Professional Documents
Culture Documents
7/13/15 8:44 AM
http://nyti.ms/1dQS5jc
Detroit, Just West of Bushwick, read the first billboard that popped up in
Bushwick, Brooklyn, this spring, with a working class scene from one of Diego
Riveras Detroit Industry murals. Detroit, Be Left Alone, a second one preached
soon after, again in Bushwick. And then a third sign appeared, in two locations in
Brooklyn and two in Manhattan Detroit: Now Hiring.
No one quite knew where they were coming from or who had put them up.
But when an unrelated photo popped up on Instagram Move to Detroit
spray-painted on a girder of the Brooklyn Bridge the campaigns anonymous
crusader finally revealed himself.
I rent billboard spaces where others dont see value. That is how I saw Detroit
on my first visit four years ago, said Philip Kafka, the 28-year-old man who then
put his passion behind the billboards with his SoHo-based company, Prince Media.
I saw great buildings, a deep and rich cultural history, and met amazing people.
He now owns six buildings in the Motor City, one of which will house his new
restaurant, Katoi, across the street from Detroits most photographed ruin porn,
the Michigan Central Station. I want people to know that in Detroit you can afford
to make art, be a chef, buy houses, start a business, do anything if you work hard,
he said.
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You can find your purpose in Detroit, which is nearly impossible to do these
days in New York, he added.
For many of the same reasons, Robert Elmes, the executive director of the 20year-old Brooklyn-based Galpagos Art Space, a performance venue and
cornerstone for artists, announced last December that the venue would be closing
its doors in New York and moving to Detroit. Or as stated on its website: You cant
paint at night in your kitchen and hope to be a good artist. It doesnt work that
way. Since then, Mr. Elmes has received more than 500 emails from artists
contemplating following him.
It is now well-documented that some of Brooklyns much-written-about
creative class is being driven out of the borough by high prices and low housing
stock. Some are going to Los Angeles (or even Queens), but others are migrating to
the Midwest, where Detroits empty industrial spaces, community-based projects,
experimental art scene and innovative design opportunities beckon, despite the
citys continuing challenges.
Brooklyn lost its whole sense of adventure for me, said Ben Wolf, 31, a Pratt
Institute graduate who, after more than a decade in New York, moved to Detroit
almost three years ago to continue creating his site-specific installations and
sculptures, made from rotten boards, rusty stairwells and peeling paint, or as he
said, the decadence of abandonment.
Initially I was attracted to the freedom of space and materials I found here,
said Mr. Wolf. But what has surprised me is how Detroit has allowed me to
mature.
Mr. Wolf now works in a 25,000-square-foot warehouse and lives with his
girlfriend in another 2,000-square-foot space both of which he bought for a
combined cost of under $8,000 two years ago. Owning my own place or starting a
business was financially impossible in Brooklyn, he said.
I came here thinking I might help save Detroit, and instead it has saved me,
he added.
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Or, as Mr. Elmes said on a recent visit to Detroit: New York is now hypergentrified like London. I want to develop artists, not destroy them, and they simply
cant afford to live and work there anymore.
To that end, he has bought nine buildings totaling 600,000 square feet for
what he said is the price of a small apartment in New York. He hopes to have the
first space, a 300,000-square-foot former high school, opened by the fall of 2016.
Mr. Elmes said he believes artists and curators will flock here from all over the
world to see the work being created. I see Detroit becoming like Berlin just after
the wall came down, he said.
Former New Yorkers now living in Detroit may be reminded of New York by a
few retail outlets in their new home.
For instance, in the West Village neighborhood of Detroit, there is now the
Red Hook, a cafe started by Sandi Heaselgrave. Ms. Heaselgrave, a photographer,
moved to Williamsburg from Detroit directly out of art school in 1998, only to find
herself moving back with her husband and son five years ago. And on the shelves of
most stores are jars of McClures Pickles, a Brooklyn/Detroit company that is
selling its quickly expanding line nationally.
But while real estate is cheap and available through agents and public auction
sites, particularly for those willing to navigate a complicated system, there are also
hidden costs to the purchase price: back taxes, old water bills and, for the most
dilapidated properties, financing a complete renovation from electricity and
plumbing to a new roof and foundation.
I estimate it costs $100 a square foot to rehab an empty house here, and that
is without doing anything very upscale, said Amy Haimerl, a former Red Hook
resident who moved to Detroit in 2013 after purchasing a 3,000-square-foot house
for $35,000. Since then, she and her husband have spent about $400,000 fixing it
up, documenting the refurbishment on her website though they have not cut
corners, putting in a gourmet kitchen and installing old moldings from an
abandoned church.
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Others, like the community activist and artist Halima Cassells, are
experimenting with more frugal ways to fix up a previously abandoned building.
Ms. Cassells, who during her six years in Brooklyn moved seven times, is now back
in her native Detroit and the proud owner of a two-family home she recently
bought for just $3,100, including back taxes.
As an extension of the free-market movement she began here, in which
community members trade items they no longer need at regularly organized swaps,
she has started a builders club. In the club, those who help labor on the houses
restoration, which she is documenting in a blog, will in return be given space to
work in what she hopes will become a rotating workshop for community projects
and artists.
One thing anyone moving here needs to know is you have to come into
Detroit respecting the people who have been living here through all the citys
struggles, Ms. Cassells said.
Toby Barlow agrees. Mr. Barlow, a former New Yorker, is credited by many
with putting Detroit on the national moving map back in 2009 with his opinion
article for The New York Times titled, For Sale: The $100 House.
Because the city has been through so much, we are ahead of the nation on all
the big conversations like race and class, he said. But you have to settle in and get
involved to succeed here.
Two years ago, Mr. Barlow started the nonprofit Write a House, which
awards a literary prize like no other: ownership of a free home in a culturally
diverse neighborhood in Detroit that hopes to encourage residents to stay in the
area. The first winner, a 30-year-old poet and historian, Casey Rocheteau, moved
to Detroit last fall from Brooklyn, and she is quick to say Detroit is nothing like her
former home.
Detroit is culturally different, she said. New York is predicated on
competition. Toddlers fight seniors for subway seats. Detroit is all about
collaboration.
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