Notre Dame initiative helps Michigan city land federal grant
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An urban planning initiative led by the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture has helped a Michigan city land a $25 million federal grant to redesign a key thoroughfare.
The school’s Housing and Community Regeneration Initiative held a weeklong urban planning session in August 2022 that sought public opinion on how to revitalize downtown Kalamazoo.
“This grant is but one of an extraordinary total of $98 million the city has received based on the design, visions, ideas and final recommendations of the project completed by the Housing and Community Regeneration Initiative,” Kalamazoo Assistant City Manager Rebekah Kik said in a Notre Dame news release.
The $25 million grant will help fund the rebuilding of Kalamazoo’s main street, Michigan Avenue, from a six-lane, one-way roadway into a two-way route better suited to calming traffic and encouraging pedestrian use.
The urban planning session was called a “Dean’s Charrette” and was one of six held in southwest Michigan and northern Indiana since the initiative began in 2021. The initiative seeks to partner with communities within a 100-mile radius of the University of Notre Dame.
Last week, the Housing and Community Regeneration Initiative announced a partnership with the city of Gary to reimagine and revitalize its downtown Broadway corridor over the next 10 years, Inside INdiana Business reported.
The Kalamazoo effort, School of Architecture Dean Stefanos Polyzoides said, “has resulted in the most ambitious regeneration work within the 100-Mile Coalition region since we began the Dean’s Charrettes.”
“We expect similar excellent outcomes going forward because the need to listen to the people of each community to help them rebuild their downtowns and urban neighborhoods is immense,” Polyzoides said. “This incredible amount of funding—and the benefits it brings to Kalamazoo—is the ideal outcome for our community-building efforts.”