OAK PARK, MI – Last month, I wrote about Highland Park, a tiny, once-prosperous city embedded in Detroit, a place that put the world on wheels a century ago, but which is now depopulated, poverty-stricken, and essentially without hope.
But a very different and much happier story has been unfolding a few miles away. Oak Park, a five-square-mile suburb on Detroit’s northwest border was just a village when World War II ended. Then it took off. It was by some measures the fastest growing city in the nation in the 1950s, its population soaring to 36,632 in a few years.
Not only that, but its schools became a magnet for the intellectual elite. Jeffrey Sachs, the world-famous economist, graduated from Oak Park High. So did Paul Milgrom, winner of a Nobel Prize in economics, and Doug Fieger, famous for his hit song My Sharona and his rock band the Knack.
Then, however, Oak Park also began to fall on hard times. The thousands of Jewish residents who had moved there from Detroit in the 1950s began to move further west, to West Bloomfield. The population and finances began to slip. Change was desperately needed, but those in power seemed unable or unwilling to change.
Then, in 2011, with the city on the road to insolvency, a retired 67-year-old school teacher named Marian McClellan decided something had to be done. She decided to run for mayor, challenging an incumbent who had been there for more than two decades.
“I never thought I would win. But I wanted to shake things up, get their attention,” she said. She knocked on virtually every door in the city. On Election Night, she stunned everyone, including herself, by winning. “I knew I couldn’t do it by myself,” she told me.
“My job was to be the public face of the city, its biggest cheerleader, and to hire a competent team to run it.” That’s exactly what happened. Within months, she led the council to hire a new police chief, a development director, and most importantly, a whiz kid of a city manager, Erik Tungate.
Oak Park began to turn around. “We’ve taken best practices from all over the place,” he said. “What am I proudest of? The financial turnaround.” When he arrived, just months after Mayor McClellan was elected, the city had a huge, sprawling, abandoned and totally empty former Michigan National Guard armory.
Now, it is fully occupied with a diverse assortment of tenants, from Fed Ex to the headquarters of Forgotten Harvest, a major Michigan charity. The city manager had nothing but praise for the mayor who he’s served with. “She’s a retired teacher, so you wouldn’t expect her to have governmental know-how. But swinging for the fences, you hope you get a visionary and someone who can bring the clans together,” he said, indicating that is Marian McClellan.
She, the city council and the manager have been an impressive team. Most city managers in smaller jurisdictions last just a few years. Now 47, Tungate, who earlier worked for Hamtramck, Detroit and the state of Michigan, plus a stint in commercial banking, is starting his twelfth year in Oak Park.
Oak Park’s hospitality business began to take off when they managed in 2015 to win repeal of an old law outlawing the sale of liquor-by-the glass. New restaurants began popping up.
New housing starts soared, both single-family homes and apartment complexes; a huge and attractive new lower-income housing development opened near the Detroit border.
Housing values increased. A rule that prevented the construction of houses over a certain size was abolished, helping stabilize the Jewish population.
Money was found to spruce up storefronts. Eleven Mile Road, for years a dreary strip of mostly closed small factories and machine shops, suddenly became home to a number of chic coffee places, restaurants and breweries which are drawing more and more millennials.
Oak Park, which had fallen to 29,310 people in 2010, actually gained slightly over the next ten years. Oak Park’s renaissance is still not well known across the area, which suits Tungate just fine.
“Playing the role of underdog is a pretty great position to be in, I believe. I want people to underestimate what we can do,” he said.
He thinks that the fact that he has an MBA, and considerable experience in both the public and private sectors, has helped. There’s still one major problem; the public schools, once among the state’s best, are now among its worst. That’s not an easy problem to fix, though a significant chunk of the residents go to better districts.
But in terms of morale, few things beat the city’s can-do mayor, now finishing her sixth term. “She is many things, but I think kind-hearted is the most important characteristic that she has. And when you are dealing with a can-do, underdog spirit in people — that’s magic,” the city manager said.
The mayor, who will turn 79 this year, agrees. “I want everyone to feel welcome in Oak Park,” she said. And I want to be the one they go to if they have a problem.” Recently, she said, a resident approached her. “Are you the lady who helps people?” they said.
She loved it. Two years ago, she won reelection with 74 percent of the vote. She had planned to retire, but decided to run for one more term this November. It’s a safe bet she’ll win this time, too.
This year, the lady who helps people is running unopposed.
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