(rshsdepot) Detroit, MI

["James Dent" <james.dent_@_itochu.com>]

An editorial from the Detroit News...

Detroit's ultimatum to business mogul has no teeth

By Pete Waldmeir / The Detroit News

     Detroit's get-tough City Council has given Grosse Pointe Shores
businessman Manuel "Matty" Maroun six months to come up with a firm plan to
redevelop and resuscitate his derelict 88-year old Michigan Central Depot --
or, they say, it will tear the building down.
   Maroun can be excused if he doesn't quake in his boots over that
toothless threat. The fact of the matter is that downtown Detroit is
littered with more offensive high-profile eyesores than the old railroad
station at Michigan and West Vernor.
   And if the council ever was to order demolition of these abandoned
buildings in order of their importance, the 18-story depot would be well up
the list in cost and well down the list in urgency.
   The once-elegant train station has been going to seed for more than two
decades. Today, it is a windowless, trashed hulk that despite being
surrounded by a high wire fence has been picked clean by scavengers, vandals
and vagrants.
   Don't get me wrong. I have no particular affection for Matty Maroun and I
put little stock in his grandiose promise that he intends to turn the relic
into some gleaming trade-processing hub complete with a cultural arts
center, shopping and housing. There just isn't much in that area of the city
to support such an ambitious undertaking -- and Maroun knows that better
than any of us.
   But why talk so tough with him when so many more-inviting targets for the
wrecking ball litter the city's surrealistic moonscape? You don't suppose
the council is just trying to make folks think that it actually intends to
do something about blight, do you?
   I got to musing about Detroit's huge, ugly real estate inventory when the
few remaining tenants bid farewell to the Whittier Towers last week so its
doors could be locked. The 78-year-old Whittier was at the top of its class
for a lot of years.
   Even after it was converted from a hotel into permanent residences, it
maintained its landmark attraction -- mainly because of its storied history
as a watering spot for the rich and famous and its east-side location along
the Detroit River.
   Now, if I had to guess what's in store for the Whittier, I'd have to say,
absolutely nothing. Take a hard look around. It's just another big fish in a
really big pond.
   Three formerly elegant downtown hotels -- the Sheraton-Cadillac, the
Statler Hilton and the Pick-Fort Shelby -- all have been vacant for years
and hold little or no hope of ever being rehabbed. Tiger Stadium was
shuttered two years ago. Plans to convert it into a
retail/entertainment/housing development are mostly pipe dreams.
   Ford Auditorium, once at the heart of Detroit's civic center, has been
padlocked since the late 1980s. Attempts to tear it down and fill its
valuable waterfront acreage with more lucrative commercial structures have
been thwarted twice, classic examples that Detroit's bark is far worse than
its bite.
   Incidentally, I hope that if Matty Maroun ever offers to sell the
Ambassador Bridge to Detroit for $100, the council won't think he's some con
man and have him arrested.
   He owns it.

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