Quote Originally Posted by swingline View Post
It's definitely a positive sign that Chris Ilitch and the Olympia Development organization have been influenced by Santana Row in San Jose. http://www.detroitnews.com/story/bus...roit/16192173/ Although Santana Row's architecture includes a bit too much faux, it's design succeeds because of its density and balance of mixed uses. It is a destination for outsiders as well a home to over 1000 residents. It skillfully created excellent pedestrian scale in an auto dominated city that attracts shoppers, diners and hotel guests.

The Arena District site in Detroit actually has an advantage over the Santana Row site because of its closer proximity to the downtown core. Hopefully it's not foolish to remain optimistic that a new mixed use neighborhood will actually get created alongside the new arena.
and land is there to be built on...

One thing about posts in a thread like this one is the sense of timeline and measurable goals [[pardon the geek speak).

It WILL take a long, long time to develop/redevelop most of the projects folks are talking about.

What needs to be done is come up with REALISTIC goals for say September 25, 2019, September 25, 2024, and then say September 25, 2034. That way folks can't play games by changing the 'expectations game' [[e.g., set them so high that a great project suffers against unrealistic expectations).

I have been posting here that I'd like to see the arena, and the connected buildings, the few housing buildings adjacent to the arena, a hotel at Woodward/Henry, an office building at Woodward/Temple, an office building on Woodward near the Fox, and several housing buildings at Comerica.

If most of that got build by September 25, 2019 I'd be very pleased. That would be a near 'miracle' given where Detroit was 12 or 24 months ago.

Then I'll work on my 10-year plan...