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Book tower sold to NY developer

resourcefulidiot

By resourcefulidiot
in Detroit

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  • 2 months later...
RustTown City

RustTown

Posted
Posted

Also, J.C. Beal, who looks to be doing the reconstruction (and it seems they are involved in almost every other downtown renovation, lol), and they have updated their site relatively recently for this project.

According to them renovation work is supposed to start some time next year with a mid 2009 completion date. What was confusing is that they say the owners are Northeast Commercial Services LLC. Perhaps this is just an offshoot of the Pagan Organization, or whatever the name of the company was that bought this one recently.

http://www.jcbeal.com/project-book.asp

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RustTown City

RustTown

Posted
Posted

Most likely it will, but that's a small price to pay for a fully restored and updated Book Tower and Building. :) I have an idea, let's put together some capital for a do-nothing business and rent some space up on the 37th for nothing other than the view. lol

But, man, oh, man, it would be great to see the Building portion fully rented/bought. The Book's always been one of my favorite buildings downtown, and would make a cool residential project if they can pull it off.

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wolverine Town

wolverine

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Only if there is a skybridge of course.

I keed.

but really though.....

If a ramp was constructed, it would be the death of that 2 story building next door. I've always hated that building because it's too short. Although that's a poor excuse for parking structure. But also because it's a substitute for what would have been a 100 story tower. Stupid great depression.

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RustTown City

RustTown

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We should really stop hoping for extensive underground parking anywhere than where it already is for the time being, because it's not going to happen. You may see a developer put a story or two of parking beneath ground, but the costs after that start getting exponentially higher. In fact, Greektown was going to go for one level of underground space beneath their 13-story garage, and decided against it, probably because of costs. Land values are going to have to get pretty high before we see parking forced beneath the surface in any significant way. The only reason, for instance, that the Premier Garage (Hudson Block garage) is underground is because the Hudson's building contained an extensive 4 level basement, so it was really already excavated. It's the deepest parking in Detroit, I believe.

BTW, and interesting photo tour showing what I mean concerning Hudson's (i.e. the infastructure was really already there):

ppg413.jpg

ppg410a.jpg

ppg41000a.jpg

They didn't have much to do to make this work, but this is the exception, not the rule.

BTW, I just found the website of the company that engineered the garage, and finally have a question to how many floors the garage can hold, and it appears it's 18:

http://www.walkerparking.com/portfolio/hudson.html

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Allan Metropolis

Allan

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The Book Tower had a large parking garage behind the building, along Times Square. The People Mover track runs through that area today. The garage was something like 12 stories...pretty tall, even by modern standards.

Today the Book Building leases parking space from the Trolley Plaza. A skybridge across Grand River takes Book Building tenants from the 2nd floor into the garage. I am not sure how large the parking garage is, or how many spaces the Book Building has, but it was definitely built to handle much more than just the parking necessary for the apartment building. The attached parking is probably one of the few things that allowed the Book Tower to hang on for so long. Otherwise it would be abandoned, just like so many of the other old office buildings.

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RustTown City

RustTown

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Was it really the parking that allowed the Book to hang on? The Broderick was right at the GCP Underground Garage and died, while the Stott isn't directly connected to parking and survived and with greater occupancy than the Book, I believe. I think what saved the Book was the local ownership, and ownership that though it didn't have the money to do all of the proper upgrades, it was a cheerleader for its building and downtown. I'm sure the parking helped, but I'm not sure it was as large a reason why this building stayed alive as some think.

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