Thirty years ago, Bishop Edgar Vann of Detroit’s Second Ebenezer Church founded the Vanguard Community Development Corporation with the simple goal of providing after-school programs for local youths.
Today, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization’s mission has expanded to all matters of community development and engagement, including affordable housing and commercial development. Vanguard will celebrate its anniversary with a gala and award ceremony from 7-11 p.m. on Saturday at the Henry Ford Health Pistons Performance Center.
“We’ve waxed and waned from a very large organization with 55 people down to one and a half people when I got here 10 years ago, and now we’re at five employees,” Vanguard president and CEO Pamela Martin Turner tells Metro Times. “So we’re small but mighty.”
The milestone comes as the North End area has enjoyed a rebirth in recent years, buoyed by developments like the QLine streetcar, which connects the neighborhood to Midtown and downtown.
Vanguard has also helped form the North End Milwaukee junction Business District Association, which aims to foster commercial development across the two adjacent communities. In Milwaukee Junction, a vibrant commercial district includes businesses like the Chroma co-working space, the Vault of Midnight comic book store, and acclaimed restaurants like Oak & Reel, Baobab Fare, and Yum Village, among others.
In the North End, there is also a planned program to designate a “Main Street” district along East Grand Boulevard from I-75 to Woodward Avenue and on Woodward Avenue and Piquette Avenue and Custer Avenue. A Grand Boulevard streetscape transformation project recently wrapped up its first phase, with a second phase anticipated for 2025. Vanguard is also working on a $45 million multi-family housing project called North End Landing set to open in 2025 with 177 units.
“The North End has a very rich history in Detroit,” Martin Turner says. “It’s one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, and it has many long generational residents — people who were born there, whose grandparents lived there. And it’s a very proud neighborhood, but just like a lot of Detroit, it fell on hard times during the ’90s and the early 2000s — though in the last five years, the North End has really begun to recover.”
Martin Turner believes a series of planned developments from Henry Ford Health, the Detroit Pistons, and Michigan State University will have an additional transformational effect on the North End.
The gala celebration will honor Bishop Vann and the organization’s other founding board members, as well as additional members of the community like Wendy Lewis Jackson at the Kresge Foundation and muralist Sydney G. James. The event will be hosted by Fox 2’s Josh Landon and is set to feature music by Anthony David and DJ Rue.
“We are one of the oldest community development corporations in the city, and certainly of African American-governed or community development organizations, we are definitely one of the oldest,” Martin Turner says. “We intend to be here for the next 30 or more years, doing all that we can to improve the city of Detroit, the North End, and Milwaukee Junction.”
