Anika Goss named Black History Month Game Changers honoree

DETROIT – Anika Goss imagines a unique future for the City of Detroit.

After working to build sustainable communities in metro Detroit for nearly 25 years, Goss was named CEO of Detroit Future City (DFC) in 2015.

Goss is this year’s second Black History Month honoree in the Ilitch Sports + Entertainment Game Changers series, which celebrates community members making a profound difference in Detroit. In partnership with Comerica Bank, the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers recognize one Game Changers honoree per week during select months to receive a $1,000 grant dedicated to the charity of their choice.

At the core of DFC’s mission is its Strategic Framework, a comprehensive 50-year guide to decision making and investment in Detroit. At the heart of that plan is creating equity for Detroiters, chief among those being its majority Black and Brown population that have long been maligned by injustice.

“The idea of what we think of equity is actually creating the opportunity for economic growth and ability for Detroiters,” Goss said. “We have to focus on wages so Detroit can't be viewed by major companies as the city of low-wage workforce for your company.”

Much has been made about the increased investment in the City of Detroit over the last 10 years to provide low-income Detroiters with housing and community amenities at the neighborhood level, but Goss said sustainability will come from mid-sized businesses emerging from Detroit, not just coming to it.

“We have to be intentional about creating opportunities for higher wages, creating opportunities for growing small business and entrepreneurship,” Goss said. “The size of businesses, are there opportunities for small businesses to grow? And that requires capital investment, not necessarily social investment programs.”

When that happens, Goss believes it will help DFC continue the mission to close the income gap between those living in the suburbs compared to those living in the city. Slowly, there has been positive change.

“We're starting to see black borrowers grow,” Goss said. “We're starting to see black home ownership rise in Detroit, especially for small mortgages, and I believe that is a reflection of five years of everyone being on the same page about Detroit.”

Another core aspect of DFC’s goals for Detroit is land use and land conservancy.

“We are really hoping to establish a Land Conservancy. We also believe that a built environment doesn't have to be the only strategy for redeveloping a city,” Goss said. “You can redevelop a city with beautiful, productive, open space that contributes to mitigating climate impacts and improving neighborhood revitalization.”

Another project Goss is working on is the replacement of I-375 with a surface road, as well as the planned caps on I-75. These plans intend to re-knit communities together after decades of being separated by freeway.

The project to remove I-375 is one that, as DFC puts it, calls for reparative investment for the area in which the Black Bottom and Paradise Valley communities were razed to make way for the freeway in the late 1950s.

“We wanted to make sure this new investment was not just an ordinary freeway project,” Goss said. “This was an investment they couldn’t easily, without intentionality, repeat the past harm from 1956.”

The Michigan Department of Transportation has implemented a progressive plan to begin this project, soliciting input from the community, which is different from the way things were done previously.

“It’s a substantially different approach to infrastructure investment, and I feel like that should set a new precedent for what investment could look like, especially in areas where there was intentional past harm to Detroit residents,” Goss said.

Goss is a critical figure in this stage of the revitalization of Detroit, and Ilitch Sports + Entertainment is proud to recognize her as a Game Changers honoree during Black History Month.

“What an honor to be recognized,” Goss said. Our work at Detroit Future City has remained steadfast in making sure Detroiters are informed and have access to economic opportunity and climate resilience strategies. Being recognized for this effort helps to advance the work even further.”