Call it dipping a toe in the water.
By June, months after the snow had melted, construction along the Kercheval Avenue border revealed itself to be a one-way roundabout, fully blocking traffic from Detroit and sending Grosse Pointe motorists straight back to where they came from.
A few days later, three farmers’ market sheds decorated with colorful paintings of strawberries and eggplants were placed, unannounced, at the end of the one-way roundabout, physically tracing the city limits in all their glorious quaintness, and once more taking up the full width of the street. The sheds stayed put for six months, holding market days and hosting Michigan fruit and veg producers twice a week.
At the end of the summer, when one vendor from Armada, Michigan, was asked about the divide her business location had come to represent, her answer came back as chirpy as the sheds she sat in front of: “We serve both Grosse Pointers and Detroiters.”
Sitting in front of the sheds on a slow Tuesday, she explained the venture could hardly be perceived as racist if it was open to both white and black customers. Separated, but equal, she seemed to suggest.
For some, the farmers’ market turned out to be the last straw. In August, a car coming from the Detroit side-slammed into the biggest shed in the middle of the night, leaving its side severely damaged. It was unclear whether the driver was making a statement of frustration, or whether he or she had simply not realized the road was now blocked.
Hastily repaired, the sheds stayed on, and were only partially displaced at the very end of the year, after Detroit’s mayor, Mike Duggan, went on a spontaneous televised rant declaring himself “tired of the lying” from Grosse Pointe Park’s administration, which had repeatedly promised – and failed – to remove the sheds.
After fully blocking access between Detroit and Grosse Pointe Park for a majority of 2014, Kercheval Avenue’s blockade was partially lifted in the early days of 2015. Cars can now come in from Detroit, but still cannot go back the other way. Meanwhile, leaks suggest plans are still under way to block the avenue with a larger and more permanent commercial structure.