[animatedmartian]

If anyone doesn't mind the drive (and even less retail options than what you'd get downtown aside from the Meijers down the street), you should be glad to know Palmer Park is going through a quiet revival. A nice second option while downtown is going through high rents.

Palmer Park's turnaround and neighborhood revival
MATTHEW PIPER | TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014



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Between 2007 and 2012, Kathy and Mark's Shelbourne Development purchased a total of 14 apartment buildings in Palmer Park, with the intent to breathe new life into the neighborhood and restore its historic grandeur through redevelopment. Of the 14, six were completely vacant at the time of purchase and eight had very low occupancy.

When I ask her why she and her husband have invested so much in the Palmer Park apartment district, Makino-Leipsitz replies, "How can you not fall in love with that area? Each building's a work of art. That district is one of the few in the nation, if not the only one, where you can see so many distinct styles of apartment buildings in one place."

Renovation work is complete in seven of Shelbourne's Palmer Park buildings; of those, four have people living in them, one has people moving in, and two will be ready for move-in in early February.

Kathy and Mark financed the purchase and redevelopment of the buildings -- and weathered the recession -- through a complex assortment of financial tools, including historic tax credits, federal stimulus funding, and low-income/affordable housing tax credits. As a result of the latter, 80 percent of the renovated apartments will be designated affordable housing, giving low-income Detroiters the opportunity to live in updated apartments inside beautiful, well-preserved historic shells.

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Rochelle Lento is on the board of People for Palmer Park, the citizen-driven nonprofit organization that assumed operational control of the park in 2011, in the wake of its threatened closure.

At the time, the city's General Services Department staff had been drastically reduced, prompting it to announce the closure of 77 city parks. Led by Palmer Park's tennis players, a diverse group banded together to protest the closure, eventually forming People for Palmer Park, an organization dedicated to the park's rejuvenation and sustained vitality.

Their efforts in recent years have been remarkable, including clearing miles of trails, pruning trees to enhance visibility through the park, opening Thomas and Lizzie Palmer's log cabin to visitors for the first time in decades, planting apple trees, managing a large-scale composting effort, and, in August 2013, installing a brand-new splash park for kids. (1,200 people attended the grand opening.) People for Palmer Park has hosted harvest festivals, tennis lessons for both kids and adults, yoga and t'ai chi classes, and once-a-week bike rides through the park. They're getting ready for WinterFest this coming Sunday, which will include a doggie fashion parade (that's right), as well as skiing, snow-shoeing, ice skating, and horse and carriage rides.

And they honor the neighboring apartment district with an annual fall walking tour that gets more and more popular every year (200 people attended in 2011, 400 in 2012, and 600 in 2013).

Together, the ongoing revitalization of the park and rehabilitation of the apartment buildings are utterly transforming Palmer Park, turning it into a vibrant center of community activity and local pride where one constructive effort uplifts another.

"One of the things we just decided we're going to do," Kathy Makino-Leipsitz tells me, "is to buy everyone who moves into one of our buildings membership in People for Palmer Park. What they're doing is such a complement to what we're doing, and the more we can do to get the residents involved in the whole community, the better off we're all going to be."