
Detroit's fabled Packard plant gets makeover - rmason
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2017/05/15/detroit-packard-plant/101733400/
======
nooron
This is really cool, but I feel some skepticism. I grew up in metro Detroit,
live nearby in A2, and commute to Detroit proper weekly for meetings. A lot of
the people moving to Detroit are like me -- young, unmarried, working in
creative, marketing or tech. We are able to have a lot of fun living there.
But relatively few of us stay as we age and get married and build families,
for fairly sound reasons, like poor quality of schools and poor quality of
emergency services. I worry that we are building a place to be partied but not
really lived in.

~~~
amyjess
Now I'm curious: what about Detroit makes it attractive as a party town?

~~~
wcunning
Look up the history of Theater Bizarre and go down the rabbit hole at your own
leisure.

Edit: Sorry that feels very google it for yourself. I don't mean it that way.
That's a good starting topic to find the other crazy things that happen here.
The Dirty Show is another one.

~~~
beamatronic
I didn't take it that way. You offered up a ( in Amazon's parlance ) a
Statistically Improbable Phrase, which presumably is a noun, and presumably
has something to do with the parent topic. Not only that, you offered a
helpful disclaimer which showed great respect for your reader's time. I award
you 8 out of 10 points.

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Animats
No, Packard plant starts to maybe get makeover. This was a groundbreaking
ceremony, not an opening. And this phase is just 121,000 square feet of office
space. That's about 2/3 of a standard WalMart.

The Michigan Central Railroad Station refurbishing was more promising. It's
one of America's most impressive abandoned buildings. There was a project to
refurbish it, and that got far enough that the windows were replaced, an
elevator replaced, and the building secured. But it's still empty.

[1] [https://goo.gl/maps/m6JZbPCqKqv](https://goo.gl/maps/m6JZbPCqKqv)

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thedarkginger
This is big news for Detroit. Probably along with the train station, the
Packard Plant was a symbol of the D's blighted era.

If you're wondering what this looked like before, Anthony Bourdain made a stop
to this site on his show a couple years back, now getting $20M+ in
development:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpF8eZ3bPqE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpF8eZ3bPqE)

Lot of good things happening there right now.

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wahern
"Tests, meanwhile, have found arsenic and selenium in the soil on the site."

Why did they even bother testing? Perhaps it was required by law or as a
condition of sale or permitting. But it's all liability and no benefit.

Obviously the site should be expected to be contaminated. Train your workers,
give them proper equipment, and enforce safe working procedures. Cover and
contain the soil. Use a reputable soil disposal company--i.e. one that also
assumes the soil to be contaminated and directs it to safe usage, such as
filler for road construction. As long as a developer does the ethical thing,
why expect him to risk his entire investment? It's not just his money stake--
everybody in that community has a stake in the project's success.

------
technotarek
I credit this place and the other abandoned warehouses of Detroit for my
interest in public policy issues (e.g., economic development, labor policy).
These places were also a great source of entertainment during my high school
days. The Packard Plant was a bit legendary for parties (raves) in the 90s.

"It was just under ten years ago that my friends and I began traveling from
our suburban homes in Royal Oak, Michigan into Detroit looking for nightlife.
We were typical middle-class teenagers seeking to change our environment and
explore the 'underground' of an aging city. The destination was often an
abandoned warehouse converted into a makeshift nightclub, where by 2 a.m. bass
shook the rundown building from foundation to roof. Over time and after
becoming acutely more observant, however, I realized that these surroundings
were more than a suburban nightlife. The boarded-up homes, the all too rare
museums, and the businesses polarized between mild victory and failure, all
came into context—my observations matured. Through the study of economics,
these observations became first-hand illustrations of poverty, real estate
markets and labor dilemmas.

...

I clearly remember paying $20 to stumble into a nearly pitch dark doorway of
Detroit's Packard Plant. The walls of the abandoned building, certainly the
size of a football stadium, were adorned with black garbage-bag-like plastic
to create boundaries for the event. There were some scarce hanging lamps and
one other thing that looked a touch unreal: an industrial heater. Seriously,
it looked like someone had taken the propulsion unit from a fighter jet and
mounted it on the floor. Its flames poured out a good 6-8 feet and the only
thing keeping you from igniting yourself was a a remote, albeit real, sense of
mortality. That was it in terms of the venue. One thousand other kids paid the
same and made the same entrance into the city's largest expense-free
nightclub...it was a good time before glowsticks and pacifiers made their way
into the scene. "

[https://technotarek.com/shows/richie-
hawtin](https://technotarek.com/shows/richie-hawtin)

------
mschuster91
Regarding the contamination: Why are property developers, especially
factory/industrial ones, not required to post bonds or insurance that provides
cleanup and restoration after a company bankruptcy?

The current model shifts all the liability to the taxpayer or worse to new
developers as contaminant presence is a significant barrier to redevelopment
of unused areas. Or in case of nuclear, the public is stuck with literally
hundreds of billions of euros with cleaning up nuclear plants - no one sane
believes that the energy companies have enough cash to cover for it.

------
curiouscat321
All of this development makes me wonder if Detroit could eventually rival
Chicago as the tech hub in the Midwest

~~~
sillysaurus3
The thing you need for a tech hub is an influx of young people. It seems more
likely that they're moving away from Detroit than to it, but is there a way to
look at the data?

~~~
ikeyany
Don't worry--they're all getting priced out of
Seattle/SF/DC/Denver/Portland/Texas. Give it 15 years.

~~~
Apocryphon
Not all of Texas, surely?

~~~
amyjess
It's starting to get that way with the populated parts.

Dallas used to be dirt cheap not even ten years ago, but it's rapidly
changing.

Personal anecdote: I remember signing my first lease on my townhouse in 2007,
and I was paying $1050/month for a ~1500 sq. ft. place in a decent
neighborhood in Far North Dallas. It steadily goes up every year, but this
year was the biggest leap ever: my lease went up to $1334/month from
$1270/month last year.

Why is everything going up? Because as our economy grows and large companies
from out of state relocate their offices to Dallas, people are moving here in
droves, putting a strain on available housing. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington is
now the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the US. What's more is that when
the housing bubble burst in 2008, housing prices in Dallas didn't go down but
construction ground to a halt. During the Great Recession, housing prices
stagnated instead of going down, and now that the recession's over and jobs
are up, housing prices are going way up, and construction is still slow.

And it's not just Dallas; Austin has recently become very expensive, and it's
probably worse there than it is here. Not sure about Houston or San Antonio,
but I wouldn't be surprised if they start getting expensive soon if they
aren't already. Are there other parts of Texas you can move to? Sure, if you
want to be in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing to do, especially if
you're used to a major metropolitan area, and very little likelihood of
meeting people who share your interests. The cities in Texas are also blue
islands in a sea of red, so if you're LGBT you may find yourself unwelcome in
small towns, and unless you're extremely conservative you are unlikely to find
people you have anything in common with. And of course you're not likely to
find a job in the tech industry; I guess you'd be OK if you work remotely, but
you better hope you don't ever lose your job.

If you're curious, here are some news articles on the rising housing prices in
Dallas caused by the population explosion. Be warned that dallasnews.com has
an easily-bypassed paywall, so you'll want to open an incognito tab for it.

[http://www.dentonrc.com/news/state/2017/05/15/housing-
market...](http://www.dentonrc.com/news/state/2017/05/15/housing-market-
stretches)

[https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-
estate/2017/05/12/n...](https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-
estate/2017/05/12/not-enough-houses-as-toyota-moves-to-plano)

[https://qz.com/978602/the-main-reason-americans-are-
ditching...](https://qz.com/978602/the-main-reason-americans-are-ditching-ny-
and-flocking-to-the-land-of-the-cowboys/)

[https://www.dallasnews.com/business/toyota/2017/05/09/plano-...](https://www.dallasnews.com/business/toyota/2017/05/09/plano-
readies-roads-first-wave-toyota-employees-traffic-comes) (this is more about
the impending traffic apocalypse than rising housing prices, but it's still
worth a read)

[https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2017/05/the-whole-
city...](https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2017/05/the-whole-city-needs-
to-be-paying-attention-to-what-is-happening-in-west-dallas/)

And that's just what I've seen posted to /r/Dallas in the last week. I
remember finding a graph of housing prices in the last 20 years or so
comparing Dallas to other major cities, showing that Dallas was the only one
that didn't take a huge hit in 2008, and I wish I could find it again.

~~~
supernovae
Property Taxes is also hurting Texans..

I live in Austin, in a neighborhood where 4 years ago the houses were 115k.
Just this month we saw some of our first 425k sales.. and this was a blue
collar non HOA homely neighborhood but Apple moved in and investors have
followed.

~~~
big_youth
115K to 425K in 4 years? Which neighborhood is that? Even on the Eastside that
seems insane.

~~~
supernovae
The neighborhood surrounding Apple's new campus in north Austin.

non investor homes hit 320k+.. but that investor flip was a whole knew game
for this hood.

