I read the Freep article and it makes me sick. You have to read between the lines to understand that the City Planning Dept, the mayor, the Council and the Detroit Historic Commission place one obstacle after another in front of developers, which have a thousand times more experience in development matters - design, financing, the market, and construction than all the incompetent municipal people put together. They know what they're doing. The city and its minions don't.

It wasn't mentioned in the Freep article but the apartments to be built on the Statler site are apparently still going to be built. That project as I recall was announced with great fanfare by the mayor a couple of years ago with the promise it would be put on the fast track. [[When Duggan starts promising stuff, be careful.) The developer owns and/or manages 44,000 apartments in many states and owns the Millender Center Apts and the Trolley Plaza Apts already. It's a local company that's been around for decades. Very deep pockets I imagine. Yet, my girlfriend was at a Historical Commission hearing last month on another matter before the Commission. She listened for almost an hour while the nitwit [[her word) Commissioners peppered the developer's representatives with some of the dumbest questions she had ever heard. They had great concern over what kind, style and color of the furniture the developer intended to put in the private park for tenants in the middle of the project. Imagine. I think she said that it was the third time they had been before the Commission. If they micromanage every project like that no developer that can spell "quality" will ever build anything here. That appears to be Duggan's idea of fast tracking a deal. It's supposed to be a $45-50 million project by a premier developer and it takes two years to cut through City red tape.

And I see that the CEO of Redico has had to spend months in meetings with the head of the Planning Department to get approval of a multi-million dollar project; the Redico people have forgotten more about quality developments than the City nitwits will ever know.

Why do they do it? There can't possibly be enough potential profits to put up with all the municipal B.S.

Dan Gilbert must be a saint. The city people should bend down every day and kiss his a__, but instead give him a hard time as well.

This city is snakebit and always will be. Stupid people running a dysfunctional city.