Michigan Central and the Rebirth of Detroit
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Both Detroit and Oakland allowed rain and rodents to heavily damage their showcase train stations.
They are trying to restore them now, but a tarp would have saved tens of millions of dollars and years in restoration costs.
The world-class DIA art museum was mentioned. Note that Toledo, Ohio, another ruined city, has the fantastic Libby Glass Museum.
> For some years he has been buying lots in the area
Forward-thinking business owners with cash flow have a unique opportunity to buy downtown real estate.
A trucking company bought hundreds of abandoned homes near swanky Belle Isle(!) and paved an urban parking lot of around 50 acres for trans-shipping between USA and Canada.
Detroit is one of the few cities in the world where you can buy a block-long brick factory and launch a new mfg. business for essentially just the back taxes.
While the article focuses on the Central, I wish there was a bit of something on the failure that is the people mover.
That being said I wish Ford and Gilbert and everyone trying to revitalize things the best of luck. It's an uphill battle which requires fixing the educational system and essentially the community.
When the gas crisis hit, it put enough money into the Japanese car makers that their next generation of cars weren't just more fuel efficient than what Detroit was producing, they were actually competitive on multiple levels.
Suddenly the Big Three had to compete, but there was a problem. They had promised their workers wages and benefits they could only provide when they didn't have viable foreign competition. More competition meant lower volumes and lower margins.
There are only two options in that circumstance. Either everyone tightens their belt or the companies fail. But nobody wanted to tighten their belt. The unions wouldn't give back what they negotiated during the time when the American automakers had no competition. So the companies slowly failed, and with them the region.
The alternative might have been that most cars were still made in Detroit, and people there made middle class wages, just not upper middle class wages. But they chose bankruptcy and unemployment over accepting that, and that's what they got.
So I used Mayor "Coleman's Train" a few times. The construction went fairly well, but thugs would wait for the doors to close and mug passengers. So passengers started to think twice before boarding. :)
The coolest thing about the People Mover was that it cut thru the corner of some buildings - quite an experience!
Ultimately building the RenCen isolated the original outside downtown from the new "RenCen downtown", destroying the original downtown as a destination.
And of course the RenCen elevators were as dangerous as Coleman's Train. Women couldn't use them alone.
The one good thing I can say about violence in Detroit is that AK-47's were never commonly used, unlike LA. You were more likely to get clubbed than shot.
Interesting Wikipedia link below. So the original projection was for 67,700 riders per day, which is laughable, as the popular Caltrain is slightly less than that even today.
(Also 4 minutes away is an amazing ramen place - Johnny Noodle King).
Oh Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynfVGyMrvz8
I grew up in Detroit and visit it often. I remember as a little kid visiting the depot with my dad where he'd use one of the few nickel phones that still remained in the city. As a teenager I took trains to and from the station.
I think what Ford is doing is amazing. A previous Ford built RenCen https://fineartamerica.com/featured/detroit-renaissance-cent... on the river shortly after the riots. It was supposed to represent the city's rebirth but it was a very flawed development. General Motors bought it and made it better as Ford exited the city.
The station represents Ford's triumphant reentry into the city of its birth. It was a very gutsy call at a time when the company faces major threats. Despite what the story says my friends that live there say that Ford has been very receptive to their concerns.
But on a sad note there are the farmers. There are a number of couples making a full time living farming the vacant lots. Someday those lots will be sold and developed and the neighborhood will lose some of its unique character.
https://www.freep.com/in-depth/news/columnists/john-carlisle...
I remember asking my parents what it was, and being confused when they said it was a train station, because I'd never heard of passenger trains in Detroit.
I do have a very foggy early memory of the last streetcars of Detroit before they were ripped out, or maybe it was just the abandoned tracks. I also remember asking my parents where the trains for those tracks were. I remember them saying that "this is a car city", neither proudly nor vindictively, just as a matter of fact.
It would be amazing to see passenger rail service return to Detroit. It would take a huge culture shift,both nationally and locally.
Why bother saving, or resurrecting it? Did we forget how to build grand buildings?
Grand buildings are beautiful, but they're also much more expensive to build, and to climate control, and they take up a lot more real estate that could be housing for people.
Bill Gates or Elon Musk could afford to build buildings like that. Or they could use their resources to fight malaria and climate change and get humans into space. And as between them, they're probably making the better choice.