SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT PROGRAM IN Highland Park

Highland Park

Highland Park is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. An enclave of Detroit, Highland Park is located roughly 6 miles north of Downtown Detroit and is surrounded by Detroit on most sides. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 8,977. About 90 percent of residents are African American. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 2.971 square miles, all land.

The area that became Highland Park was a small farming community on a large ridge at what is now Woodward Avenue and Highland, six miles north of Detroit. In 1818, prominent Detroit judge Augustus B. Woodward bought the ridge and platted the village of Woodwardville in 1825. After a succession of closures and reopenings of the rural post office, the settlement was finally incorporated as a village within Greenfield Township and Hamtramck Township under the name of Highland Park in 1889.

In 1907, Henry Ford purchased 160 acres just north of Manchester Street between Woodward Avenue and Oakland Street to build an automobile plant. Construction of the Highland Park Ford Plant was completed in 1909, and the area’s population dramatically increased in 1913, when Henry Ford opened the plant’s first assembly line. On October 7, 1913, the Highland Park Ford Plant became the first automobile production facility in the world to implement the moving assembly line. The new assembly line improved production time of the Model T from 728 to 93 minutes. The Highland Park assembly line lowered the price of the Model T from $700 in 1910 to $350 in 1917, making it an affordable automobile for most Americans. On January 5, 1914, Ford announced that factory wages would be raised from a daily rate of $2.34 to $5.00, and that daily shifts would be reduced from nine hours to eight.

Following Henry Ford’s announcement in 1914 that his company was paying assembly workers $5 a day, thousands of people from the South and around the world poured into Highland Park. Every segment of Highland Park benefited from the city’s growing tax base due to the population boom, including city services, neighborhoods, retail businesses, and schools. The village of Highland Park was incorporated as a city in 1918 to protect its tax base, including its successful Ford plant, from Detroit’s expanding boundaries. In 1910, Highland Park had 4,120 residents. Between 1910 and 1920 during the boom associated with the automobile industry, Highland Park’s population grew to about 46,500.

Highland Park benefited from proximity to Detroit’s industrial core, attracting workers and fostering rapid growth after its incorporation as a city. However, the relocation of auto plants to suburbs and overseas, coupled with persistent municipal fiscal challenges, precipitated a protracted economic downturn. Highland Park was rolling along and firing on all cylinders when a seismic economic shift rattled the city in the mid-1990s after Chrysler Corporation moved its World Headquarters north of the city to Auburn Hills. Financial experts and other stakeholders believe that when Chrysler moved from Highland Park, the city lost 25 percent of its tax base and 50 percent of its annual budget.

In 1944, the Davison Freeway was opened as the country’s first modern depressed urban freeway, running through the center of the city. Highland Park boasts immediate access to three major expressways — the Chrysler (I-75), Lodge (M-10), and Davison (M-8) — as well as Woodward Avenue, Michigan’s main street and National Scenic Byway, which runs through the city.

As of the 2020 census, there were 8,977 people, 3,917 households, and 1,845 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,021.5 inhabitants per square mile. The median household income in Highland Park is $29,309 with a poverty rate of 40.91%.

Highland Park is governed under the council-mayor form of government. The mayor is the executive and administrative head of the city. The city council consists of five members, two elected at large and three elected from the city’s three electoral districts. Glenda McDonald currently serves as Mayor of Highland Park.

The Highland Park Ford Plant was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and named a National Historic Landmark in 1978. Additional notable landmarks include the McGregor Public Library (1926), designed in Roman Renaissance style, and the Highland Park Civic Center ensemble along Gerald Street. On June 19, 1982, drafter Vincent Chin was beaten to death in Highland Park by two automotive workers in retaliation for Japan’s success in the automotive industry, a killing that galvanized the Asian American civil rights movement nationally.

Notable people from Highland Park include John Conyers (1929–2019), former U.S. Representative, and Bobby Joe Hill (1943–2002), basketball player and 1966 national champion point guard for Texas Western, whose team fielded the first all-Black starting lineup in NCAA championship history. Robert B. Blackwell, who served as Michigan’s first Black mayor, guided Highland Park’s nationally recognized “Model City” redevelopment era in the late 1960s and 1970s.

City of Highland Park