Detroit Downtown Update

As I said, I started out my trip in Detroit. After the Superbowl and the MLB all-star game, Detroit's downtown looks better than it has in a long time, though regretably, some of it is due to demolition of many buildings, including the illegal demolition of the Madison-Lenox. A lot of money was put into demolition and landscaping.



The on and off renovation of the abandoned Book-Cadillac Hotel is apparently on again, with Sheridan Hotels supposedly going to operate it.





The old Statler Hotel, would have been in the immediate forground, was torn down last year, revealing the bandoned United Artists building (another fine Mike Illitch property), with a sign, likely as a prop.















The Ernst and Young building is brand new, though is disappointingly short. Campus Martius is complete, and seems to be successful in summer and winter (with a skating rink)







Ended up seeing the Red-hot Tigers play against their main rivals, the White Sox with someone I met up with there. With a grand slam for the home team after the Sox winning through most of the game, and a sell-out crowd, I had more fun than I expected. Detroit's got a nice new stadium as well, and it helps bring people down from the suburbs. Though the Tigers and the stadium, along with the Wings and Lions, are owned by the slumlord/illegal demolisher Mike Illitch.

Detroit actually looks semi-pleasant these days... shocking...

Once you get outside downtown Detroit, with its loft apartments and new office buildings and landscaping, you will find Detroit not much different than it was 10 or 15 years ago. The only difference is that more abandoned buildings have been leveled by the city, so there's less of a bombed out look, even when driving along Michigan or Grand River. Though along Woodward north up to Grand Blvd, there's more construction for Wayne State U and even other lofts, and the resurgence of Brush Park.

I think downtown Detroit's starting to climb back, where there's more than just the Greektown pilot light on these days - it will take longer for the rest of the city to claw its way out of its long decline - the city needs to draw upon the downtown and Woodward corridor.

The world's largest factory town. Photos I see of downtown Detroit are either really gritty or really shiny and new... nothing ever seems to just look normal, but rather always an extreme.

Wow...you know, if D-Town doesn't want some of those grand old buildings, I'm sure Toronto would happily take them.

Wow...you know, if D-Town doesn't want some of those grand old buildings, I'm sure Toronto would happily take them.

Click to expand...

Yeah, we tore most of our down ages ago!

We'll take em!

People in many cities would give their right arms to have a few of those "grand old buildings".

After the riots of the late 1960s Detroit went through 30 years or more of the "bombed-out" look. Downtown office workers left for the burbs at 5 pm, and you wouldn't be caught dead downtown (so to speak) in the evening.

Nice to see at least a few scattered signs of rejuvenation in the downtown area.

Actually, what intrigues me in those photos is that tres-70s Brutalist slab next to the Book Tower--if only because of the sheer daft optimism of when it was built, where it was built, and I guess how it was built, too. (Y'know, an attempt at some kind of Manulife/Lucliff urban-residential-megastructural class...)

Oh, Trolley Plaza. That's one piece of shit - and the historic trolleys are gone - they used to run on Washington Blvd and Jefferson between near the tunnel entrance and up to near where the Statler used to run, with a wierd jungle-gym look to the street with metal frames running everywhere. That's gone, and Washington now has the divided road with planters that it had back in the 1920s-1950s.