What would Detroit look like if the RenCen hadn't been built?

**Gistok** · April-08-09, 04:07 PM

Um.... I want to clarify a few misconceptions about the Renaissance Center and its' location...

1) there was no train station where the RenCen currently sits. All I remember was some large silos and industrial building with train tracks running to the complex. These were demolished to build the RenCen, not some old train station that got demoed.

2) as much as folks want to lament the building of the RenCen... all you have to do is look at what happened when GM took over in the 1990's... a LOT of the tenants moved to the suburbs [[including the 1,700 workers that Ford had). So had the RenCen not been built in 1977... there was no guarantee that other office towers would have been build scattered around downtown. Other office buildings in the suburbs could have just as likely been built to house the folks who moved to the RenCen back in 1977.

**iheartthed** · April-08-09, 05:14 PM

Originally Posted by Gistok

2) as much as folks want to lament the building of the RenCen... all you have to do is look at what happened when GM took over in the 1990's... a LOT of the tenants moved to the suburbs [[including the 1,700 workers that Ford had). So had the RenCen not been built in 1977... there was no guarantee that other office towers would have been build scattered around downtown. Other office buildings in the suburbs could have just as likely been built to house the folks who moved to the RenCen back in 1977.

But where else could those office workers have gone in the 1990s besides the suburbs? There have only been 3 office buildings built downtown in the past 40 years...

**Bob Green** · April-08-09, 06:36 PM

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure there was a train station just east of the Ren Cen where the GT commuter trains stopped [[want to say it was at the end of Brush Street). They demoed it and replaces it with bus stop-like shelters, much like the Birmingham Amtrak station, at least until they got rid of it in the early 80s.

**Todd_Scott** · April-08-09, 07:35 PM

Yes, it was the Brush Street Station. It was demo'd in 1973 for the Renaissance Center. There's a photo and more information about it in this book starting at page 64.

**Gistok** · April-08-09, 08:45 PM

Originally Posted by iheartthed

But where else could those office workers have gone in the 1990s besides the suburbs? There have only been 3 office buildings built downtown in the past 40 years...

Well considering that 211 W. Fort was empty after Comerica moved to One Detroit Center [[now Comerica Tower) in the early 1990's, One Woodward Ave. [[former "Gas Building") was not full, neither was 150 West Jefferson, and other buildings in the CBD... there was plenty of space for folks to move to, but some [[such as Ford) still opted for the burbs.

As for a Train Station on the site of the RenCen... that tiny 2 story building [[not exactly a large masterpiece such as the former Romanesque Revivial 4th St. Station), nor the large silos [[flour company?), hardly count as something architecturally significant to be lamented due to the building of RenCen.

**Huggybear** · April-09-09, 07:57 AM

If the Renaissance Center had not been built, GM likely would have moved out of Detroit in 1996, this place would be in even more horrific shape than it is now, and the old GM building would be vacant. The availability of the Renaissance Center probably prevented the demolition of the old GM facility - because the availability of cheap office space enabled GM to do the redevelopment deal. With no RenCen, the Millender Center site likely would still be a dirt lot.

People love to hate the Renaissance Center, but few buildings better evoke the ethos of post-riot Detroit [[or of 1970s urban America in general). The use of beige tile and unfinished polymer-impregnated cement is pure John Portman. Go to Embarcadero Center in San Francisco or Peachtree Center in Atlanta. I suspect that in 20 years, people will be complaining about how the building was "wrecked" by the SmithGroup redesigns of the front and back of the building and the circulation ring.

In terms of what was lost in the building of the Renaissance Center, the train capability was not taken out until 500 and 600 were built. There are pictures of the commuter trains on Franklin in front of the building [[or to the east of it), and Cadillac used them in a recent ad campaign. I think they are Tony Spina shots, but I'm not 100% sure. The Robin Hood flour mill was an eyesore and a very poor use of riverfront land. My suspicion is that the siting of the Renaissance Center was so that it would be visible down the major road corridors, and it just happened to eliminate one particularly ugly riverfront use.

The effect on the rest of downtown? Probably a lot less than you might think. As far as I can tell, Detroit had no other new Class A office space built between 1970 and the mid-1980s, and Southfield was building it like crazy. GM's move into the Renaissance Center may have driven some tenants to the suburbs, but the RenCen was probably the only thing that had kept them in Detroit in the first place. With a declining office population, no nighttime population, and poorly maintained older office buildings, downtown in the 1970s-1980s was, to put it politely, challenged. The RenCen was supremely functional as office space, and it had spectacular views.

Consider also that Henry Ford II [[who conceived the RenCen) also used Ford's purchasing power to strongarm a lot of companies to invest in and locate in the complex. Those people weren't going to move into any of the existing office buildings downtown.

**Novine** · April-09-09, 08:20 AM

"People love to hate the Renaissance Center, but few buildings better evoke the ethos of post-riot Detroit [[or of 1970s urban America in general). "

Can we all agree that the original design was a failure? To each his own when it comes to architectural tastes but a building and a site either works or it doesn't and the RenCen didn't. It failed to take advantage of its riverfront location, it failed to interact with the surrounding areas and its interior common spaces were well-known for their maze-like qualities. If that much square footage of office space had been dropped anywhere else in the city or suburbs, it would have had a tremendous spin-off effect. But the RenCen didn't really revitalize the way it was intended to do.

**Fury13** · April-09-09, 09:02 AM

"The use of beige tile and unfinished polymer-impregnated cement is pure John Portman."

Yes, and it's still awful. Portman's no Louis Sullivan.

There are good and bad designs in every era, and this one is bad [[although most 1970s architecture seems to be mundane and inconsequential).

**Fury13** · April-09-09, 09:05 AM

And "unfinished polymer-impregnated cement" is always a bad idea for interior space. Come to think of it, it's hideous anywhere. It's just plain ugly. Cover over it, please.

**iheartthed** · April-09-09, 11:51 AM

Originally Posted by Gistok

Well considering that 211 W. Fort was empty after Comerica moved to One Detroit Center [[now Comerica Tower) in the early 1990's, One Woodward Ave. [[former "Gas Building") was not full, neither was 150 West Jefferson, and other buildings in the CBD... there was plenty of space for folks to move to, but some [[such as Ford) still opted for the burbs.

But didn't Ford just consolidate their workers at the HQ in Dearborn? Or did they do more that I'm unaware of? As for those other buildings, do they have Class A office space [[is that what it's called) like the Ren Cen and newer offices in the suburbs?

I have mixed feelings about the Ren Cen. I think it was built in a poor location. It's isolation from the rest of downtown probably helped put a few of the smaller stores and restaurants out of business down there as well. But it's the most signature of buildings in Detroit's skyline.

Would it have made sense to consolidate several of those shorter towers into fewer taller towers and built the center on a smaller footprint north of Jefferson Ave? Something like the World Trade Center towers.

**gnome** · April-09-09, 12:37 PM

You can check out the wsu virtual library. search for Waterfront you can also search under Renaissance Center

overview of waterfront while Cobo is being prepped fro construction:

http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/imag...rt=1;resnum=43

1938 view of proposed civic center
http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/imag...rt=1;resnum=45

mid-1950's view of the downtown with City/County building under construction

http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/imag...rt=1;resnum=58

1971 proposed plan for rehabbing the old Detroit Public Lighting facility at Atwater and Randolph. Notice re-addaption of DPL buildings. This is the site on which the Ren Cen sits.

http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/imag...97;viewid=5597

another view of the same project:
http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/imag...;viewid=5597_1

**gnome** · April-09-09, 12:43 PM

The silos that sat where Tri-Centenial Park is now located were cement, not flour silos. The Robinhood silos where taken down for the RenCen and sat just east of Randolph approx where the RenCen waterside entrance is now located.

There was a railroad building down there, but it wasn't for Amtrak/semta passengers. You can see the old buildings on the WSU site, search Renaissance Center