An Artistic Vision: The Red River Artists Center

River Rouge and Royal Oak. Conventional wisdom says the only similarity between the two inner-ring suburbs is the first letter of their names.

Royal Oak is Metro Detroit's poster child for smart city development and high-quality urban life, the place young, college-educated people flock to and their parents don't blink when writing out big checks to cover rent. In its downtown, the biggest problem small businesses face is fighting off chain stores who want to elbow in on their profits. Royal Oak is the place out-of-town journalists go to find an urban success story in Metro Detroit.

They don't go to River Rouge. The Downriver suburb on Detroit's backdoor step deals with a lot of stereotypical problems that plague its big city neighbor; a vanishing manufacturing base, shrinking population, aging housing stock, and downtown fighting to stay alive. Tourists don't go to River Rouge. In fact a lot of people don't go to River Rouge if they can avoid it.

That isn't what Rick Manore sees. Well, he does see, and respect, the challenges but he looks at it from a problems-equal-opportunities point of view. The problem meaning the long-empty U.S. Steel office building in downtown River Rouge. The opportunity is the Red River Artist Center he and friends believe will spark a revival in dormant Downriver town.

"It's not about the art incubator," says Manore, who is quarterbacking the initiative. "It's about the whole city. It's a city that knows it has to transform itself. It's not going to be the Arsenal of Democracy anymore. It can't depend on steel anymore."

The Dream

Manore is a big believer in the idea that when the artists come to a declining area the depression leaves. The formula is simple in his eyes. Old, dense city centers provide the struggle and low costs that make for great art and opportunity. That in turn creates a vibrant community filled with people and businesses excited about staking their claim, the type of place that becomes attractive to more people and businesses who want a piece of this emerging Bohemia, and down the hill the snowball rolls.

"I have seen what this can do," Manore says. "I've lived it."

River Rouge's snowball is the Red River Artist Center. For years the 2-story contemporary office building (at least by 1970s standards) overlooking West Jefferson Avenue was known as the local office for U.S. Steel. That is, until it vacated the building in 1998, giving its 25,000 square feet to River Rouge. It has remained a vacant storage space for the city every since, slowly becoming a building fewer and fewer people wanted to hug.

That's until Manore (a bear of a man) came along. The middle-aged Downriver native has been a fixture in Metro Detroit's art scene for decades. His resume is long, but the thing most people know him for is running the C-Pop gallery in Detroit.

Manore believes River Rouge can follow in Royal Oak's footsteps because he has walked in Royal Oak's shoes. He and his partners opened C-Pop in downtown Royal Oak in the early 1990s, a time when the downtown's streets were much quieter and sported far fewer faux hawks.

"It has to be organic," Manore says. "It can't be rammed down people's throats."

He watched the same process unfold again when he moved C-Pop to Detroit's Midtown neighborhood in 2000. Manore likes to say that then it was just them and the Majestic in what everyone referred to as the Cass Corridor. Today the neighborhood now called Midtown is widely regarded as Detroit's most vibrant area, filled with art galleries, small businesses, and young people.

Manore closed C-Pop earlier this year, looking for a new challenge in a region with a great scene for art creation but not necessarily art buying. The next logical move was to create a place where artists could create work  - the Red River Artist Center. The building is largely divided into small offices, each with its own half bathroom. Manore is renting them out for prices between $155 and $250 a month on average.

The Telegram, a small weekly newspaper for Downriver, and its handful of employees will occupy a large ground floor space. Manore plans to turn a large glass enclosed room in the center of the building into a recording studio and find other niche uses for what could be seen as a problematic space. He even likes that fact that the building has a ghastly ugly 1970s mustard yellow interior because it gives the artists the freedom to do whatever they want with their studios. Manore even likes the idea that some artists are doubling up in some of the spaces. To him that means more people, more jobs, more vibrancy, and more success.

"I am all about artists sharing spaces, especially the bigger ones," Manore says. "I just want more people here. The more the merrier as long as its another person in River Rouge."

It's the same concept that makes the Russell Industrial Center in Detroit arguably Michigan's most successful small business incubator. Spur Studios in Ypsilanti, i3 Detroit in Royal Oak and The Wyandotte Arts Center in downtown Wyandotte are also opening up their own artist/entrepreneurial incubators, buying into the idea that turning the negatives of old obsolete buildings into artistic positives will creatively redefine their Rustbelt reputations.

Artist at work

Dan Drotar is on his second pitcher of Kool-Aid. The photographer who has shot everything from news to architecture to bands is renting a 24-by-20-foot office in the Red River Artist Center. The downtown Wyandotte resident loves his hometown and the Downriver area, but he sees something special in River Rouge.

"The thought of River Rouge being at the center of it all is something else," Drotar, 54, says. "It has its own funky ambiance. It has an artist feel to it. I don't know if you want to call it Bohemia or what, but it has great potential."

For Drotar, the potential starts with the bottom line - value for the money. He thinks space in Ferndale and Birmingham is overpriced. He has a friend who spends $1,000 a month for a tiny storefront in Royal Oak. Drotar spends $200 a month for a space that provides great depth, lighting, and is located in a city that is constantly trying to redefine cooperative.

"The No. 1 thing is value," Drotar says.

Essential help

Karl Laub was the little brother to one of Manore's high school friends. Laub would sometimes roadie for the band his big brother and Manore played in, and mess around with the group's equipment because it was stored in Laub's basement.

"I probably screwed up their stuff more than anything," Laub recalls with a laugh.

Today he serves as the community development director for River Rouge and dabbles in painting on the side. He creates children's art, some of which is showcased in downtown Wyandotte's famed Biddle Gallery and the Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit. Laub made it a point to recruit Manore to come to River Rouge, showing him beautiful buildings in the city's center that could serve as art gallery that wouldn't stay vacant in places like Royal Oak.

At first Manore politely placated Laub by going and brushed him off with the "Alright Carl, whatever." Manore looked around, admired the surprisingly intact but morbid downtown, but never took Laub seriously. That is until one of River Rouge's historic schools became available and Manore began to take Downriver seriously as the home of an arts incubator.

The school district eventually pulled the school off of the market, prompting Laub to step in and make Manore an offer he couldn't refuse. The city would let Laub turn the old U.S. Steel building into his artist incubator, rent free, with any money made at the non-profit artist incubator invested into improving the building. The city would even pay the utility bills for the first eight months so the operation could get its feet under it.

"It's amazing. They made it so easy," Manore says. "They bent over backwards to get me here. It happened so quick I wasn't even ready. There was no politics. Just a solution."

It's a refreshing point of view that is hardly par for the course in a state that has a reputation for being both business unfriendly and creatively deaf. Many Metro Detroit municipal leaders will tilt after big corporate windmills with wild abandon and not give small-time entrepreneurs or activists the time of day, leaving them to fend for themselves.

For instance, nearby Lincoln Park also has a largely intact historic but morbid downtown. The city owns or controls a number of attractive, historic buildings that sit vacant and in disrepair. There is a local grass-roots group working to do something similar to the Red River Artist Center, specifically with the Mellus Newspaper building. But some key city officials are disinterested and hell bent on tearing these potential assets down. The common refrain preservationists hear from city officials is, why don't you just bring in a developer if it's worth saving? It has all the appearance of Lincoln Park throwing vinegar at annoying flies while River Rouge puts out the honey for bees.

"That makes a big difference. I applaud River Rouge for doing this," says Robin Boyle, a professor of urban economic development at Wayne State University. "They are doing the right thing in this context. Secondly, it sends a good message to the business community that they are willing to work with them."

Foolproof plan?

Unfortunately, the best of intentions don't always produce the best consequences. Boyle points out that the artist-led community revival plans have worked across the nation on numerous occasions. It's a trend that has value, he adds.

However, those examples normally include strong local economies for them to feed off. River Rouge deals with a lot of issues related to poverty, not what people often refer to as "good problems" that come with disposable income. To succeed, the Red River Artist Center needs a regional effort to draw on the region's wealth, Boyle says.

"That's the catch," Boyle says. "It's about the economic structure of the region in the long run. They have got to be able to sell their goods and services in the community."

Mike Whitty, a business professor at the University of Detroit Mercy, is more optimistic about the Red River Artist Center's chances. He has seen similar schemes bear fruit in San Francisco, where he serves as a visiting professor at the University of San Francisco.

"I saw first hand the power of the creative economy, with artists sustaining San Francisco's industry and tourism," Whitty says. "It's a phenomenon that has been documented by a number of authors as driving New York's economy."

He sees the same growth happening in pockets across Metro Detroit, and River Rouge is the just the latest sprout. The combination of entrepreneurship and arts breeds a social entrepreneurship that can rapidly take hold and make a difference, especially in a small town.

"I think these things can be quite successful in a small town because it can grab attention quickly," Whitty says.

Manore sees the artist center working for other reasons, too, specifically the problems River Rouge deals with. The long-time artist believes these challenges are what artists really crave (whether they realize it or not) for inspiration. It's also what brings a community together to rally around something and put change into action. He even sees out-of-town artists coming to River Rouge for a time to get a "Detroit experience" under their belts.

"Art doesn't come from a happy place," Manore says.