Gisele Regatao

By Melani Bonilla

Many arts organizations are struggling to survive post-pandemic, but not the Detroit Institute of Arts. Thanks to a unique tax-funding model, the museum has secured something few nonprofits can count on: revenue predictability.

The DIA’s business model is a striking contrast with other museums, which rely mostly on ticket sales and donations. “We believe it could serve as a framework for other institutions in today’s difficult economic climate,” wrote Salvador Salort-Pons, the DIA’s director, in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Located in Midtown Detroit, the DIA has one of the largest collections in the U.S. and has been ranked for two years as the best museum in the country by USA Today. The DIA boasts more than 100 galleries and one of its most famous works is a mural by Mexican artist Diego Rivera, commissioned by the museum in 1932. Composed of 27 frescos that fill an entire room, the Detroit Industry Murals tell the history of industrialization, including the city’s automotive roots. It took Rivera almost one year to paint the murals, which depict multi-racial workers at the forefront, as well as a child being vaccinated as a nativity scene, which stirred controversy at the time.

The tax plan to fund the museum was enacted when Detroit was on the brink of bankruptcy. In 2012, voters from Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties approved a 0.2 millage, or property tax, to fund the DIA. The new tax meant that a homeowner with a home value of $200,000 would pay approximately an additional $20 per year. The tax was supposed to last 10 years.

“The benefit of having this tax is having this jewel maintained properly,” said Sonya Clifton, a resident of Wayne County who was visiting the museum recently. “I would vote yes on another millage to keep the museum, $20, $200, even $2,000 a year.”

Although the millage was supposed to expire in 2022, in 2020 voters overwhelmingly approved its renewal for another decade, until 2032. This fiscal year, the millage is expected to provide 68 percent of the museum’s annual operating budget. The remainder comes from fundraising and ticket sales.

Thanks to the millage, country residents get several benefits at the DIA, including unlimited general museum admission, free school trips with bus transportation, free group visits for seniors with transportation and expanded community partnerships.

Some residents believe the deal is worth it. “Every community needs libraries and art galleries. So, to me, it’s part of being in a community,” said Laura Grimes, owner of a consulting firm in Oakland County.

Rochelle Riley, director of arts, culture and entrepreneurship for the city of Detroit, believes that the DIA serves an important role for the community. “Every year they have exhibits from Detroit public school students, they have massive special events and they just did a whole big thing where they celebrated local art collectors,” she said.

Where the millage money goes

The millage funds are being used, in part to bolster the museum’s endowment. While the DIA touts its success in growing the endowment from $124 million in 2016 to $365 million in 2023, critics argued that this accumulation of wealth does little to address the pressing needs of Detroit’s under-served communities. The DIA hopes to build its operating endowment to $800 million by the time the millage ends.

“We pay millions in tax dollars and the community benefits are five or 10 percent of the total millage,” said Steve Panton, an art curator based in Wayne County. He believes the museum should focus more on supporting local artists instead of growing its endowment.

Leon Drolet, a Macomb County commissioner, agrees that the museum should do more to represent and uplift local artists. A thin margin of voters in Macomb County approved the original measure in 2012, 50.5 percent, but that grew to 62 percent in 2020.

Drolet was born and raised in Macomb County and voted against the original millage proposal. His feelings about the renewal are unchanged. “The contract is the same as it was 12 years ago, and the local art projects are occasional. The DIA just wants to build a foundation, not benefit the public,” he said. 

Director Salort-Pons defended the museum’s financial decisions, citing the imperative of building a robust endowment to safeguard its future. 

“We currently don’t withdraw funds from our operating endowment, but instead reinvest its income,” he wrote. “Once we reach our goal, this endowment will generate enough revenue to replace what the museum annually receives from the millage, allowing us to weather economic uncertainty while continuing to deliver outstanding art and educational experiences.”

Panton, the art curator, also thought the museum should be more transparent.  He said a recent Van Gogh exhibit titled “Van Gogh in America,” celebrating a painter whose work the DIA was the first U.S. museum to acquire, was expensive to produce. Still, Panton said, DIA was reluctant to release attendance numbers.

DIA said attendance is now close to pre-pandemic levels: over 600,000 people visited the museum in 2023.

By Irza Waraich

Hamzah Nasser’s dad is a doctor, but halfway through his first semester of college, he dropped out. “I was so bored,” he said. Nasser delved into bounty hunting at 21. At 23, he opened a gas station in Detroit. After that, he started a trucking company.

When he wasn’t on the road, Nasser would make lattes for friends and family using his at-home coffee bar. “I didn’t even want them to come over,” he said, but he wanted to “make them coffee.” 

In 2021, Nasser turned a beloved passion into his latest business enterprise: Haraz Coffee House. The growing Yemeni cafe chain began in his hometown of Dearborn, a city in the Detroit metropolitan area where most residents are of Arab descent.

With 16 locations nationwide, mostly through franchises, the chain is getting ready to open its first New York location in May.

Haraz’s expansion is taking place even as the town of Dearborn — and the cafe — find themselves at the center of the state’s “uncommitted movement” and support for Palestinians, as well as Islamophobia, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel last October. In February, a Wall Street Journal opinion piece dubbed Dearborn “America’s Jihad Capital.” Following the OpEd, Abdullah Hammoud, the Mayor of Dearborn, called for an increased police presence outside local mosques.

Haraz Coffee has raised $21,000 for relief efforts in Gaza in partnership with the Muslim charity organization Baitulmaal. 

As Haraz prepares to enter New York City’s crowded and competitive coffee market, Nasser is confident.

“We don’t look at anyone as competition,” said Nasser, who is 37 and owns two of the stores himself, both in Dearborn. “We’re innovators.” 

Launching a new type of coffee store in New York City, which is home to more than 3,700 coffee shops, could be challenging, according to Scott L. Newbert, chair of Baruch College’s Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. 

Newbert said that since the coffee market is such a competitive industry, Haraz Coffee House may have to steal customers from other businesses, while trying to offer something new.

“When Haraz comes to New York, they’re not just selling coffee,” Newbert said. “They’re selling the experience, they’re selling the culture, they’re selling Yemen.”

The cafe could benefit from setting itself apart as a uniquely Yemeni coffee shop, with one of Haraz Coffee House’s biggest assets being unique drinks that don’t exist anywhere else, according to Nasser.

He created the pistachio latte before Starbucks, a recipe he takes pride in. Some of the famous pastries include a milk cake and saffron-topped cheesecake. His best-selling drinks, such as the Adeni (black tea sweetened and boiled with cardamom and cinnamon) and the Harazi (medium-roasted coffee with cardamom.) But Nasser said the company’s most important asset is its Yemeni coffee.”

Haraz Mountains

Yemeni coffee, first believed to have been discovered 500 years ago by Sufi monasteries in the Arabian Peninsula, has a long history. Cultivated in high, mountainous and drought-prone terrain, the coffee is known for its distinct, dried fruit flavor.

Nasser sources his coffee from a farm in Yemen’s Haraz Mountains, which is managed by a family friend. 

“Yemen has such a long history with coffee and I wanted to bring that coffee bean here and sell it,” said Nasser. 

Nasser has put all his savings into Haraz. Due to pandemic-related increases, the cost to build his first store in Dearborn was $350,000, almost twice as much as he initially expected. Nasser had to sell his trucking business to finance the new venture. 

Haraz Coffee House opened its doors in April 2021, and has since acted as a community hub.

Hadi Yassine, a Ph.D. student at Wayne State University, said that during one recent week, he went to the cafe four times. “You can sit here as long as you want,” he said. “Nobody really bothers you. Whenever I want to write or do data analysis, I come here.”

Ragih Dean, a healthcare worker, has frequented the cafe since its opening, and enjoys both the music and the Yemeni brew. “It reminds me of my mom’s coffee,” he said.

Haraz attracted so many customers during the first months after the business opened that Nasser couldn’t hire employees fast enough. So, Nasser enlisted a group of teenagers and young adults, some as young as 15 — a decision that initially made him quite nervous.

“I was like, oh my God. I just opened a business that I spent everything I had on and I have a bunch of kids. But you know what, it was the best thing I did,” he said. 

The youngest employees on staff at the time included Nasser’s brother, Mohamed Nasser, who was 15 when the cafe opened. The brothers would work 16 hours a day to make up for the shortage of staff.

Now 19, the younger Nasser serves as operations manager, overseeing store performance and streamlining customer orders from Haraz’s headquarters.

“I was there helping him clean the dust off the walls, off the ground; I’ve just been here since the beginning, by his side,” said Mohamed Nasser, referring to his brother Hamzah.

Haraz Coffee House now has franchisees in Illinois, California and other states. While the Dearborn location generates $1 million in revenue, the total revenue for all Haraz Coffee House franchises ranges from $25 million to $30 million, according to Nasser. His company takes 5 percent of the profits from the franchises. 

The coffee enterprise has also created the Haraz Coffee School, which trains franchisees at Haraz headquarters in Dearborn on brewing coffee and making latte art, and also offers classes to anyone for a fee. More recently, due to high travel costs, the Haraz team now travels to new locations a week before each opening to train out-of-state franchisees — and stays for a month.

That process may evolve as Haraz Coffee House is working on a deal to open 87 new locations within the next three years — some in the U.S., and some in the Middle East. 

Nasser said he believes his company is doing more than selling drinks and pastries. 

“We didn’t just create a coffee shop,” he said. “We created a place for the community to come and gather.”

By Jada Flores

In 2019, when automaker Stellantis built its first Detroit assembly plant in 30 years, the company agreed to add some art to the massive wall that surrounds the plant. Detroit muralist Hubert Massey was commissioned to work on the piece. But before he got started, Massey had conversations with community members in the East Canfield neighborhood where the plant is located to see what they wanted.

“It was a joint effort,” Massey said of the resulting mural, which he painted on the 1,500-foot-long and 15-foot-high wall.

The mural is an homage to the great migration of Black Americans from the South to the city of Detroit. They are seen taking trains, cars or walking on foot to arrive at a city where they hoped to find better jobs, often in auto plants. The number 313, representing the city’s area code, appears repeatedly throughout the piece.

It took Massey five months to finish the mural, which culminates in a portrait of a couple embracing with the sun in the background; the image, the artist explained, represents what lies ahead for Detroit. “A community that has a bright future,” he said.

Massey’s piece is one of 602 murals in Detroit, according to Rochelle Riley, director of the city’s office of arts, culture and entrepreneurship. She said many communities and businesses are embracing street art. “I had the CEO of a major company call and say, okay, we want a mural,” she said. “You wouldn’t have heard that five years ago.”

Detroit was ranked fifth in a recent survey of the best cities in the country for street art.

Studies show that murals often bring a community together, and help it shape its identity and values. And that’s particularly important in a city with 19 square miles of vacant land.  

“They help people feel like their neighborhoods are not overlooked and forgotten,” said Tom Goddeeris, the chief operating officer of the local think tank Detroit Future City. “Even in places where the traditional economic metrics don’t look so good, it still makes a place that people care about.”

Reinaldo Perez, who works at a hotel in Corktown, Detroit’s oldest neighborhood, said that street art didn’t become popular in his area until about 10 years ago. “It was depressing living here and not seeing signs of life,” he said.

But street art can also get entangled in politics and controversy.  Last October, Detroit’s department of planning and development commissioned seven murals ahead of this year’s NFL draft. The murals were painted by “international artists,” recruited by the New York-based group Street Art for Mankind. Local artists complained and Antoine Bryant, director of planning and development for Detroit, faced criticism for implementing the contract without the City Council’s approval, which stalled payment.

“The artists will be paid and the city is moving with a couple of private entities to ensure that the bill will be addressed,” said Bryant.

For many, there is also a distinction between murals and graffiti, even though they are part of the same art form. “There was a long time where graffiti artists felt like they weren’t welcomed and graffiti, the wrong kind, still isn’t,” Riley said. “The mayor doesn’t want any horrible graffiti.” 

Many mural artists start out — and continue to work — as graffiti artists. Graffiti is an art form that uses public or private property as a canvass, without permission, and is often considered vandalism. At the same time, the success of artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Harring, who started out as graffiti artists on the streets of New York City and whose work is now on display at major museums, has helped elevate the urban art form.

In Detroit, some murals are also coming to specific neighborhoods through a federally funded program called Arts Alleys. One of them is Bailey Park. Katrina Watkins, founder and CEO of the Bailey Park Neighborhood Development Corporation in the McDougall-Hunt neighborhood, said the community’s alley project will include plants, flowers, benches, sculptures and murals. “The goal is to have more art that people can see in the neighborhood,” said Watkins. “It’s part of that beautification.”