DPS announces Cass Tech demolition

**detroiturbex** · October-19-10, 02:48 PM

http://www.freep.com/article/2010101...ch-to-be-razed

Abatement work to start Nov. 1, major demo work to start in June.

Here is the press release from DPS: http://detroitk12.org/news/article/2077/

**Detroitnerd** · October-19-10, 02:49 PM

Sure am glad Bobb is putting all that money into edumacation.

**R8RBOB** · October-19-10, 03:24 PM

It's time. Old Cass Tech has it's day but the old girl has to come down.

**DetroitZack** · October-19-10, 03:37 PM

I was just about to post this

**casscorridor** · October-19-10, 03:53 PM

Ya fer skools!! A+ fer bob bobb on his pragres reporte for histery clas!!!

Caunt wate tu see the crumblin weedy lot thay replase that eye soar with

**Gsgeorge** · October-19-10, 04:03 PM

A sad shame what has happened to that building and its legacy. It has been pillaged & burned, with thousands of documents & equipment left behind. I wonder if anything left inside will be salvaged... I doubt it. Taking the items out when the building first closed would've saved thousands more. Why this building was left open to the elements & people for so long is puzzling, especially with the new school right next door & so many eyes on it.

Bobb, the council, planners, and businessmen like Illitch have seemed to just given up on the area around lower Cass Ave. Unquestionably it is the most demolished, abandoned, and seedy parts of the downtown area. But it is surrounded on all sides by good assets like Midtown, downtown, Corktown, and Woodbridge. Instead of trying to save what is left, the idea seems to be 'demolish now, build later'. At the expense of what? I would say a lot of history, integrity, pride, and identity is left in the rubble pile.

**kathy2trips** · October-19-10, 04:04 PM

What is wrong with us? We will regret this someday....soon.

**casscorridor** · October-19-10, 04:32 PM

Business as usual... if you haven't notice

**marcwigle** · October-19-10, 04:36 PM

My question is, could the school not have been renovated and expanded, if necessary, so that it could still be in use? Obviously, too late for that now but I always wondered... and it's too bad that it couldn't have been converted into office or condo space.

**detroiturbex** · October-19-10, 05:50 PM

Originally Posted by marcwigle

My question is, could the school not have been renovated and expanded, if necessary, so that it could still be in use? Obviously, too late for that now but I always wondered... and it's too bad that it couldn't have been converted into office or condo space.

That's a complicated issue, and I'm hoping someone with more experience in building restoration will chip in, but here are my $0.02:

A lot of the building had already been renovated. The modern wing facing Grand River was new construction built in the early 1980's. The eastern side of the original building [[facing the freeway) was renovated in the early 90's, mostly in 1992 to convert the floors from industrial to IT classrooms.

The problems though are significant. For starters, the foundation of the 1980 addition is subsiding, and the new wing is starting to pull away from the old wing on the top floors. The two wings run on different electrical currents, which would require the exiting electrical system to be pulled out and replaced. 40% of the water pipes in the building are lead, and they would need to be replaced as well. Scrappers have removed much of the remaining plumbing and computer network wiring. There are at least 10 elevators, but none of them were in any reliable working condition when the building was open, and at least two of them were bricked off.

One of the biggest challenges is that the building isn't just one structure anymore. It's like those dense high-rise structures, where they just kept adding on buildings and rooms on top of each other. When they stopped using part of the building, they'd just board it up and leave it. Huge parts of the first and top floors were simply sealed off or used for storage when they weren't useful anymore, and weren't maintained. Freeze / thaw. Repeat.

This is not a simple make-over. To make the building usable would require - at the very least - replacing all the wiring, plumbing, HVAC, elevators, roofing, windows, fixtures, bathrooms, make major repairs to the structure of the building to shore it up, asbestos abatement, tearing out the parts of the building that aren't usable, and bringing it up to code.

For what?

Mothballing or securing the building for future use is a questionable use of resources when there isn't a clearly defined need for it in the near future.

I'm a die hard preservationist, but in my totally non-professional opinion, the building is too far gone to be saved. As long as it stands unsecured, there is a very real possibility that it is going to catch fire like so many other buildings in the city, and from personal experience, that building with its dead-end hallways and stairwells full of obstructions would be a total deathtrap for firefighters.

It just is not worth it.

**RYANGUARD** · October-19-10, 06:04 PM

I will miss my alma mater but it is long past due to tear it down.It should have been demolished as soon as it was closed so that they could proceed with the original plans to build an athletic field and parking there.It just amazed me that no one could stop the vandals and scavengers from destroying the place one window at a time.There would have been a lot of animosity over the decision to tear it down but I would have rather the building was torn down as opposed to seeing it in this condition,which was inevitable.Nothing stays intact for too long in this city after it has been closed for any length of time.That is a sad fact of life in Detroit.

**mikefmich** · October-19-10, 06:18 PM

Just another casualty in Motown.

I had many friends that went to Cass, and my dad attended Cass also....class of '31 or '32.

When it comes to the city, I try to remain numb these days.

**UpTown** · October-20-10, 05:40 PM

That Cass Tech fell apart so fast was intentional. The City of Detroit turned a blind eye to it, as it would only accelerate it's deterioration and give less fuel to the preservationists. Logic being scarce these days, from what detroiturbex explained of the condition of the skeleton inside that hulking monolith, the outside needed to simply reflect the inside.
I'm sure there were countless times where kids could look out the window of the new Cass Tech and watch the scrappers, vandals, and urban spelunkers wandering around the empty halls doing whatever they please.