Detroit Clears way for Redevelopment of Book-Cadillac & Fort-Shelby Hotels

[Michi]

Crash! Down she goes! Today at lunch (11.29.06)

The destruction of the Detroit Commerce Building. Farewell, oh pretty one.

Soon to be forever replaced by a hiddeous, monstrous, lifeless parking garage. Bright lights, blank facade, porous walls, depressing cityscape. Parking garages on EVERY corner. No car left behind. Surplus of parking...bring your boat!

Oh, the irony.

[RustTown]

What a great sightline this will create from Campus Marius. Another interesting feature is that you'll be able to look out of the recently expanded ramp on the other side of the Lafayette and see this new one. lol

[Allison Slater]

Any pictures available on what was just torn down?

[dtown]

Yes, id like a pic of the previous building, too. Please.

[Jasoncw]

On the bright side, it will create easy access to a viewpoint for photographers.

It's too bad, hopefully in the future this kind of thing will happen less.

[Michi]

You guys, that IS the building being torn down. See the hole in it? lol

Downtown Detroit at night is going to be as bright as the sun with all these new parking garage lights. Don't you think the Lafayette and Book Cadillac can both share ONE garage? Good grief!

[Allison Slater]

Ah I'm sorry, the giant billboard prevented me from seeing the hole. I was thinking you guys were refering to something in the blank space adjacent to the building having been already torn down.

[tracer1138]

So much for the "best collection of pre-depression era buildings" moniker

[Allan]

No worries. Soon we'll have the best collection of parking garage architecture in the entire world. Who needs pre-depression architecture when you can have a 10-story parking garage on every corner?

[Michi]

I know. The one thing Detroit has that the suburbs NEVER will is its heritage. Well, that is unless we stop tearing down every corner for a parking garage.

I got the feeling you guys thought the space where the crane is sitting was the demolition I was referring to. In my mind, that lot is large enough to built an urban parking garage, similar to the elevator garage at Merchants Row. Afterall, most people at luxury hotels use valet, so it's not like they need connected parking. Plus, the homeowners could have had connected access via a skywalk through the Detroit Commerce Building. Making use of its first, second, or third floors could have prompted future renovation of the rest of the building. Maybe into apartments?

People have their doubts, but I refuse to settle for less. Great cities aren't made by tearing them down. It takes brain power and it takes money. Two things Ferchill has proven they have. Unfortunately, it could have gone just a tad further in this case. [/2 cents]

[statedude3]

I'm not one that agrees with the demolition of the DCB, but I would like to pose one question about it...

It was obvious from the beginning that the BC renovation would not go through without dedicated parking. Now I know there surely could have been other options, but all things considered doesnt the BC's rebirth trump the removal of the DCB?

To sit here and say "somewhere down the line I'm sure someone would have renovated it" is just silly. If you renovate the BC with 2 massive abandoned buildings (DCB & Lafayette) adjacent to it, who in the hell would want to stay there... or live there for that matter. We all know how long it takes for developments in Detroit to get worked out and the is no evidence that the DCB would ever be fixed up.

You would have thought there would have been discussions about that after the first BC announcement if there had been any realistic chance of it happening. But to my knowledge there was nothing.

[Michi]

So, with that logic, in order for the Hotel Eddystone to be rehabbed and occupied, the Harbor Light Center next door has to be torn down for a parking garage because 1) nobody would live next to an abandoned building and 2) no one would live in the Eddystone w/o connected parking?

My reply has two points as well 1) people invest a ton of money living next to abandoned structures and "rough" exteriors. Look no further than Brush Park. And 2) if parking is priority #1 in slow, Detroit redevelopments, then expect A LOT more demolitions in order to meet an equilibrium of occupied units-to-parking spaces per unit.

It's an unrealistic imbalance to offer every potential body interested in spending time downtown to be guaranteed a parking space. We have transit, but we have ineffective transit. Something needs to be fixed, and in my mind it is not the demolition of the downtown that addresses that most accurately.

[Zissou]

People are lining up to live in BC even with an abandoned Lafayette and a mostly abandoned Capitol Park right there. The buildings around BC havent been a factor for interest in living there and an empty DCB certainly wouldnt have deterred potential buyers.

I really wish though that they could of at least explored the option of keeping the Commerce Building adding future condos to the building at some point. Instead they took the easy route. It really could have been an amazing development had they built the garage on the other side of DCB and incorporated that building into the BC redevelopment.

[dtown]

You guys, that IS the building being torn down. See the hole in it? lol

Downtown Detroit at night is going to be as bright as the sun with all these new parking garage lights. Don't you think the Lafayette and Book Cadillac can both share ONE garage? Good grief!

[RustTown]

Statedude, I think they got you on this one.

[wolverine]

If the money was available, it would be nice to see the parking put all beneath the streets. Like two or three levels beneath Washington, Fort, Woodward, etc. But it's too late for that now. The only thing great I see out of these parking structures going up is Detroit serves as an example for the rest of urban America as what you should not do with your downtown. Bad in Detroit's case, so I guess we'll have to embrace design when it comes to new parking structures. I think Detroit is alone as far as the severe amount of pressures put on for dedicated parking.

Here in Ann Arbor, the necessity of parking for a project to be succesful (including a renovation) isn't as significant, though still important. If there isn't enough parking for residents or hotel guests, they'll have to park elsewhere or in a shared garage, or take the bus!

[Michi]

^Also, demonstrating in this specific case, which I'll state over and over again...hotel guests will valet and residents are getting such a unique product in the Book Cadillac, they will value living in such a place that having to walk a short distance to their car (via a connected skywalk) is not worth not purchasing a unit in that location.

And if you DID value parking more than your $300,000-$1,000,000 home, then something is seriously wrong with you.

[RustTown]

What really irks me even further is that I'm not sure the city even has a plan for the garage, yet. It's my understanding they want to demolish the Commerce in anticipation that they'll come to some agreement with Ferchill. This is mostly the city's doing (not a surprise). It will be a city garage, from what they have loosely concieved (thus far), and they'll lease out some of the garage to the B-C. It bothers me that they could even wait to actually concieve a solid plan for the parking garage before they tore down Commerce. Perhaps, I'm wrong, and they have some secret plan they aren't telling us about (I seriously doubt it). But, God forbid they actually take more time to look through a few more options, one that may "gasp" mean not having to tear down the Commerce. I give many of the suburbs grief, quite often, but man can Detroit leadership (and I use the term loosely for quite a few) be just as, if not more, backwards of quite a few issues.

[Michi]

Oh it's backwards. A lot of the leadership on these issues though, comes from the DEGC, which has a highly intelligent brain pool.

This is news to me and opens a whole new can of worms. I'd imagine Ferchill (pro parking to the grave) told the city he needed attached parking and a certain amt of spaces and the city accomodated, no questions asked. If it took a few months longer...and addressed the DCB, I would have asked the questions.

[RustTown]

I've heard that it was the city that spearheaded this. They are hoping to be able to use part of this new deck to solidify/make more attractive the potential redevelopment plans for the nearby Lafayette, which still seems to be in some kind of limbo. Ferchill may have asked for parking, but I'm still getting the feeling that the city had already been thinking about parking at the Commerce site for the potential Lafayette renovation. I was getting the impression, since Ferchill had been looking and dealing with the city for some months before the renovation announcement that he was going to renovate the B-C regardless, or perhaps it was also then that the issue of parking came up and they weren't going to tell us until it was too late to save the Commerce. Who knows? Everything is so increadibly secretitive even after the fact. It would be helpful to know who in the city took this on, and even better if we could contact Ferchill candidly. I know I heard Ferchill making the comment about how projects like this don't work without adjacent (or was it simply dedicated) parking, but it seems that the city was already thinking about this before hand.

[dtown]

They better make the deck strong enough for a building to get built on top of it.

[Zissou]

I dont think thats the plan if the city is already building it for BC and probably Lafayette. They would likely need something larger if they intend on putting something on top.

[detroitfan]

It's been known for close to a year that they would include enough parking in the BC garage for both buildings. In a recent thread on DY it was mentioned though that the developer of Lafayette wants their own garage. That is one of the reason why it's taking so long for Peebles and the city to reach an agreement.

[RustTown]

Lafayette wants their own garage?! That would literally create three parking garages across from one another, just about.

[detroitfan]

Yup.

http://tinyurl.com/yjfzkf