Dearborn : In the News

Strike up the music! The NAMM Foundation has called out the school districts of Berkeley, Bloomfield Hills, Dearborn, Ferndale, and Troy, as being among the best in the nation for music education.

Read the full list here.

In a good comeback story, Metro Detroit is no. 14 in the country in terms of percentage job growth from 2011 to 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

More here.

Detroit's economy is facing forward. Now it just needs some new verbiage.

Excerpt:

"Former heavy manufacturing hubs around the Great Lakes like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee often get roped together under the heading of "post-industrial" (when, that is, we're not otherwise identifying them by their prevalence of rust). The term poses at least two problems, though: Industry still exists in many of these places, and the very notion of defining them by their relationship to the past can hamstring us from planning more thoughtfully for their future.

"You've got the 'post-war,' you've got 'post-modern,' you've got 'post-9/11,'" says Paul Kapp, an associate professor in the school of architecture at the University of Illinois and an editor of the book SynergiCity: Reinventing the Postindustrial City. He was speaking Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Planning Association (hosted in what's often considered the post-industrial city of Chicago). "You get to a point," Kapp says, "where you've got to say, 'When does post-something end and you do something new?' I think with 'post-industrial,' we're at that opportunity now. I think it's now time to come up with a new term."

More here.

A great, comprehensive article on how the 7.2-square-mile greater downtown Detroit is growing posher by the minute, it seems, and how and why its deindustrialized metros (and certain Detroit neighborhoods) are landing the creative class.

Excerpt:

"Two of the top 10 creative class tracts are in Birmingham; two are in Bloomfield Township, and another is in Bloomfield Hills, home to some of the priciest real estate in the U.S. and the Cranbrook educational community. Designed by Finnish architect  Eliel Saarinen, the architecture critic  Paul Goldberger  called Cranbrook "one of the greatest campuses ever created anywhere in the world." University of Michigan's  Little  points out in an email to me: "Cranbrook graduates have added to the cutting edge design and creative communities of Detroit and the nation for decades."

Another top creative class tract is in nearby Troy, a sprawling middle-class suburb with excellent public schools, and the site of a high-end mall, the Somerset Collection. Two are in Huntington Woods, a leafy neighborhood that boasts such notable amenities as the public golf course  Rackham and the Detroit Zoo. Two more are in the "Grosse Pointes" — Grosse Pointe Farms and Grosse Pointe Park — the communities of choice for many of Detroit's old industrial magnates, whose lakeshores are lined with sprawling Gilded Age mansions."

More here.

Hopeful immigrant entrepreneurs now have a fallback in the form of a unique model support program for those needing some business survival skills.

Excerpt:

"As lawmakers in Washington work out an overhaul of the immigration system, a Michigan-based social and economic services agency has launched a comprehensive program to help immigrants open or expand businesses.

Dearborn-based ACCESS recently held a graduation ceremony for the inaugural class of its Immigrant Entrepreneur Development Program. It's one of several immigrant- and refugee-focused efforts in the organization's new Growth Center division...

Dijana Bucalo, a former Bosnian refugee who settled in the Detroit enclave of Hamtramck, is a self-described "clothing artist" with a fashion design and costume-making shop in the International Institute of Metropolitan Detroit in the city's Midtown neighborhood. She came to the United States in 1996 after war in her homeland – knowing no English but with experience as a fashion designer.

Still, she took a job far from her preferred field. Bucalo became a real estate agent and said she was successful at it until the housing market tanked a few years ago.

"I should be thankful the economy went bad," she said. "It helped me to think more seriously about my business, my skills and my trade."

More here.

Dearborn is first out of the gate for developing a new Metro Detroit intermodal train station. This one not only services the community but connects visitors to The Henry Ford and Greenfield Village.

Excerpt:

"The construction ceremony was held at Greenfield Village because a new entrance to the Henry Ford complex will allow train passengers easy access to the visitor attraction.

The money for the new train station was approved two years ago under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but Congress did not sign off on the funding until August.

Dearborn will consolidate its two passenger rail stations into an intermodal station on Elm Street near South Brady in the west section of downtown. Construction has begun on Michigan Avenue near the Southfield Freeway."

Read the rest here.

The Michigan film incentive may be on life support but some Dearborn teens are determined to keep the cameras rolling.

Excerpt:

"Prom-iscuous," the 13th annual Dearborn High School feature film about a senior prom, is so well-written, produced, directed and acted the ban on lewd dancing is the only indication this is a film put on by adolescents.

Kelley Thierry, 17, wrote "Prom-iscuous" and Taylor Stanislawski, 17, directed the film, which premieres May 23 and 24 at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center in Dearborn. The "mock-umentary" involves MTV following six kids as they prepare for the prom. All of the students are enrolled in the class Advanced Movie Making, taught by Kurt Doelle, whose credits include the 2011 Arts Educator Award from the Dearborn Community Arts Council and the district's Teacher of the Year award a few years back. But please don't ask him about it because he simply doesn't do the ego thing. At all.

Read the rest of the story here.