Detroit's community-driven comeback on display in Fitzgerald neighborhood
Fred Watkins (left), Valarie Watkins, and Rick Helderop
DETROIT (FOX 2) - To Valarie Watkins, Kentucky Street was always the biggest eyesore in her community. The vacant buildings, the piles of trash, and all the blight in between was the clearest sign of Detroit's struggles.
"I always thought Kentucky was the worst street because of all the abandoned homes or semi-demolished spots," she said. And the adjacent streets Ohio and Indiana weren't much better.
That was eight years ago when members of the Marygrove Community Association, which encompasses about 450 households in the Fitzgerald Neighborhood, say the area hit its low point. It's been a busy decade since.
"This is an association of doers," said Rick Helderop, a local business owner and former treasurer of the association. "Where other neighborhoods kept going down, this area bottomed out and is now going up."
Where some describe investments in Midtown and Downtown Detroit as a sign of its return ot prominence, local residents in the outlying neighborhoods see a different kind of comeback unfolding.
The rendering of what Huntington Park would look like once completed.
It's more organic and community-driven comeback, Valarie says. And it can be found at 16170 Kentucky Street. Together, she and her husband Fred have spent the past few years beautifying the neighborhood with trash pick-ups, boarding up vacant homes, and building a community garden.
Set to be unveiled this Thursday will be Huntington Community Park.
"When you couple this with some of the other projects going up around here, plus Marygrove College, this whole area is just lifting up," Helderop said.
What was once vacant land with weeds growing over dumped refuse is now three lots of manicured park space. Rain barrels placed under the new pavilion will help water the beds of perennial flowers and plants
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The park is named after Huntington Bank, which contributed $49,000 to its development. Wayne County also donated $47,000 while its design came from a grant from the Detroit Collaborative Design Center at the Detroit Mercy School of Architecture.
What Huntington Community Park looked like in 2019 before it was refurbished.
Before the park, the Marygrove Community Association had done work on a garden for the purpose of collecting rainwater. Some of the first lots sold by the Detroit Landbank were in the neighborhood - which both Fred and Valarie say had been eyed by the city as a prime space for development.
"All credit to the mayor, because he chose this area as the place he thought would be really nice when build up," she said.
The area is not too far from the revitalized Avenue of Fashion on Livernois, which has gone through some city development and road work as Detroit seeks to rebuild the business network in the area.
Locals that are part of the association say they've seen their housing prices actually jump as a result. A few more residents from downtown have also moved in.
But as work on the park continued, so did the association's ambitions.
"The dream got bigger," said Helderop. "The vision got bigger."
"And people bought into it," Valarie added.
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Following the unveiling of Huntington Community Park, the association is hoping to beauty the alley way connecting it to the gardens with artwork that is illuminated and walkable.
Both Valarie and Fred have lived in the neighborhood since 1999, however, their roots in the city go back much further to when they were children. Now in their 60s, they are encouraged by the improvements to the area.
Rain barrels will collect stormwater to help irrigate the plants growing at Huntington Community Park.
But for Valarie, that progress has come with some apprehension - who will perform the upkeep it after they can no longer help?
"My worry is that it still will be maintained after we're gone or we're too old to do anything," she said. For her, it would be a waste of their efforts if they can't get more community buy-in to the plots of land.
Yet, the hard part of getting started is over. With momentum behind the project already moving in the direction of progress, there's real hope that more neighbors will come in and help before the pioneers of the original work are finished.