“We understand that African Americans typically live in marginalized communities, and that because of this, disparities continue,” said Ms. Manigault, 48, who is now the director of small-business attraction and retention at the Growth Corporation. “Our intention is to rebuild those neighborhoods by rebuilding our commercial corridors.”
Paul Jones is a director of Invest Detroit, a nonprofit that supports community building projects like Ms. Manigault’s and is fully financed by the New Economy Initiative, a philanthropy focused on small-business development in southeastern Michigan. Last spring, the organization created a $20 million fund to bolster that effort, amid concerns that the pandemic threatened gains that small businesses had made, particularly in neighborhoods where home foreclosures had already eliminated an opportunity for many families to pass along generational wealth.
“The goal is that through these funds, we help 12,000 businesses, half of which are owned by people of color,” said Mr. Jones, 45. The pandemic galvanized community support agencies “to make sure we were working together as an ecosystem, to make sure our restaurants and our employment providers didn’t go away,” he said.
The local drive to stimulate more business success in Detroit’s immigrant communities helped Hamissi Mamba and Nadia Nijimbere open Baobab Fare last year. The restaurant, which specializes in the food of the married couple’s native Burundi, is in the New Center neighborhood, on the same block as the West African-Caribbean restaurant YumVillage.
Baobab Fare and YumVillage — along with enterprises like Warda Patisserie, a bakery in Eastern Market that received early help from FoodLab, and Folk Detroit, a food market and cafe in Corktown — are among a number of new Black-, immigrant- or women-owned businesses that are now thriving downtown.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/dining/detroit-restaurants.html
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