Old Redford

What you won't find within this neighborhood is above average crime. What you will find is a good neighborhood that has a nice sense of community and who want to bring this back to the hot spot that it used to be. The theater is the biggest draw here as it has so much history and therefore many want to still visit it from time to time.

It was time, a decline in people moving in, and a devastating fire a few years back that really brought this part of town to its knees. Though there is of course great potential here it's not necessarily the part of town that many would hand pick to live in. It's not a bad area and you do feel safe here, but it is definitely in need of some updating and improvements.

The good news is that you are close to several major roads and that makes it very easy to get in and around. It's highly accessible, close enough to amenities, and nice part of town are nearby. It has traditionally been a part of town where many families with kids gravitated to, but through time it just didn't have the draw that other parts of town did.

There is a golf course that has been here for years and it still brings in a fair amount of interest. However a community can't live off of just that alone. Therefore this is a part of town that you wouldn't necessarily want to move to, but yet it's certainly not as bad as other parts of town. Average at best as it is in great need of updates and improvements!

At the intersection of Lahser and Grand River, Old Redford is a diverse neighborhood that can seem uninteresting to the outside. This neighborhood is home to the New Rogell Golf Course, one of the first golf courses in the state of Michigan owned by an African American. Outside of the course, there seems to be little else, but this area between Telegraph and Evergreen Road does offer a number of other small surprises.

Many of the shops, restaurants, stores and bars in the area are less than a mile away on Seven Mile or Telegraph, and the golf courses nearby gives the residential areas a slight country club feel. In addition to these amenities, Old Redford is home to a variety of early 20th century brick houses that remain some of the most valuable and some of the most visually stunning in the city. Old Redford is perhaps most known for the large Redford Bowl and Sports Bar – which now sits empty and in decent shape, waiting on and interested investor, entrepreneur or local trying to revive the area and the building - and for the Artist Village, which is a community center and meeting place for local artists and local activists.

As a kid I used to live in the next neighborhood over, Berg Lahser. I lived on Pembroke right off of Berg Road. The neighborhood kids I hung out with were quite adventurous and we often rode our bikes down Berg Road into the Old Redford neighborhood.

The neighborhood had a quaint, vintage feel to as I recall back then. Some of the homes and streets seem right of some old time movie. The upkeep was decent then, and it hasn't fallen of dramatically since. The neighborhood is really small though, consisting of only a few streets.

I recently reconnected with a neighbor girl who used live in Berg Lahser, and she still lives there. She said much of the neighborhood is the same, and Old Redford is about the same as well. There is some decent shopping down Grand River. I remember I got one of my first bikes at a bike shop down there.

As an adult the new attraction is the golf course. I think I read somewhere that it the only African American owned golf course in Michigan. I have golfed there twice; once as a teen and once as an adult. Needless to mention, I had more fun as an adult because I was a much better golfer. The course is not bad and the rates are decent.

Other than that there is not much going around here. You have the major thoroughfares like Grand River, Telegraph and Seven Mile close by, but that's about it.