5470 Chene Street
Polish Youth Center, Kukawski’s Fashion Shoppe, Neighborhood Service Organization, RecoveryPark
I believe that this address includes 5466, 5468, 5470 Chene Street, and 2612 East Ferry Street.
According to the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, a small, one-story storefront stood at the location of the structure pictured here in 1921. Within a few years, the current building would be constructed.
In 1928, a store here was hiring a shoe salesman here. I believe the structure was built with two stores facing Chene and a small unit on the Ferry Street side, so the shoe store was likely one of the Chene-facing storefronts. The second floor may have been apartments, but it was commercial space by the 1930s.
On February 12, 1938, “300 Polish-American young people dedicated a Youth Center Saturday night at 2616 E. Ferry,” according to the Detroit Free Press. The center occupied four rooms on the structure’s second floor. Mrs. Karl Ripa, the wife of the General Polish Consul in Pittsburgh, presented the key to the center to the Polish-American Federation of Youth in Detroit.
The youth center became known as the Polish Youth Center and was home to dances, events, and meetings. In August 1944, the Federation of Polish-American Youth held an event supporting the U.S. government’s rehabilitation program for Poland. After that, I haven’t found any mention of the group.
Back on the main floor, Kukawski’s Fashion Shoppe had become a popular neighborhood spot for children’s clothing by 1946. Initially carrying some women’s clothing, too, the store was known for its youth ready-to-wear clothing selection and had another location at 10334 Joseph Campau, near the corner of Caniff in Hamtramck, another Polish enclave nearby.
Kukawski’s Fashion Shoppe was a popular destination off Chene Street; however, a traumatic event in the shop in 1950 may have led to its closure. On August 26, a man entered the store looking for socks. The worker, Mrs. Helen Mile, 26, daughter of owner Alex Kukawski, told the man that they didn’t sell adult clothing, just for children. Mile, pregnant then, said the man left the store after receiving that information.
However, a few minutes later, the man returned with a gun and told her to empty the register. Kukawski and his daughter said that out of nowhere, the man fired a shot, striking the pregnant Mile in the abdomen, before running out of the store. The shooter was Frank Ross, 42, who Kukawski chased but lost in an alley near the store.
Ross left his car at the scene with the key still in the ignition, so police waited for him to return, which he did. While searching his home, authorities found a .38 revolver under the bathtub with one of the bullets fired, and a nitrate test shows that his arm had been near a recently fired weapon. He later admitted to the shooting, telling police, “I thought the old man was reaching for a gun and that’s why I shot,” according to the Detroit Free Press.
Miles and her unborn child survived. Ross got five to life for assault with intent to rob in October 1950.
Not long after that, the newspaper advertisements for the Chene Street location of Kukawski’s Fashion Shoppe stopped; however, the Hamtramck location had adverts for a few more years. In 1956, a business and a large amount of clothing, shoes, and other stock were for sale at the former address of Kukawski’s on Chene. The advert said that the owner was selling on account of illness and that the price was very reasonable.
On Wednesday, July 21, 1965, a public auction was held to sell the remaining merchandise from the store at the corner of Chene and Ferry. It had All National Branded Children’s and Ladies’ Wear and many showcases, counters, racks, and a cash register. After that, information about this structure becomes hard to come by.
At some point, maybe in the 1960s, there was a dentist office inside the structure. Later, there may have been a doctors office or clinic.
By 1997, the structure was home to the Neighborhood Service Organization, a nonprofit that still exists today. At that time, they were offering free HIV testing at this location. The organization was here until 2016. At some point around that time, RecoveryPark purchased the property.
Warning: the following section contains some editorialized writing.
RecoveryPark, a nonprofit focused on employing returning citizens, was formed in 2010 by Gary Wozniak, and the first farm opened in Poletown East in 2014. Around this time, the nonprofit convinced the city to practically hand the nonprofit 40 acres of land. Mayor Duggan said that the project “isn't just about transforming this land…It's about transforming lives,” according to the Detroit Metro Times. One of the properties that RecoveryPark acquired was 5470 Chene Street, pictured here, which was the non-profit’s headquarters. Additionally, they owned Chene-Ferry Market, Max’s, and other local landmarks.
The project received multiple puff pieces from local and national media, and the process of turning Poletown East into a commercial farm was underway. However, according to a piece in the Detroit Metro Times, all members of the RecoveryPark staff were terminated in February 2020. Wozniak claimed that the layoffs were due to the pandemic; however, those cuts were made a month before the world shut down because of COVID-19. The non-profit went from one of the most talked about projects in the city to one almost wholly forgotten in weeks.
Though I have no physical record of this, multiple reliable sources have told me that RecoveryPark has sold almost all of the land it acquired from the City nearly a decade ago to an investment consortium that includes Matthew Tatarian, a local business owner. His brother’s holdings include the former White Grove Restaurant on 2nd Avenue, which is currently being renovated.
Though I don’t know who currently owns this structure, I know it is active and still listed under RecoveryPark’s stewardship. Cars move in and out of the parking lot, and Google Maps says it’s still home to RecoveryPark, WJZZ Detroit Jazz Radio, and Campbell Construction Services. While taking these photographs, someone watched me soak my feet in the mini river in the alley after it rained.
Similar to other projects that popped up around this time, like Hantz Woodlands, most Detroiters that I know feel that the entire thing was a scam. Affluent people came into a down-on-its-luck city with a novel idea for a nonprofit, were handed dozens of acres of land from the city by a suburbanite mayor who made them pinky swear to do right by their promises without getting much in writing, and the nonprofits petered out after a few years with a large chunk of that property being sold for profit.
That might just be my pessimism showing through; however, as others have said, these deals weren’t available to the average Detroiter, and that’s frustrating. Today, the city is experiencing a mini-housing crisis because the average worker can’t afford to live in an exponentially growing segment of the city because investors have snapped up so much of the market. Detroit used to be cool because, if you worked hard enough, you could shoot moves here. Today, that’s not the case. There are dozens of buildings in this neighborhood awaiting redevelopment that are currently being sat on by investors. If they were available for a fair market rate, people who would actually use them would purchase them. However, they aren’t for sale, so they sit, rot, and eventually fall apart.
Don’t get it twisted; I’m thrilled that this structure is stable and in use. That said, I can’t help but be frustrated that the organization that operated it for so long under the guise of helping Detroiters has made it so that other properties like it in the neighborhood can’t be redeveloped, too.
Eventually, I will do a piece on Chene-Ferry Market, which will include more information on RecoveryPark. If you’re reading this, Gary, that piece won’t be very nice, either.
