By Maureen McDonald / Special to The Detroit News

Daniel Mears / The Detroit News "I always dreamed of living in a new house in Detroit, but wondered if it could happen in my lifetime," said Kittrell Griffin, shown with his wife, Sandra. Neighborhood developments Lafayette-Elmwood Park, a combination of condominiums and apartments just east of downtown, began in earnest in the late 1960s after tens years of organizing. Small land parcels in the development continue to be developed and renovated. In the early 1980s, General Motors Corp. created New Center Commons by redeveloping and selling more than 50 historic homes north of its former headquarters on West Grand Boulevard. Victoria Park, launched in 1992 south of Jefferson and east of Conner, has 157 homes. They sold for $160,000 and more when new and now bring up to $300,000. Recently, Clairpointe of Victoria Park, a neighborhood just outside of Victoria Park, sold 29 houses for $255,000-$350,000. A new set of 126 condominiums are being built adjacent to Victoria Park by shopping plaza owner Michael Curis. After five years of legal disputes, in mid-November the city of Detroit announced plans to begin the $116 million Jefferson Village, which includes 350 houses and a 15-acre shopping center on Jefferson, just west of Conner. Detroit News research Daniel Mears / The Detroit News Bill Phillips, vice president of Windham Realty Group, says Victoria Park sold homes as fast as they could build them. He regrets his former company didn't have the land to build more. Daniel Mears / The Detroit News The opening of 44-acre development released pent-up demand for new housing in Detroit. Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

Hot dogs, balloons, political speeches and wide-eyed faces greeted Kittrell and Sandra Griffin at Victoria Park subdivision's grand opening in June 1992. Builders, community leaders and prospective buyers were also on hand to see the first new market-rate neighborhood built in more than 30 years.

"I always dreamed of living in a new house in Detroit, but wondered if it could happen in my lifetime," said Kittrell Griffin, who grew up in the city, moved to Southfield with his wife and hankered to come back.

Within six months of seeing the 25 models on display, they had a home built with a two-story living room on New Town Street, which is in the subdivision.

The first 86 homes built in the neighborhood south of Jefferson and east of Conner were sold "as fast as they could build them," former Victoria Park operations manager Bill Phillips said. Within the next three years, all of Victoria Park's 157 lots bore homes.

"The only discouraging thing is that we didn't have more lots in the subdivision to build on," the owner of Windham Realty Group in Farmington Hills said.

The opening of 44-acre Victoria Park was the first step in releasing pent-up demand for new housing in Detroit, said retired city of Detroit planner Russ Kramer. Before it was built, no major housing projects had gone up in the city since Lafayette-Elmwood Park, a combination of condominiums and apartments east of downtown in the late 1960s, and a smaller housing development in the Wyoming-Eight Mile area.

Both, unlike the private-public consortium that built Victoria Park, were financed with government urban renewal funds.

The subdivision's 10th anniversary coincides with the recent announcement by President George W. Bush of the $200 million American Dream Down Payment Fund, which is intended to increase the number of minority homeowners in America by at least 5.5 million. The fund will make it easier for prospective minority home buyers in Metro Detroit to buy homes similar to those in Victoria Park.

The development was the brainchild of the late Detroit Mayor Coleman Young and Irv Yakness, director of the Building Industry Association of Southeast Michigan. They were joined by the late Thomas Ricketts, who was president of Standard Federal Bank and executive president of the Building Association; and Gary Carley, executive vice president at Standard Federal.

Victoria Park was subsidized by the city, Standard Federal, the southeast building industry group and the Jefferson-Chalmers Nonprofit Housing Corporation, according to Yakness, director of the building industry association. More than 10 construction firms in the group were the main builders of the homes.

"Young home buyers wouldn't believe all the hoops we went through to build Victoria Park," Yakness said. "We spent two years in and out of negotiations until we reached a satisfactory agreement to start building.

"Mayor Young threw me out of his office a half dozen times, I walked out a half dozen times. Finally, we hashed out an agreement."

Yakness insisted the city sell the land for the subdivision to its builders for $1 and pay for needed environmental clean up.

"Finally, we convinced the mayor we had to make the land affordable, because no one knew how big of a gamble we were making," Yakness said.

The community surrounding Victoria Park had blighted housing and boarded up businesses in 1992. In the next five years, as more houses arose inside and outside Victoria Park, so did tension between builders and bureaucrats.

The city lacked a good site plan review process and adequate new housing inspection procedures because it hadn't had experience doing so in many years, said Phillips.

Using suburban government processes as a template, Phillips said he was hired by the city as a consultant to help Young and has since helped succeeding Detroit mayors restructure license, permit, inspection and other departments so developers may pass more fluidly through the city system. For advocating on behalf of builders, Phillips recently won a leadership award from the southeast Michigan builders association.

But new subdivision construction doesn't please everyone. Some preservationists argue the homes don't reflect the character of the city.

Urban preservationist Constance Bodurow said she would like to see more projects like New Center Commons. In the early 1980s General Motors Corp. renovated 50 historic homes north of its former West Grand Boulevard headquarters to bring them up to electrical and esthetic standards.

Phillips disagrees.

"People want two car garages, curving streets, islands and culs-de-sac," Phillips said. "The market drives this kind of (new) housing."

Many more Detroit housing deals are on the horizon, Phillips said. In fact, the city could well become the next hot spot for regional developers because land prices are relatively low and interest in the city is gaining ground, he added.

"People like the diversity of Detroit," Phillips said. "The (nearby) Clairpointe (of Victoria Park) homes sold for $250,000 plus, next to old houses in Jefferson Chalmers and new subsidized housing built by Habitat for Humanity."

Victoria Park homes, which sold originally for $160,000, now sell for more than $300,000.

Since Bernie Glieberman, the owner of the Crosswinds Communities building firm in Novi, was recruited to build nine houses in Victoria Park, he has become one of the most prodigious home builders in the city. He constructed several hundred condominiums in Elmwood Park, expects to complete 500 to 700 condominiums at Woodward Place in Brush Park and is building 120 lofts with an urban flair at Woodward and Pallister. He was recently named chief home builder for Jefferson Village, a 350-house development on Jefferson, west of Conner.

Land value near viable developments is growing, Phillips said.

"You are seeing a lot of appreciation in Detroit properties," Phillips said. "In neighborhoods surrounding Victoria Park, the appreciation rate soared 40 percent."

Shannon Bledsoe was 13 when her mother, Dawn Williams, bought a model home on West Victoria Park. Playing jump rope on brand new concrete streets never left her memory.

"I got married, moved out and realized how much I wanted to come back," Bledsoe said. "I couldn't think of a better neighborhood to raise my baby, Trinity."

She and her husband, Charles, moved into her mother's home. There, the neighbors maintain an active association that commissions a guard service to patrol the streets at night and hosts annual picnics. Bledsoe loves to point out the judges, lawyers and political candidates who live nearby.

"We loved the mix, the people of all ages and the sound of other children playing in the street," Bledsoe said.

For the Griffins, the neighborhood holds continuing charm. Few houses have steel bars, barbed wire fences or woofing pit bulls. Sandra Griffins said turnover is extremely low.

"It's the kind of place you want to stay a lifetime."

Maureen McDonald is a Metro Detroit free-lance writer.