Wayne State & New Center Areas-1989 [[Includes Project Screenshots)

[mtburb]

Well, I am going to tell you that I'm currently working on something huge. This project is an attempt to simulate what the area bordered by Grand Boulevard, Lincoln Street, Warren Avenue and Riopelle Street [[including Wayne State and the New Center area) as it appeared on October 2, 1989. This however, will primarily focus on I-94 between I-75 and 3rd Street [[at the eastern end of the M-10 interchange) and the immediate area.

Do you know what inspired this? Recently, I've been looking at several paintings on Lowell's paintings site he did of the Cass Avenue overpass along this stretch in the early 1980's, so that's one. Now, here's an unexpected reason [[even though this had nothing at all to do with Detroit): one day, nearly a month ago, one of the many cable movie networks aired Ghostbusters II, but I only watched it mainly to wait for Bobby Brown's "Take Control" song in the closing. After that, I was looking for a few areas near my home that I could model as if they appeared in 1989, when that movie came out. I eventually settled on that one part of I-94, Lowell's paintings were one reason for that.

And so I started this massive project, using this as a template, which will be mostly accurate, but with some artistic license included. I will be including buses operating every DDOT and SMART route that operated over the overpasses along this part of I-94 as of that date in 1989. However, I know that SMART didn't get it's own buses until a year later, so I've decided to plaster their logo onto ex-SEMTA buses, via the "Red Green treatment". Also included will be every 3M National and Gannett Outdoor billboard in that area that existed back then, with some help from this thread [[which I also started).

And so, an important reason why I've decided to do this project, personally, is so that this could be my personal monument to the closing chapter of the 80's that's known as 1989, known to me as "the only year in which the fall of the Berlin Wall, the opening of I-696, the creation of SMART, the Pistons' first NBA championship, the Red Wings were still dead, the Tigers were still owned by one of Ilitch's competitors, the "GENERAL MOTORS" letters still graced the top of Cadillac Place, movies like Ghostbusters II came out, shows like This is America Charlie Brown and the Smurfs ended and shows like the Simpsons and Tiny Toon Adventures started, all of these preceding events taking place in the exact same year". Yes, you're right, 1989 was the only year that all of this happened.

So, what I'm hoping for with this thread is with you people helping me out with this. Do any of you remember what the area bounded by Grand Boulevard/Lincoln/Warren/Riopelle was like in the fall of '89? For example, I do know that in 1989, there was a gas station at John R. and the westbound I-94 service drive, so I placed a Shell-branded one there, unless you guys knew otherwise. And here are a couple of screenshots of my project [[another one is in that billboard thread I linked to above):







[[that one billboard was inspired by an episode of The Red Green Show, even though that show didn't start until 1991)