
Michigan Central and the Rebirth of Detroit - pionerkotik
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/KnxBMVGAcn/michigan_central_detroit
======
redis_mlc
This is a great article - maybe the best that I've seen in terms of depth and
balance about Detroit (I'm from there.)

Both Detroit and Oakland allowed rain and rodents to heavily damage their
showcase train stations.

They are trying to restore them now, but a tarp would have saved tens of
millions of dollars and years in restoration costs.

The world-class DIA art museum was mentioned. Note that Toledo, Ohio, another
ruined city, has the fantastic Libby Glass Museum.

> For some years he has been buying lots in the area

Forward-thinking business owners with cash flow have a unique opportunity to
buy downtown real estate.

A trucking company bought hundreds of abandoned homes near swanky Belle
Isle(!) and paved an urban parking lot of around 50 acres for trans-shipping
between USA and Canada.

Detroit is one of the few cities in the world where you can buy a block-long
brick factory and launch a new mfg. business for essentially just the back
taxes.

[https://www.mobsteel.com/detroit-steel-wheel-
co](https://www.mobsteel.com/detroit-steel-wheel-co)

~~~
ironchef
Friend of a friend owns mobsteel. It's not manufacturing in the sense of "big
production lines" ... but more crafting new cars out of old ones. You'll see
lots of Adam's cars right at home on the woodward dream cruise.

While the article focuses on the Central, I wish there was a bit of something
on the failure that is the people mover.

That being said I wish Ford and Gilbert and everyone trying to revitalize
things the best of luck. It's an uphill battle which requires fixing the
educational system and essentially the community.

~~~
cleandreams
I see this differently. I grew up in Chicago in the era of decline. Economic
decline begets social decline. Much is made of the pathology of poor
communities, and I've heard it before: for jobs to come, you need to 'fix' the
people, the schools, the community. But funny thing, if the jobs are stripped
away, the people sink into despair and dysfunction. You see it today, in white
working class communities where it seems nearly everyone has succumbed to
opiates. When I was growing up it was called the pathology of the Black
family. In my area, jobs fled because the companies didn't want to pay union
wages. Then gangs took over. The people were blamed for the dysfunction. What
happens when the jobs disappear is the real problem.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The problem is people don't want to admit what needs to be done before it's
too late.

When the gas crisis hit, it put enough money into the Japanese car makers that
their next generation of cars weren't just more fuel efficient than what
Detroit was producing, they were actually competitive on multiple levels.

Suddenly the Big Three had to compete, but there was a problem. They had
promised their workers wages and benefits they could only provide when they
_didn 't_ have viable foreign competition. More competition meant lower
volumes and lower margins.

There are only two options in that circumstance. Either everyone tightens
their belt or the companies fail. But nobody wanted to tighten their belt. The
unions wouldn't give back what they negotiated during the time when the
American automakers had no competition. So the companies slowly failed, and
with them the region.

The alternative might have been that most cars were still made in Detroit, and
people there made middle class wages, just not upper middle class wages. But
they chose bankruptcy and unemployment over accepting that, and that's what
they got.

~~~
nradov
The promises to workers were certainly a contributing factor, but incompetent
and apathetic management was a far larger problem. If management had decided
to make efficient, high-quality cars the workers were capable of building them
as perhaps only slightly higher cost than the competition. Union assembly line
workers didn't design the Ford Pinto.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Management decisions did them no favors, but it was a fundamental shift no
matter how well they would have executed. If they had made better cars they
would have done better, but there was still no way to maintain their previous
revenues when they had new competitors selling good cars for less money, and
those revenues were what paid for those benefits.

------
spking
After years of looking at Detroit "ruin porn", I finally got to visit in
person last month with a friend from the area as my guide. Photos don't do it
justice! The station is enormous and very imposing.

(Also 4 minutes away is an amazing ramen place - Johnny Noodle King).

~~~
bloaf
Haha, small world! Johnny Noodle King is indeed amazing, I have some distant
relatives who built the countertops for the restaurant.

Oh Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynfVGyMrvz8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynfVGyMrvz8)

------
rmason
That station first represented the greatness of Detroit. Then it represented
what locals call 'ruin porn' and I've got at least three coffee table books
where it was the cover subject.

I grew up in Detroit and visit it often. I remember as a little kid visiting
the depot with my dad where he'd use one of the few nickel phones that still
remained in the city. As a teenager I took trains to and from the station.

I think what Ford is doing is amazing. A previous Ford built RenCen
[https://fineartamerica.com/featured/detroit-renaissance-
cent...](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/detroit-renaissance-center-
christopher-arndt.html) on the river shortly after the riots. It was supposed
to represent the city's rebirth but it was a very flawed development. General
Motors bought it and made it better as Ford exited the city.

The station represents Ford's triumphant reentry into the city of its birth.
It was a very gutsy call at a time when the company faces major threats.
Despite what the story says my friends that live there say that Ford has been
very receptive to their concerns.

But on a sad note there are the farmers. There are a number of couples making
a full time living farming the vacant lots. Someday those lots will be sold
and developed and the neighborhood will lose some of its unique character.

[https://www.freep.com/in-depth/news/columnists/john-
carlisle...](https://www.freep.com/in-depth/news/columnists/john-
carlisle/2018/12/12/north-corktown-urban-farmer/2141940002/)

------
danans
Even as a kid in the 80s when I saw its shuttered carcass out the car window,
I knew that building was something special, even though its size and
prominence vs it's surroundings made it a bit scary looking.

I remember asking my parents what it was, and being confused when they said it
was a train station, because I'd never heard of passenger trains in Detroit.

I do have a very foggy early memory of the last streetcars of Detroit before
they were ripped out, or maybe it was just the abandoned tracks. I also
remember asking my parents where the trains for those tracks were. I remember
them saying that "this is a car city", neither proudly nor vindictively, just
as a matter of fact.

It would be amazing to see passenger rail service return to Detroit. It would
take a huge culture shift,both nationally and locally.

------
analognoise
I don't understand why we bother. If places outlive their economic usefulness,
just move somewhere else. That's exactly what people did with Detroit - moved
on.

Why bother saving, or resurrecting it? Did we forget how to build grand
buildings?

~~~
cleandreams
Yes, we did forget how to build grand buildings.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
We didn't really forget. We just stopped wanting them.

Grand buildings are beautiful, but they're also much more expensive to build,
and to climate control, and they take up a lot more real estate that could be
housing for people.

Bill Gates or Elon Musk could afford to build buildings like that. Or they
could use their resources to fight malaria and climate change and get humans
into space. And as between them, they're probably making the better choice.

