Yeah! After a year or so of speculation Detroit landed 4,000-strong Quicken Loan for its downtown! This will compliment Compuware's move a few years back quite nicely, and other Gilbert (owner of Cleveland Cavaliers)-owned companies are also considering moving to downtown Detroit with Quicken. Many had thought the plan had died because of the terrible housing market and defaulted loans. Gilbert has said that Quicken moved quite some time ago to doing better loans so maybe this isn't hitting them as hard as others.
I read about this earlier. This is great news. So much of the problems that Detroit faces has to do with the suburbanization of the metro area and the lack of dependence on the central city. The more economic value that Detroit has, the better for the region.
They talk about how Detroit is trying to move forward but is having a tough time trying to shake it's reputation. Hopefully more developments like the Quicken Move, and the DIA opening continue to happen.
It's not going to be easy to shake a reputation that the city earned over 50 years. I think it's silly for anyone to expect that it won't take at least a decade or two to completely reverse, if not a whole other 50 year period. The city could easily eventually win the battle on the ground, but still have to fight for years to change perception.
My main hope regarding Detroit is that they make every effort to save historic structures, it seems they're doing quite well right now, but if they sway from that the losses could be huge.
They really tore down too much, already, too the point of that there isn't much left of much significance to tear down, anymore. We don't have to worry about them falling back into this trend for that fact. That, and the preservation community is much more powerful now.
I am moreso talking about the smaller neighborhood buildings, like houses, rowhouses and lowrise apartments, those are the most at risk. I think that most people are smart enough to try to save a 10 or 20 floor building of historic significant. Although, there are a couple of very recent, very prominent examples of this (Motown and Statler).
Comments
- First a development strategy will have one year to pick which of the two sites in downtown Detroit Quicken will move to, so that will be by 2008.
- Then, they will have another 18 months to actually finalize a development plan.
We're not looking for any solid construction for what seems at least another two years.
First is an article: Detroit Revival Vies With Industry’s Decline
Second is a slideshow: "In Detroit, Bad Timing for a Renaissance"
They talk about how Detroit is trying to move forward but is having a tough time trying to shake it's reputation. Hopefully more developments like the Quicken Move, and the DIA opening continue to happen.