Grandmont Rosedale Development Corporation
When was it organized?
1989
Who is completing this survey? Name and role with organization:
Tom Goddeeris, Former Executive Director
Choose one category that best fits your organization:
Community Development Organization (not sponsored by a church or agency or company)
Does your organization have paid staff?
Yes
If yes, how many?
6 FTE and 1 PTE
What is the annual budget of your organization?
1 million
Describe the streets or locations that define your organization’s overall focus area (north, south, east and/or west):
- Evergreen — W boundary from Mcnichols to Outer Dr
- Outer Dr to Westwood, Westwood to Linden
- Linden to Grandville
- Grandville to Schoolcraft; S — Schoolcraft; E — Asbury Park Grand River and Southfield Freeway
Describe in detail the work your organization does, within the role categories below, along with the specific geographic area in which the work is done. Refer to the definitions below of the community development roles we are inquiring about. Include any partner organizations you work with, and how the work is funded or otherwise resourced. Use extra pages if necessary. If your organization doesn’t do work in one or more of the role categories, just skip that portion of the survey.
Please describe the work your organization does in community development:
Convening/Facilitating/Collaborations: General Description
- Our organization is a collaboration of five neighborhoods and each neighborhood has its own neighborhood association.
- The representatives on our board represent each of the five neighborhoods. Through the board, and other subcommittees, we bring people from five neighborhoods together to talk about issues and strategies.
The unique thing about Grandmont Rosedale is it really is a collaboration of people who all have the same interest, all together in the same area. Our collaboration has worked well because of that. GRDC is democratically ran — not perfectly democratic because not everybody chooses to participate perfectly.
- We also work with businesses. There’s a nascent separate business association that formed within the last month or so that is still determining its vision and purpose. We connect businesses with other stakeholders like service providers and technical assistance providers, and provide affordable office/work space options.
- We work with police.
- There aren’t really any agencies in the area.
- We have a youth baseball league that’s within the neighborhood and a youth soccer league (that are nonprofits) that are resident and parent-based.
- We collaborate with agencies to improve of parks.
Convening/Facilitating/Collaborations: Partner Organizations
- North Rosedale Park Civic Association
- Rosedale Park Improvement Association
- Grandmont Community Association
- Grandmont #1 Improvement Association
- Minock Block Association
- Police department
- Youth baseball league
- Youth soccer league
Convening/Facilitating/Collaborations: Funders
- Fundraisers
- Individual donations
- We fund our collaborating work through general operating support funds.
Convening/Facilitating/Collaborations: Important Outcomes or Lessons
Outcomes:
- The neighborhoods would act more independently. For example, there is a vacant property task force that has residents from all five neighborhoods. Before they were convened into one, there were five disparate activities all doing the same thing. We have a crime prevention task force that’s structured the same way.
- There’s a huge benefit to working together; they get moral support from working together and they’ve learned a lot from each other. The two task forces are the best examples of bringing people from all five neighborhoods together.
- The BIZ/BID (special assessment district) didn’t work because it was beyond what people were willing to do. We were giving up too much of our organization to be a part of a collaboration.
- Crime is going down, but I’m not sure if it’s related to Grandmont Rosedale, but there are increasingly better relationships with the police officers.
- There’s better community relationship building and better relationships with the city.
Lessons:
- The unique thing about Grandmont Rosedale is it really is a collaboration of people who all have the same interest, all together in the same area. Our collaboration has worked well because of that. GRDC is democratically ran — not perfectly democratic because not everybody chooses to participate perfectly. We were always transparent so, if people didn’t like something, they would know about it and could decide whether to come to the meeting to talk about it. Opportunities always existed for people to come participate and collaborate.
- We didn’t try to control the outcomes of the meetings and listened and adjusted based on the feedback. We tried to make sure that voices affected the outcome. The structure led to a high level of trust.
Resident Engagement/Empowerment: General Description
- GRDC does a lot of grassroots work. For example, the vacant property task force and housing preservation volunteer committee looked at houses, but part of it was professionalized i.e. run by professional staff.
- We have some areas of GRDC where staff are supportive and residents are leading.
- Our volunteers are both residents and from outside the community i.e. are from a company or a student group.
We didn’t try to control the outcomes of the meetings and listened and adjusted based on the feedback. We tried to make sure that voices affected the outcome. The structure led to a high level of trust.
- Our vacant property task force is made up of residents who research who owns what and they meet with the land bank, BSEED and department of neighborhoods to bring issues to those groups’ attention.
- We do outreach to neighbors. We mail information to them and knock on their doors.
- We host a big event every spring.
- The residents cut grass and board up buildings and then we do a major clean up.
- We do a bimonthly safety forum and the committee plans them and puts it on. The residents are involved in setting the agenda.
- Our board is entirely residents.
Resident Engagement/Empowerment: Partner Organizations
- U of M (Detroit Partnership Day),
- Ford Motor Company
- Quicken Loans
- Project 561 (suburban high school students)
- Sports leagues
Resident Engagement/Empowerment: Funders
- Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan funds community engagement and creative placemaking.
- Quicken Loans funds property tax foreclosure prevention outreach and education.
- General operating support
Resident Engagement/Empowerment: Important Outcomes or Lessons
Outcomes:
- The neighborhoods would act more independently. For example, there is a vacant property task force that has residents from all five neighborhoods. Before they were convened into one, there were five disparate activities all doing the same thing. We have a crime prevention task force that’s structured the same way.
- There’s a huge benefit to working together; they get moral support from working together and they’ve learned a lot from each other. The two task forces are the best examples of bringing people from all five neighborhoods together.
- The BIZ/BID (special assessment district) didn’t work because it was beyond what people were willing to do. We were giving up too much of our organization to be a part of a collaboration.
- Crime is going down, but I’m not sure if it’s related to Grandmont Rosedale, but there are increasingly better relationships with the police officers.
- There’s better community relationship building and better relationships with the city.
Lessons:
- The unique thing about Grandmont Rosedale is it really is a collaboration of people who all have the same interest, all together in the same area. Our collaboration has worked well because of that. GRDC is democratically ran — not perfectly democratic because not everybody chooses to participate perfectly. We were always transparent so if people didn’t like something they would know about it and could decide whether to come to the meeting to talk about it. Opportunities always existed there for people to come participate and collaborate.
- We didn’t try to control the outcomes of the meetings and listened and adjusted based on the feedback. We tried to make sure that voices affected the outcome. The structure led to a high level of trust.
Economic Development: General Description
- 95% of the land is single family houses.
- We purchase, renovate and sell vacant houses and we have a neighborhood stabilization strategy about decreasing vacancy and bringing new residents.
- We manage a coworking space called Grand River Workplace, which is a 2,800 square foot building. There are 19 businesses that share it and 24 employees in the 19 businesses. On average, there are 5–6 of them in the space at a time. Within that space, there’s also a retail pop up space.
Discover D1 was the only thing we were involved in that’s bigger than our boundaries. It’s the whole district. We don’t do projects that are parachuted in and you have to be cautious to not always do things for the money.
- We own another space that’s a more traditional space that we rent to tenants.
- We got a grant from Kresge to do a community store front idea to create more foot traffic.
- There’s a promotions committee for the business district. We connect local entrepreneurs to resources; through a partnership with ProsperUS, we do two, eight-week training sessions a year.
- We work with TechTown and work with MotorCity Match to connect business owners and try to recruit businesses to the neighborhood. We’re the point of entry for a lot of people. We didn’t feel like we should create our own business training program.
- We’ve done streetscape improvement: we planted trees on Grand River.
- We installed three new murals.
- We renovated every park and playground in the neighborhood (7 total).
- We completed a pretty big renovation at Stoepel Park; it was a three year, million dollar, multi-phase project which includes green infrastructure.
- We have a farmer’s market that’s been around for 14 years. It’s open weekly from June — Oct. The market helps to build community. It’s explicitly a business development activity. It costs $25 to come set up a booth. Businesses test their ideas there. Three hundred people a week come through the farmer’s market. The market makes $40,000 a week.
Economic Development: Partner Organizations
- Project 561
- Other volunteers
- Build Institute
- SCORE
- SEED
- TechTown
- ProsperUS
Economic Development: Funders
- Kresge
- NEI (most important for commercial)
- Huntington Bank
- Farmer’s Market (didn’t have funding in 2017)
Economic Development: Important Outcomes or Lessons
Outcomes:
- We renovated all seven parks.
- We planted trees on Grand River.
- We installed 3 new murals.
- Three hundred people a week come through the farmer’s market.
- The market brings in $40,000 a week.
- Numerous businesses have been helped.
Lessons:
Discover D1 was the only thing we were involved in that’s bigger than our boundaries. It’s the whole district. We don’t do projects that are parachuted in and you have to be cautious to not always do things for the money.
Resident Support: General Description
- ProsperUS applicants are by neighborhood. It is mostly people that are in and around Grandmont Rosedale.
- The people that use the coworking space live within a mile or two of the building.
Resident support is good to do: it’s not that hard to do and it makes people feel good.
- Our safety program hosts a lot of workshops about how to protect yourself in your home or how to prevent your car from being stolen.
- We do tax foreclosure prevention.
- We’re working on a victim’s support group.
- We’ve done work around vehicle etching.
- We hold health screenings, exercise classes, canning workshops, etc.
Resident Support: Partner Organizations
- ProsperUS
- TechTown
- SCORE
- SEED
- Build Institute
Resident Support: Funders
- NEI
- Quicken Loans
- Farmer’s Market (didn’t have funding in 2017)
Resident Support: Important Outcomes or Lessons
Outcomes:
Lots of people attend our trainings.
Lessons:
- We need to do a better job of quantifying how we support our residents.
- Resident support is good to do: it’s not that hard to do and it makes people feel good.
Community Planning and Advocacy: General Description
Community Planning:
- We have a strategic plan for the neighborhood. This is a quality of life plan that was created through a community engagement process. We held meetings where people voted on priorities. This plan is at the tail end of its life and needs to be done over again. It was a five year plan that’s in year five. GDRC took the community plan and used it to guide our work.
- The board develops an annual plan based on our mission and goals.
Community development is more than real estate development and so often the numbers that people care about are real estate outcomes. If GRDC went away, people might renovate a house or commercial building, but they wouldn’t do the other things that support residents.
- In 2016, we did a lot of planning around the commercial corridor, including planning for how to improve streetscape and traffic patterns and identifying opportunities for redevelopment. That has been overtaken by the city that is doing their own planning.
- We’re planning for a larger area (Grand River Northwest). We’re currently organizing people to have input in that process.
Advocacy:
- Our advocacy work takes place around vacant property: blight and nuisances and/or a building that needs to be torn down.
- The land bank has a nuisance abatement program and we’ll advocate for a certain case to be taken up.
- We advocate for city services.
Community Planning and Advocacy: Partner Organizations
- Congress for New Urbanism (a national organization that did a weekend charette)
- Bloomberg Associates (didn’t contract with them, but they helped us refine concepts)
- City of Detroit — Planning Department
Community Planning and Advocacy: Funders
NEI
Community Foundation (small planning grant for the commercial corridor)
Community Planning and Advocacy: Important Outcomes or Lessons
Outcomes:
We have a strategic plan for the neighborhood that’s a quality of life plan that was created through a community engagement process. It was a successful five year plan that we now need to revisit.
Lessons:
- Community development is more than real estate development and so often the numbers that people care about are real estate outcomes. If GRDC went away, people might renovate a house or commercial building, but they wouldn’t do the other things that support residents.
- CDOs play the role of being a neighborhood institution. Part of the value that we provide is that we can be responsive to what people want and not always be planning too far in advance to do something. Staff are sometimes disgruntled to do things that we’re not being paid to do, but that’s our mission.
- Real estate is a vehicle.
Finally, please rank each role 1 to 5, with 5 being the most frequent role, and 1 being the least frequent role carried out by the organization.
Convening/Facilitating/Collaborations: Frequency Rank
5
Resident Engagement/Empowerment: Frequency Rank
5
Economic Development: Frequency Rank
5
Resident Support: Frequency Rank
3
Community Planning and Advocacy: Frequency Rank
3
This information is current as of 5/24/17