September 7, 2016
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is to announce this morning that the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood on Detroit’s far east side has been designated a National Treasure.
This will be Michigan’s first National Treasure, and just one of 70 in the United States.
The Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood, with residential and commercial buildings built primarily in the 1920s, runs along East Jefferson Avenue from Alter Road to Conner Avenue.
The designation means the neighborhood will have the attention and resources of the national organization to preserve and improve its buildings, said Mary Lu Seidel, National Trust for Historic Preservation Chicago field director who also is project manager for the Jefferson-Chalmers project.
“Jefferson-Chalmers has good bones, a strong local partner (business development organization Jefferson East Inc.) and is on the tipping point of becoming better or worse. It has great assets and a strongly engaged community,” she said.
We’re looking to get involved in neighborhoods that suffered loss and disinvestment yet support rebuilding of the neighborhood in a way that benefits the community.
Seidel has been meeting with Detroit partners and stakeholders such as JEI, the city of Detroit,Detroit Future City, Michigan Historic Preservation Network and Preservation Detroit since February 2015 to determine the potential and impact of Jefferson-Chalmers and other Detroit neighborhoods being named a National Treasure.
Click here to read the full article in Crain’s Detroit Business.