five of those closed recreation centers. And they started funding youth athletics which used to be in the recreation department responsibility. And so they started funding groups like Detroit and evil sports this kind of grassroots groups made up the gap offered football and soccer. The other big initiative and I'll talk about more in a second was a partnership with the pistons TELUS Foundation, which is different than our pistons representative today. This is the predecessor to the William gates. And then, of course, he worked with business leaders and foundations in the state of Michigan. To begin what became against the Republic, and I'll talk more about that as well. So the palace foundation under William Davidson, read in 1994 to make renovations across. This is like really like a first big foundation investment in renovating public spaces. And at first they had really grandiose dreams, but they brought it down to the reader base $20 million. Much of that is actually donated by Kresge Foundation more so actually, they both put in a lot of money. And they they put in basketball courts above 30. In the city of Detroit, unfortunately, this partnership was somewhat acrimonious in the sense. Detroit was not able to uphold its end of the bargain, which was to maintain these as excellent beautiful park spaces. And so the Davidson foundations were pretty frustrated and ultimately backed out of continuing because they felt that they were building great basketball courts, but then they were falling into disrepair, and that was possibly damaging. So it was we'll call it a mixed success. Archer also worked with business leaders in downtown before the organization called the greater Downtown Partnership. And now it's big plans in 1996, maybe 97. To turn what happened Kennedy square for about 40 years into a new renovated Park Model on Bryant Park in New York called Campus Martius. Again, as part of a bigger plan to read a comp plan, all in league with demo possibility building. He also as part of the planning for the 300th anniversary in 2001 convened a group of business leaders work, riverfront Association and some others. She started in a renovation of General Motors Town Center, Brent said they wanted to build a plaza trigger in Detroit to create a bill on the first piece of Riverwalk extending from Kobo to another state of Michigan region five and on the riverfront contaminated land which is today tricentennial tricentennial State Park and then north. At the time that Archer was in office, it wasn't clear exactly how all of this will be operated. And running it seemed like maybe the city Archer kind of unexpectedly didn't run for election money compatriots elected one. And unfortunately Michigan's economy really takes the auto industry against a really severe problems. And so the 2000s is sort of, I think it's sort of like a tale of two parts. Because on the one hand that this is the period of the most severe cutbacks to the recreation system, but it is also the period in which a whole host of organizations many of which are now represented. First form in many of them took control of public spaces, either newly built or that had previously been a great shop management system. So many people unfortunately remember these budget cuts taking place in different Patrick they call me compassionate, closed the zoo. It was an aquarium, I was there the day it was a project protesting as like 14 year old company, close to 15 recreation sites. He sold camp riding, which was a city park actually out riding. He closed his soul shop off course.

And he attempted to sell me to the master plan by the city public park system, reducing the number of parks. At the time, it was about 20 and the goal was to get it down to 200.

City council did not approve the sales. But the kind of cost cutting continued as Detroit was moving to our bankruptcy case being cut back to the point where a lot of parks were only being mowed about four times a year became hard to distinguish these marks from the vacant lots are also being voted on. And he tried to just was another 77 marks in money. And so I decided to trade on the edge of bankruptcy. This is the condition of a lot of parts and not all of them it was sort of a complicated system for determining which parts can get voted six times, which will get voted four times get voted out all but it was a bad situation. The silver lining to this theory is that because the threat of our system is so severe, it really pushed a lot of organizations a lot of people to get involved in so this is by no means. But these are some of the organizations that have formed if I can if you can offer friends who are going to trade under Conservancy, riverfront Conservancy, the Palau women's committee for the South Park committee, friends of mine while aquarium Fletcher feel urban neighborhood initiative already existed but started getting involved in cars. People were pulling apart friends and allies on our part Roosevelt Park Conservancy in Detroit over in, you know, all kinds of groups got together and said basically, you know, say we have the Detroit Motor brand, which is mainly like suburban dads, you know, pick one more random parks and mowing the grass root. The city's sort of creating an adoption program like half managing it and trying to get the trash on there. And you also widespread to stop the cutbacks, save the parks to figure out where to go from? Where does ended up? Where is that arguably going to do this? By the time Detroit emerge from bankruptcy, you have a fundamental shift from where you went back to the 50s and 60s is one big park system, not perfectly managed, racially and equitable all under one unit all aren't really today, we actually have five different networks of partners. We have five different organizations all over the city of Detroit, really no controls, the neighborhood comes in no other management. Most of the parks along the riverfront are in the greater downtown. Almost the most places to manage the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, rather than a greater control over a series of spaces, being negotiated with the archer administration is Bill tracking annual State Department and then expanded to the outdoor metro center across the street. And then of course, eventually, under the emergency manager team over the veto of city council. The city manager sign of these transferring control over to the state of Michigan. The district riverfront conservancy formed in early 2000s. And basically they emerged having planted that initial piece of the the riverwalk Archer administration came in against the budget crunch. Some of the business leaders behind that effort said we don't want this to fail. You want to you want to take this forward. We want to put together a private organization that can manage this public space going forward. You can do so with an endowment fund operations. And so the Kresge Foundation gave me I think it's the largest grant as district $50 million to Kickstarter Conservancy. They got big donations from General Motors and most of other organizations. And maybe the managing partner of the protocol was created, then planning the extension of the Riverwalk. Eventually being from the Ambassador Bridge, all the way to the Downtown Partnership eventually emerged in the merger of different organizations, including the treasure hunter Conservancy in partnership with the Business Association, in took over management, not just Martius sort of newly renovated under their parents, but eventually all public spaces downtown Cork City and then Midtown Detroit Inc. Also graduated took responsibility for spaces, our reading class, some of which are sitting in parks and some of which in so where we ended off with again, is you've got the Department of responsibility sort of split between federal services, which does make matters worse recreation department sort of handles planning and programming. But the city's role has really been managing this kind of neighborhood recreation system, in partnership with many of you and figuring out what was the role of partners working with the city. The state of Michigan controls Millikan State Park outdoor adventure design, in conjunction with planning a river with this picture here, you might know this. This came from a plan published by the Detroit riverfront Conservancy for what the East River you know, and it reflects kind of the goal that the, for groups like the documentary partnership and riverfront Conservancy, it's kind of a dual mission of creating great public spaces and draw, draw people to the water brings people into contact with nature of average events. But there's also an economic development machinery required to attract the goal is to transform neighborhoods and create a public spaces. You of course, have any Marsha is just going to brace himself some public space managed partnership, I couldn't find a good picture for me.

You can see the town's kind of terrible. So where are we? So there's sort of a glass half empty, or half full perspective on the billing side of things is that you just look at the numbers are making 75 the number of parks in Detroit fell by 90, the majority of those were very small parks like those best.

Closer hidden equipment now sold a number of parks over the years for various reasons. 30 out of 45 recreation centers, and a total workforce, I actually don't know where it stands today. But as of coming out of bankruptcy, there were about 300 people involved in the fact that it takes a lot of people to meet each other. I do think that since 2014, the park system isn't as obvious the most sustained investment it's received, going all the way back to when not because those prior administrations didn't care, a lot of investment. But it was just a bunch of side projects. And I do think that the current administration sees the value in renovating for the public. So we've seen a lot of park renovations since 2014. And, you know, expansion and things like that. We also have the Detroit parks Coalition, which has alluded to, you know, it started in 2010, and kind of a reactionary position, you know, neighbors in those in those neighborhoods for 70 Plus proximately. Gathering together, what do we do? How do we stop this? How do we be honorable for ourselves? How do we get the city to be more responsible for our decisions, develop our own plans for the safety of our system. And then this is sort of restarted again in 2019, bringing together some more established organizations and also provide a forum for all of these smaller groups. And I think there's a lot of potential here and a lot of excitement, a gathering like this, the second one never took place prior for two years. Now, the last time a group was bringing together this many people around public space in Detroit, was in the late 1960s. So I think it's really exciting that there is a form of a voice to do this work together. You know, there are lots of big questions, I think about where to go forward. So in general, the groups that are best resource are those that are working along river funds in that town. And I think a big question over the last 10 years going forward, and how you get more into the neighborhoods in neighborhood parks. Another thing is that there's so many different things that the parks do. Traditionally, Detroit is focused pretty exclusively on recreational helmets, although that gradually got lost the budget costs, and a lot of things like natural spaces. So that's another question like, are we providing the opportunity to do all of the things that are great for our systems? And then the fact that our system is not split up between these different agencies, which Deuteronomy kind of takes away some of the opportunity to think about how to make priority, which we're going to be one of our reasons I'm, for example, the sugar conservancy which has done an amazing job of river. They're currently overseeing a renovation on the west river for over $150 million. Imagine that $150 million within the Detroit neighborhood parks, you know, those are important consideration is going to be a beautiful space, probably the best park in the city. But is there a way to get funding like that or other spaces? This is me. Feel free to email me. I'd love to hear from the wall. What I presented today, it's actually just a target dissertation, which you're writing through covers the history of interest card system all the way back in 1800s. So if you're interested, just Google my last name and dissertation. The first result