Ilitches finally moving on Fine Arts Building facade & Blenheim Apts?

[Gistok]

If I have to choke down “festivities” area… Dare I ask what took so damn long? And WTF with the Detroit Life building? Nothing festive about that capping the festival block. Gilbert would have finished that empty beauty 10 years ago if it was in his portfolio.

You forgot to mention "festoon lighting"... when I looked that up it mentioned "light bulbs strung along".

I am just as skeptical as you are... after all the Detroit Life Building has been a work in progress for over 20 years! And I worry that the Ilitch owned Women's Club just south of the Blenheim will be a work in progress for some time as well.

My only hope is that if the Ilitches hand over the property for someone else to develop, so that something will actually happen with the Blenheim and Fine Arts properties, besides fester.

Maybe the city administration is finally calling the Ilitches to task for their slumlord activities. So they release the properties for someone with actual development experience to take them over [like with the United Artists Building]. But definitely we have to invoke Skipper's Rule here [we won't believe it until it is done].

Here are 2 images of W. Adams, one from Woodward in the 1940s at night looking past the now gone Adams Theatre entrance, past the neighboring gone Shurly Hospital... all the way to the Downtown [former Oriental] Theatre blade sign, where the auditorium was torn down in the early 1950s, but the former lobby [now PAO Restaurant] is housed within the Briggs Houze apartments.

The other image is aerial from the other end showing the now gone Downtown Theatre auditorium [replaced by parking], the PAO Restaurant, farther up to Woodward the missing gap in the streetwall where the Shurly Hospital and Fine Arts Building [Adams Theatre] used to be. This 2nd color image also shows the red Blenheim Apartments up Park Ave.