Dan Gilbert, Please Don't Demolish the Metropolitan Building

[Danny]

Gilbert wants his PRIME DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY without a eyesore around the corner from his building ventures. So tearing down the Metropolitan Building and turning a whimsical yuppie park just like the Chase Bank Build--[[ I Mean Quicken Loans Building) may prove useful.

[Huggybear]

Gilbert is the 800-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to historic preservation. We're not just talking about sticking ugly little security cams on One Woodward nor changing the paint color in the Chase Tower. I'll put it out there that in five years, he'll be held in the same regard some people hold Ilitch now. That's a future in which he knocks down the Metropolitan Building and the Albert Kahn-designed police headquarters - because one is microscopically inconvenient to the M@dison and the other doesn't fit the vision of a casino-entertainment zone.

Face the tough news - Gilbert is neither a friend nor enemy of preservation. He pretty clearly acts in a self-interested way [[well, his companies act in their own interests, but people confuse the two...). Where he can acquire a distressed property, do some relatively minor work to it, and rent it, he tends to help the prospects of historic buildings. But he doesn't yet have any tearout historic renovations under his belt [[the Broderick, Whitney, and UA are not his projects) - nor has he yet been a constructor of new things, save a parking deck. And when things are in his way, you will find that they are disposable. The Gilbert organizations also share the Ilitch belief that land ownership tends to bleed over into control of adjacent public land. For Ilitch, it's street parking. For Gilbert [[or "Opportunity Parks," an organization that neither officially controls nor owns any parks), it's throwing people out of Grand Circus Park at "closing" time. And Gilbert himself sporadically attempts to supplant the downtown planning infrastructure [[the Mertropolitan demolition appears in one of his presentations, after all).

The whole thing with expecting the Big Man [[whomever it is this year) to do things is reminiscent of the 30 Rock joke about bringing in a snake to catch a mouse, a mongoose to catch the snake, and a coyote to catch the mongoose. Unleash the Big Man, and you'll get an flurry of activity not all of which will be in accord with your wishes.

HB

[Novine]

This won't be news to anyone who has followed what Gilbert has done down in Cleveland.