The DREAM Center

Your generous donation will be used to transform Dream of Detroit’s recently acquired land, where we plan to build our first commercial venture here in our neighborhood: The DREAM Center on Woodrow Wilson. Your investment will help us build out an innovative and collaborative space to transform our community and revitalize our neighborhood. This year, we celebrate DREAM's 10 year anniversary and embark upon the next chapter in our journey as a community development organization.

Dream of Detroit is combining community organizing with strategic housing and land development to build a healthy community and empower our neighborhood on the Westside of Detroit. It was almost a decade ago that we started DREAM’s work to revitalize a street adjacent to our local masjid.

Today, not only have we made a tremendous difference on that first street our impact turf now covers this entire neighborhood and our efforts to revitalize our community are ever-evolving. We have almost 15 home rehabs under our belt, 85 graduates of our entrepreneurship training program, and community organizing that’s building real power for our local residents and attacking Detroit’s property tax crisis. We’ve turned the corner from being a volunteer-only initiative to building a staff and creating a professionalized community development organization that can bring generational change to this neighborhood.

Recent Growth on Our Team

After operating more than 8 years as a volunteer-run organization, we now have the equivalent of 4 full time employees, in addition to an engaged board and volunteer base. Our housing work is being anchored by the new DREAM Community Land Trust, our tool for ensuring permanent affordability in the future of our neighborhood. We’re also continuing with our home rehabs, while exploring options for new construction. In our community organizing work, we’re expanding the boundaries of our local neighborhood association that’s increasing civic engagement and building political power for our residents. We’re also doubling down on community organizing trainings that’ll bring more folks from faith communities into the fight for justice in Detroit’s neighborhoods. And as for economic development, our sights are now set on bringing new commercial activity to Woodrow Wilson Street. 

This year, as part of our 10 year anniversary celebrations, we’ll bring back the DREAM Street Fair, which has brought out thousands of people to experience a lively community festival and get a glimpse at a thriving Woodrow Wilson Street again. And on top of this, we’ll give our work a new home on Woodrow Wilson in the DREAM Center. 

The “Main Street” of Our Future

Woodrow Wilson was once a busy street lined with businesses and apartment buildings. We see a day where this street is again a thriving economic corridor, lined by ethical and eco-friendly businesses. We’re creating that future with our neighbors every day.

The Vision for the DREAM Center

The Vision is to have a complex built out of shipping containers that serves as an office for Dream of Detroit as we move out of our local community center. Our new space will serve as a co-working space and a digital media lab and literacy center where folks from our neighborhood can come benefit from our digital literacy services and from incredible technology that they can use to do everything from learning how to use tablets and laptops, to creating dynamic media, to embarking on technology-based careers. We'll have an outdoor sitting area where the community can gather, either on their own accord or when we host our own events, as well as a pop-up space so that businesses in our community can test their services before one day having a brick and mortar location of their own.

The DREAM Center will be in the heart of our impact turf. It’s a chance for DREAM’s work to go from the house on Waverly we used to operate out of, then to the community center we currently operate out of, to having our own frontage right here on Woodrow Wilson Street, where we’re trying to create a real main street that's going to serve our neighborhood for generations to come. DREAM will be an active participant in the cultivation of local businesses—developing commercial property, identifying and recruiting existing businesses, and working with local community members to launch locally-owned small businesses and cooperatives whose stakeholders live in and contribute directly to our targeted neighborhood

A Little More About Dream of Detroit

Dream of Detroit is combining community organizing with strategic housing and land development to build a healthy community and revitalize our neighborhood on the Westside of Detroit. We’ve rehabbed homes all throughout our neighborhood and now plan to develop our first commercial property. We’re a founder of the Longfellow Block Club (our local neighborhood association), a member of the Coalition for Property Tax Justice, where we're fighting for Detroiters whose homes were illegally taken, and we’re allied with partners throughout the neighborhood and across the country. Our work has been featured in local and national media: The Nation, The Detroit Free Press, Crain’s Detroit Business, The Guardian, WDET Detroit 101.9, Michigan Radio, WXYZ 7 ABC News, WBEZ Chicago 91.5, WJR NewsTalk, Sapelo Square, AltMuslim, Mad Mamluks, Diffused Congruence, and more.

View Our Recent 10-year Impact Report: