Revolutionizing Detroit, One Nibble At A Time
I’ve learned a few things in my time away from Detroit. One of those things is that a societal and cultural turn-around within a city (hell, within a country…) is not possible without a revolution in food quality, sourcing, and availability. It seems as though Cindy Warner and Zaccaro’s Market, a Michigan-based specialty food store, has seen fit to plan the opening of what amounts to Detroit’s first tried and true gourmet market ever – right smack on Woodward in the Midtown area. I first became aware of this last week while perusing the DetroitYes message boards. While some skeptics horned-off their dissonance, most people seemed overly joyed by the idea. Then, Cindy herself made her presence known on the board and has requested ideas from everyone as to how they should gear the store! Novel concept! This is an excerpt of what she had to say most recently:
As far as product….we have gone out of our way to have Made in Michigan and Made in Detroit products….we hunt them down far and wide and encourage new food entrepreneurs to contact us so we can provide retail space to help them succeed. If you have specific Made in Michigan or Detroit products that excite you, let me know so I can ensure our chefs have them on our inventory listing!
We do have an open kitchen in the store, that will present cooking classes regularily and once we get our full liquor license we will do frequent wine tasting and wine/food pairings.
I am planning another locals forum (we have done a small one previously) in the next few weeks so that you can some and meet our key chefs and sommalier. At that time we will also present our menu and inventory and ask for your honest critique. I will let you know the date and location but it appears it is either 2/19, 20 or 21 and will likely be at the Whitney if Bud had the space. I would LOVE for all of you to come.
As for being a LOCAL…I am moving from my condo to Midtown to be a LOCAL and I spend every day during the week in Midtown at Union Station, Atlas, Traffic Jam or others…..
This, to me, says that a cementing of Detroit’s revolution is in process. Food always brings about the necessary changes that down-trodden areas need to come back and for someone to believe in Detroit so deeply that this is happening is a confidence in the future of a first-rate city. I can’t wait to come home.
I take the 495 John R past this building to work everyday and it’s been great to watch the renovation of this structure and all the others in the midtown to downtown area – that is, when I don’t miss the bus because SMART times have a variance of 10 minutes in arrival time.
When I have to drive to work downtown because I missed the bus, I typically take John R south until it dead ends in Highland Park, which was looking like a neighborhood on the return…if they new buildings hadn’t either been broken into or charred because an old one next door blew up. You gotta love abandoned homes with 1920′s-era electrical wiring.
I suppose I’m I wish that for every new Zuccaro’s, stocked with Michigan goods (Black Star Farms wine?), five homes in what could be viable neighborhoods will not explode.
I missed myspace deletion day.
Wow. I really need to proof what I post on blogs before clicking that unforgiving “Submit” button.
Ha ha ha…the unforgiving “submit” button has killed me a couple times on other blogs. Luckily, I can edit myself here within seconds of seeing that I typed “ass” instead of “pass.” I’ve left crazy and sometimes incoherent comments elsewhere and then I decide to just never visit the blogs again.
I’m curious to see how Detroit is actually looking. The last time I visited was back in ’06 and things seemed to be moving in the right direction then. But, with all of the information I’ve read lately, there actually seems to be a stirring excitement about it now trumping the cracker naysayers. As I alluded to above, I wholeheartedly believe that turn around comes from, well, not just good food/restaurants but from artists and others that think outside the box in the first place (and, just because you’re an anarchist living in a shack doesn’t mean you’ll affect change…).
I saw how being staunchly provincial in Portland, OR has made it an amazing place to live. I’m certainly not saying that nothing else should matter, but Detroit and the rest of Michigan should be #1. I think the biggest problem people have is that they look at Detroit as being one thing: The Motor City. They look to the future as being a globally relevant city. I think to move forward, Detroit needs to be re-imagined as a smaller city willing to progress into a future that most people cannot fathom. There are already urban gardens starting to flourish around the city. That’s another step in the right direction. The writing scene is exploding. That’s huge. Music has always been a boon the the character there. Industries need to evolve…hell, why aren’t there any engineers trying to push the envelope by designing their own cars and trying to work their way into the market edgewise (indie cars!). We’ve always seen that Goliaths are always toppled by Davids. All the factors are there. If people can come together and envision this as not a re-birth, but a birth alone, it’ll all work.
Wow…thanks for posting Cas! What a great initative. I completely agree with the notion that a healthy food culture can revitalize a community.
However, I’m not sure if Detroit (or southern Michigan for that matter) can sustain a local food market. I once took an urban agriculture tour of Detroit. It was a beautiful thing to see organic farms mixed amoung the urban blight. But I couldn’t stop thinking, “Is this food toxic?” Detroit’s dead industry has created a scary toxic ghost. Boo! Are folks really going to buy Detroit grown produce at prices comparable to other gourmet markets?
I really hope the market works, it is an idealistic endevour. However, in my view, Michigan is sooooo far from a sustainable economy that it is like trying to sell dirty band-aids to folks with gapping head wounds.
I’ll end on that positive visual.
~Jeff
Man, everyone is crawling out of the woodwork now, huh? Thanks for being positive there, Vermonter.
You pose a few good questions, though, Jeff. However, doesn’t it make sense to at least start a greening of Detroit? In my experience I’ve learned that Portland wasn’t always the way it is now. It took a long while to become the mecca of progressivism that it eventually became, but it had to start small and move gradually. It required people, too, to believe in the process. That is the factor that I think is changing small bit by bit for Detroit. Detroit, being a manufacturing and industry city, certainly has major issues with pollution and air quality. But, I’m not so sure it affects the entirety of the area as much as it may seem. Certainly, there are areas to avoid, but I think there are some huge areas that are pretty ripe for a conversion.
I have an issue with pricing of produce and food stuffs. More times than not, “gourmet” outlets will charge more because they do attract a certain clientèle more willing to drop more money for food. However, the prices most Americans expect from their produce are ridiculous and can ONLY benefit corporate farms who are the ones that have made a mess of America’s produce in the first place. We’ve all become so used to bargain-basement prices that we’ve forgotten that in paying for crap, we’re certainly getting it and putting it into our bodies. What I’m much more interested in is making sure that my money goes back into Michigan’s economy (when I get there, that is…) and that the farmers are getting their fair share of the profit. This is what I’m talking about when I say that Detroit needs to re-imagine itself not as the failing manufacturing/industrial metropolitan graveyard that most people see, but as a smaller city self-sufficient on a local economy with vision beyond what it has (which would require, basically, a hoisting away of the city council and the mayor…) but the drive to get there. With starting somewhere, “The Paris of the Midwest” might actually become that, especially if I get there and breathe some life into the food scene like I want to! Muahahaha.
And, come on….if Brooklyn can make the turn around it has and if Harlem is making the turn-around that it is, why in the hell can’t Detroit and the rest of Michigan? With a blank canvas, even five year-olds with ambition can make beautiful art.
Welcome back Jeff!
Do you have any evidence of that? I mean, those were your thoughts, but can you back them up? I’d like to see some research on the subject before spreading that rumor.
Not to mention, you’re only referring to upfront cost. When considering the environmental, economic, ethical, and health costs Wal-Mart produce demands, you’re not saving any money by purchasing it. Quite literally, the adage runs true, you’re “cutting off your nose despite your face.”
Just a few points:
1. Why does the 24 years a spent in south east Michigan get wiped away because of the 3 and a half years I’ve spent in Vermont? If I’m a Carpet Bagger when it comes to issues involving Detroit, the so are you Cas. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. :)
2. Of course it makes sense to start a local food market in Detroit. Any effort to change destructive practices is a good effort. I’m not convinced that a for-profit “gourmet” market in Midtown is the right way to reach Detroiters on issues of food quality and eating locally.
If the market is really based in pursuing sustainable food options then perhaps a non-profit organization with a market, community center, and public outreach program would have been a wiser use of their money and time.
3. I completely agree with the notion that modern corporate food production has externalized the true price of food. I just wonder if this Market is going to convince Detroiters to eat ethically or simply link the notions of sustainability to the gentrification of their neighborhoods. A fantastic non profit org was recently built in Barre, Vermont (one of the few poor blue collar towns in Central Vermont). It is a non profit market and community center that only sells local foods. It is a very welcoming environment, yet it is struggling to reach people or make enough money to pay the rent. I can only imagine how poorly a “gourmet” market would be welcomed into the community.
4. Speaking of gentrification, I wouldn’t look at the gentrification of Brooklyn and Harlem as success stories of sustainable urban community. They have only expanded the vacuum resource consumption of Manhattan’s privileged class and made a lot of folks homeless.
5. As for concerns over toxicity of food. No I don’t have a study, and I don’t think one has been done which covers all of Detroit’s soil contamination. I do know that lead, PCBs, mercury, arsenic, dioxin, and other toxins found in post-industrial soils can contaminate food supplies. There are also somewhere around 20 superfund sites in Wayne County, and it is no easy task to get the EPA to officially recognize a contaminated site as a Superfund sites.
I only know what I saw and tried to be clear in my post that it was a personal reaction to what I saw on the tour. I saw an organic farm (which is used to provide food to a homeless shelter) on fields directly next to abandoned industrial warehouses and large urban gardens on abandoned lots with heaping piles of illegal dumped trash and abandoned cars.
I also saw beautiful things, like communities working together to remove trash dumps and make gardens where there was once trash. But what about the toxins that have leeched into those soils? No one is going to study the effects of those soils on that local neighborhoods garden. They were abandoned lots, where houses had been burnt down. The folks in the neighborhood didn’t own the lots. Who would do this study? Who would fund it? And would it be credible anyways?
Anyone purchasing/growing produce from/on the land.
I’m sure some Wayne State ecology students could manage a toxicity study on some community farms without extraordinary funds. They probably have some sort of hands-on lab work they need to complete anyway and is it that difficult to get lead, arsenic, mecury, etc.. levels?
Depends on who funds it. If my example was used, I don’t see why it wouldn’t.
Ha ha ha! Yeah, you’re right about my transplanted ass. I’m still a Michiganian at heart…but if you called me a San Diegan, I’d travel my transplanted ass to Vermont just to kick yours.
I agree that awareness would be better spread with a non-profit, most likely. But, to have a for-profit market that would turn around and make sure their suppliers (i.e. the farmers) get a fair share is a good start in the right direction. What it does is bring revenue which would, in turn, promote commerce which the Midtown and Downtown areas have very little of. It fuels economic growth and the generation of taxes for the city which, ostensibly, the city would use for improvement (well, yeah…the city and its leaders would have to understand that first, I know). Also, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Zaccaro’s will be spreading the good word of sustainable growing and sustainable economy…I’m not completely sure of this, but with such a local and centralized owner, we’re not looking at giant owners off in Whole Foods land somewhere.
My question, though, is this: How can growth in poor areas not be gentrification? Isn’t there a very thin line separating growth and gentrification? How can that be avoided? That’s the tough question in my eyes.
If the growth didn’t result in the poor being displaced for the rich (and the subsequent raising of property value and taxes) I believe it wouldn’t be gentrification.
Here’s some reading materials about it.
The Cass Corridor has been going through a steady gentrification for over a decade now. At this point the area is pretty much 1/3 poor, 1/3 white suburbanite students/hipsters, 1/3 professionals (professors, doctors, yuppies). My feelings somewhat collide with Jeff’s. This market is going to give the latter 2/3 a new place to shop. But the poor are going to continue to buy potted meat at the same place they get their checks cashed.