Quote Originally Posted by Retroit View Post
At the very least, Dionysia should be required to put the total cost of renovation in an escrow account before work begins. $3-4 million is not going to get them very far.
As if Detroit should be dictating financial responsibility.... It's not as if the City has an extra $1.4 million laying around for demolition.

At what point do you get the City of Detroit's hands out of what should be private sector work? An escrow account for the total cost of renovation is a ridiculous proposition--and would be considered nonstandard in the industry. Please--let's put more red tape in the way of developers, shall we?

This is getting embarrassing for the DEGC. You have cocksure sky-is-falling George Jackson [[is that George Jackson, P.E.? I can't tell.) declaring the building "unsafe", when no engineer has been retained to assess the integrity of the structure. Dennis is proposing to do what DEGC should have already done--IF DEGC WERE INTERESTED IN OBJECTIVE DECISION-MAKING.

Dennis's $3-4 million isn't intended to cover the cost of complete redevelopment. He hasn't even submitted a plan. But in order to come up with a plan, you need to hire an engineer to evaluate the structure, develop a scope of repairs, conduct stabilization activities where necessary, and hire an architect to develop a schematic design for the new use. At that point, you figure out how much a redevelopment is going to cost, and what kind of money you can get for it through leasing, and determine whether or not the numbers are going to work.

Knock Dennis if you will, but at least he's putting up some money to make an objective decision instead of going around just knocking shit down at random. Let's see the DEGC put their actions where their lip-service to preservation is.