1021 Nottingham Road
Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan 48230
Phone (313) 331 7821
Fax (313) 331 2567
Email dgo@esoplaw.com
A Brief History
Goals
Strategies
Projects and Services
Supporting Organizations
Over two years ago, residents, business owners, political leaders, and representatives of neighborhood, commercial and grassroots development organizations on the Eastside of Detroit and the Grosse Pointe communities met to begin an initiative that resulted in the incorporation of JOINT CITIES DEVELOPMENT CORP. ("JCDC" or "JointCities") in 1994.
The initial group formed in response to Wayne County's announcement of plans to establish a Development Bank. Under the name "Development Bank Coalition East" (DBCE), the initial participants believed that the Eastside presented an excellent opportunity for a successful Development Bank, as envisioned by Wayne County. The group believed that the Development Bank would be a catalyst for the adjacent Detroit and Grosse Pointe areas to support community improvement through cooperative efforts.
As the coalition worked within the Eastside community to build support for an Eastside designation for the Development Bank, participation in the group expanded. Residents and leaders in the area learned of DBCE and wanted to participate in its positive commitment to the Eastside. When Mayor Archer announced that the City of Detroit would pursue an Empowerment Zone grant, the group found a second focus for its commitment -- providing input and support to the Empowerment Zone application to include the designation of an Eastside area.
Based on the enthusiasm and potential for successful cooperative efforts, DBCE decided to continue to pursue its commitment to the Eastside, regardless of the outcomes of pending decisions concerning the target areas for Development Bank and the Empowerment Zone application. In February 1994, the group voted to incorporate as "Joint Cities Development Corp." Joint Cities Development Corp. incorporated as a Michigan non-profit in March of 1994.
On Saturday June 25, 1994 Joint Cities held a community planning session attended by 35 community organization representatives and business owners to determine the mission for Joint Cities, and to explore the needs and create goals for a coordinated commercial development of Mack Avenue from Alter to Balfour on both sides of the street.
The area was chosen because it includes the regions served by many of the groups involved. It is half in Detroit, half in Grosse Pointe Park and adjacent to Warren-Conner's and U-SNAP-BAC's Mack-Alter Square commercial and housing developments and includes the Grosse Pointe Park Northwest Tax Increment Financing Authority and the Detroit Empowerment Zone. It is commercially viable, but blight is serious on the Detroit side and creeping up the Grosse Pointe Park side. The end result of this meeting was that JointCities contracted with Development Research Associates, Inc., to carry out a comprehensive study of the potential for commercial development in the Mack Avenue project area.
Much of this early work has already produced noticeable results:
During 1995, JointCities spent considerable energy on organizational development. Beginning in July, JointCities took on an intern through Wayne State University's Urban Linkage Program. The intern, David A. Spitzley, has provided continued staffing after the end of the internship, and now serves as JointCities' Administrative Assistant. With the issue of staffing addressed, JointCities took the fortuitous step of developing a grant request for the New Directions Initiative.
The extensive discussions by the Board of Directors involved in developing the request provided a long-term vision for the evolution of JointCities as an organization, and a corresponding refinement of how we view ourselves and our role in the Eastside (see section 2, Brief Description of the Organization). We enter 1996 with a stronger idea than ever of what we as an organization hope to accomplish, and a wider range of approaches for doing so than ever before.
JointCities as an organization is centrally and viscerally directed to aiding the development of a true cross-municipal community encompassing the whole of the Eastside. The futures of Detroit and its suburbs are inextricably bound together; the barriers which divide the city and suburbs cost both in opportunities to build a better future. Those working to make changes in our communities share common goals which would be better met through broad-based cooperation than through isolated activity. Cooperation based not on charity or fear, but on mutual benefit, is the key to restoring pride and prosperity to our communities and region.
JointCities' specialty is bringing together groups on the Eastside with compatible objectives and resources to collaborate on projects of mutual interest; our long-term goal is to create a self-sustaining process for forging Detroit-suburban alliances. To these ends, JointCities has created a diverse Board of Directors and Advisory Board, with proven leadership skills, vision and track records, deep and broad experience in development, personal and professional commitment to the future development of Detroit and its neighbors, and long experience working on the Eastside, both city and suburbs.
Many of the city and suburban members were strangers to each other initially. However, they immediately began to utilize their diverse networks to help one another on an ad hoc basis, and quickly chose the Mack Avenue commercial area as a project development site. The regular contact between these individuals has already had a noticeable effect on the functioning of the Eastside community, and continues to influence activity in the region.
While this approach to bringing groups together is a defining characteristic of JointCities, it would be ideal if access to this social network could be widened beyond the contacts the JointCities Board of Directors can undertake themselves. With this in mind, JointCities plans to develop the Database of Eastside Community Organizations (DECO), as resources become available.
The idea behind DECO is to develop a computerized database of information on Eastside community and non-profit groups, including their areas of interest, projects they are currently pursuing, resources they need, as well as those they have others might be able to use, and contact information for the organizations. By gathering and then widely disseminating this information, we believe we can make it much easier for community groups throughout the Eastside to make contacts on their own. As a side benefit, our collection of this information will greatly expand our own knowledge of the organizations in the area, which will enhance our ability to provide useful assistance.
JointCities' current form is the first of three phases in our planned evolution. Once we have developed a set of successful techniques for bringing community organizations together to work cooperatively, we will then develop the organizational capacity necessary to institutionalize JointCities' position in this intermediary role. Having achieved the necessary degree of stability, we will finally pursue the ability to assist in the formation of complete joint ventures, not only bringing together primary project organizations, but also locating interested funding organizations, bringing in support from local government agencies, and providing technical assistance necessary to successful planning and implementation of the joint venture. In this way we hope to evolve from helping Eastside community organizations see the possibilities for collaborative action, to helping projects emerge from the Eastside community which no single community organization could have undertaken on its own.
Should JointCities be successful, and we have every expectation we will, the dynamics of community action in our area will be dramatically enhanced. In addition to significantly simplifying community organization access to information, JointCities will also help weave a network of working relationships between the organizations in our region which will strengthen their ability to successfully accomplish their goals. In addition, JointCities' success on the Eastside would serve as a persuasive proof-of-concept, and would justify both the expansion of JointCities' efforts into the rest of the Metro Detroit area, and the use of the JointCities' model in other regions of the United States.
JointCities follows several strategies in pursuit of our goals:
The primary service Joint Cities offers is the existence of a forum for community leaders from Detroit and its eastern suburbs to meet and plan cooperative activity. Joint Cities is unique because it brings together people who live quite close to each other but have been separated by strong invisible barriers in the past. The disparities of race, class, employment levels and social concerns on either side of the city borders create the challenge and the opportunity for innovative solutions.
As an outgrowth of our primary service role, JointCities has taken on a key role in several projects within the Eastside community. The first of these is the Mack Avenue Commercial Study. JointCities took on the task of mobilizing the necessary funds to carry out the study, because we hoped to improve the quality of information available to the Mack Avenue business community. This will be critical when the time comes for them to discuss what actions have the greatest promise for revitalizing the area. JointCities has recently received the report, and once the review process is finished, we plan to begin disseminating the results.
Another project which JointCities is helping organize is the formation of an Eastside Youth Soccer League. In response to discussions with representatives of the MorningSide community, JointCities has organized a series of meetings between several organizations on the Eastside, both in Detroit and in the suburbs, which has lead quite quickly to the establishment of a set of teams from Detroit to participate in the Spring schedule of the Grosse Pointe Soccer Association in 1996. As one of the first practical tests of the JointCities concept of aiding collaborative activities between other organizations, the success to date of the Eastside Youth Soccer League project is quite encouraging.
JointCities is involved in a number of other smaller endeavors, and in each case, our role is bringing together individuals and organizations who want to see something accomplished, with the sole goal of helping them succeed.
The following organizations have agreed to assist JointCities by aiding in fostering discussion and the collaborative projects which result: