The former Lincoln Motor factory is in the vanguard of new development poised to transform moribund automotive facilities into affordable housing and

Dreamtroit, a Low-Cost Bohemia for Artists, Revs Up in Motor City

submited by

Style Pass

2024-10-12 20:00:07

The former Lincoln Motor factory is in the vanguard of new development poised to transform moribund automotive facilities into affordable housing and art studios.

Dreamtroit in Detroit is a sprawling art complex with affordable live/work housing for creative residents, in a former Lincoln Motor plant. This graffiti-filled space once stored frozen food. Credit... Sarah Rice for The New York Times

Maurice Cox, the former planning director of the city of Detroit, remembers the first time Matthew Naimi wandered into his office in paint-splattered overalls in 2018, with fingernail polish, a kaffiyeh on his head, and his bare arms a constellation of tattoos. When Naimi told him that he wanted to develop a multimillion-dollar low-cost housing complex for artists out of one of the city’s most dilapidated automobile factories, long abandoned, “it was bordering on satire,” Cox recalled.

But Naimi, 51, who is of Iraqi heritage, and who runs a community recycling program, was dead serious. So was his partner, Oren Goldenberg, 41, a filmmaker and events producer who devoted his 20s to revitalizing a local synagogue. (His father is Israeli.)