Wolf
Senior Member
Anyone from Detroit know this old POS building? I hear it is so far gone, and a huge blight on the city there. They are trying to bring it down, but the tree huggers keep getting in the way. This is so out of control. Anyone know what the real story is keeping this POS from getting demo'ed?
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March 5, 2010
Seeking a Future for a Symbol of a Grander Past
By SUSAN SAULNY
DETROIT — The last train pulled away more than 20 years ago from Michigan Central Station, one of thousands of “see-through” buildings here, empty shells from more auspicious times.
Many of the blighted buildings stay up simply because they are too expensive to tear down. Yet Michigan Central is in a class of its own. Some city officials consider it among the ugliest behemoths to pockmark Detroit and have ordered its demolition, but others see it as the industrial age’s most gracious relic, a Beaux Arts gem turned gothic from neglect but steeped in haunting beauty.
Now Detroit has become embroiled in an urgent debate over how to save what is perhaps its most iconic ruin — and in the process, some insist, give the demoralized city a much needed boost.
“People compare it to Roman ruins,” said Karen Nagher, the executive director of Preservation Wayne, an organization that seeks to protect architecture and neighborhoods around Detroit. “Some people just want it left alone. But I’d love to see that building with windows in and lights on again.”
Since the City Council voted last year to demolish the depot, the building has been granted a reprieve of sorts thanks to more urgent issues confronting the city, including a $400 million budget deficit and a lawsuit to halt the tear down (citing the station’s historic landmark status). Further, several council members, elected since the vote, do not share the previous Council’s enthusiasm for land clearing.
“I don’t want to bulldoze it, then find out later there could have been a viable use for it,” said Charles Pugh, a newly elected member who took over as Council president in January.
Now preservationists, business owners, state leaders and community activists are taking what feels like a last stab at saving the 97-year-old building before it goes the way of New York’s Pennsylvania Station or, more locally, Tiger Stadium and countless other pieces of old Detroit that have fallen to the wrecking ball in recent years.
Among the recent proposals have been to turn the cavernous brick, steel and stone facade into an extreme sports castle; a casino; a hotel and office park; a fish hatchery and aquarium; an amphitheater; or a railway station again, with high-speed trains.
Or just clean and secure it, and leave it the way it is as an attraction for tourists.
“It’s the quintessential example of urban decay in Detroit,” said John Mohyi, a Wayne State University student and founder of the Michigan Central Station Preservation Society, a nonprofit group formed to save the building. “To see redevelopment of that station would have a major impact on morale.”
Having lost nearly a million people in the last 60 years, Detroit has a backlog of thousands of empty office buildings, theaters, houses and hotels. Downtown alone, more than 200 abandoned buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. Most are examples of the Art Deco and neo-Classical styles that were popular before World War II, when Detroit was booming.
But with 500,000 square feet of space on 14 acres of land, Michigan Central Station is “different from your standard vacant building,” said Mickey Blashfield, a government relations official with the station’s owner, CenTra Inc., a trucking and transportation company that acquired it by default through a property transfer in 1995 and has struggled to find a use for it since.
“Architecturally and historically,” Mr. Blashfield said, “it has more of an emotional connection with people than virtually any building in the city.”
As it is, Michigan Central Station, with its 18-story office tower, has been picked to the bare bones by scavengers, who over the years have made off with a treasure-trove of chandeliers and mahogany and marble ornaments.
But it is still a magnet for urban explorers and photographers from around the world. On various Facebook pages, it has more than 15,000 fans and friends. Phillip Cooley, a restaurant owner who lives across a park from the station, estimates that about 30 sightseers a day show up at its locked gate, cameras raised. He calls the building “an education.”
“A building like that would not be allowed to deteriorate that way and remain standing in any other city,” said Mr. Cooley, who spends some of his free time around the station with neighbors cleaning up and planting grass. “It shows our postindustrial landscape: how nature takes over, what abandonment looks like. There’s a lot to be learned from its current state. It needs to be a public space again.”
Jack Teatsorth, the station’s director of security, said his parents met at the depot during its bustling World War II years. “Inside is a solid steel skeleton,” he said. “There’s not enough dynamite in four states to bring this building down.”
Mr. Blashfield said his company was not interested in demolition, but needed an anchor tenant or at least “a critical mass” of businesses or government agencies before it could pay for any renovation. And that is the hard part; grand and varied plans have been proposed over the years, with none coming to fruition.
But there is new hope that momentum is building for Michigan Central to become a hub for some government security functions, like the Detroit headquarters of the Michigan State Police, some state and federal Homeland Security offices and, given Detroit’s location close to the Canadian border, a center for trade inspections, Mr. Blashfield said.
Plans are preliminary, but they offer the most promise of anything proposed lately, especially if federal stimulus money can be used.
“I think this window of opportunity is very narrow, and if we don’t seize the moment, we may lose it,” said Cameron S. Brown, a Republican state senator who supports having security agencies use the building. “The clock is ticking.”
______________________________________________________________
March 5, 2010
Seeking a Future for a Symbol of a Grander Past
By SUSAN SAULNY
DETROIT — The last train pulled away more than 20 years ago from Michigan Central Station, one of thousands of “see-through” buildings here, empty shells from more auspicious times.
Many of the blighted buildings stay up simply because they are too expensive to tear down. Yet Michigan Central is in a class of its own. Some city officials consider it among the ugliest behemoths to pockmark Detroit and have ordered its demolition, but others see it as the industrial age’s most gracious relic, a Beaux Arts gem turned gothic from neglect but steeped in haunting beauty.
Now Detroit has become embroiled in an urgent debate over how to save what is perhaps its most iconic ruin — and in the process, some insist, give the demoralized city a much needed boost.
“People compare it to Roman ruins,” said Karen Nagher, the executive director of Preservation Wayne, an organization that seeks to protect architecture and neighborhoods around Detroit. “Some people just want it left alone. But I’d love to see that building with windows in and lights on again.”
Since the City Council voted last year to demolish the depot, the building has been granted a reprieve of sorts thanks to more urgent issues confronting the city, including a $400 million budget deficit and a lawsuit to halt the tear down (citing the station’s historic landmark status). Further, several council members, elected since the vote, do not share the previous Council’s enthusiasm for land clearing.
“I don’t want to bulldoze it, then find out later there could have been a viable use for it,” said Charles Pugh, a newly elected member who took over as Council president in January.
Now preservationists, business owners, state leaders and community activists are taking what feels like a last stab at saving the 97-year-old building before it goes the way of New York’s Pennsylvania Station or, more locally, Tiger Stadium and countless other pieces of old Detroit that have fallen to the wrecking ball in recent years.
Among the recent proposals have been to turn the cavernous brick, steel and stone facade into an extreme sports castle; a casino; a hotel and office park; a fish hatchery and aquarium; an amphitheater; or a railway station again, with high-speed trains.
Or just clean and secure it, and leave it the way it is as an attraction for tourists.
“It’s the quintessential example of urban decay in Detroit,” said John Mohyi, a Wayne State University student and founder of the Michigan Central Station Preservation Society, a nonprofit group formed to save the building. “To see redevelopment of that station would have a major impact on morale.”
Having lost nearly a million people in the last 60 years, Detroit has a backlog of thousands of empty office buildings, theaters, houses and hotels. Downtown alone, more than 200 abandoned buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. Most are examples of the Art Deco and neo-Classical styles that were popular before World War II, when Detroit was booming.
But with 500,000 square feet of space on 14 acres of land, Michigan Central Station is “different from your standard vacant building,” said Mickey Blashfield, a government relations official with the station’s owner, CenTra Inc., a trucking and transportation company that acquired it by default through a property transfer in 1995 and has struggled to find a use for it since.
“Architecturally and historically,” Mr. Blashfield said, “it has more of an emotional connection with people than virtually any building in the city.”
As it is, Michigan Central Station, with its 18-story office tower, has been picked to the bare bones by scavengers, who over the years have made off with a treasure-trove of chandeliers and mahogany and marble ornaments.
But it is still a magnet for urban explorers and photographers from around the world. On various Facebook pages, it has more than 15,000 fans and friends. Phillip Cooley, a restaurant owner who lives across a park from the station, estimates that about 30 sightseers a day show up at its locked gate, cameras raised. He calls the building “an education.”
“A building like that would not be allowed to deteriorate that way and remain standing in any other city,” said Mr. Cooley, who spends some of his free time around the station with neighbors cleaning up and planting grass. “It shows our postindustrial landscape: how nature takes over, what abandonment looks like. There’s a lot to be learned from its current state. It needs to be a public space again.”
Jack Teatsorth, the station’s director of security, said his parents met at the depot during its bustling World War II years. “Inside is a solid steel skeleton,” he said. “There’s not enough dynamite in four states to bring this building down.”
Mr. Blashfield said his company was not interested in demolition, but needed an anchor tenant or at least “a critical mass” of businesses or government agencies before it could pay for any renovation. And that is the hard part; grand and varied plans have been proposed over the years, with none coming to fruition.
But there is new hope that momentum is building for Michigan Central to become a hub for some government security functions, like the Detroit headquarters of the Michigan State Police, some state and federal Homeland Security offices and, given Detroit’s location close to the Canadian border, a center for trade inspections, Mr. Blashfield said.
Plans are preliminary, but they offer the most promise of anything proposed lately, especially if federal stimulus money can be used.
“I think this window of opportunity is very narrow, and if we don’t seize the moment, we may lose it,” said Cameron S. Brown, a Republican state senator who supports having security agencies use the building. “The clock is ticking.”
