WDET News
- Southwest Business and Art Meet at COMPAS
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Feb 12, 2010Metro Desk - Link to Audio
A partnership between Detroit’s arts and business communities is bearing fruit for a Southwest Detroit organization. WDET’s Rob St. Mary reports on COMPAS.
(click audio link above to hear the story)
On the corner of West Vernor and Lawndale… inside the refurbished Odd Fellows building in southwest Detroit resides COMPAS. That’s an acronym standing for Center of Music and Performing Arts – Southwest. The program takes mostly neighborhood children and adults and puts them through courses in guitar, piano, percussion and various dance traditions.
Ismael Duran is Director of COMPAS.
“What COMPAS has become is not only a music center but it’s become like a community center where the families and the kids and the community feel involved here.”
COMPAS came into existence through the efforts of the Southwest Detroit Business Association. Kathy Wendler is President of the SDBA.
“Looking at kind of this key location… in at the time was a much softer part of the West Vernor market than Vernor/Springwells, Vernor/Junction or the Mexicantown neighborhood, we thought it would be a great way to catalyze development here.”
And beyond that…Wendler says COMPAS fills a need in Southwest Detroit.
“We really saw an opportunity to create a cultural center leveraging the richness of the Middle Eastern community to the west of us, the Latino community here and the artists in Southwest Detroit who teach all over who have national recognition and we didn’t have a great place for them to teach and to practice their art.”
Wendler says the organization looked for a location and found the abandoned and empty Odd Fellows Building at West Vernor and Lawndale as the perfect location… although it would take over $5 million from about 13 different funding sources to bring the building back to life.
“It was unbelievable. The east wall was literally falling off the building. We took the wall down and rebuilt it as part of the renovation. We had to put new structural steel in because there had been water leaking into the building for about 10 years and as we started the construction I believe we took 50,000 gallons of water out of the basement.”
Once the building was completed… financial backers like the McGregor Fund and the Skillman Foundation came forward to help the fledging group reach out into the community and teach music and dance. COMPAS teaches up to 600 students a year. Director Ismael Duran says he sees his program as filling a gap in the community.
“We are filling up that gap that we don’t have the afterschool programs any more. Because we don’t have any afterschool programs in schools hardly, a few some of them… and we know that it’s a problem with funding whatever it was. But, what do we do? As a community do we sit there and do nothing?”
And by filling that gap…and growing over the past three years…Duran says COMPAS has helped area businesses to thrive.
“COMPAS is being a place… showing to others that it is possible to renovate and change the look of a community… and it’s good for the business owners, it’s good for the party store across from us.”
In the end…Kathy Wendler says the mission comes back to the children.
“The parents are unbelievable in their ownership of this place and their pride in what their kids are doing.”
It’s that enthusiasm that makes Duran feel positive about the students at COMPAS.
“I see those kids…when they are taking… for me it’s not a pastime that they come in here and play a little guitar, do a little dancing… no! I see a potential in any of those kids to continue in their education to become a professional musician, to become a professional dancer or performer, to go to Mosaic and from Mosaic they can go…hey, why not Hollywood?”
And as the students continue to practice…the Southwest Detroit Business Association and partners continue their support of COMPAS… a center keen on catching the rhythm of the community.