I would guess it might have something to do with the fact that the United States has 9.5 times more population than Canada; Canada's largest city has a metro area with a population only a little bit larger than metro Detroit and Windsor. So I would imagine funding those types of projects on a federal level in Canada would be considerably easier. Not to mention Canada has more historic protections available for buildings than in the United States. I always found it befuddling that a building on the National Register of Historic Places cannot be legally protected from demolition if the owner is so inclined.
In the same sense, only the feds really do have the money to restore a building such as, say, the train station. So a government tenant, as boring as that seems, may be the only hope for those types of buildings. I wouldn't mind seeing a government department at Michigan Central [[it would be foolish to reject any offer to renovate the MCS) but at the same time I would feel a bit disappointed it was not a more public use.
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