- [Speaker] Every development is, has tons of risk, tons of struggle, a lot of moving pieces.
A and and particularly when you're redeveloping a a, a city then, then you're kind of overcoming barriers that have made prior people not, not, you know go after a certain project.
So you have all that and then you have this sense of and and sometimes it can be pretty nebulous, right?
It's uh where it's mmmm, what's going on here.
You know, it's, you know, it's a big part of of development, is the confidence that people have in the developer.
And, and that's where bias can be particularly introduced.
The sense of are you able to do it?
You know, even once they believe that it can be done, which was a struggle for Detroit for years, then it's can you do it?
- So talk about your journey as a developer in the city and again, talk about it in the context of these kind of dual barriers that you face.
It's tough for African Americans and other people of color to be developers, successful developers, also tough for women.
How did you get started and then get us to where you are with Developed Detroit - I actually spent a number of years working on Wall Street and, and came back to Detroit about 10 years ago for what I thought was a temporary consulting job.
And not having been in Detroit for a while, I really fell in love with the energy here and what was going on.
And there just were so many people who were moving here, moving back here, who were just trying to figure out like how do we move Detroit to a better place?
And, and I I, I did have a finance background.
I did have a, a Wall Street banking background had a little bit of a land use background, but really I just wanted to be a part of what was going on here.
And so I work with a group of people to launch what has now become Developed Detroit back in 2015.
And, you know, it's a really tough business.
I, I suppose you could say being a woman doesn't make it easier.
I, I have to admit, I've spent most of my career in male dominated industries, and so I, I think I maybe just have a really thick skin kind of around the ways in which gender intersect with work.
- Jeff, I wanna have you talk about Capital Impact Partners and I think you're kind of uniquely situated among our guests today to talk about more of a national picture with, with this issue but also how that national picture relates to Detroit because I know you guys do do work here as well.
- We're Capital Impact Partners.
We're a national CDFI, Capital Community Development Financial Institution.
And while we are a national entity working with what we call underestimated communities nationwide, we've actually just celebrated our 10th anniversary of working in Detroit, the Highland Park communities.
We are committed to Detroit.
And what you've heard in terms of the challenges of developers rising in this space, is a national theme as well.
So while it's not specific to the the Detroit market or region it definitely plays out certainly, but differently in, in in ways as well.
As a capital provider, we're a lender, but we're also a capital provider in other ways.
Talking about the growth of developers, there's the access to capital, there's the access to resources there's the access to networks that you've heard about.
We as, what we like to tell the story of our work in Detroit is that we've realized that we've been a lender in many important impactful projects in Detroit.
But we realized back mid twenties that by and large we weren't making to the developers of color the black and brown developers, and credit to my colleagues who, who run our local programming, they actually created our equitable development initiative.
So it, it started in Detroit.
So we're, we're very thankful and proud of that story.
And just to say what that is the Equitable Development Initiative is really a holistic way to support the growth of black and brown developers in this space.