Quote Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner View Post
This is Collingwood a few blocks from Waterloo. https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Colli...=12,359.6,,0,0

It hardly looks comparable to the area around the Packard Plant. There was good bones in the area to begin the development off of. What you are supporting is the exact opposite.
This leads me to ask a question: For what kind of conditions, pray tell, is Detroit waiting?

First, a developer can't redevelop the Packard plant because it's not contiguous with the CBD. Now the area of the Packard plant doesn't have "good bones". Never mind that Cleveland--as well as most other cities--isn't hellbent on turning its neighborhoods into small clusters of prairie homes.

People complain that Detroit doesn't have enough jobs, that people are poor, that there isn't good housing stock. Did anyone stop to think that a Packard plant redevelopment could provide these things??? Given the size of the site, I would think that the scope of such a redevelopment could be its own stable neighborhood, and improve the desirability of the surrounding areas. I know it isn't as fun and magical as building a $600 million ice rink and parkingplex, but hey, if someone wants to invest a buck in Detroit--what do you have to lose??? Maybe you can use your professional background, DetroitPlanner, and educate us all as to what conditions are necessary for a developer to satisfy the Court of Public Opinion before they dare invest a dollar in your fair city.

How much longer are investors supposed to wait before conditions are absolutely perfect? Seems to me, this is another move of the goalposts. But, as I've stated above, Detroiters will find any damn excuse to NOT do something, and that, more than anything else, explains the status quo.