Metromode is on tour.
It’s a listening tour. We're traveling to four cities in Metro Detroit to hear from local entrepreneurs and the folks working to help them succeed.
At top of mind: As Midtown and Downtown Detroit boom, what strategies do Metro Detroit's suburban communities have to grow their entrepreneurial ecosystems, both in cooperation with Detroit and independently?
Our work, funded by the Davidson Foundation and executed in partnership with Bill Sullivan Enterprises, is all about convening conversations to help us better understand what’s working--and what's not--to support small-scale entrepreneurs across some of Metro Detroit’s larger urban communities.
Our first stop was Dearborn, where last week we met with 18 small business owners, entrepreneurs, creatives, placemakers, local economic development officials, and nonprofit leaders. We asked them three simple questions: what does entrepreneurship look like in Dearborn today, what assets and resources do entrepreneurs use, and where are the opportunities for building a better future?
What resulted was a rich conversation that we hope will continue. Our next stops: Mount Clemens, Pontiac, and Ypsilanti.
Here’s what we learned in Dearborn:
Resources for entrepreneurs exist in Dearborn, but they are fragmented.
Plans, resources, and strategies to support entrepreneurs exist in many places within the city, including the Economic and Community Development Department, and within the DDA, within the Chamber, the universities, and nonprofits such as ACCESS.
Each of these programs serves a specific demographic and geography, and entrepreneurs pointed out that it can be difficult, especially for new business owners, to know where to go.
Many would like to see more coordination between resources and more bottom-up input into plans and strategies. The group discussed how while an “entrepreneurial ecosystem” functions much like a natural ecosystem--without a single central organizer, they see a need for more intentional coordination of the assets and resources within that ecosystem.
For example, Dearborn has a citywide economic development strategy as part of its work to become a certified Redevelopment Ready Community under the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s statewide program. But that plan, the group acknowledged, has received little publicity and was prepared largely to the state's specifications.
Participants expressed a desire for this plan, and all plans for economic development and entrepreneurship within the city, to coordinate with all city resources, and to seek input from ground-level entrepreneurs across the city.
Dearborn Senior Economic Development specialist Steve Horstman agrees with this sentiment.
“What I would like to see is more of this convening of local businesses and residents,” says Horstman. “Help us build that strategy. We can't dictate it to you. We have to hear what it is that you all want out of an economic development strategy for the city.”
Bring out the welcome wagons.
It may be a digital world, but nothing beats a basket of paper directories, coupons, samples, and special offers that you can touch, taste, and feel. That’s what many of the entrepreneurs we convened would like to see the city provide for 
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Ideas on how Dearborn can grow its entrepreneurial ecosystem are posted to a board.new entrepreneurs.
Windy Weber would also like to see a portal on the city’s website welcoming new and potential new business owners.
She says the portal could be “A tab that says NEW BUSINESS. You open it and it gives a rundown of the DDA offices, of a partnered realtor who can help them find a space, of a city inspector who can guarantee a place is free of leaks and mold and does not flood, a link to the Small Business Association and local banks who are more apt to work with small biz loans.”
Weber adds that the information could also be shared in print and available at local shops to have on hand for any customer who says anything about wanting to open a shop in the city.
Dearborn is not Detroit--but there are things it can learn from the (other) D.
Several participants sang the praises of Detroit’s hotspots--the food, the ambiance, the uniqueness, the opportunity to support small business. The group grappled with the question of how Dearborn can learn from Detroit while maintaining its own sense of unique identity.
Participants would like to see some of the tactics employed in Detroit brought to Dearborn--making streets walkable, interiors unique and cozy, and an emphasis on outdoor seating and greenspace. They noted that prior conversations with residents have revealed that Dearborn residents want these amenities--and would rather not have to travel to another community to get them.
Connecting with Detroit can also be seen as a success story. A prime example is the Detroit opening of Sam Abbas’ second location of Brome Modern Eatery in Detroit's financial district. The proximity to Detroit presents a real opportunity for Dearborn entrepreneurs to connect with and do business in both markets, according to the group.
But Dearborn shouldn’t try to be Detroit, some pointed out, because it has a uniqueness all its own. And that uniqueness is grounded squarely in its diversity.
“God knows we have enough individuality to be our own city, and we certainly are world famous with the largest Arabic population outside the Middle East,” says Weber.
Weber would like to see more focus on serving diversity in race and income, by acknowledging those realities as part of the city’s economic strategy.
“In NYC and San Fran, they celebrate Little China; why don't we seem to do those things here?” she asks. “I am seeing gaps in racial issues, and also in income. East Dearborn and western Detroit are not simply Arabic people. they are truly a mix of backgrounds, but the unifying factor actually seems to be the residents are working people, poorer people. With Dearborn being 20th in the USA for having the highest percentage of poor people in a city of 65,000 or more, we either have to change our idea of success or work harder to make people from higher income areas come to us.”
Entrepreneurs need more help navigating the brick and mortar landscape.
Whether it’s finding the right space, dealing with rising rents, or getting a landlord to fix a leaking roof, would-be entrepreneurs need lots of help navigating the world of the small-scale commercial real estate.
Entrepreneurs in the group generally agreed that they would like to see more resources allocated to helping business owners with all phases of procuring and maintaining their physical spaces, from scouting for locations, to negotiating rents, to assisting with improvements, to grants and funding, to code enforcement.
They’d also like to see the city adopt some programs to help early-stage entrepreneurs test their products and services by making temporary spaces available. Examples of such “pop-up” retail programs can be found in Detroit, Dayton, Atlanta, and many other places. Dearborn resident Stacey Grant successfully experimented with the idea through her “Made Metro Collective” concept earlier this year.
Outside of retail, the group would also like to see the development of local spaces to help entrepreneurs to develop and test their ideas as part of a larger community with access to business development resources. Such spaces might take the form of incubator spaces or maker spaces where people can use equipment and consult with business development experts on legal, technical and financial issues.
Dearborn needs more “third spaces” to foster a community of the like-minded and build a startup culture.
The future belongs to freelancers. According to a study by Freelancer’s Union, more than 50 percent of the U.S. workforce will be freelancing within ten years if current trends hold.
What that means is that many cities, particularly those with large residential populations, will increase their local workforces. Many will work in home offices, and the demand for “third places” to work or hold meetings--coffee shops, coworking spaces--will increase.
Another opportunity for Dearborn might be to steal a page from Detroit’s Open City program, a monthly networking event for entrepreneurship featuring talks by business owners on various topics related to launching and sustaining a small business.
Participants noted that Dearborn does not currently have enough of these types of places and opportunities available and that the city needs to build more of a startup culture. Many who freelance travel to Detroit to work at its well-trafficked coffee shops and multiple co-working spaces.
Group participants would like to see a proactive emphasis on attracting places for freelancers and contract workers to work in the city, so they don’t have to travel to another town or city.
Dearborn’s downtown is great--but there’s a whole city, too.
It’s a familiar story, and one we hear all the time in Detroit, where the lion’s share of investment is happening in targeted areas of the city--mainly Midtown, Downtown, and Corktown.
In Dearborn, economic development efforts--and media attention-- have focused mainly on its two downtown areas and along Michigan Avenue. West Downtown’s iconic Wagner Place Development, in particular, has received a significant share of investment and attention over the past year.
The area features higher-end eateries and retail. It is overseen by the Downtown Development Authority, which can only fund projects and improvements within the DDA district boundary.
“We can build on those two blocks, but they alone will not save our downtown,” says Windy Weber, owner of Stormy Records. “In a way, they introduce more issues, as rent in them will be higher. [High rent] negates the option for what the public keeps asking for: Small boutique funky retail.”
As the city invests resources in developing a plan to develop and unite its East and West downtowns, the group sees more opportunity for its overall strategy citywide.
What’s the Dearborn “Experience”?
Dearborn is a destination--but more people need to know it.
The group expressed a desire for a more coherent marketing of the cumulative resources in Dearborn to create an awareness of the potential for multiple-destination visits to the city. They noted that while Dearborn is full of destinations--The Henry Ford, The Arab American Museum, restaurants like Ford’s Garage--many people don’t understand all of the options they have in the city to make up a full day trip or evening out.
And that’s a huge opportunity that Dearborn is currently not taking advantage of.
“I have in my mind if I feel that I want to have the Ferndale experience I can distinctly feel what that experience is. So I'll go to Ferndale. If I'm feeling Royal Oak one day, that's a very distinct experience that I can articulate and then I'll go to Royal Oak,” says Hassan Bazzi, director of regional opportunities for ACCESS.
“I don't think we have that yet in Dearborn. I think we have destination businesses that people will come to. But I don't think there's a cohesive experience that will bring people here and have them stay here for an evening or a day.”