Gilbert's Plan: Downtown Detroit as a Pedestrian Paradise

[marshamusic]

Those of us with longer memories remember that closing off Woodward and Washington Blvd. dealt the death blow to downtown retail. Other American cities have experimented with this same notion, which does sound good on paper, with similar poor results, including several here in Michigan. I truly hope that we don't have to go around that particular cycle of civic disaster again.

What do you mean "closing off Woodward and Washington Blvd."? I'm trying to remember that.

[EastsideAl]

What do you mean "closing off Woodward and Washington Blvd."? I'm trying to remember that.

In the late 1970s plans were put into action to close both the east half of Washington Blvd. [[the side where most of the stores were) and Woodward between Campus Martius and Grand Circus Park to traffic.

Washington Blvd. was remade into a "pedestrian-friendly" set of concrete plazas united by a central architectural element [[the infamous red 'monkey bars'), with an antique trolley car running through it as a tourist attraction.

Woodward was 'malled', covered over in red brick with very broad car-free walkways in front of the stores, divided by a two-lane transit corridor open only to buses and emergency vehicles. The long-range plan [[which never came to fruition) was to eventually build a roof over Woodward to protect shoppers from the weather and give it an even more mall-like ambiance, linking it in with the Cadillac Center Mall that was to be built on the Kern Block [[where Compuware is today).

Both plans were unmitigated disasters that instead created empty pedestrian-less wastelands and practically all of the remaining retail was gone from both areas within just a few years. Leaving in their wake the depressingly store-less and lifeless downtown that existed until just the last couple of years.

[mwilbert]

Both plans were unmitigated disasters that instead created empty pedestrian-less wastelands and practically all of the remaining retail was gone from both areas within just a few years. Leaving in their wake the depressingly store-less and lifeless downtown that existed until just the last couple of years.

Both plans unambiguously failed, but I'm not sure you can give them credit for the pedestrian-free wastelands, which I kind of think were already in progress before those "improvements".

[EastsideAl]

Both plans unambiguously failed, but I'm not sure you can give them credit for the pedestrian-free wastelands, which I kind of think were already in progress before those "improvements".

Downtown retail was not extremely healthy to be sure at the time, but both streets had most of their stores filled before they were closed to traffic. And several of those businesses, like Hudson's, had been operating downtown for decades. There was certainly much more pedestrian and economic life on the streets downtown in the late '70s than there is even today.

[downtownguy]

There was certainly much more pedestrian and economic life on the streets downtown in the late '70s than there is even today.

I'd go so far as to say it was even busier with retail to the end of the 80s than it is today. Hopefully, the momentum has turned up again.

[stasu1213]

Downtown retail was not extremely healthy to be sure at the time, but both streets had most of their stores filled before they were closed to traffic. And several of those businesses, like Hudson's, had been operating downtown for decades. There was certainly much more pedestrian and economic life on the streets downtown in the late '70s than there is even today.

Agreed. The malling of Woodward came too late when Detroit and downtown was in a downward spiral. Coleman Young and planners had allowed it anyway. Does anyone has photos of Washington Blvd was in was a parklike blvd when the apehanger orange bar ran along the street. I remembered walking down Washingtonin in the 80s and 90s. There would always be the aggressive panhandlers sitting around