What the Michigan Depot could look like

[RO_Resident]

Well, the KC depot has the advantage that it is not two miles from anyplace that people want to visit.

Surprisingly, the KC station is relatively isolated. The station is surrounded by the WWII memorial and Crown Center to the south, and the tracks to the north. But, it is more along the lines of Joe Louis Arena isolation, not MCS isolation. [[I had a very nice meal at the Pierpont's restaurant in the station a few years ago. The rehab looked very nice.)

One advantage the KC station has is that it spread out horizontally. It seems like it is always harder to infill vertically. I'm not saying it is impossible, just that it is harder.

[ghettopalmetto]

Richmond, Virginia had three stations.

One, Broad Street Station, was at a ways from downtown and has been repurposed as the Science Museum of Virginia.

Main Street Station was close to downtown [[beautiful Victorian architecture) and was repurposed as a large shopping mall [[with little parking). All the stores went broke and the state took it over for gummint offices.

Hull Street Station was very small and the Norfolk Southern uses it for storage.

Richmond's Main Street Station hasn't housed government offices [[which, as with the mall, were in the train shed) for almost a decade. The head house [[station building) was restored around 2006, and Amtrak service was reintroduced.

The long-term plan is to increase the number of Amtrak Northeast Regional trains, accommodate Southeastern High-Speed Rail trains in the future, and extend Virginia Railway Express commuter service that currently terminates in Fredericksburg. The station would also serve as a hub for local buses, intercity buses, and a possible streetcar line.

...and it's a good mile, downhill, from the center of downtown, on the other side of I-95.

There are some people, though, who will find any excuse NOT to do something.

[FlyingJ]

There are some people, though, who will find any excuse NOT to do something.[/QUOTE]

I thought by the post it would be St. Louis' Union Station.
http://www.stlouisunionstation.com/info/aboutUs
It should be noted KC's Station is in a bad area, & a heralded Gang Problem http://www.kclibrary.org/blog/week-k.../mess-massacre

[DetroitPlanner]

Forget this place. Let it rot. We should be instead focusing on making WC3D look more like the richardsonian train station that it replaced!

[Gistok]

I'm sure you heard of that little recession we had in 2008. Detroit was not immune to that. Nor was it a static and permanent condition, either.

But one gets the sense that if it doesn't agree with the Leave It To Beaver Baby Boomer narrative of Everyone-Move-to-the-Suburbs-and-Lay-Waste-to-the-City, then somehow it's a "waste".

Your generation had its time to decimate the cities of our nation. Now go retire to your stripmalls, and let my generation clean up the mess.

FYI... Detroit now for the first time has a Baby Boomer as mayor. Detroit went from pre-boomer mayors Young and Archer to Generation X Kilpatrick and Cockrel... to pre-boom Bing... and now FINALLY we have a boomer in Mayor Duggan....

[Wesley Mouch]

...I'm curious to see what the delta is between redeveloping the entire structure vs the entrance.

The delta will be very large. Rehab of the high-rise is a major rehab project. [[I'd say about 10 times the lobbies).

The tower will be rehabilitated if and only if there's an economic need for office space.

The big question is what the use for the lobbies would be? Outside of casinos, its hard to imagine anyone needing that size/quality of space badly enough to pay the restoration costs.

The tower is the bigger problem. I'm sure it could be rehabbed. It would be on the expensive end of historic rehabilitation since the structure is probably not the fireproof style of the Book, Fox, Broderick, etc. That'll make it a really hard project to get done. The best we can hope for would be a stablization for a few million now. Windows, roof, major structural perhaps, and then just a modest amount of heat to keep it dry. To save that kind of asset would be worth it to me, so long as someone else's money could be used.

[douglasm]

It might be constructive to look at the work done by the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation and their attempts at restoring the Buffalo Central Terminal, and to a lesser extent, the work done to save the Tacoma [[WA) Union Station.

The CTRC has worked long and hard at saving the terminal, and has realistic goals and understand the problems they're facing in saving the building. Although the website is "under construction", the tabs all work, and the FAQs are really quite interesting.

http://buffalocentralterminal.org/

[Hermod]

Union Station on Fort Street [[long gone now) was a much more distinctive building than MCS and should have been saved instead.

[beachboy]

I still think it could be a train station and a hotel. [...] Chicago, Philly, Cincinnati just some off the top of my head...

Did you say "Cincinnati"? As in:



At the risk of sounding like a "broken record" [[kidz today don't know what
that means...) this marvellous space is equipped with a large E.M. Skinner
symphonic pipe organ [[known as the "Wotan" organ):

http://www.musicincincinnati.com/sit..._Terminal.html



Hear the sounds yourself: http://www.ohscatalog.org/emskatunteci.html

[Khorasaurus]

Honestly, I think the best bet for the MCS is to stabilize it in its current condition, up-light it [[as has been done), and re-develop around it [[as is currently happening).

It's a tourist attraction because of its ruined state and actually draws people to that area that then patronize the businesses. Instead of trying to save it, we should embrace it how it is and make the neighborhood around it the best it can be. It can be a memorial to Detroit's dark times. This way, development capital can be spent in more productive ways.

The priorities in that area should be sprucing up Roosevelt Park, fixing the bizarre traffic pattern at Michigan/Vernor/14th, renovating the CPA building, and infill along Michigan.

[royce]

Khorasaurus, I agree about fixing the traffic pattern in that area. First, there is no way that you should not be able to make a left on to Vernor from Michigan. Simply, turn the one-way lanes heading northeast into two-way lanes, which would serve the same function as the current one-way lanes heading southwest. Then build some retail storefronts/residential along Michigan Avenue where Roosevelt Park now stands [[the park would just be smaller but continue behind this development. MCS would be our Acropolis or Roman Coliseum.

[Khorasaurus]

Khorasaurus, I agree about fixing the traffic pattern in that area. First, there is no way that you should not be able to make a left on to Vernor from Michigan. Simply, turn the one-way lanes heading northeast into two-way lanes, which would serve the same function as the current one-way lanes heading southwest. Then build some retail storefronts/residential along Michigan Avenue where Roosevelt Park now stands [[the park would just be smaller but continue behind this development. MCS would be our Acropolis or Roman Coliseum.

Interesting idea, although I think the priority should be the north side of Michigan, which is pretty much entirely vacant fronting the park. With all the popular businesses in that area [[Slow's, Mercury Bar, Sugar House, etc) and Honey Bee market not that far away, it seems like the perfect location for a Studio One/Ellington style apartment building.

The streets around Roosevelt Park are bizarre because they're designed to allow stacking of cabs to pick up train passengers. Just spitballing, but I think one way to fix it would be to tear out the westbound lanes of Vernor, convert the eastbound lanes to two ways, convert 14th to two way traffic south of Michigan, and install a traffic circle at the Vernor/Michigan/14th intersection. There's plenty of space because of the park to the south and southwest of the intersection.

Now, finding the money for that and getting MDOT to agree to it are a different story, but I think it would make that area a lot less awkward and help continue the redevelopment momentum.

[SDCC]

Indianapolis Union Station
Underwent a major makeover in the early 80’s – the Station’s grand opening was in 1986. Union Station is in downtown Indianapolis.
“Union Station became a collection of restaurants, nightclubs, and specialty stores; which included an NBC Store and a model train retailer”.
The one photo is the “Grand Hall” and the other is from “track-side”, which was upstairs from the Grand Hall – this area [[where they purchased tickets) housed a few fancy restaurants, one was Norman’s – a Michigander and restaurateur named Norman LePage opened “Normans”.
Crown Plaza opened at the opposite end of track-side, using Pullman Cars as suites, the hotel is still open and is all that remains from the original Union Station.
I moved away in 1990, most of the retailers left in the mid-nineties. Today it’s been partitioned off – walls and barriers divide the facility into different sections which are rented out to a few businesses, mostly it sits empty, it’s heady days of the 80’s long gone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_Union_Station

[Gistok]

Thanks for that info SDCC... all I can say is this... Ghettopalmetto... when is your generation planning on coming to Indy and cleaning up this vibrant urban mess?

Ditto for St. Louis... who's massive Union Station had $140 million in renovations back in the 1980s... great ideas all... except no trains go there anymore... the retail has just about been obliterated... and with that massive amount of investment... you would think that such a jewel would have gotten more than the $20 million fire sale price it received back in 2012... after undergoing several owner changes!

http://www.stltoday.com/business/loc...9bb30f31a.html

These great train stations... they make fine restoration projects... and make their cities proud. But so many of them seem to loose steam after a few years....

[professorscott]

These great train stations... they make fine restoration projects... and make their cities proud. But so many of them seem to loose steam after a few years....

No doubt, and for a simple reason. Washington [[DC) Union Station is doing fine as a combination train station and shopping/dining center because lots of trains come and go there every day. Train stations, ordinarily, were built slightly out of the way of the center of town, because they take up a lot of space. So for a train station as retail center, or any such kind of thing, to succeed, you either need the train station itself to be busy, or you need the neighborhood to be of sufficient density [[or to be, in and of itself, a sufficient destination) to support the retail activity.

Detroit's grand old station has neither thing going for it. There aren't enough people living close enough to it to support it in that way, and even if the Detroit trains still stopped there, that's only a few trains a day.

It saddens me to say this, because I've always been an admirer of that wreck of a building, but I just can't imagine any use of that building that would be successful and justify the expense of renovation, given where it is, and given how redevelopment is happening in Detroit: spotty, and in several different areas, but not that one.

[Not In MI]

Richmond, Virginia had three stations.

One, Broad Street Station, was at a ways from downtown and has been repurposed as the Science Museum of Virginia.

Main Street Station was close to downtown [[beautiful Victorian architecture) and was repurposed as a large shopping mall [[with little parking). All the stores went broke and the state took it over for gummint offices.

Hull Street Station was very small and the Norfolk Southern uses it for storage.

Let me correct a few errors here. Broad Street Station served the old RF&P and ACL railroads [[will let you all look up what railroads those initials stand for). Main Street was the C&O and SAL. In the 1950s SAL left Main Street and moved over to Broad Street Station. Both Main and Broad Street limped into the 1970s Amtrak era. The state took over Broad Street and originally was going to tear it down but it was saved and converted to the Science Museum of Virginia. House tracks have been relaid in the past few years and trains can now back in. In addition its new next door neighbor is the Redskins training facility. Main Street was remade into a mall which quickly failed and is today state govt offices. But it also a huge tax money cesspool, millions were spent bring it back as an Amtrak stop but the anticipated economic development has yet to pay off.

Hull Street Station is not a storage place for Norfolk Southern, it is the home of the Richmond Railroad Museum.

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

Professorscott, I agree with your post entirely, but I think I am slightly more optimistic about the future. You are so correct in noting that successful stations-as-big-city-destinations require many things, including lots of traffic. Stations in DC, Philly, Chicago, New York, etc are all hugely busy with both Amtrak and commuter service. Even if Amtrak service and patronage to Detroit quadrupled we would not be in their league.

I see 2 scenarios for providing a useful future for the building:

1) A private development of some sort [[hotel or office building), subsidized with huge and creative tax credits. I would favor giving a developer 20 years of no property or sales taxes at the station itself and 10 years of no state/city income taxes for any new job created there or moved there from out of state. But no one will build an island. It would also need a more vibrant neighborhood in which to thrive. To foster that, I think the city should commit to offering substantial tax credits for the Michigan Ave corridor from downtown to the bridge [[or further). The city needs to determine whether a desire to renovate MCS and revitalize the neighborhood is worth such a broad array of tax credits. I think it is, and a proposal like this would attract real bids.

2) The building could be a great anchor for a museum/educational hub. I would not mind seeing the state dept of Education taking the building through eminent domain and establishing a natural history museum, planetarium, and aquarium in and about the station. The tower could be used for offices and classrooms. The public spaces in the station could be cafeterias, museum stores, etc. The actual attractions could be built behind and next to station. This plan requires a plan to build and fund these new institutions [[which we should be doing anyway, I think). It would require direct gov't money and a vigorous private fundraising campaign. I would allow one [[or more) of our state universities to run classes [[for the general public, for school kids, and for college students) in the tower. I would also enlist those same universities' science education departments to design the educational program of the museum/planetarium/aquarium, with grad students working with the kid groups.

I would favor a private development at the station, but hope a cultural center could be built if something else didn't materialize. Note: I think we should build those museums regardless of what happens to the station.

[casscorridor]

What ever happened to civic ambition?

We have to think more long term. The tracks lead to CANADA, and Detroit will be a major station on a future international high-speed rail line. Thousands of travelers from Montreal, Toronto, Chicago and beyond could pass through the station every day.

Subway or light-rail could easily connect passengers with Downtown, less than two miles to Campus Martius. The station could be a hub for suburban commuters and inter-city travelers alike.

The new center station can still be important, as many cities have multiple passenger rail hubs.

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

Cass Corridor, being a thru-station on the road from Chicago to Toronto will not generate any people getting out and spending time in Detroit. Detroit will never be a major rail destination. When you change planes in Atlanta, you are not spending time in Atlanta. Even if we sank billions into station renovation, subway and light rail connections, and we convinced Amtrak to massively reroute the Chicago-Toronto line through Detroit [[although it is less direct), it would not increase visits to Detroit.

Our transit money is very stretched as it is. It makes no sense to spend a bundle on a gigantic station renovation that will serve few people. There might [[and might not) be a little bump in Amtrak business out of Detroit. And you would need to spend another bundle build & reroute our regional transit systems through MCS. Which, while grander, it would be much less practical because it pulls the system's focus away from where it's most likely to be used- downtown.

Civic ambition is great. But it should be focused on maximizing our potential. We don't have the potential to have a Union Station/Grand Central/30th Street Station here on Michigan Ave. There is no money you could spend to make it a major rail station. It's huge. It could be beautiful. But it won't be busy. We would benefit our transit users a lot more by improving bus service, doing limited light rail, and connecting our various systems with each other, parking, and major destinations for employment, education, and retail/entertainment. Spending a ton to make the few people taking the train feel like they are in an amazingly cool White Elephant Train Station would be such a waste of money that Lansing and Washington would be justified in cutting off transit money. Restoring MCS as a train station is a service to vanity, not transportation. Running light rail or BRT down Michigan Ave would serve commuters and that neighborhood better than a station reno would for a similar amount of money. And it would have users.

[river rat]

Same old, same old. Detroiters like to blame someone else [[in this case, Matty) for the mess of the city. Detroiters elected idiot and corrupt politicians for decades, tolerated soft and activist judiciary, served on incompetent juries just to mention a few sins; and now continue to propose projects that are looney. Same old stuff. Why not bring back steam locomotives too?

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

We could build a subway system all throughout SE Michigan that ran on steam locomotives! What a great idea, river rat. If only Dick Cheney and Wascally Wepublicans hadn't destroyed Detroit to get oil and set Kwame up!

[KJ5]

So, wait, you guys are saying...it's not gonna be the new police headquarters like Kwame promised??

[Richard]

Cass Corridor, being a thru-station on the road from Chicago to Toronto will not generate any people getting out and spending time in Detroit. Detroit will never be a major rail destination. When you change planes in Atlanta, you are not spending time in Atlanta. Even if we sank billions into station renovation, subway and light rail connections, and we convinced Amtrak to massively reroute the Chicago-Toronto line through Detroit [[although it is less direct), it would not increase visits to Detroit.

Our transit money is very stretched as it is. It makes no sense to spend a bundle on a gigantic station renovation that will serve few people. There might [[and might not) be a little bump in Amtrak business out of Detroit. And you would need to spend another bundle build & reroute our regional transit systems through MCS. Which, while grander, it would be much less practical because it pulls the system's focus away from where it's most likely to be used- downtown.

Civic ambition is great. But it should be focused on maximizing our potential. We don't have the potential to have a Union Station/Grand Central/30th Street Station here on Michigan Ave. There is no money you could spend to make it a major rail station. It's huge. It could be beautiful. But it won't be busy. We would benefit our transit users a lot more by improving bus service, doing limited light rail, and connecting our various systems with each other, parking, and major destinations for employment, education, and retail/entertainment. Spending a ton to make the few people taking the train feel like they are in an amazingly cool White Elephant Train Station would be such a waste of money that Lansing and Washington would be justified in cutting off transit money. Restoring MCS as a train station is a service to vanity, not transportation. Running light rail or BRT down Michigan Ave would serve commuters and that neighborhood better than a station reno would for a similar amount of money. And it would have users.

I take Amtrak from Fla to Mlps with 6 hour layover in Chicago and same in DC.

Both are in what I would call remote areas or not walkable.

Chicago has lots of transfer points but it is really confusing to me so time spent is just kinda walking around not spending money.

DC is also remote and also has other options,but like Chicago is overwhelming and both would require lots of time and research to figure how to take advantage of,and the average
traveler is in a strange location.

The difference is in DC I have an option which is the $25 Old time tours I use them and spend money across the city and have fun every time I go.

That is the difference when presented with different options and how one city capitalizes on that aspect verses the other.

Detroit has excess to 70% of the rest of the country within 24 hours,by rail,moving not only people but cargo,so now you also have created a cargo hub.

You are running late to catch your train to Chicago and are hungry,no bother grab a bite in the restaurant at the station and relax.

High "speed" rail from Detroit to Chicago is going to be online soon,MCD could be a hub from Canada with a 3 hour layover,what can you do as a city to accommodate those passengers in those three hours and give them a positive lasting impression while relieving them of some of their hard earned cash which is revenue,public relations and jobs for the city.

Why is it impossible to believe that when Detroit is assessable to 70% of the rest of the country in 24 hours that it can be a destination?

So Detroit has nothing to offer to 70% of the rest of the country?

Why is the train called from Detroit to Chicago and not reverse?

Chicago is also assessable to 70% of the country so it is a hub,why? Because Detroit is not a hub today and it never will be,so it is law that it will never happen.

When I was in the service everybody always asks where one is from,

Me,Minneapolis,most common reply is that in Indiana?

Go anywhere in the world and say Detroit and it is known,I would say that Detroit has more potential as a destination then a very large percentage of the rest of the country,like it or not that foundation was laid by your forefathers,at this juncture one can either build on it or dig a hole and bury it because it is not,therefore it cannot be.

[Hermod]

Why is the train called from Detroit to Chicago and not reverse?

Because railroads have always used east to west and north to south to designate trains.

It is Chicago-New Orleans, not New Orleans-Chicago.

It is Chicago-Denver not Denver-Chicago.

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

Not to be condescending, Richard, but could you summarize your main point or question? I can't really figure out from your post what you are trying to say.