Around the world LGBTQ+ ‘gayborhoods’ have popped up in many major cities, where LGBTQ+ people and their friends and families can feel free to socialize, drink, eat, and hang out at LGBTQ+-owned businesses. These neighborhoods are most often created by individuals to accommodate the needs of their community. In Detroit, however, The Detroit Regional LGBT Chamber of Commerce is planning a LGBTQ+ business district, according to LGBTQ Nation.
Detroit was home to dozens of LGBTQ+ bars in the 1970s, a number that diminished by the ‘80s. Today, there are just under ten queer spaces in the city at large. Detroit’s Regional LGBT Chamber of Commerce founder Kevin Heard, told Bridge Detroit that the city lacks a gayborhood. In an effort to jumpstart an initiative that would change this, the chamber partnered with the City of Detroit and an LGBTQ+ research firm to develop a survey “aimed at gauging which areas in the greater Detroit region are considered most LGBTQ+ friendly, where people would like to see an LGBTQ+ business district established, and what they hope it would look and feel like,” LGBTQ Nation reports.
After carefully curating the survey, it went live in June and has thus far been completed by over 1,000 people. So what’s next? Heard told Bridge Detroit “When we pinpoint the top three areas [from the survey results]…we will be going into a capital campaign to acquire properties in that area and lease to new and existing LGBT-owned businesses within the space or whoever has a sustainable business that will be friendly to the LGBT community.”
If the project is green-lighted it could take up to a decade to complete.
