Giving Compass' Take:

· Next City reports Detroit's plan to spend $130 million for new investments in developing neighborhoods and public spaces throughout the city.

· How will this investment affect the community in Detroit?

· Read more about remaking Detroit's neighborhoods.

Under the leadership of co-founder and managing partner, David Alade, Century Partners has been serving as part of a city-selected team to rehab over a hundred homes and landscape nearly 200 vacant lots in Detroit’s Fitzgerald neighborhood, closer to the northern edge of the city than to the downtown and midtown areas that have seen a wave of investment yet to come to the rest of Detroit.

“Detroiters aren’t any different from folks who live in cities across the country,” Alade says.

“They want safe neighborhoods. They want activated homes. They don’t want to walk by or drive by blight. They want to be able to access high-quality retail within walking distance. And they want close-knitted and connected neighborhoods where people know each other.”

Alade says that the RFP process to join the project required intensive community engagement, and that the team has worked closely with Fitzgerald residents and representatives from nearby universities in the time since his firm was selected to do the work. Michelle Bolofer, who has led a nonprofit offshoot of Century Partners called Century Forward since March, says she’s been working to build a network of stakeholders in the project and help create workforce opportunities for Fitzgerald residents.

Detroit now hopes to build on the strengths of that work, announcing $130 million in new investments in neighborhood development and public spaces across Detroit. The funding will expand the city’s Strategic Neighborhood Fund, which previously invested $42 million in three areas including the Fitzgerald revitalization project, to seven more areas across the city.

Read the full article about Detroit's plan to spread wealth by Jared Brey at Next City.