The Detroit River Renaissance

By James David Dickson

Detroit is finally treating its riverfront right — and it only took 300 years.

An international waterfront that now attracts three million people, the Detroit River was, for long stretches of the city's history, owned, controlled, and accessed by the few. In the earliest days of European settlement, it was divided into ribbon farms to accommodate French settlers. From then on, it was viewed as a highway, then a trash receptacle by heavy industry.

Time was, private industries looking to set up on the river named a location, the city OK'd it, and the public lived with it. Now, that paradigm has flipped completely: The city is seeking out the public's view, and private investment will have to adjust.

In May, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan's remarks at the Mackinac Policy Conference provided a window into how far the city on the strait has come. The remarks went over well in Detroit — and sent a signal to any investors watching that the city would now be protecting its crown jewel.

Dequindre Cut

The Dequindre Cut pedestrian path allows people better access to the river, without using a vehicle — or dodging one.

Before. Photo courtesy the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy.

After. Photo courtesy Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

"The Detroit River is for everybody," Duggan said. That statement was the last of eight principles he announced that day in May that will lead Detroit's ongoing attempts at recovery.

In some ways, the city's economic trouble paved a path. Detroit was still in the throes of bankruptcy when Mike Duggan won the 2013 mayoral election. The city's financial and political turmoil in the years before Duggan's arrival put a number of riverfront projects on hold.

In 2015, Duggan hired Maurice Cox as the city's planning director, but even before then, city officials had soured on some of the developments that had been planned, which went right to the water's edge.

Atwater Street Development Concept

Future. The Atwater Street Development Concept would keep the land between the road and the river public and green. Rendering courtesy Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Today. Atwater Street at Milliken Harbor today. Photo courtesy Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

"There are times in the city's evolution where, if someone wanted to develop in Detroit, you don't ask any questions, you just did it," Cox says of past planning decisions. "Now, the city is making a choice. It's an acknowledgment that we have a pretty unique asset, an international waterfront. Who does it belong to? Who should it belong to?"

That vision, of an inclusive, attractive riverfront for all people was the result of asking Detroiters — rather than developers — what they wanted.

Detroit East Riverfront. Map source: Google.

From freeway to waterway

Belle Isle, located in the Detroit River east of the mainland, is America's biggest urban island park. Larger than New York's Central Park, Belle Isle is where Detroiters have loved, laughed, and even rioted since the city purchased it in 1879.

By the time its 982 acres were procured, mainland Detroit's riverfront was spoken for. The land that now invites three million annual visitors was, until the last two decades, host to industries that used the fast-running river to dump waste.

After the riots of 1967, the center of gravity for the business community moved from the central business district to suburban office parks. The riverfront once pulled business to downtown Detroit, but when commerce and residents decamped to the suburbs, few had reasons to make the trek, and even fewer access points to the water, since most of the land around it was privately held and industrial.

For much of its history, the river "was really just a way to get materials from Point A to Point B," says Mark Wallace, CEO of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, a nonprofit that has stewarded safety, cleanup, programming, and fundraising concerns for the riverfront since 2003. "It was treated as a freeway," he says, "not a waterway to interact with."

The public-private partnership between the city and the conservancy is, from the city's perspective, a matter of resource preservation.

The partnership — a collaboration between the city, General Motors, and the conservancy — allows the city to enjoy a managed, secured riverfront without cost, while giving the conservancy the heft of government power in its negotiations. From the conservancy's perspective, it's a matter of public trust — people who study waterfront issues in Detroit and elsewhere would be the best caretakers for a city that's only recently started embracing its strait between Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie.

The effort to reclaim Detroit's formerly industrial waterfront dates back to river cleanup in the 1970s. In the 1920s, Detroit's health director said that accessing the polluted river was fine so long as visitors didn't drink the water. In 1948, an activist dumped dead birds, killed by the polluted river, in front of the capitol building in Lansing to get lawmakers' attention. Today, billions have been spent on remediation, and collaborators work to invite humans and nature back to the river.

The conservancy now looks to turn the 5.5 miles between Detroit's bridges — MacArthur Bridge, to Belle Isle on the east side, and the Ambassador Bridge, to Canada on the west side — into a contiguous, publicly accessible path — which hasn't been a possibility since before either bridge existed.

Jefferson's diet

"We're blessed with all this fresh water. We're blessed with a southern-facing city. The sun rises on your left and sets on your right as you look toward the waterfront. It's beautiful all day, and it moves really quickly." That's what Wallace sees from his office at the Renaissance Center, which overlooks the riverfront he stewards.

From the conservancy's founding in 2003, it started holding public meetings, asking Detroiters what an inclusive riverfront would look like. In 2004, the first stretch of the RiverWalk, a half-mile-long path behind General Motors headquarters at the Renaissance Center, was paved.

"We held 100 meetings before the first shovel touched the ground," Wallace says. "That gave us a lot of credibility as we got started."

The conservancy's style, of collaboration via listening, has held consistent since those early days and extends even to event programming.

Jefferson Avenue

Today. Most agree Jefferson Avenue as it is today is a problem. Its road diet, which began this fall, will cut lanes from nine to four, with better pedestrian crossings and protected bike lanes. Image courtesy Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Tomorrow. Jefferson Avenue's road diet, which began this fall, will cut lanes from nine to four, with better pedestrian crossings and protected bike lanes. Image courtesy Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

"We want to be a place where people say yes rather than no, most of the time," Wallace says. "Not creating something new out of the ground, but taking something that's happening already and bringing it to the riverfront. That allows us to expand what we offer without draining our resources."

In that spirit, events such as yoga classes and concerts, along with walking, jogging, and cycling, draw some three million annual visitors to the RiverWalk. Allowing community groups to organize their own programs on the riverfront helps the conservancy focus its resources on completing the 5.5-mile path. That should be done in the early 2020s, officials say.

In 2014, the conservancy started on a vision for the east riverfront project. In a public process, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was chosen to lead that vision. As work progresses, residents remain engaged, says Aaron May, AICP, projector manager for the firm. That collaboration with the public "changes the dynamic immediately, because there's no curtain anyone is hiding behind," May says. "The discussions are really frank, and the expectation of the public is that they'll be involved in the process all the way through."

May says one "wavelength" between planners and stakeholders soon formed: the land between Atwater — the southernmost road before the water — and the river itself would be kept public and green.

Another important point of agreement: Jefferson Avenue was a big problem. Detroit's historic "river road," which runs parallel to the river north of Atwater, was hulking and off-putting, stretching nine lanes across.

"As urban designers coming in from a non-Detroit perspective, Jefferson left us aghast," May says. "The number of lanes it has, the fact that it cuts off important neighborhoods from the riverfront. You really don't have any pedestrian traffic across Jefferson."

Wallace agrees. "One thing we heard from the community is that Jefferson is an impediment. That kept coming up over and over again."

The problem wasn't just aesthetics. In a five-yearspan, the two-mile stretch of Jefferson from Rivard Street to East Grand Boulevard was the scene of 1,350 car crashes — 39 involving pedestrians — and nine fatalities. The design of the road was not just an impediment to nearby neighborhoods' ability to reach the waterfront — it was unsafe.

So planners decided to put Jefferson on a road diet, which started in September. Protected bike lanes are being installed. Pedestrian crossings are being enhanced. Medians will be placed in some areas, allowing pedestrians a refuge mid-crossing, so they don't feel they need to rush across the street. And there will be fewer lanes to cross in the first place: five, down from nine.

"That should drive the riverfront businesses you'd want to see," Cox says, citing retailers as one group likely to find the area more attractive once the road diet is complete. Retailers had been deterred from investing along Jefferson because the landscape was off-putting, both to pedestrians and motorists, who'd rather not stop and park if they don't have to.

"This kind of project gives those looking to invest in the city a clear indication of where to invest," Cox says. In October, the city announced that the first mixed use development in decades would be built on East Jefferson. It will include housing (including set-asides for low-income renters) and retail.

The Jefferson Avenue diet, along with already-complete pedestrian paths on the Dequindre Cut and the Campau and Beltline greenways, allow people better access to the river, without using a vehicle — or dodging one.

"It's one thing to fish on a pier," Cox says. "It's another thing to walk from your house to fish on the pier. It would be ridiculous if a riverfront that serves the entire metro region didn't serve the people just a half-mile north."

Public-first design

The quarter-mile-long former Uniroyal site, the easternmost parcel before Belle Isle, represents a change in the way Detroit develops its riverfront. Its view toward MacArthur Bridge is one Detroiters have been denied for most of the bridge's existence.

Rather than wait for an investment to surface at the Uniroyal site, a tire plant vacated in 1980, and planning riverfront access around it, the city has decided to create public access first, by way of what Cox calls a "promenade," offering not only walking paths, but toes-in-the-water proximity to the river.

"We get to build an equitable recovery with bricks and mortar," Cox says. "I love that aspect of the work."

That's arguably a break from tradition in Detroit.

These days, the Uniroyal plant wouldn't be built where it was. One of the choices Detroit made, in the many public conversations about changing the face of the riverfront, is that the land south of Atwater, the southernmost street before the river, would remain in public use, not subject to private development. Developments such as Orleans Landing, completed in 2014, reflect the change in philosophy, as its residents have riverfront views and easy access to the RiverWalk just north of Atwater.

The biggest open question is what will become of the Joe Louis Arena site, which planning director Cox refers to as the "knuckle" between east and west riverfront projects. Per the terms of Detroit's bankruptcy in 2013, the future of the city-owned arena will be determined by a creditor whose bondholders had lost value. Riverfront stakeholders are tightlipped about what will become of the land after the arena is torn down.

Only two parcels remain undeveloped to the east of the Joe Louis Arena: the Uniroyal site and man-made Atwater Beach, a $1 million project slated to start in fall 2018. The west riverfront has much more work ahead. Two parks in that area, West Riverfront and Riverside, will be transformed — Riverside Park will even have a skatepark. But four sites remain out of public use, including the Joe Louis Arena's neighbor, Riverfront Towers. Talks to add an inland addition to the RiverWalk, parallel to the private path Riverfront Towers residents enjoy, are in progress. A design competition for the West Riverfront Project is ongoing; in keeping with Detroit's efforts to give the public a voice in the riverfront's redesign, finalists were interviewed in open meetings in August.

The result of this river renaissance is a level of inclusive access to an international waterfront that few Detroiters in the city's 316-year history have ever enjoyed. And not just on an island, like at Belle Isle, but in the heart of downtown, with civic and business and social opportunities steps away.

"Every time I stroll down the waterfront, I'm somewhat amazed and delighted by the racial and ethnic diversity on display," Cox says. "I see people fishing and think 'this is what the riverfront is all about.' You see kids frolicking through a place like Milliken State Park, and you realize this landscape is a kind of revelation to them."

James David Dickson is a journalist in Detroit.