True, that has happened. And some lofts have been built. What did that do for Preservation Wayne's bottom line? Or their core vision? These developers made some serious coin developing these properties before the bottom fell out of the market. wish that they would have donated some of that to the group, or toward others. Kind of like a pay it forward type of deal.
And the building still sits vacant. Why? An admirable job cleaning that mess out 10 years ago, but come on, there has got to be a use for that place by now....PW hasn't gotten into the bricks-and-mortar issues as some conservancy groups have, but they have done a lot to promote the surviving historic fabric of the city. We volunteered and cleaned out the city owned National Theatre on a weekend back in 2000. There must have been 20 tons of debris in the interior [[lots of fallen ruined plasterwork). And there are countless other projects that we've contributed manpower towards.
DIA put that together, right? And you guys promoted them heavily. Safe to say that would have been a hit regardless of PW participation. And who's money put that infill up? I like the looks of Ferry Street, but there's things to be said for involvement from others, like the DIA. If it weren't for their involvement, would that have happened?PW also heavily promoted the surviving mansions on Ferry Ave. Today, with the help of the DIA [[and their 4 mansion Inn on Ferry Ave.) as well as other developers building quality infill housing, that street looks better than it has in decades.
It should be your call. Really. These various groups are in existence only for the self-interest of each group. It reminds me of that picture contest on this site:PQZ bitches about the grousing on this forum... but only a small fraction of members here are PW members.
Another issue is that the Detroit preservation community is rather fragmented... there's PW, Cityscape, DAADS [[Detroit Area Art Deco Society) and other smaller groups. It would be nice to combine efforts under say.... a Detroit Conservacy Group... but that's not my call.
http://declaredetroit.wordpress.com/gallery/
If I were to make a caption for that, it would be "Demand Better Preservation". Or "Unify or Destroy", with a nice pic of the Lafeyette building behind it. It's that serious. These groups need to get off their combined asses and actually DO something besides whine about the lack of preservation.
The grousing on this forum is from a whole lot of people that, for many reasons, are deservedly bitter about the half-hearted preservation efforts of the preservation groups. Having a real regional conservancy would be nice. But probably not in our lifetimes, with these groups butting heads, not at all possible.
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