The Notorious Brewster Projects

[Danny]

The Brewster-Douglas wasn't always the way most of us will remember it. To put some faces to the Brewster-Douglas Projects of old:

Attachment 24077

Attachment 24078

Attachment 24079

Detroit: The Black Bottom Community, Jeremy Williams, 2009

The early days of the Brewster Projects in the 1930s were nice, clean and filled with poor black folks who left their run-down shacks in Black Bottom. When the gangs, drugs and street crime came into to projects. Poor black folks were put down and bullied. There were lack of security and maintenance. Community and Civil Rights leaders tried to talk to Detroit City Council and Mayor [[who were mostly white) at the time, but they response with false promises. Now as the Brewster Urban Prison Projects is gone it brings a sigh of relief. Now that area can be redeveloped to something yuppified or strengthen section 8 requirements in order bring people with hope instead of building containment boxes.

[Lowell]

So what explains the sudden uptick in demolition speed in the last week? Did Homrich figure out it wasn't being paid by the hour on this project?

HB

Hmm... Seems I heard some new arena was going to be built along Woodward and there are three old hotels and a huge apartment building that may need to be removed. Maybe equipment and staff need to be be freed up? [No basis for that but...]

I also speculate that there is a bit of 'knock it down before they change their minds or figure out how to stop it' mentality in the demolition industry. Minimize the time between the contract signing and when the first ball hits the walls. There's no reset button in that industry.

An example was when a large section of Packard was demolished before parties with interests could organize and get a court order to halt the demolition of the rest.