After we nearly mistook yesterday for Wednesday, it is now — officially — Wednesday. 

☁️ Today's weather: Rain, probably after 1pm. Clouds and an early high of 53, with the temperature falling off the rest of the day. Some wind gusts up to 20mph.

Today's newsletter is 887 words — a 3.5-minute read. Edited by Delano Massey.

Construction is starting on a rare development in Detroit: reusing a historic, vacant school building.

Why it matters: Detroit's landscape is dotted with old, vacant public school buildings, remnants of nearly 200 closures between 2000 and 2015, per a Regrid report. With the high cost of repairs or repurposing, the city has accelerated demolition efforts.

• It's rare, though not unheard of, for a school adaptive reuse project to get off the ground here.

The latest: The William E. Higginbotham School in northwest Detroit will become the Higginbotham Art Residences, a $36 million project from Detroit-based URGE Development Group that includes 100 residential units and space for community organizations.

• The group aims to celebrate local artists, with an outdoor sculpture garden and artwork throughout the buildings.

Between the lines: URGE plans to renovate the school and build two new residential buildings, using $8.4 million in federal ARPA funding provided by the city of Detroit and $14.1 million in tax credits for building low-income housing.

• The units will be offered at a rate designated "affordable" for people making 30-80% of the region's median income ($67,200).

What they're saying: "We wanted to come up with a plan to show an example of, 'How do you revitalize a school and thus start to revitalize a neighborhood?'" Roderick Hardamon, URGE's CEO, said at a groundbreaking event Monday.

The intrigue: Hardamon said that while development can raise the values of nearby homes, he wants to ensure longtime homeowners benefit. To achieve this, URGE plans to invest in facade and exterior improvements to nearby homes.

• He plans to share more details on the effort this spring.

Catch up on the school's history

What if you could step into a sci-fi tale set 1,000 years into the future? Starting Friday, the mobile home on the grounds of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) will do just that.

The big picture: Detroit-based artist Levon Kafafian has used woven cloth to bring a scene to life from their science fiction story "Portal Fire," set in the magical "Azadistan."

Between the lines: "Portal Fire" blends "Armenian spiritual tradition, practice and lore with expansive and ever-changing realities of its diaspora," says Kafafian, who is Armenian American, on their website.

What they're saying: In Kafafian's story, digital society has collapsed and a movement has taken place among ethnic groups in Southwest Asia to live in independence, they tell Axios.

• "There is a main character, a nonbinary orphan, who is the subject of prophecy and brings about a major shift in the world of Azadistan, which has gone from this egalitarian society to one where there is a hierarchy and one of the clans is dominant over the others."

The latest: While Kafafian envisions "Portal Fire" to eventually become a graphic novel, they are telling the story through different installations that combine storytelling and textile art.

Flashback: Kafafian got into textiles through a job at Hagopian World of Rugs. They also studied linguistics, foreign languages and anthropology while in university.

• Disillusioned with their college programs, Kafafian considered rug repair and was told to take a weaving class to see if they liked it.
• "Long story short, I fell in love with making work anew instead of doing repair, and I quit everything else and went full forward for weaving," they say.
• Their focus on how textiles transmit culture mixed with interest in speculative storytelling — and a desire to see science fiction stories by and about people of Southwest Asian descent — starting around 2016 to become "Portal Fire."

If you go: The exhibition at Mike Kelley's Mobile Homestead on MOCAD's property in Midtown opens with a reception for MOCAD's fall exhibitions on Friday, 6-9pm.

• "Portal Fire" runs through Feb. 23.

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