OT: Park Avenue building implosion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s89BTGWMD0o
The former Park Avenue Hotel, built in 1924, was imploded Saturday morning to make room for the new hockey arena and entertainment district in Detroit, July 11.
Drone footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvFzPtu1cXw
#RedWings pic.twitter.com/WH1Su1rT0i
— Red Wings StadiumSpy (@RWStadiumSpy) July 11, 2015
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they are in so much trouble. i bet they get grounded and have to clean it up.
except for controlled demolitions
That building hadn't been touched for 30+ years, with the exception of whatever the Salvation Army was doing until 2007. "Historic" isn't the word for that particular one. "Ruin" fits much better.
There are wonderful old buildings within the city that are viable candidates for re-hab. But no one gave a damn about this place until Mr. Ilitch wanted it gone. Then everybody's got 100 ideas for this place, with no plan or money to carry them out.
If you've got a building that you want to save, that hasn't been ransacked and abandoned for decades, and isn't cost-prohibitive to save, then by all means, please do so. But you can't continue to hang on to 1952 when a place has been left to rot for decades on end, especially when it's dilapidated to the point where it's no longer safe to set foot in.
Without this project, I doubt anyone would renovate either building. They've been sitting vacant for years and no one was willing to do it (even with historic preservation tax incentives).
BTW-Here's a rendering of the Eddystone:
If it turns out like that, then that's awesome.
That area was not a place to be in much past 7 PM on any given night, and I wasn't overly comfortable even driving through there on the way home from a Tiger game, on the way to the Lodge Freeway, down Temple St.
That entire area was abandoned and forgotten, until someone wanted to do something to improve it. Then everybody came out of the woodwork to get in the way.
If you thought no one gave a damn about the Park Avenue before the Red Wings project rolled in, you missed the boat on about three decades of preservation advocacy in the CIty of Detroit. The Eddystone and the Park Avenue were both part of redevelopment projects which were either stonewalled or unceremoniously abandoned during the early 2000s, in large part due to the fact that historic rehabilitation was a lot more complicated than it should have been. Corruption caused construction costs to be artificially inflated, and miles of red tape at the city government level discouraged investment and developer interest in a number of historic properties.
Yet the biggest problem was that the city, for a long, long, long time, viewed preservationists as obstacles--not allies. I was active in an organization promoting saving a number of historic buildings during the early years of the Kilpatrick administration, and it was amazing to see the kind of embedded contempt many within the city government had about redeveloping historic properties, something that seemed to have a long history that stretched beyond Kwame's shadiness. There was never any cohesive plan--it was always "Demolish it, and they will come." And of course, they never did. And now there's a bunch of empty lots where formerly viable buildings used to be. You can always redevelop a building that's standing there. Once it's gone, it's gone. The realm of possibilities change. Things seems to be changing over the last couple years. Yet for decades, that wasn't the case.
I talked to a number of folks who worked in preservation advocacy throughout the country, and to a person, they were always absolutely amazed at the stark contrast in attitude in Detroit about historic preservation. Everywhere else, it seems cities are interested in adaptively reusing their architectural assets, and see folks like the National Trust for Historic Preservation as resources and allies. Detroit didn't want to be bothered--just more outsiders trying to tell them what to do. The attitude was basically "nope, not interested, leave us alone," cutting off their nose to spite their face. The whole thing was completely bizarre.
I personally helped uncover Detroit BS&E officials falsifying and backdating building inspection reports to accelerate demolition, saw backhoes rolled in on nights and weekends to take strategic scoops out of buildings so there was no turning back on demolition, tried to go to Historic District Commission meetings that were cancelled at the last second... It was purely vindictive, and more often than not, people like Ilitch Holdings came out on the better end. It was infuriating.
Google George Jackson and read a little bit--the guy probably helped tear more viable buildings down in the CBD than he helped redevelop, almost exclusively to be replaced by absolutely nothing. And he was apparently in charge of "Economic Growth." And while you're at it, search out what happened to the Madison-Lenox Hotel in the run up to the Super Bowl. Over a decade later, Mike Ilitch still has his landscaped parking lot, which I'm sure brings in a whole hell of a lot less revenue than the boutique hotels and apartments several developers couldn't convince the city were a better alternative. They were literally pounding the doors down, and the city would not listen.
So there's a history here. The Park Avenue is just the latest, and arguably higher-profile case. I'm not saying every building should be saved. In the Park Avenue's case, there's something that will be going there. Yet it exists within a history of a city whose intent has always been "demolish now, ask questions later," ignoring the fact that buildings are assets with more possibilities than empty lots.
/rantover
Considering the city had numerous vacant hotels at the time, it seemed idiotic to have a vacant hotel next to a brand new stadium. It's typical Detroit. Half the city is vacant and people want development, but don't want to tear down the useless vacant buildings.
Actually, that wasn't really the issue with the Madison-Lenox. It was six years after Comerica was built, and the proposals weren't universally for hotel rooms. In fact, because the site was actually three distinct structures (two separate hotels and a low-slung connecting building added later), there were a lot of interesting possibilities there for adaptive reuse. Partial demolition was a possibility, and indeed, a likelihood. A number of developers had sustained interest in the property over a long period of time, not just after the push for demolition. Yet the city wanted to help Ilitch more than it wanted a functioning property and legitimate investment. 10 years later, it's still a landscaped parking lot, despite promises that there were plans for the property beyond Tigers and Lions parking.
But, you seem to have an idea of what you think happened, and that's OK.
I thought you were talking about Hotel Wolverine next to Comerica Park. I agree with you on the Madison-Lenox.
Historical rehab is a great program if the rehabbed property can pay for itself through something other than taxpayer support, barring very significant historical importance. Based on numerous pictorial reviews of Detroit that have surfaced over the years, I would imagine that demolition is going to occur in the vast majority of cases. Welcome to the world of Rust Belt cities and the loss of manufacturing jobs and the tax base.
I'm not a native of Michigan, but I do spend a fair amount of time in Ann Arbor and surrounds. From what I have observed of Detroit, the City (and State) has horribly poor infrastructure, the State has relatively high income taxes and very difficult weather to say nothing of the high crime rate. I'm not intending to bust chops here, and I know that some of you have close emotional ties to the Detroit area, but why would someone, if they were looking for a place to expand or move a business, choose Detroit over Southern states like Tennessee or Kentucky, or for that matter, Washtenaw County? In orther words, why would someone expect growth in Detroit to occur at levels high enough to justify historical rehabs?
because there are already people here, 5 million of them more or less, with relatively high levels of education and a lot of cheap land. Washtenaw County has a lot going for it, but it's on the edge of a sprawling metro area and could never become the new center of it... for better or worse all roads lead to Detroit.
Look, Detroit has improved considerably in the past 5 years alone. Before Gilbert started his property buying spree, the whole Campus Martius thing wasn't really working. Downtown Detroit was empty more often than not. Now you can go down there and not feel like you're in one of those fake cities the North Koreans build. And that attracts other compaies. Going right to the workforce instead of having to import them to the sunbelt is also a perk.
There's a component of the psychology of Detroit's leadership that is bizarre and pathetic. Needy and haughty all at once ..... those weren't *their* buildings, I guess, so #$@% 'em.
To put it another way, it seems that there was a great cultural distance between Kwame's crew and the preservationists.
In the early 1970s, prior to the Pontiac Silverdome's construction, I petitioned for the new football stadium to be built on the Wayne State University campus, as the start of a bigger project to rebuild the Cass Corridor. There would be multiple synergies, I argued - e.g. use of the stadium and its parking for students & fans, attract new investment in restaurants and related venues, provide parking for commuters from the suburbs who had jobs downtown by connecting the two with an extension of the monorail, tax credits to encourage people locally employed (at the university, medical ctr. cultural, etc) to live there full-time, etc. It got some attention but only weak support from the office of the mayor, city council, and governor. My concern then was what you see now - the loss of infrastructure and critical mass necessary for fueling a meaningful revival.
exactly... calling it the Park Avenue Hotel gives it too much credit, it was a Salvation Army retirement home/homeless shelter for most of it's functional life. It is not architecturally significant, or not more so than any other building in the immediate vicinity. Not every building in Detroit that dates to the good old days and looks mildly pretty can be saved, nor should they. bsp;
And that's wonderful. If an old building is restored properly, that building would be beautiful, far more often than not.
But we can't hang on to every building that is old, just because it is old. This is a city, not a museum. That's all I'm trying to say.
Yeah, I know there are always people who claim that restoration and preservation work was on the way, but large swaths of Detroit have been vacant for years now, and while I'm sure someone, somewhere has some pie-in-the-sky plans on fixing each one of them up, there's not nearly enough resources to keep them all standing up. Maybe a couple of them get replaced with a parking lot or something equally unglamorous, but the idea that Detroit is yearning for boutique hotels and apartments, when large sections remain unused and with a diminished tax base, feels just as destructive and reductive as those who complain about everything being "demolish now, ask questions later." Hell, in New York they tear down buildings semi-regularly that probably could be viable to make better, more useful structures. It isn't always popular, but you have to rebuild sometimes.
First rule of renovation: No one wants to renovate something till someone else wants it torn down.
how they've managed to perfect the use of sequencing explosives to destroy buildings with such precision like that. . . .
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The Ashley?
Should the people living there move first?
http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20150325/BLOG016/150329924/the-ash…
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you remind me of my father ranting about how there are crack wars going on in Detroit... the 90's are long over.
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Detroit.
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Given that I drove by it every day, I will always think of it as the zombieland building.
directly across the street until about a month ago. That would have been a mighty big boom this morning.
As it was, I woke up to it in my new apartment downtown...sounded like a huge, long ass clap of thunder.
"long ass clap"
Every time I go down to our downtown headquarters by MGM, something is very different in the view now. It still feels weird not to see Tiger Stadium out the south side of the building, or to not see the old Cass Technical High School to the west and north and now the Park Avenue is gone from that view too. It takes a while to get used to not seeing things out the window when you look around. That being said, I am excited to see that area get redeveloped.
The Hotel Park Avenue may not be standing now, but it stood for much longer than Illitch's new hockey cathederal will.
25 years from now whoever owns the team will get a new taxpayer built arena, because this unbuilt taxpayer funded arena will be seen as inadequate and outdated.
This one may not even be paid off yet.
Going a bit OT here, but in 25 years they'll be talking about a replacement for Comerica Park. The average lifespan of a baseball stadium is 40-60 years before you start putting some serious money into renovations.
At some point this society figures out that repeately handing billions to people that can afford to build their own stadiums is counterproductive.
Want to know why athletes get paid more than the GDP of many nations? US taxpayers fund it all, AND pay for admission to the buildings they pay to build.
and most open scandal in American urban life. And stadiums rarely if ever stimulate real urban growth--dwellings, unrelated commerce--just tend to bring more blight. I'm very keen to know what downtown Brooklyn looks like 20 years out, and whether Jay Z remains anybody's hero.
Frankly, in the case of this project, people who hate public funding of stadiums should be cheering the new Wings arena up and down the block. The bonds issued to pay for this thing are being paid back by the Ilitches and the DDA - NOT "Detroit taxpayers" which seems to be what fronts all the headlines. The Downtown Development Authority is more akin to a homeowners' association than anything, except its members are downtown businesses, and it's them who will pick up half the tab. It is most emphatically not being paid for by city residents.
The DDA is funded by property taxes paid by downtown businesses, but only that portion of property tax above and beyond the value that the property would be assessed at if it wasn't in the DDA. And since state law requires that money go to economic development in the area, the arena is a more than logical use of the funds. Oh, and the DDA will own the arena, not the Ilitches.
plus the main argument used against arenas and stadiums, that they merely redistribute economic activity instead of spurring it, are actually a plus for Detroit. Every penny spent in the city instead of Auburn Hills or Royal Oak is a penny that goes toward rehabilitating the city proper, which will ultimately pay dividends for the entire region. The sooner we kill the "forget Detroit, focus on our giant suburban houses and our glamorous suburban malls" logic that infects people in this metro area the better.
Was the Tigers' bullpen involved?
All part of the plan, man. Did you know hey have cars now that can freakin' run on water? THEY don't want you to know.
