Southfield teams up with other cities for ‘Let There Be Light Gateway’ crowdfunding campaign

SOUTHFIELD — In partnership with the cities of Southfield, Oak Park and Detroit, the Eight Mile Boulevard Association launched the “Let There Be Light Gateway” crowdfunding campaign to transform the Eight Mile Greenfield Gateway.

The Eight Mile Boulevard Association is a nonprofit founded in 1993 with a mission to revitalize and promote Eight Mile Road by helping to strengthen and improve the neighborhoods and businesses along the boulevard.

The “Let There Be Light Gateway” aims to provide an artistic and colorful safety enhancement to the area.

Kimberly Marrone, who is the municipal services director for Oak Park and the chairperson for the Eight Mile Boulevard Association, shared her excitement about the project.

“In total, with, you know, designing it and everything, (it’s) about two years that we’ve been working on it,” Marrone said. “The last component of any project is getting the funding to do it, so this is kind of our last step to fill the final gap in making this project come to fruition.”

She added that if everything goes according to plan, the installation could take place in the summer.

The campaign will run until May 23 and aims to raise $50,000 through the Michigan-based crowdfunding platform Patronicity, which will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) for a total of $100,000. At press time, the campaign had raised around $15,000.

According to Marrone, there are no fundraising plans in place other than through the online donation platform. However, if the goal is not met, she said that they would have to revisit the idea of hosting some fundraising events.

Currently, no lighting exists under the Eight Mile bridge at Greenfield Road and the Lodge Freeway, which, according to the city of Southfield, is “traveled by over 100,000 people daily.”

Twelve lights will be installed, and the option to change the color will be available for different holidays or sporting events.

“So even from a safety standpoint, it’s probably not the best idea to not have any lighting under the bridge for any pedestrians going through that area,” Marrone said. “So that was one of the impetuses, but the main one was we were looking to do maybe some kind of art installation under the bridge, whether it be a mural or something like that. And then Mayor Siver had traveled to Texas and saw that they had kind of an art lighting project under one of their bridge overpasses, and came up with that idea.”

Southfield Mayor Ken Siver said, “We’ve had significant development in the Eight Mile (and) Greenfield (and) Lodge area, and so to promote further investment in the area I wanted to see something special happen to the bridge, and there’s no lights there. So the idea is to underlight the bridge with multicolor lights.”

Siver explained that the lights would be a unique fixture to help spur economic development in the area and beautify the intersection. He added that the area is undergoing significant transformation with new businesses, including the Costco Business Center, the Northland project, Forgotten Harvest’s facilities, new housing developments and newly-renovated stores and restaurants.

Individuals or organizations can make donations at the Projects Let There Be Light Gateway Patronicity page at www.patronicity.com/project/let_there_be_light_gateway#!/.