DETROIT (WWJ) – Michigan has won a $105 million federal grant that will help fund the I-375 modernization project in Detroit, local, state and federal officials announced on Thursday.
The project will replace the outdated I-375 freeway with an accessible boulevard, which officials hope will spur economic development and link neighboring areas of the city.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttiegieg and local Detroit leaders made the announcement Thursday, saying it will create good-paying jobs, support local small businesses and reconnect prominent Black communities that were split apart by the freeway construction in the 1960s.
When the freeway was built nearly 60 years ago, prominent Black neighborhoods Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were demolished to make way for the project, according to the governor's office. Officials say it was constructed through what was a thriving Hasting Street and when it opened in 1964, it created a barrier between the city's central business district and the neighborhoods, just to the east.
It resulted in "decades of underinvestment and a lack of opportunity for the predominantly Black communities on the other side of the freeway."
Speaking Thursday in Detroit, a day after visiting the North American International Auto Show with President Joe Biden, Buttigieg said Detroit wasn't the only place that saw this type of freeway construction in the past.
"Some of the planners and politicians behind decisions in the past built roads like this one through the heart of vibrant, populated areas," Buttigieg said. "Sometimes even in an effort to reinforce segregation. Sometimes simply because the people who lived there did not have the power to resist and force change."
Officials say Michigan now has the opportunity to "eliminate this obstacle and provide easier access to better jobs, services, and quality of life to the residents of adjacent areas of persistent poverty."
Whitmer announced earlier this year the project has been cleared to move forward after the Michigan Department of Transportation concluded an environmental review of the area, with input from the community.
Although an exact start date has not been determined, officials hope I-375 will be transformed into a boulevard by 2025.
