Southwest Housing Solutions‘ Vista Partnership is taking steps to redevelop vacant buildings along a 20-block stretch of Mexicantown (Detroit, Michigan) as part of a larger redevelopment plan.
The Detroit-based nonprofit’s Vista Partnership seeks to engage local residents, organizations, public-sector partners and businesses to revitalize a southwest Detroit neighborhood with economic opportunity and social equity. It is funded primarily through grants from foundations such as the Skillman Foundation.
The project got off to a slow start as it required creating a strategy and culling community feedback through meetings and a survey, said Dan Pederson, director of Vista Partnership and a former resident of the neighborhood for 20 years. Now that it has accomplished those steps, it can proceed to find developers and occupants for the vacated buildings.
Pederson is approaching owners of vacant buildings to see if they would like assistance in redeveloping the property or if they would like to sell the property to Vista that would, in turn, redevelop it and find tenants beneficial to the neighborhood.
A challenge has been getting real estate “speculators” who own the properties to sell or redevelop the property themselves.