Dan Gilbert hopes Madison project will change downtown Detroit

BY JOHN GALLAGHER

DETROIT FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER


To get a good idea how Quicken Loans founder and chairman Dan Gilbert hopes to change downtown Detroit, take a look at the progress on his Madison Theatre Building.

Gilbert bought the small, five-story structure near Broadway and Grand Circus Park and has workers transforming it into a hub for high-tech entrepreneurial activity.

The building is to open in late fall.

There'll be a co-working floor that Gilbert plans to offer for free to entrepreneurs -- sort of a desk-for-a-day environment for techies. And there'll be a 150-seat theater where Gilbert hopes to host all sorts of technology events, from critiques of new software and hardware to brainstorming sessions for digital types.

It's all part of transforming downtown into what Gilbert calls Detroit 2.0 -- a city rich with high-tech entrepreneurial activity and a bustling new economy.

"We're just really trying to highlight the city and bring folks from the suburbs downtown," Dan Mullen, Gilbert's point man for the Madison project, said last week during a tour of the work in progress.

He added, "We want you to live here, work here and play here."

Continued at: http://www.freep.com/article/2011062...wntown-Detroit

hopefully this will help encourage new small businesses based in the city..

This guy is serious!!

I hope they continue to incorporate the Madison Theatre marquee. [[Can the current restaurant branding). Maybe they could refurbish it and light it up and post messages on it, or put up the graphics for some of the first run films they showed there:

Spartacus
West Side Story [[the Saul Bass lettering and fire escape graphic)
Lawrence od Arabia [[the "black Lawrence" head)
The Sound of Music
Gone With the Wind [[the 1968 restoration print).

These reminders of roadshow's out-of-the-past would give passers by pause, and perhaps a smile or two.

"Can" the signage for a major tenant of the building to show nostalgia-trip marquees for a theater that was torn down?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vitalis

I hope they continue to incorporate the Madison Theatre marquee. [[Can the current restaurant branding). Maybe they could refurbish it and light it up and post messages on it, or put up the graphics for some of the first run films they showed there:

Spartacus
West Side Story [[the Saul Bass lettering and fire escape graphic)
Lawrence od Arabia [[the "black Lawrence" head)
The Sound of Music
Gone With the Wind [[the 1968 restoration print).

These reminders of roadshow's out-of-the-past would give passers by pause, and perhaps a smile or two.

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link doesn't work...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by StubbyStone

link doesn't work...

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It seems to be a problem at freep.com. There are a lot of other links to the story elsewhere that aren't working.