By Monica Mercer
Special to the Times Free Press
DETROIT -- CreateHere co-founder Helen Davis Johnson's mother was born in Detroit, but that family connection is not why Chattanooga's original nonprofit in urban innovation is now tackling the Motor City.
Several CreateHere staffers and about 40 Detroiters mingled Saturday in an empty restaurant on the fringe of downtown.
Visible through its large windows was the target of a "civic intervention" the group staged: Michigan Central Station, the main symbol of the city's decay, and a forlorn strip of ground called Roosevelt Park in front of it.
Locals believe the site could become a portal to the rest of the city if the community only would embrace it.
They made plans for building the park's brand and installing art pieces. They brainstormed about finding funds and talked with architects already working on a "master plan" that would include an amphitheater with the abandoned train station as a dramatic backdrop.
"I can't believe people from Chattanooga came up here to help with this," one Detroiter said.
Johnson said it's easy for community leaders like her to relate to Detroit's legacy and transition. As Chattanooga is poised for more change with the arrival of the auto industry, Detroit is trying to reconcile its car-building history with the possibilities for its future amid a tremendous loss of jobs and population.
"Yes, people are leaving Detroit," Johnson said in explaining why the CreateHere group came.
"But more than any other city right now, coming to Detroit is a choice," she said. "It means you want to be here. And I think that's a tremendous asset for the city. There's nothing like a good crisis for pulling people together to create a platform to determine a place's identity."
Establishing a city's identity often is done through social entrepreneurship, and CreateHere co-founder Josh McManus said the two American cities that can benefit from it most are New Orleans and Detroit.
"Detroit is the wild west of social entrepreneurship. With so much societal transition, you can try anything here," McManus said. "There's an openness to change, unlike other big cities where things are held as much more precious."
One Detroiter at the forefront of the city's transition is Slows Bar B Q owner Phillip Cooley, whose restaurant across from Roosevelt Park became a test case five years ago for reinvigorating Detroit's Corktown neighborhood.
Now an entrepreneurial success story, Cooley recently was featured in The New York Times. He's become well known in Detroit for pushing the buttons of major real estate owners who have let its huge skyscrapers and monoliths such as the train station languish in abandonment.
"That's the biggest problem in Detroit, the millionaires and billionaires who own the majority of the city and just let it sit there. They're making us look bad," Cooley told the group gathered Saturday.
It's the regular people who live in the community who will end up changing Detroit, Cooley said, but not without reclaiming more public spaces like Roosevelt Park and taking pride once again in the city.
"Forget the national perception and understand the possibilities in Detroit," Cooley told the crowd. "Think of this as Utopia, because it really is."
Monica Mercer is a former Times Free Press reporter who now lives in Detroit.