Central City Alliance

What's Happening With The Empowerment Zone? by Jill Robinson

Sep 27, 2002

In the previous newsletter, you might remember a story about your neighborhood working together with the Empowerment Zone Urban Space Initiative Project (USIP) and The Greening of Detroit to clean and green vacant lots in your area.
Last Spring, The Greening of Detroit met with several residents at the Tangent Gallery to talk about where to focus our efforts and when we wanted to begin. Unfortunately, there has been an unexpected roadblock with the City of Detroit regarding the funding for this much needed project.
The funding is funneled through the Empowerment Zone Development Corporation to the city of Detroit Department of Public Works and is then granted to The Greening of Detroit to work with neighborhoods throughout the Empowerment Zone.
As you can see, there is quite a bit of funneling this money has to do. Since The Greening of Detroit has been unable to get the money from DPW, we are unable, at this time, to continue with the USIP project.
The Greening of Detroit is a 501(c)3 that is dedicated to helping revitalize neighborhoods with the help of their residents.
Unfortunately, when a funder doesn?’t come through with promised money, our projects, and most importantly our neighborhood allies and friends, suffer the consequences.
We will continue to work with the city to make this project a reality for your neighborhood and so many others. We truly appreciate your patience and the ability to communicate to everyone through this newsletter. In the meantime, The Greening is working to identify different funders to support this project, because we truly believe cleaning up vacant city owned lots and turning them into usable greenspace adds significant value to a community.
If you have any questions, please consider calling the following:
?· Jill Robinson - (313) 237-8733
The Greening of Detroit
?· Tamika Hale - (313) 872-8050
Empowerment Zone Development
Corporation
?· Alicia Kisner - (313) 224-3905
City of Detroit Department of Public
Works