We want the building to stay up just to annoy you.
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People who think this about Detroit have never been to another major city. If there is one thing Detroit has in abundance it's parking.
Maybe you just don't like walking from your car.
That said if the alums manage to put forward a complete proposal [[with funding) within a couple months then demolition should halt and they should be allowed to do it. Otherwise tear the thing down and focus on preserving buildings that haven't been ransacked. It's been that way long enough.
I have heard the debate about whether or not a building should be torn down on this forum since I first joined. I too have debated whether or not buildings like the Statler Hotel or Lafayette Building should have been torn down. Regardless of whose side I've been on, one thing that rarely gets debated in detail is the rights of the property owner to do what he or she wants with their property and the City of Detroit's obligation to preserve historic buildings.
One of the oldest dreams of U.S. citizens has been to own land/property. That dream was strong in Detroit in the days when auto factory jobs were in abundance and people came here in droves. Some people bought property to build factories. Others bought property to build stores or retail strips. The majority of people bought property to build homes. The city was more than happy to give up strips of land in order to get what it probably believed to be a perpetual stream of revenue through property taxes. However, what Detroit could not have predicted was the incredible amount of abandonment left by these property owners. How could the city be prepared to go after so many property owners who failed to take care of their property and fail to pay their property taxes, leaving the city with the burden of tearing down their property and also trying to collect deliquent property taxes. Very few major cities throughout the world have had to deal with these scenarios that Detroit faces.
I raise this point because it goes back to whose rights are more important in this country: the individual property owner or the community [[in this case the City of Detroit). Regarding old Cass Tech, DPS, the individual property owner, chooses to tear their property down. The community, as least some former alumni and preservationist want to save it. Whose rights come first? This is the question that should really dominate this argument. However, is this only a Detroit question that Detroiters need to answer because it doesn't appear to be a big issue in other major cities around the world, or is it?
Royce... it is not just a Detroit Issue... it is a worldwide issue...
NYC wanted to tear down Grand Central Station in the 80s, just like they razed the magnificent Penn Station in 1963.... the late Jackie Kennedy Onassis was a leader in that preservation struggle.... and they won.
In Britain, Prince Charles has lead the fight to preserve some of the best of Victorian London... but entire blocks of glorious structures have been torn down to build ugly monstrosities. Sir Christopher Wren's London of the 18th century has been destroyed more by post war charmless office blocks, than by all the V2 rockets of the Nazi's.
http://www.planetizen.com/node/36364
In China, during Mao's Cultural Revolution in 1965... thousands of historic structures were demolished, including the enormous [[23.5 km long) and spectacular city walls of Beijing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing...fortifications
In Germany... a different struggle is taking place.... buildings that were annihilated in WWII have over many years started to be rebuilt. In Dresden the 315 ft. tall Dresden Cathedral [[largest Lutheran church in Germany) was rebuilt [[finished 2005) from the wartorn rubble [[reusing the salvagable fragments, making it look like an old/new jigsaw puzzle)...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_Frauenkirche
Also the Dresden Opera House was rebuilt [[1985) after being bombed out 40 years earlier....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semperoper
And now the vast Town Palace [[Stadtschloss) in Berlin [[it survived the war with some damage, but was razed by the Russians in 1950)... is being rebuilt at a cost of about 800 million Euros. Although those plans are on hold for a few years due to the economic constraints... the quarrying for the stone has alread begun...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtschloss,_Berlin
Historic preservation is not just a Detroit struggle... it's a worldwide struggle. Only here in Detroit we have a greater lack of money and probably an even greater lack vision to preserve our architectural heritage.
Gistok, thanks for the informative post.
Royce, I hear you on the property rights issue, but rights come with certain responsibilities. Derelict properties are magnents for rapes, drug dealing, shootings and pose safety risks to children and health risks for the neighbors. Property owners have societal obligations so they must either maintain their "investment properties" or sell them to someone that will. The worst maintained homes in the city present nowhere near the problems of the uncared for "investments".
How could Detroit have afforded to allow so many delinquent properties to go unanswered and how do we propose they can afford to allow the results to remain? The societal losses of these properties has proven to far exceed what it would have cost to deal with the owners. Since the causes of the hosuing collapse were varied and complex, the solutions weren't going to be easy either and mistakes were going to be made along the way, but they don't need to be repeated.
Rising crime leads to diminishing populations which leads to more sellers than buyers which leads to properties with a negative net worth. Eventually they reach a tipping point where abandonment happens. The city's policy of forcing owners to stay by strictly enforcing code only on homes listed for sale didn't help. But then again, I wasn't around at the time, so I can't say that it seemed obvious then that the risk of people walking away from bad investments outweighed the benefits of some staying. Once again ignoring all economic realities, the Feds went beyond their authority as they tried to fix the insufficient buyer problem by letting everyone own a home whether they were capable of doing so or not.
Ultimately, the market wasn't able to correct these mistakes because they were insulated from market forces. Government choose to not enforce its rights to get the properties back into the stream of commerce and banks were allowed to misrepresent the property values to investors as the face value of the loans rather than FMV of the properties. A policy still in effect today.
How is the entire housing market of today different from Detroit's market back then? I have no idea. How have our national policies chnaged because of what hapened in Detroit? Looking at the condition and management of foreclosed and abandoned properties, doesn't seem it has. What's going to stop most local governments frome experiencing the same property tax issues that Detroit experienced as property taxes dropped like a rock? I've heard no answers, let alone any meaningful discussion.
Why did they close the Old Cass Tech anyway? If it was cheaper to build a new one rather than renovate or add to a building in use, why didn't they plan to tear it down then and simply incorporate the costs into the new building budget? Why didn't the new building plans and budget include costs and plans to keep the old building from deteriorating to the shameful condition that its in now? My system's engineering class repeatedly keeps stressing that design plans need to think of everything start to finish. They had to have had a end-of-life cycle date in mind when the original Cass Tech was built. What was it?
That building and others like it were built to last for hundreds of years. End of life cycle date is the thinking of contemporary American mall developers who plan for 7 years to turn their profits. Then they can demolish it or let it get vandalized.
Cass Tech, like so many buildings of that area, was built by craftsmen with the skills of European gilds. Europeans built buildings to last for centuries.
Jerrytimes,
Many people, including many government leaders, agree with your concept of speculative demolition.
It seems to make sense in theory... if a building has been vacant for more than a few years, it has proven to be a blighted eyesore beyond repair, and should be demolished to make the site more attractive for redevelopment.
The only problem with the theory of speculative demolition as a tool to promote development in downtown Detroit is that it has proven to be an absolute, complete, unequivocal failure.
I can not think of one example over the last 15 years in downtown Detroit where speculative demolition has resulted in redevelopment of the site. The Tuller, the Statler, the Hudsons building, the Lafayette, the Madison Lenox, etc. Not a SINGLE ONE of these sites has been redeveloped.
Compare the absolute failure of speculative demolition to the astounding success of renovating downtown buildings that sat vacant and run down for decades... The Book Cadillac was a vacant building for 25 years. The Fort Shelby was vacant for over 30 years. Think about the Kales building, the Iodent building, the five vacant buildings remodeled into Merchants Row, the three vacant buildings remodeled into the Lofts at Woodward, the Cliff Bells building, the Lafer building, the Hartz building, the Eureka building, the Madison building. The David Broderick tower is currently getting a complete renovation after decades of sitting mostly vacant.
Contrary to popular opinion, the vacant "eyesore" buildings in downtown Detroit are not liabilities preventing the city from attracting investment and development. In fact, the old vacant "eyesore" buildings are the most attractive sites to developers investing in the city.
The facts are blatantly obvious. Speculative demolition in downtown Detroit leads to absolute failure, and patiently waiting for redevelopment of long vacant buildings is a proven path for success.
If they planned to tear it down for parking then, the opposition to demolition would have been 100 times worse. It's a lot easier to tear down a heavily vandalized historical building than one in good condition. That was their plan and their intent all along. Now plans for demolition has support of most of the community. It's all politics.
The 5 part series on Cass Tech that WDET aired last week is archived at this website:
http://www.michigannow.org/
Attachment 8761Great posts... my mom went to Cass Tech back in the 60's... saw the plastic flapping in the wind on the top floor and snapped a pic from the bus while we were stopped. Saw a number of recent posts from out-of-towners asking for pictures and just got a new phone with decent camera, so here ya go.