DETROIT | Development & Construction: Motown Lowdown

[Onn]

Wonderful, I'm glad they're finally doing it!

[Rizzo]

Originally Posted by patriotizzy

It boggles my mind how cities let beautiful architecture get so wasted. I appreciate the renovations but it shouldn't happen in the first place. Still, huge praise for this building's renovation!

I agree. Vacancy is understandable in Detroit, but the slumlords did nothing to protect these buildings. The Broderick has an absolutely awful history of abuse and neglect in the past 10-15 years. So much so that this development seems to be a fluke. I thought for sure it was a goner.

[fishrose]

Originally Posted by Hayward

I agree. Vacancy is understandable in Detroit, but the slumlords did nothing to protect these buildings. The Broderick has an absolutely awful history of abuse and neglect in the past 10-15 years. So much so that this development seems to be a fluke. I thought for sure it was a goner.

Everyone thought it was a goner. I was talking to the guy who runs buildingsofdetroit.com at Lefty's last year and he said he'd been inside and it was a completely lost cause. I'm very glad it's finally getting the attention and care it deserves.

[animatedmartian]

In terms of what buildings have been lost in Detroit, two were recently demolished.

Ford Auditorium




Photographer D.Coles.

Cass Technical High School


_MG_1184.jpg by detroiturbex.com


_MG_0641.jpg by detroiturbex.com


_MG_0703.jpg by detroiturbex.com

So it seems for every building we do save, there are still some that are pretty much lost. At least Cass was replaced by a newer high school, (building in the background of the last picture). The good news is that I don't think there are any more high rises that will be demolished anytime in the near future, except for maybe the Brewster Projects, but no one wants to keep those anyway. The bad news is that we're still in a slow economy and it's going to take lots of money to renovate whatever buildings are left. I'm optimistic, though, that Detroit has seen the worst and that things are getting better.

[Rizzo]

I think the Lafayette was the last remaining building of architectural significance to be demolished downtown....for now. But up next I'd guess the Charlevoix building is next likely to fall. So bad, it doesn't even have stairs

Notable neighborhood buildings of size, height, and architecture in danger include:
American Hotel
Lee Plaza
Harbor Light

The rest as you mentioned (like the Whitney and Book) are highly likely to be renovated in the near future.

[animatedmartian]

http://www.freep.com/article/2011081...sectionstories

9 Detroit schools to unveil $172M in renovations next month

Students at nine Detroit Public Schools will find new and improved facilities on the first day of classes next month as the district unveils half of the projects from its $500.5-million school construction bond program.

Parents and staff who recently toured some of the projects were impressed by new perks, including two-story common areas and new art rooms with kilns for making pottery at several schools. Some said they didn't get everything they wanted but were looking forward to moving in.

The unveiling of nine projects worth $172 million will be the largest one-day grand opening of the three-year construction blitz voters approved in November 2009. The massive bond package was sold as a crucial step in the process of righting the district.

...

DPS closed dozens of schools in 2005-09, but voters approved the Proposal S ballot measure in 2009 to build anew and also renovate remaining buildings.

In total, the bond is paying for 18 projects: seven new schools, a new district police headquarters, renovations to nine existing schools and the demolition of the old Cass Tech High School. District-wide technology and security upgrades also are part of the package.

The last construction bond program passed in 1994 for $1.5 billion.

The nine projects are: new buildings at the King High School and Gompers and Earhart elementary-middle school sites, and renovated facilities for Bunche and Garvey elementary-middle schools, Duke Ellington at Beckham Academy, and for Denby, Ford and Western International high schools.
...

ANDRE J. JACKSON/DFP

[animatedmartian]

Major Developers are looking at Detroit.

One mentioned is the W hotel chain.

[animatedmartian]

http://www.freep.com/article/2011082...xt|FRONTPAGE|p

Loft living is where the action is in metro Detroit
BY JUDY ROSE
DETROIT FREE PRESS
Aug. 21, 2011

...

Heavy demand means short supply

In Detroit or in the suburbs, if you hunt for a loft, you'll find 90% are rentals.

When low-down-payment mortgages crashed around 2007, they took the for-sale loft market with them. Back then, developers building lofts for sale found they had to rent them or fold.

Now both locally and nationally almost all new lofts are for rent, says Andy Farbman, president and CEO of the Farbman Group in Southfield.

But even for rent, he says, Detroit is close to running short of lofts. For the first time, his company's Woodward Lofts in Midtown has a waiting list.

"With all the young work force coming downtown, you'd have to be blind to not see what's happening."

At The Loft Warehouse, owner/broker Sabra Sanzotta handles both sales and rentals in areas like downtown, Midtown and Corktown. The larger part of her business is rentals, she says, but she could sell more lofts if she had them.

"People moving into Detroit is a phenomenon," Sanzotta says. "We really have to work hard to find individual condo owners who want to sell." As with single-house sales, she says many loft sales are foreclosures or short sales.

The loft idea is so popular, many apartments now incorrectly call themselves "lofts." Of true lofts for sale right now, the largest is Willys Overland Lofts on Canfield near Cass, where Wren and Smiley bought two smaller lofts and combined them into one. The complex only offers lofts for sale.

...

[LMich]

More Gilbert-induced migration:

Another Gilbert firm to move downtown Detroit

By John Gallagher | Detroit Free Press

August 22, 2011

MyInsuranceExpert.com, an online life insurance brokerage owned in part by Quicken Loans founder and Chairman Dan Gilbert, will soon follow Gilbert’s other companies moving to downtown Detroit from the suburbs.

MyInsuranceExpert currently employs about 85 workers in Troy, but has plans to hire an additional 200 people in the next several months and move downtown by the end of this year.

The expansion and move has been aided by an investment from Rockbridge Growth Equity, LLC, a private equity firm based in Detroit that is one of Gilbert’s investment firms.

...

A spokeswoman for Gilbert said the company would consider locations in various downtown buildings.

[Rizzo]

Originally Posted by animatedmartian

http://www.freep.com/article/2011081...sectionstories














ANDRE J. JACKSON/DFP

Did the freep really post these crooked-ass photos?

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by Hayward

Did the freep really post these crooked-ass photos?

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by hayward

did the freep really post these crooked-ass photos?

lol.......

[fishrose]

Originally Posted by Hayward

Did the freep really post these crooked-ass photos?

Does that really surprise you? The Free Press is a joke, they've recently reported more than one internet message board rumor as fact. They even ran a story with a fake, photoshopped image (made by a message board poster) of Michigan State's yet-to-be-revealed Nike Pro Combat football jerseys

[animatedmartian]

Cobo update.

• Video Link

[Rizzo]

Thank you for posting that video. Very informative and I look forward to the progress. Despite some of Cobo's drawbacks, the center has been very flexible to change over the years. And what also makes it great are the very high ceiling exhibition spaces with a 200' spans between columns....and yet an occupied floor above for parking. Probably considered extremely ground breaking for the time it was built. Even today, stacked spaces can rarely achieve this because of cost.

[animatedmartian]

Now that you mention it, I've never noticed the columns that actually supported the roof. I would only notice the ones that supported the people mover. Don't know if these have been posted yet, but they're on Cobo's website.

http://www.cobocenter.com/renderings2.html

Basement Level


Street Level


Level 3


Level 4


Interesting to note that when it was originally built, it stopped at Larned. It was expanded in 1989 (wikipedia).

http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/imag...art=;resnum=38


http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/imag...art=;resnum=68

[LMich]

Originally Posted by Hayward

Thank you for posting that video. Very informative and I look forward to the progress. Despite some of Cobo's drawbacks, the center has been very flexible to change over the years. And what also makes it great are the very high ceiling exhibition spaces with a 200' spans between columns....and yet an occupied floor above for parking. Probably considered extremely ground breaking for the time it was built. Even today, stacked spaces can rarely achieve this because of cost.

Funny, huh? Governments and public authorities the nation over actually used to spend money to get the best product possible. lol But yeah, I used to hate Cobo, but during the fight over this new renovation and expansion it began to grow on me.

BTW, looks like the Wayne County Commission voted to awarded a contract (to Walbridge) the other day for the building of a consolidated county jail across from the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. They will tear down two existing jails (one building of which is from 1929 that I can't even picture at the moment, and the 1980's built Baird Detention Center), and empty their jail in Hamtramck. With the old city police headquarters and jail soon to be vacated in the area, this is a heck of a lot of land that'll be opened up, though, I fear it'll just be more parking.

[animatedmartian]

I'm wondering if it's going to be a sprawling jail since it's so much space.

[animatedmartian]

http://www.freep.com/article/2011090...oit-riverfront

Start of Uniroyal cleanup sharpens vision for Detroit riverfront
Sep 3, 2011
BY JOHN GALLAGHER

Promises made, promises kept.

Detroit's once-industrialized east riverfront took another huge step toward a hoped-for future Friday as a long-awaited environmental cleanup began on the old Uniroyal site near Belle Isle.

The Uniroyal work is part of the decades-long transition of the riverfront from a place of factories and smokestacks to a place of recreational, residential and retail uses.

That transition remains a work in progress, as it will for many years to come. But cleaning up the Uniroyal eyesore marks a huge milestone. It will allow for the future expansion of the city's RiverWalk and the eventual development of shops and waterfront housing on one of the most prominent sites in the region.

...

Faye Alexander Nelson, president and CEO of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, said she expects to begin construction next spring to extend the Detroit RiverWalk from Mt. Elliott Park across the Uniroyal site to link up with the piece of the RiverWalk at Gabriel Richard Park, just east of the MacArthur Bridge.

Meanwhile, former NFL star and Detroit native Jerome Bettis -- working with Pittsburgh-based developer Charles Betters -- has been planning to redevelop the site as a series of mixed-used residential and retail projects.

...

[DTW]

Pics I took last week of progress on the Broderick Twr


Broderick Tower by msufan507, on Flickr


Broderick Tower by msufan507, on Flickr


Broderick Tower by msufan507, on Flickr


Broderick Tower by msufan507, on Flickr


Broderick Tower by msufan507, on Flickr