Monroe Block Development

[royce]

Can't understand why that front window of the National Theater has remained open for several years. Rain, snow, and bird-droppings don't add to the decay of the building?
IMHO, the National Theater has been neglected by the city on purpose. Now, Dan Gilbert comes along and basically wants to tear it down. "No problem," says the City.

The National Theater deserves to be saved. A small concert venue like St. Andrew's Hall could be the way to go. An archway to what, sucks?

[EastsideAl]

Can't understand why that front window of the National Theater has remained open for several years. Rain, snow, and bird-droppings don't add to the decay of the building?
IMHO, the National Theater has been neglected by the city on purpose.

Ding, ding, ding!

I knew someone who was involved in he DIA's performing arts wing who, once it was owned by the city, badly wanted to gain use of the National Theater for putting on smaller musicals [[smaller than the big roadshows that the Fisher booked) and operas. The National, as a former vaudeville and burlesque house, was much better suited to this than the DIA's own theater.

Despite having private donors lined up to help pay for it, and professional theater people interested in running it, the city administration stood in his way at every turn. They also refused to keep the structure heated, pretty much ensuring that the plumbing and the plaster would be trashed, and refused to allow the roof to be inspected, pretty much ensuring that water would leak in and wreck most of the rest of it. After a few months they pulled the permission for further visits to the theater, and that spelled the end of that project.

Demolished by neglect [[who remembers that?) was the Detroit way of 'urban renewal' back then under the Young administration. It just served to add immensely to our problems and the empty lifelessness of the city, and destroyed so much [[like most of Brush Park) that we would now dearly love to have back.