Woodward/Charlotte Car Dealership owned by Ilitch facing demolition

[bust]

This is what I was replying to, and I copied the quote:

"Originally Posted by Bham1982I think you'll soon be getting your "premium rate parking", but in the form of yet another surface lot. Just look at the amazing revitalization initiated by our latest sports arena...

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I've always maintained: If NO LCA, Then no Brush Park development. [[simple if-then-else statement).

This argument is so wrong it's infuriating.

Brush Park is developing DESPITE the arenas, not because of them.

Brush Park is revitalizing first because a few people with vision saw the potential in the beautiful old houses close to Woodward, downtown, CCS, the DIA, the rest of the cultural district, and Eastern Market. Second because like DotWC said, the Ilitches weren't accumulating properties there for a potential stadium, tearing down the buildings, and/or accelerating their destruction by neglect. Third because the city and feds decided the Brewster Projects were no longer serving their intended purpose. Lots of other people have since caught on, most notably the investors behind City Modern.

I have several times posted here how I am a fan of City Modern. I once said it's the best thing going in Detroit. It presents an enlightened vision how to create a thriving, walkable, mixed use neighborhood. It offers attractive options people like me might want.

The absolute WORST thing about that development is its proximity to the dead zones surrounding the arenas and the streams of outsiders they attract. Too many attendees disrespect the neighborhood. The rest still unintentionally create a negative impact, due to the traffic they create and the banality of the businesses that will open to serve them. If I lived there I'd only attend an event at one of the arenas a few times a year and never go to one of the new crap restaurants, but the parking lots, the parking garages, and impenetrable streams of car traffic would be a cancer to deal with every single day.

Much more of the old neighborhood been destroyed in order to build and serve the arenas than has been created. And everything that has been created has been for the arenas and their crowds, not local residents.

Detroit would have been better off had the arenas been situated much farther from Detroit's most promising real estate, somewhere else.

I have plenty of experience living a few blocks away from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. And I was there many years before it was built. I know what an arena means for local residents. With three arenas nearby and nowhere near the mass transit and powerful vitality of Brooklyn to counteract them, Brush Park's arena problem is much more than three times worse!

But I agree with Zads07, emu steve is changing the topic. Like the leak about the supposed high rise probably never to materialize near Comerica Park was intended to distract from the topic.

Back on point: Is Detroit better or worse off after this handsome historic building is torn down for yet another Ilitch parking lot?

[1953]

It is criminal to tear down an historic, zero-setback, multi-story, mixed-use building on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit. I wish the Ilitches only ill-will for their decades-long destruction of Detroit's urban fabric.