Ford is out here this week making a big deal out of its new office complex, which is reborn out of Detroit’s long-abandoned Michigan Central Station. Partly, this is because Ford is extremely proud of this achievement. It also feels like Ford probably needs to explain why it spent so much money on a building when no one wants to go into an office anymore.
Tesla is a mess right now, with another proxy advisor telling shareholders to reject Elon Musk’s biggest paycheck in history, a lawsuit over insider trading, and some board shenanigans. Speaking of shenanigans, Toyota copped to even more test irregularities, forcing it to stop the shipment of certain vehicles.
And, finally on today’s The Morning Dump, people like to say that Kia dealers don’t work hard for their customers. That’s not true! One dealer group did a ton of work… allegedly defrauding Kia America.
Inside Ford’s Michigan Central Station
I’m reading a book about the Peking-to-Paris Rally in 1907; there’s a great chapter about the development of the automobile, and it makes the point that automobiles were too important to stay the plaything of the wealthy forever. Everyone knew it, but it wasn’t until Ford and the Model T that this democratized dream of mobility was fully realized.
Almost 120 years later, Ford is still here, although the automotive industry is in yet another upheaval. Ford is celebrating by opening up a new ‘Culture And Tech Hub’ built out of the once derelict Michigan Central Station in Detroit.
The abandoned 18-story building, and an adjacent building/campus, were redone at a cost of about $950 million and will, eventually, host about 2,500 employees. Here’s Ford Chairman Bill Ford explaining why the company did this:
“Michigan Central means a great deal to us all. In many ways, this building tells the story of our city. This Station was our Ellis Island – a place where dreamers in search of new jobs and new opportunities first set foot in Detroit. But once the last train pulled out, it became a place where hope left.
“In 2018, I decided it was time to change that by reimagining this station as a place of possibility again. Over the past six years, Ford Motor Company and teams of forward thinkers, designers, community leaders, and more than 3,000 skilled tradespeople have worked to bring this landmark back to life.”
That’s a really nice, hopeful vision for the place.
In an interview with CNBC there’s an explanation for this, especially as GM is downsizing and leaving the Rennaissance Center (maybe):
“We’re in a war for talent, our industry and our company,” Ford, who spearheaded the project, told CNBC. “And you need to give talent two things: You need to give them, first, really interesting problems to solve, and then you have to give them a great place to work. With Michigan Central, we checked both those boxes.”
Bill Ford decided to purchase the dilapidated building after years of trips to Silicon Valley for his Fontinalis venture capital firm and during his tenure as a member of the eBay board of directors. He’s long been outspoken about the need for the traditional automotive industry to compete with newer tech companies in both product and talent acquisition.
I don’t mind the swing, honestly, and Ford’s HQ in Dearborn isn’t a particularly exciting building.
Anyway, that’s the reserved, calm Bill Ford version of this. From Jim Farley in the Free Press we get a way more fun version:
“As someone who lived in Detroit during the era when everyone was bashing the city,” he told the Detroit Free Press, “… how incredibly awesome it is to be able to look at the same people and say, ‘You were wrong.’ The city is now growing. It’s kind of a little bit of revenge.”
There are lots of reasons why people have historically talked ish about Detroit, and there were certainly rough times, but the critiques were often, if not explicitly racist, happy to conveniently overlook the impact of structural inequality that contributed to the condition. People did love to act as if Detroit was just this empty, rundown shell, conveniently forgetting the many people who live there (about 80% of whom are black).
Ok, one more Farley quote:
The whole global media, and especially Time magazine: ‘The tragedy of Detroit’? All this bull—- that I just felt we were all being gang tackled by the national media without them really doing their homework. They didn’t know the spirit of Detroit.”
Get’em Jim Farley.
[Ed Note: I used to live in the city of Detroit, and I can tell you that cleaning up this building has cultural/psychological importance that cannot be understated. This is what I remember of the train station:
I will say that touring abandoned structures, especially automotive ones, was incredible. I may have to write about that someday. -DT]
Tesla Drama, Redux
So, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was awarded the biggest paycheck in human history (in part because he hit some humongous revenue goals and made many of his shareholders a little or a lot richer). One shareholder sued saying it wasn’t kosher and the Tesla Board of Directors, largely run by Musk associates or family, didn’t do its job. A Delaware judge agreed, and tossed the compensation, and so Tesla said it would ask investors to reapprove the pay package, as well as move the company HQ out of Deleware to Texas.
A lot has happened since then, including a slide in the company’s stock price. Last week, two major firms that help advise shareholders to vote came out against the pay package, mostly recently ISS. From the Associated Press:
The firm said that Tesla met the pay package’s performance objectives, and it recognized the company’s substantial growth in size and profitability. But concerns about Musk spending too much time on other ventures that were raised in 2018 and since then have not been sufficiently addressed, ISS said.
“The grant, in many ways, failed to achieve the board’s other original objectives of focusing CEO Musk on the interests of Tesla shareholders, as opposed to other business endeavors, and aligning his financial interests more closely with those of Tesla stockholders,” ISS wrote.
Most advisory firms seem on board with Tesla moving out of Delaware, mostly because Texas doesn’t seem to have laws that are that different and it’s sort of assumed Texas judges/government are going to be friendly.
Even more amusing, the committee that was going to decide if the company should move was just two people, but then half the committee had to resign because of a conflict of interest according to Reuters:
Joe Gebbia, the Tesla director who exited a board committee that made key decisions about the car maker’s future, told Reuters that CEO Elon Musk had discussed purchasing a house from his start-up and that he was concerned their friendship could be seized on to attack the committee’s independence.
[…]
Gebbia stepped down from the committee in March after its mandate was expanded from deciding on the redomestication to also considering what to do about Musk’s pay package, the filing states. His exit left behind a special committee of one, an unusual corporate governance setup that has been criticized by some of Tesla’s shareholders.
A subcommittee of one is kinda hilarious, and Matt Levine has a good bit about what happens if Delaware rules against the relocation:
So shareholders will go to the Delaware judge saying “Elon Musk tried to pay himself $55 billion, and you stopped him from doing that because it was unfair to shareholders, and now he is trying to move Tesla to Texas so that he can (1) get rid of you and (2) pay himself $75 billion, so you have to stop him again.” And I think that is an argument that the Delaware judge might find compelling? I mean, she did stop Musk from paying himself $55 billion. Presumably this move will be even more offensive.
This is hilarious and probably won’t happen, but it’s still hilarious. I’m not a Tesla shareholder and I have no dog in this hunt, other than being a blogger and wanting the funniest thing to happen. Oh, yeah, there’s an insider trading lawsuit against Musk as well. I almost forgot about that.
Japan Finding Out Its Automakers Fudged A Bunch Of Tests
Hey, corporate culture is important! Bill Ford ain’t wrong about that.
Toyota, in its quest to be the biggest and the best, seems to have pressured its engineers to the point that they skipped some required tests at Daihatsu. Then Toyota had to stop selling certain vehicles as it uncovered more testing issues at other companies.
And, now, per Automotive News, Toyota is in yet another one of these pickles after doing a little more work. And this time Honda and Mazda had to admit to similar issues:
Mazda Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and two other companies were also caught similar certification testing missteps under a review prompted by Japan’s ministry of transportation, the ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Suzuki and Yamaha also uncovered inappropriate testing, according to the ministry.
“It is extremely regrettable that new fraudulent acts have come to light, since fraudulent acts in type designation applications undermine user confidence and shake the very foundation of the automobile certification system,” the ministry said.
Toyota, for its part, says its tests were more stringent and so the tests it skipped were NBD, although it apologized for the mistake. BTW, two proxy firms are telling people not to re-appoint Akio Toyoda as Chairman of Toyota over all this.
Remember, you can’t make a tomlette without breaking some Gregs.
Kia Says Dealer Defrauded Them For $500,000
Dan O’Brien Kia has a mascot and it’s Dan O’Brien, I guess, who is this bald dude with a big beard. It’s creepy and uncanny valley-ish.
The group, based out of New England, has been slowly selling off its dealership after numerous issues, including allegedly deceiving its customers (for which it was forced to pay $1.25 million). This latest accusation from Kia states that O’Brien’s dealerships essentially pretended to sell a bunch of cars the dealer did not sell. From Automotive News:
The defendants “engaged in a pattern and practice” of falsely reporting retail sales when no sale had occurred to the customer named in an RDR, no sale at all took place, a vehicle was transferred to a different dealership and the transaction was mischaracterized as a retail sale, or a vehicle was sold to a wholesaler, broker or fleet purchaser,” the complaint says.
“In addition, the defendants deliberately failed to report the reversal or cancellation of certain sales previously reported in order to dishonestly retain incentive payments,” according to the complaint.
According to the lawsuit, the alleged scheme included the transfer of new inventory back and forth between O’Brien’s Kia and non-Kia stores to cover up irregularities and unrealized sales.
O’Brien’s attorney is seeking to have the case dismissed.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
We did Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor” so I guess it’s only right to do something from Wyclef’s best album, “The Carnival” featuring… Lauryn Hill like 19 times. I love this album.
The Big Question
Is Detroit back? Was it always here? When was the last time you were in Detroit? If you live there, for how long?
Look, the best way to understand what Michigan Grand Central means to Detroit is what happened when Ford announced they were buying it and restoring it:
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/found-decor-iconic-detroit-station-revival-inspires-return-of-stolen-artifacts/
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/06/27/ford-return-detroit-train-station-items/734256002/
People just *gave back* stuff that had been looted over the past 30 years.
Looking at pictures that were just taken, I think they got most of the large items back. That just feels… wild to me. Detroit, especially during the great recession, became a place that couldn’t keep the lights on because people kept stealing the street light power cables for copper scrap. That the old MGS fixtures and stuff hadn’t been sold off or destroyed says something about what the building meant to the city – even when it was the urban spelunking choice par excellence.
(BTW, the transformers fought on it’s roof in one of the movies)
The fact Detroiters gave grand central items back sounds to me like people took them in the 1st place to protect/preserve them in the hope one day someone with deep enough pockets Would commit to restoring the place. I’m happy Ford made the commitment And more importantly has followed up on it.
As much as people shit on Ford and GM I do hope they both are able to make the transition to ev and they don’t both go the way of Packard…
(and Pierce, Arrow, Pierce-Arrow, Pace, Hudson, AMC, Studebaker, Nash, Cunningham, Oldsmobile Pontiac, Saturn, Saab, Willis, Dusenberg, Baker, Stanley, Austin, Doble, Diamond T, Auburn and many, Many more!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States)
I was there in 2009?8? for the Final Four.
I remember there were statues outside of a baseball stadium, and I could walk to 3 or 4 major sports venues.
There was an overhead tram called the “PeopleMover”, or something, that didn’t seem to take us anywhere but a casino, and no one was on it.
Everyone ‘knows a guy’ that can get you a lift from the wherever to wherever.
Cabs may or may not have had a working meter. The cabbie just gave you a number and you paid it.
It seemed like the 70k fans that showed up may have tainted my normal view of the place.
Oh, and there was some weird-ass fist air punching nothing.
The Joe Lewis fist!
Louis, man. Louis.
Dammit! It’s one of my favorite landmarks too!
It has a name? Okay. I guess every city has its thing….
Dude, google Joe Louis, lol. He was way more than a Detroit thing.
I’ll even help you out. All you gotta read is the first two paragraphs. Jeez, if you went to the Final 4 I’d have thought you’d know this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Louis
Joe Louis is perhaps the greatest heavy weight boxer ever.
Anyone that’s already extremely rich (most anyone that’s amassed a billion dollars already has questionable ethics) and then thinks they deserve another $56 billion is just a terrible person.
It’s only 1% of the value created under him, so while it’s a mind-boggling number, it really isn’t that outlandish as a percentage.
He created $5.6 trillion? Did you mean 10%?
The idea that one man “created” that value is outlandish.
Disclaimer – grew up just outside Pontiac, MI, and my father worked for Pontiac Motor Division.
Ford did the smart thing and moved into a right-sized, historic location.
GM tried to do something to revitalize the city by moving to the RenCen, which has always been problematic. While I applaud the sentiment, there are a number of issues with that building.
It’s confusing. Bleak. Dated. Way, way too big. And isolated from the rest of downtown.
It does not mesh with the rest of the city’s architecture.
Best thing that could be done is tear it down after figuring out how to connect that parcel of land with the rest of the city core, maybe as a part of eliminating I-375. Then work out what would be the next best move.
The Ren Cen building doesn’t symbolize the rebirth of that city. If anything, that eyesore is a sorry reminder of the dysfunctional past of the city and as such, it needs to go the way of the wrecking ball and shovel.
The riverfront and recovering areas in Detroit, along with residents who are proud to live there, are the best symbols of that city. The Art Deco treasures and the restored structures that show what is possible, they rep the city well.
Nice work on Ford’s part. I am no fan of Henry Ford or Ford cars or any sort. But this was really a great decision that represents the revitalization efforts.
I’ll be in Detroit in a few weeks and really look forward to it!
The Ren Cen is a TERRIBLE building. Confusing doesn’t begin to describe it.
It is a typical 1970’s building, and it’s a effing labyrinth to navigate. The exterior is nothing special, and the interior is what I think is called “brutalist”.
The Old GM building has been turned into state offices, including the Court of Appeals, so at least that’s not gone to seed…
Brutalist design is quite apt for that building.
True Brutalist design should focus on the honesty and integrity of the materials and components used. This example hews to brutalist concepts in materials and geometric order without hitting those focus points noted above. The result is a statement incongruous with what the real revitalization of Detroit looks like.
Instead, the focus and resulting architecture seems to be full emphasis on a visual statement created to distract from the real issues of neglect and contempt for those who lived in the city. It is a sterile, multistory monument to bad decisions that made life better for no one in Detroit’s neighborhoods.
It’s kind of an extension of how many people who didn’t love the city felt about it, in the form of a building. It seems to me like the physical embodiment of not understanding the city it is in or what makes Detroit unique, and not putting in effort to do so.
Instead, it was city leadership and elected officials trotting out, “We’ll just put this shiny thing here and this makes us world class. We’ll call it a symbol of how we’re rebuilding.” Except there was no rebuilding or investment or even a damn being given to those who needed it most.
The people who love Detroit love it with a fierceness not common most anywhere else. They see it for what it is, accept its warts, and know that it takes every person living there to make it what it will be.
I would wager money that most Detroit residents take whatever their elected leaders have to say with a grain of salt when it comes to how they (the elected) will make the city great. The people who live there know they’re the ones that drive this. They have learned how to make it great, even in spite of those elected, when necessary.
There’s still some badly underserved, dangerous, and dilapidated parts of that city. But it’s getting better step by step. Where it is now, versus in 2000, is utterly remarkable.
Tearing that ugly, dumbass building and the towers near it down, and reconnecting that land to the rest of the city core, would really be a great symbol of Renaissance in Detroit.
Thanks for reading this rambling opinion.
As a child growing up in Chicago (born in Farmington Hills), we’d go visit my grandparents on Hendrie Street in Detroit. I knew we were getting close when we passed the big Uniroyal tire on I-94. Shortly before they moved into retirement housing, a GM plant sprung up on the other side of the highway and started killing the neighborhood (although I’m sure there were other factors involved). Very few or none of the houses on that block even exist anymore. My parents moved back to the Detroit area for a while and lived behind the old Packard Proving Grounds off Van Dyke until a couple years ago. I’ve been to the area quite a bit over the years but I never bothered going downtown. As a matter of fact, the last time I was downtown was about 20 years ago when I played a concert in the park across the street from the Hard Rock Cafe to a bunch of homeless people. The stage was kinda cool though – it had a hydraulic lift.
Detroit is a very important part of my life, but it will remain firmly in the past.
Not if it were a 1970’s era movie starring Charles Bronson. It’d be badass.
10/10 would watch.
I can’t help thinking of my visit to our nearest office (which I had successfully avoided visiting for my first 10 years with the company, but then they offered free pizza 😉 ). We got a tour of the renovated complex where we were renting space and it was all very nice, but two things stuck out to me:
I would not want to be involved in commercial real estate right now.
The fact is that companies have to offer a compelling reason to go into an office if they want to attract top talent. Part of that is offering an office that you want to visit in the first place, which at least in my line of work, often times is the case.
Another factor is actually making going into an office meaningful beyond just having a snazzy place. Don’t just go into an office to do the work you can do at home. Leverage the advantages that can be had by in-person collaboration, planning, team building etc.
It also wouldn’t hurt America to invest in mass transit either. For me, the biggest barrier to return to an office is the commute. Commutes are probably the most awful things we as humans have place upon ourselves. They’re soul crushing, expensive, and just a flat-out waste of time.
It’s also fair to point out that there are people who prefer to work in an office. I’m not one of them, but working for a company with a significant percentage of its workforce entirely remote, I have known a few people who left simply because they couldn’t deal with the isolation of perpetual WFH.
I still think they’re the minority and most top talent these days is going to insist on some remote work provisions because it’s such a huge quality of life thing, but as I said I’m glad I’m not the one who has to navigate this. It’s very tricky.
This is true, and I can understand. I actually don’t mind the idea of a hybrid solution, if it’s executed well.
The story of Detroit is a complicated one, that’s for sure. As someone who grew up in the burbs, moved Downtown when no one lived there (something like only 25,000 residents in the CBD), and enjoyed every friggin’ second of the 8 years on the riverfront, I think I have a pretty good grasp on the goings-on during “The Downfall.”
While there are many factors involved in any City’s economic and social well-being, I gotta say that throwing a blanket statement like “Racism” is wrongheaded and lazy. If you look at the biggest scandals from the 60’s to the ’00s, they all involved Mayors Young, Killpatrick, and Bing. From Krueger Rands to Casinos on the Riverfront, they were all massive fraud schemes founded on, and specificially designed for, theft. It wasn’t because anyone was black, because everyone was black.
On a lighter note, the soundtrack of Detroit and all the great music that originated there would have not nearly been as amazing as it is, if it weren’t for the strife.
For those unfamiliar with the city other than from the sidelines, take a gander at the wiki page of one of the greatest music venues in all of the US, St. Andrew’s Hall, and be wowed by who has played there (take note that the capacity is roughly 1,000):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Andrew%27s_Hall_(Detroit)
Also, there is a concert streaming on Peacock Thursday night at 8:30 for the grand re-opening of the Train Station with Diana Ross, Jack White etc. Aww heck, read it for yourself, lol..
https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/music/brian-mccollum/2024/06/03/michigan-central-station-concert-opening-eminem-jack-white-lineup-artists/73897014007/
Here is a concert Electric Six shot at St. Andys. You get a pretty great sense of the vibe of the place just in the first few minutes. Now, imagine seeing Tool or Bob Dylan in that tight of a venue. Fucking awesome place!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uACePIKUKGI
I was at that Electric Six show. It must have been 12 years ago because I remember I recently turned 40 and decided to jump into the pit. I thought I was going to have my first heart attack LOL
Electric Six, a band originally from Detroit, filmed a concert at St. Andrew’s Hall on September 7, 2013, entitled Absolute Treasure. (from the wiki)
So there ya go, Old Man! 🙂
Oh shit! Electric Six!!! Gay Bar was a must play every Rock Band game night.
This is actually the first time in 110 years that Michigan Central Station is “complete”. The upper floors were left empty and unfinished in 1914, since Michigan Central Railroad wasn’t able to find tenants for all the space, and just stayed like that until Ford’s renovation. Kind of a rare case where they didn’t just restore the building, but arguably made it even better than it was at its prior peak
i imagine i’m not the first to point this out, but in a note to the editor, that first picture is the wrong “MT” I don’t remember which apartment building or hotel is in the foreground, but neither building is the Michigan Terminal (almost 40 years since i lived in the CC). That’s the Masonic Temple not Michigan in the background. So Cass Corridor, not Cork Town.
It’s the Hotel Park Avenue (now torn down) and the Eddystone (now renovated)
I don’t know if Detroit is back quite yet, but it certainly seems like it is improving greatly. I worked a few miles north of downtown Detroit for a little over a year in the mid 2010s. I haven’t been back since, but from what I have seen on street view things have improved a lot. It appears there has been a lot of new construction near where I used to work.
It is helpful that some of the most abandoned areas (i.e. multiple blocks with no occupied buildings) are relatively close to downtown and midtown. It is far less controversial to redevelop an area if almost no one still lives there. I think the degree of abandonment of the city actually is a strength for Detroit in this respect.
Street view in Detroit is kind of wild. If you look at street view for a cool new restaurant, half the time it shows a burned out warehouse next to an overgrown field.
I would like to go back to Detroit at some point just because I’m sure it is very different from what I remembered. It seemed like a lot of new construction was just starting when I lived there. What I have seen on street view is impressive, but I’m sure there is a lot more that isn’t captured on street view.
It is nice to see the city improving. I liked Detroit. It is an interesting city, even if it is a bit rough in places.
“Ford is celebrating by opening up a new ‘Culture And Tech Hub’…”
Based on their current product line, it may have been more appropriate to put it in an old abandoned Stuckey’s
What’s wrong with their current lineup? Trucks, SUVs, and sports/muscle car. Fits the culture right now dead on
Auto makers “fudge” tests. In my opinion, this is a foregone conclusion where regulations are put in place without bureaucratic infrastructure to enforce the regulations. We’ve outlawed foxes eating hens, and left the foxes in charge of the menu.
It also feels like Ford probably needs to explain why it spent so much money on a building when no one wants to go into an office anymore.
Because their entire business is making vehicles to take workers to offices. Bill Ford practicing WFH would be like the Pope preaching atheism.
Next week we’ll read an article about how Ford is Gentrifying Detroit and that it’s bad.
So Dan O’Brien and his creepy dwarf mascot, who kind of looks like a house elf, were trying to go after Bill Heard’s “Mr. Big Volume USA” slogan.
Things can be both bad and good, and often are!
This country certainly has a reputation for sucking all the resources out of an area, and then spitting it out, leaving it to rot, moving on to the next benefactor/future victims.
I’m always in support of urban renewal, and investing resources into places and people who were unceremoniously forgotten. I always root for Detroit because of that.
I have often heard that the problem, usually worded as tragedy in the tellings that I hear, of Detroit is that the city never expanded its borders out into the suburbs, and all of the tax base moved to the suburbs of Detroit, leaving Detroit without any way for the city to maintain itself.
Oh, and bravo Ford!
“Never expanded it’s borders out into the suburbs”
Uh, did it occur to you that the residents of those suburbs voted against annexation?
Or should Detroit have simply conquered those towns with soldiers and tanks and bombs?
This reminds me of the RoboCop movie series.
It doesn’t work that way either.
If course it occurred to me, that’s the way it usually happens and Detroit isn’t the only place it happened.
Some other cities expanded preemptively to avoid a ring of suburbs that leached off the central city.
That’s not at all what happened with Detroit, though. After the riots in ’67, people (mostly white, but not all) fled the city almost instantly. This turned areas like Oakland/Monroe/St. Clair Counties from farmland to expanded industrial hubs and wealthy enclaves like West Bloomfield/Bloomfield Hills/Birmingham and basically any other place with a lake that wasn’t Wayne County.
These areas have almost nothing to do with Detroit taxes/services/schools. No leeching to speak of going on at all. In either direction.
Here’s a fun song that sorta encapsulates the times. Detroit ’67- Sam Roberts Band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCi17SEPgpc
Which, by the way, shoulda been that song for the day, MATT!
It was no different in Chicago. I was an infant during the ’68 convention, living with my parents on the southwest side. By the end of the year, we lived in Arlington Heights.
Exactly. I’m a bit lost on the idea that a city can just magically expand its borders beyond a county line to chase back money. That’s not how things work, lol.
A huge part of the problem was the Big Three’s HQs weren’t part of a cohesive downtown during the boom years, and the city struggled to develop any core.
GM’s HQ was in the New Center a couple of miles north of downtown, Chrysler was in Highland Park, and Ford was out in Dearborn. What made it worse was they traditionally made little effort to draw associated businesses like advertising and banking to the city, or support academia. The execs always preferred to go to places like NYC or Chicago. When they were a huge percentage of the national economy, the city got short shrifted.
Even when they supported cultural institutions like the Detroit Institute of Arts, they were cited outside of downtown proper.
Few of the execs bothered to build homes in the city when it was filled with open space in the 19 teens and eatly 20s, preferring to live in places like the Grosse Pointes and Bloomfield Hills.
As a result the city lacked the density and life you’d get from from real downtowns. There was a major shortage of civic pride from the Big Three – Detroit was a place for the employees.
And so when the 70s hit and the Big Three struggled, there was not much else going on to fall back on. It’s taken a long time since then for the city economy to diversify and for the central core to fill out.
That pretty much concurs with what my friends from Detroit have said. Actually I think most of them were from the greater Detroit metropolitan areas the way someone from Beverly Hills or Van Nuys would say they were from LA.
I live about 5 miles from the Detroit border and am there often for projects (usually at least 3-4 times a month.) There are a lot of good things going one, but there are still fundamental challenges that Detroit has to overcome, mostly in the neighborhood areas (city services, tax rates, safety, quality of schools, etc.). The change in the downtown area has been amazing in the last 10 years or so. I was there for the Grand Prix this weekend and they put on a great event. Construction downtown is still busy, but probably not as busy as it would have been if Covid hadn’t happened. It’s slowly starting to creep out of downtown into the neighborhoods. The train station already is and will continue to be a catalyst for the Corktown neighborhood. The Q-line for all it’s silliness has been a catalyst for for the Woodward Corridor (but I personally think the improvements to the streetscape had more to do with that than the Q-line). There’s things happening in various other pockets in the city. Covid did slow down some of the momentum because we lost some great restaurants downtown, and the shift to remote work has really hurt the office market downtown, which had been really filling up. I think some of that hasn’t really hit yet and it’s going to take a toll. There’s a lot of office space for rent downtown again and it’s slowing momentum on renovating and building new buildings. Downtown Detroit is fun and a great place to visit, especially during a big event, like the Auto Show, Grand Prix, NFL Draft, etc. where the city is really alive.
I don’t know if it has an impact that’s sizeable or a drop in the bucket, but HGTV’s “Bargain Block” is a very entertaining hit show and they’ve restored many Detroit houses that you’d expect to be torn down.
Every bit helps. People forget how weathy Detroit was at one time. There are so many amazing houses in the city that need love.
And Keith and Evan do a terrific job.
Nicole Curtis from “Rehab Addict” (?) fixed up a bunch of old homes, too. She’s excellent at keeping it authentic to the time it was built.
I don’t love their style but I love their work and WHAT they are doing. I’ve been meaning to drive by some of the streets they’ve worked on, but I live close to Ann Arbor, so I’m almost never around Detroit proper.
Hopefully Ford left the “Sex, Drugs and DETROIT” graffiti on the facade in the pursuit of architectural authenticity.
They actually are keeping some of the graffiti on the walls on the inside, which is pretty rad. Here are the pics (yes, it’s a slideshow, but not like you think. it’s like 30 pics per page):
https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/after-years-of-neglect-detroits-refurbished-michigan-central-station-opens-to-the-public-photos/Slideshow/36438308/36438342
That is incredibly cool. It simultaneously acknowledges the history of the building while making sure that future generations know that “Fat Wuz Not Here”!
Totally! I really like how they have the easels with the “before” pics in the areas they restored.
This is the kinda thing that most other cities would never do. Detroiters are not shy about the history of the city. It’s what makes it cool. Like, “Yeah? So what?”
Also, what really stands out in the pics is when you look at the size of the windows compared to the doors in a given room. Really shows how massive they are and how tall the ceilings are. I am for sure going to check it out next time in town.
Elon musk being a shithead, sketchy dealerships, large companies fudging regulatory test results. What an upside down world we live in!
In other words: Just another day in America.
https://youtu.be/rf592f9jPaM?si=UiGIIVQ0SmVTETUV
Went to school in Detroit in the ’90s. For all its problems, it has character, you could pretty much do what you wanted on the roads as long as you didn’t shoot at the cops, and I got some stories from it (eventually, I’ll get to finishing my book where Detroit features heavily). Were it not for the weather and the pure salt they dump on the roads, I’d take it over LA every damn day (they’re both large area cities that are spread out and fairly flat, which is why I compare them).
LA is anything but flat.
Flat as in, spread out, sprawling, not terribly dense with high rises or other tall buildings. There are a lot of single story houses and low buildings over a wide area rather than dense with tall buildings in a small space. It’s not Florida, but I also wouldn’t call it terribly hilly, though, either. It’s surrounded by higher elevation, but it’s not like I was climbing up and down hills there.
I have a hard time believing Musk will ever be held accountable, and even if he is it will probably be similar to Trump and actually affect him very little if at all. Unfortunately the legal system isn’t capable of holding billionaires accountable, and that’s by design. I’ll believe one of these shitheads will face tangible consequences when I actually see it happen.
Anyway it truly shocks me that a company with the resources that Hyundai/Kia have can’t get their fucking dealerships under control. This has been an issue with them for their entire existence in the US market and absolutely nothing has changed. I find their level of incompetence and general propensity towards massive unforced errors hard to believe sometimes but they uh…find a way.
It sucks because the actual products are really good. I love my Kona N. It’s been problem free and is going back to the track this weekend for a high performance driver education day provided they have enough instructors. Pretty much everything they have on offer is competitive in its respective class and they always give you great value.
But dear god, man. No one wants to fucking go to the cesspool dealerships. I got verbally accosted by a sales manager at one when I was searching for my N because I wouldn’t pay a markup. Another stop on that journey led me to a dealership that had $3,000 worth of add ons that they swore weren’t a markup. I looked up the actual cost of what they’d said they done, which was a couple hundred bucks, sent it to them, and said if they had proof they’d actually done what they’d claimed to I’d pay the exact cost of the add ons. Unsurprisingly I got crickets.
I felt like I had to shower after every goddamn interaction with a Hyundai dealership until I found a really good one. But alas…they were then bought out by a bigger local conglomerate so I assume they’ve gone to shit as well. My wife will be due for a new car soon and she explicitly doesn’t want to look at Hyundais because of how my experience went and the Kia boys nonsense.
And you know what? I don’t blame her.
Kia and Hyundai, I blame on foreign companies thinking they can do business as is without adaptation in a foreign country.. a recent example Red Lobster and their newish Thai owners.
FWIW, the Thai owners were just part of the problem for Red Lobster. Their private equity ownership prior to the Thai ownership set them up to fail with the real estate deals they made and then locked Red Lobster into.
Funny, just last night I watched Beverly Hills Cop again and I was thinking how perfectly “Detroit” the opening squence was. That’s probably how the majority of the country still thinks of it. Beverly Hills Cop (1984) Opening (youtube.com)
Nah, I think of the version in RoboCop.
RoboCop was filmed in Dallas and Pittsburgh. Verhoeven wanted the Urban Brutalism architecture of Dallas to suggest what a city of the near-future would look like, and Dallas’ City Hall fit the bill.
The last time I was in Detroit was to visit Conner Ave Assembly at its shutdown with a large group of Viper owners. This would have been 2017. We got to take a tour of the mostly empty plant, see the last few Vipers at the end of the line, drive as a convoy to Dodge Power Days or whatever it was called on Woodward Ave, meet the Dodge Brothers actors, and made a day of it.
I don’t care what Ford spent to renovate the train station. I am always a supporter of spending money to renovate cultural and historical landmark architectural things such as this.
100%. I’m as jaded and cynical as the next corporate drone, but as a lover of Detroit (and architecture and history) I’m thrilled that Ford put in the effort to revive this building.
Thirded. Big fan of urban revitalization when done right, and Ford did this right.
Yep. Imagine if NYC’s old Penn Station wasn’t torn down in 1963.
They didn’t realize what they lost until it was gone, and after it was torn down they created ordinances to ensure they never tore down such iconic landmarks again.
The irony being that now there are genuine talks of tearing down MSG to rebuild Penn Station.
To be fair, the MSG is the 4th MSG.
The one built in 1968 was far from the best one.
The one from 1890 was probably the one we all wish still existed.
This is true. I’m a Knicks fan so I don’t want to see it torn down. But I’m also a Knicks fan, so I hate James Dolan and wouldn’t mind him losing out of spite? It’s complicated. I do understand why people want it to happen though, for I have been to Penn Station, and it might be the very, very worst train station in a major city in the world. It’s the worst that NYC has to offer. Grand Central, in it’s opulent renovated glory, and the Moynihan Station, are obviously the standard.
What will ultimately drive MSG being replaced again is seating capacity. The 1890 Stephen White MSG is unquestionably an US architectural icon lost, but it only could seat 8000 people.
Might be the worst? No contest.
Deleted.
Word is, HF3 also has issues with how the Model T plant in Highland Park is such a decrepit eyesore and it is also on his list of things to remedy. I wholly support his vision and ability to move it to action, regardless of the motivation.
I challenge Stellantis to compete with this by restoring the old Chrysler Headquarters on Oakland Avenue.