Crain’s Detroit Business
Written by Sherri Welch
April 9, 2024
New cultural district on Detroit's east side set to open in May
The first pieces of an ambitious cultural district taking shape on Detroit’s east side will open to the public in May.
The project is anchored by the former Good Shepherd Catholic church in Detroit’s East Village neighborhood at Agnes and Parkview streets.
Adaptive reuse of those buildings and 3.5 acres around the church will add new art gallery space for the Library Street Collective and its co-founders, Anthony and JJ Curis, along with community offerings including artists' studios, performance spaces, restaurants, a bar or two, a bed-and-breakfast and a skate park designed by Tony Hawk and artist McArthur Binion.
The efforts are part of a larger neighborhood development leaders have dubbed “Little Village.”
“We really wanted this to feel less like a commercial gallery…(and) more like a cultural art center, and very collaborative...working with a lot of different galleries, institutions, nonprofits, and so many others,” Anthony Curis said.
During a tour on Monday, he shared plans for a new patisserie owned by Warda Bouguettaya, a James Beard award winner the Curises "kind of stalked" to land the project in an old farmhouse on the property.
Next door, another yet-to-be-named restaurant will occupy renovated houses behind the church. On tap for the former garage behind the rectory is a new bar called Father Forgive Me, operated by Curis and Joe Robinson.
Across McClellan Avenue behind the church property is the former convent building, where work will begin in May to build out space for Louis Buhl & Co., a sister gallery to Library Street Collective moving to the neighborhood.
A 110-year-old church anchors the project
Anthony Curis, a real estate developer, and his wife, JJ, an accountant by trade, founded Library Street Collective a dozen years ago after they began collecting art. The gallery commissioned the murals for the Z parking garage in downtown Detroit and later created The Belt, a nearby alleyway now home to murals and arts installations curated by Library Street Collective.
The Curises bought the Good Shepherd property in 2019 and started on renovations designed by New York-based architecture firm Peterson Rich Office in 2021. They’ve invested an undisclosed amount to renovate the former Roman Catholic church buildings, nearby homes, a former bakery a couple blocks north and other properties in the years since.
Work to mix old and new inside the 110-year-old church is nearly complete.
Inside, architects have created two galleries off the central part of the church along with performance, classroom and workshop spaces and the Little Village Arts Library of artists' monographs, exhibition catalogues and research materials focused on Michigan artists of color. Library cubicles are making use of the former confessionals.
A mezzanine accessed by a winding staircase offers additional seating and work space along with a view of the gallery below.
Library Street Collective is collaborating with the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit on the first exhibition at the Shepherd — the arts center anchoring the broader campus — featuring work by Detroit artist Charles McGee. “Charles McGee: Time is Now,” opens May 18 and runs through July 20.
The multi-media exhibit is accompanied by The Charles McGee Legacy Park, a sculpture park featuring larger-than-life pieces inspired by the artist's work. That project is financially supported by Dan and Jennifer Gilbert and the Curises through a partnership with Jefferson East Inc. — a multi-service neighborhood organization that serves low-income populations on Detroit’s east side and five adjoining historic neighborhoods, according to Library Street Collective — and executed in collaboration with the city of Detroit and other stakeholders.
McGee “in our opinion is…one of the most important artists in the last century or so," Curis said. "He was a dear friend of ours who passed away a couple years ago. And so we actually built this sculpture garden in Charles' honor, which was the last project that he actually worked on before he passed away."
The Charles McGee Legacy Park opens in May. So does the skate park. But both are already attracting visitors, said Simon David, principal and creative director at Office of Strategy+Design, the landscape designer on the project.
Through OSD’s designs, alleyways, parking lots and vacant land now flow together like the ghost rivers discovered beneath the site, David said — and a nearby grassy area with a hill presents opportunities for outdoor events.
Bed and breakfast in a rectory
Next door to the church, Library Street Collective is gearing up to open Aleo, a bed-and-breakfast with four open rooms on the first two floors of the rectory.
The building features works by nearly 30 Detroit artists on its walls. McArthur Binion’s foundation, Modern Ancient Brown, which provides work and living space to BIPOC writers and artists, is occupying the third floor.
Project leaders will host a grand opening the evening of May 18, with performances by Detroit’s Urban Art Orchestra, a 20-piece collective led by Grammy-nominated composer De’Sean Jones.
Nonprofits, record label in former bakery
Further up McClellan at Kercheval Avenue, the Curises are finalizing renovations of the Lantern, a former bakery site with three connected buildings.
Two nonprofit arts tenants will be operating out of The Lantern by May: Signal-Return, a nonprofit focused on preserving and teaching traditional letterpress printing, and Progressive Art Studio Collective, which creates work and gallery space for artists with developmental disabilities and mental differences.
Detroit-based music label Assemble Sound will also set up its studios and headquarters in the building.
Other plans for the Lantern — so-called for the roughly 1,500 holes punched in outer walls of the building and fitted with glass to let the light in — include a beer bar, fashion retail store and café, along with affordable studio space, 4,000 square feet for retail and food businesses, and a courtyard with community gathering space at the rear of the building.
The Little Village developments are attracting others to the neighborhood, too. Artists are moving into nearby homes, and the Curises have rehabbed about 10 in the area that are drawing new residents.
Two Library Street Collective leaders are living in a pair of the historic houses within the church site, and Isabelle Weiss of IM Weiss Gallery is living and working from another nearby. She’s set up a gallery with art curated from Detroit artists in her front room and plans to open it to the public this month.