In this week’s Fellow Spotlight, we are checking in with Darin McLeskey. He fills us in on what he enjoys most about living in the city, and his host company, Soil and Materials Engineers, Inc. 

Darin, growing up in the Metro-Detroit area, tell us about moving to Detroit?

I’ve been living in the Detroit metro area since I was 4 years old, but my family has fairly deep roots in the region and my grandparents have lived downriver and in Brightmoor. I grew up in the distant exurbs northwest of Ann Arbor, but I moved to the city proper just this last May after graduating.

What drew you back to “Detroit-proper”?

Really, two things have motivated me to move back to the city: knowledge and opportunity. In Pinckney I saw countless farms fall to subdivision development and thought that a hour-long commute to work was normal. I was also taught that Detroit was a hell-hole that everyone is either escaping or trying to stay away from. After taking some urban planning courses and venturing into the city myself, I began to understand the reasons for its decline. I learned the mistakes of yesteryear, met great people doing amazing things, and was given potential prescriptions to solve the city’s deepest ills. Aimed with a few years of knowledge and a lot of first-hand experience, I felt conflicted between the environmentally responsible and fun new-age urban lifestyle, and a more agrarian one that could put you in touch with the land and nature. Then I realized that you can have both in only a city like Detroit – and since that moment I made it my prime objective to embed myself in and endlessly promote the City’s resurgence.

How are you involved with both the environmental and urban aspects of Detroit’s resurgence?

I’ve been told I have three hats: environmental engineer, urban farmer, and real estate agent/ investor. They’re related, but balanced fields that often complement each other on a day-to-day basis. At my host company, Soil and Materials Engineers, I’m often working with developers and municipalities who have environmentally sensitive property. We perform the upfront assessments, provide recommendations, and oversee the remedial actions. We’re essentially helping to recycle land, which, in turn aides redevelopment of urban or previously developed areas. In my urban farming role, I’m producing a lot of food locally. I co-founded a non-profit, the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (www.miufi.org), that encourages urban agriculture and is actually experimenting with and demonstrating new methods of growing food in “shrinking cities”. Urban agriculture can provide food, employment, blight reduction, and environmental services in many of the “fringe areas” of Detroit that often get overlooked. Lastly, I’m a real estate agent and have been personally investing in the city. I own 4 houses, and about two dozen vacant parcels. One is rented out, while the others are being renovated. The land is in various phases of clean-up and alternative redevelopment. I think that creating better living conditions in the otherwise “distressed areas” of the city can cause pockets to flourish, and connecting these isolated pockets will gradually lift larger neighborhoods.

Tell us more about your host company, Soil and Materials Engineers. What is an interesting project you are working on now?

Within the City, we get a lot of work when developers come across the unexpected – drums, hydrocarbon smells, discolored soil, etc. We’re generally the first to respond, interpret the issues, and recommend a solution.  Sometimes we’re working with developers from the beginning, and we can help them interpret environmental concerns and plan for them. In the ideal situation, we can support them in finding tax credits, Brownfield grants, or alternative solutions, which can improve their bottom line. My work is totally different every day. I’ll be writing reports one day and drilling 40 foot soil samples in 10 degree weather the next. I travel all over the Midwest, but am often thrilled when I’m able to work on a project close to home in Detroit.

What do you like most about the team challenges?

I like that the challenges are both flexible and comprehensive. We’re able to leverage the wide range of backgrounds to create a very thorough and high quality deliverable. At the same time, we’re able to choose a role that best fits our individual interests and desires. The challenges themselves have varied so much already – from a semi-suburban retail corridor and art neighborhood to a city-wide biking framework, I’m just really excited to see what’s next.

What are you most looking forward to in Detroit?

I’m honestly looking forward to creating the life I’ve always wanted. The city is headed in the right direction, independent of my personal actions, but I’ve arrived at such a time that I can not only gain from it, but influence and contribute towards it. No other modern city has offered such urban amenities while lowering the barrier to entry as far as Detroit has. I’m looking forward to showing hundreds, if not thousands of people, from my next-door neighbors to far-off immigrants that Detroit is ripe with opportunity and it is a very viable option for creating a business, growing a family, and simply fulfilling your own dreams.

Check out Darin’s personal blog here, and his spotlight video.