outside of Michigan, end up staying in the city after their fellowship ends. “We’ve been effective in creating a launch pad so fellows can stay and work in Detroit,” she added.
The Detroit Neighborhood Business Directory came about in part thanks to Danner’s friendly relationship with Alexis Wiley, Mayor Mike Duggan’s chief of staff. They had long wanted to collaborate, so last summer, Danner asked Wiley if there was anything the city was working on that might be a good fit, particularly if it was something the mayor’s office needed done fairly quickly. The neighborhood business directory was an idea that had been bubbling, and Challenge Detroit’s participation made it a reality.
“It’s amazing to see what you can accomplish once Challenge Detroit gets involved,” Wiley told the fellows at a meeting last week.
Devon O’Reilly, a Challenge Detroit fellow who works for the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, served as one of the project leads. “We didn’t even have a list,” he recalled of the process to find small businesses for the directory. “If we would have had a list, it would’ve been more regimented. Instead, we were able to go out and explore.”
O’Reilly said he was pleasantly surprised by how open and eager the small-business owners were to participate. He said most of them were happy to finally share their stories. It was disappointing, however, to see how disconnected these businesses were from each other, despite the fact that they often had a lot in common in terms of trying to survive the city’s tough economy.
“Say a restaurant needed to order plates and cups,” O’Reilly said. “They often didn’t realize that, instead of going to a big box store in the suburbs, they could get what they needed from another small business here in Detroit. The take away was that there’s a lot the city and the Chamber can do to foster more collaborations and business-to-business interactions.”
Danner said that kind of ongoing support from the city is something she hopes Detroit’s small businesses will get more of as a result of the directory. The first batch of physical copies has been snapped up, but a second printing will happen soon. In the meantime, the directory is available online, and the plan is to continue to add to and update the listings in 2016.
Danner also hopes this project will be scaled to other cities that are trying to revitalize.
“We want to help change perceptions, which I think could be replicated elsewhere,” Danner said. “Entrepreneurs and small businesses have a real voice in their communities. We feel very passionate about bringing innovation and creativity to the storytelling process to build awareness of what they’re doing.”
