Kresge Foundation Announces Grant to Support Placemaking in Detroit

PPS is thrilled to announce that we’ve been awarded a grant from the Kresge Foundation for our program, “Rebuilding Detroit Neighborhoods through Placemaking and the Power of 10.”

With Kresge’s support, PPS will soon begin planning for a series of community dinners to be held early this fall in Detroit neighborhood farmers markets.   The dinners will be a first step to involve the community in imagining “lighter, quicker, cheaper”  improvements to the streets and public spaces around their local markets as well as to identify the ten destinations or potential destinations that can serve as focal points for neighborhood renewal.   Expanding  farmers markets in areas where fresh food is scarce is another focus of the effort.

The program will be piloted in two neighborhoods this year, and hopefully expanded to other neighborhoods in the future.   The planning process with each community will support a broader city-visioning process funded by the Kresge Foundation called “Detroit Works.”

Place-based Governance in Michigan This work will continue to advance Michigan’s groundbreaking commitment to Place-based Governance, established by the state’s new governor, Rick Snyder, through his first Special Message to the State Legislature which established Placemaking as a state-wide economic development strategy.

About The Kresge Foundation Headquartered in metro Detroit, The Kresge Foundation is a $3.1 billion private, national foundation that seeks to influence the quality of life for future generations through its support of nonprofit organizations in six fields of interest including arts and culture, community development, education, the environment, health, and human services.

The Kresge Foundation’s commitment to its Detroit Program reflects the organization’s deep roots in the city.  Since its founding in 1924, Kresge Foundation has provided continuous philanthropic support to the area’s nonprofit organizations and community initiatives. In the 1990s and early 2000s, this support was coordinated by our Detroit Initiative, which focused primarily on strengthening civic institutions and building new public gathering spaces, such as the RiverWalk and Campus Martius Park, a project for which PPS worked with the community to develop a vision for a park that would become, in the Mayor’s words, “the best public space in the world.” PPS’ design suggestions envisioned an entire district of public uses to tie the park into a larger, city-wide revitalization.

For almost eight years, PPS worked with the city of Detroit and stakeholders at the city’s renowned Eastern Market on revitalization strategy.  The Kresge Foundation has been a leading supporter in the renovation of the market’s historic sheds and of the market’s ongoing community programming.   Today the Eastern Market is once again one of the largest and most vibrant market districts in the US.

Kresge uses a values-criteria to guide their grantmaking, which aims to create access and advance opportunity for marginalized populations, promote community impact in ways most needed by residents, cultivate innovation and risk taking, support interdisciplinary solutions, reach under-served locales, foster environmental sustainability, and encourage nonprofit boards and their staffs to reflect the racial, ethnic and gender diversity of the people they serve. PPS is honored to have been selected.

For more information about this project feel free to contact Steve Davies at sdavies@pps.org.

Are you in Detroit? Tell us about how to improve your local markets in the comments below.