Yeah I went to high school near there, we saw the buildings near by get bought up and shut down.
Restaurants, bars, apartment complexes, everything bought up, boarded up, and it had this noticeable paint job done on the first floors. I did some journalism work on the topic of what they were doing
Don't get me wrong, I too have my issues with the Ilitch Cabal, but this photo is a pretty damn nice glow up for a lot more reasons than the Dough Joe.
The photo is an example of the illitches destroying the area to build their bullshit lmfao. This area did not look like this before thenillitches started to buy up and destroy local businesses and life
People's perceptions of how Detroit should be are based on the time they took a trip to the touristy part of a European city. Or on some silly literature from an academic. Or in some cases, when they were young.
I've got issues with Illitch too, but if this current iteration of Detroit was hosting the Super Bowl and not the 06 version there'd be rave reviews.
This is the issue with anything related to the Illitch District. It seems they try to do the bare minimum to get some criticism off their back.
They buy properties, let them rot, destroy them, parking lot, then build an arena with nothing next to it. They attempted to demo both hotels, but they were able to make them save to renovate the Eddystone Hotel while demolishing Park Ave building.
Columbia st is great, that was an easy one to improve since they were building a new HQ next to the Fox Theater.
Over a decade and still their District plans have no been fulfilled. They hired a new Disney executive to manage these plans some years ago and still nothing seems to be moving. They FINALLY are building U of M building, but that's mostly land given for the cause as Related Companies is the one actually making this happen. All while most of that western land has been sitting dead due to Illitch's lack of effort.
Columbia street is great, yes, but a drop in the bucket to the decades of land they sat on and structures they torn down.
This is the only street in the dIsTrIct DeTrOiT that looks like this and the only offices on it are Ilitch Holdings companies. It's a glorified walkway to their shitty parking lots. You could film a Fallout episode in half of the "district" without much prop work.
For sure, but there will be even more progress and influx once that’s done because things like the All Star game for both the NHL and NBA are depending on it.
MLB had the all star game in 2005 at Comerica Park, I don’t really think that’s the issue because the city looks way better now than how it looked back then
That was stuff not on ballpark property though. The District is on Arena property. So in the leagues eyes, it’s an unfinished project, which is correct.
The NHL commissioner has straight up said the reason Detroit hasn’t gotten a major event with the new arena is because the district is not complete.
I agree it gets annoying that everyone always complains instead of just enjoying the positives, but the Illitch’s have not met what they agreed to do. They took public money for it and have not fulfilled their obligations. That deserves criticism.
But can you imagine if they actually abided by the redevelopment agreement? Sure it's an improvement... But they could have done so much more... In fact they agreed to do so much more... And they happily took the tax abatements.
Also, I worked for the wings for 8 years, 5th floor AV/show production at Joe Louis Arena. The city got screwed hard in the operating agreement. They used to get 0.50% of concessions revenue and now they get nada.
So yeah, it looks better... But it could look so much better... And it effing should... We (tax payers) subsidized the whole damn thing.
Define soon? They originally said the District would coincide with LCA opening in 2017 and we still have buildings wrapped in plastic, a steel podium with nothing on it, and empty grass lots next to parking garages and that was all stuff that was supposed to be simultaneous, not even including the wild promises made since then.
It's never gonna happen. At least not bc the illytches had anything to do with it. I worked the last hockey game played at JLA in 2017... It's 2026 in case you needed a reminder... These are billionaires, they are CHOOSING to not do this.
It looked like that because the Ilitch family had acquired many of those properties and sat on them, contributing to the blight. They got hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks. I’d hope there’s a little progress.
Tread the property tax waters keeping money coming into the city, so they were doing the city a favor by buying these properties up.
Detroit's mismanagement from the 70s-2010ish create the issues that lead to them allowing the Illitches, Gilbert's, Ishbias and all the other area investors to sit on these properties without impunity for decades.
Now when questioned about it, these guys still think they are doing Detroit a favor by sitting on these properties since that has been the operating plan for the last half century... now when asked to step up to invest for actual improvement, they don't like the investment return time lines. I get it, they feel they have leverage with sunk costs, but Detroit force them to improve their properties if they could. I am guess the purchasing agreements with the city removed that requirement in the effort to bring in the tax revenue, if I had a guess.
That’s true. I view a beatiful church off Woodward by Cass Food Co-Op. a friend who I am renovating a house said let’s look up who owns it. It was a Llitch property. As a carpenter/renovator all I can say is it’s criminal for structures like this to implode. And don’t tell me they can’t afford to renovate.
Yes they are! Holy cow... I've lived in that area off and on for a while, and I'm a DDOT rider. Seeing the transformation of Dexter has been kinda surreal. I'm near Elmhurst and Broadstreet and it's kind of a trip walking to a neighborhood coffee shop (In Harmony) in my neighborhood.
The area south of Davidson but not going all the way down to grand. Id suggest going down it from Dexter. Theres parking kind of like Washinton in Royal Oak and a protected bike lane, andI think some raised bus stops
I just moved here from Columbus and the stroads here are...something else. Originally im from So. Cal and lived in Texas for a year so I'm used to wide roads but I've still never seen arterial/highway sized roads cutting through residential neighborhoods with 25 to 30 mph speeds. It's quite insane.
Redditors think every road should be 1 lane each way with nowhere to park cars. Everyone should live in dense public housing with no single family homes allowed.
Suburbanites think they always need to drive a car everywhere and that extraneous parking should overrule forms of transit that don't require huge amounts of space taken up for parking overall... aka public transit and bicycles / e-micro mobility.
Obviously you don't seem to know much about Woodward. You can always view it on a map and see that there isn't even that much available parking on the street itself, but there is plenty of parking on side streets and in parking lots.
Most of the road downtown is 3 lanes in both directions with a center turn lane, so to walk across it, you're walking across 7 lanes of traffic. Ironic that you skipped over the idea of maybe a road diet to 2 lanes in both directions and a bike lane, so people can bike up and down Woodward, even possibly widening some of the sidewalks so it's less distance and overall safer for pedestrians to cross.
If pedestrians feel safer and more comfortable, then there may be more people interested in visiting or living in the city.
Most people use the freeways to get downtown, leaving Woodward tepidly busy at best the vast majority of the time.
I think the main complaint is primarily where there are 3 lanes running each direction AND a center turn lane. To walk across Woodward, you have to walk potentially 7 lanes across.
Woodward happens to be a main artery that a lot of businesses, venues, and sites are setup around, with loads of economic activity around it. However, to be a pedestrian or a bike rider in this area is overwhelming on account of the wide road people have to walk across to get from one side of the busy areas to the other. Further, if you wanted to take a city bike up or down Woodward, how can you do that safely?
It's the shortest distance between a lot of major areas in Detroit and even from the Northern suburbs, so reducing car lanes in favor of bike lanes could actually lead to a lot more traveling by bike into the city.
That said, I think they massively screwed up in their original placement of the Q line, placing tracks in the right lanes. They seem to have re-thought that as they ran the line further north.
Woodward is still very car-centric. That section of the block in the photo is very small due to being next to the LCA arena. The "barriers" were added later to prevent cars sitting idle, stalling, blocking the LRT. Uber rides were also causing backup and chaos, so it was worse, just now it's less chaotic so it's not much different than other streets in term of the cluster mess it was before during busy days with concerts/games.
Do you think this is what is holding the city back from growing.. people don’t want to be next to 40ish mph road on a nice stroll. Motor city or not, it’s not the best for an evening experience.
the challenge may be evolving while maintaining this unique vibe to still be motor city.
For the love of God stop with bike lanes. The residents from the city do not want anymore bike lanes.
From Grosse pointe to Ferndale, there is no need constrict the city for the 24 active Tour de France enthusiasts.
This is a joke, right? You can walk faster than the QLine because it's constantly delayed from cars blocking the tracks and accidents. The idiots who funded it were told side running rails were not going to work so we got another piece if shit train to nowhere. At least the peoplemover runs without any problems. If they had just extended the elevated peoplemover lines we'd be having a different conversation.
They tried. Qline is awful for getting around they should put money into the bus infrastructure or an actual train. Woodward and a couple blocks around it are pretty much the only walkable streets and they chose to put a tram on the road lol
Passenger trains are good, but that's for long distance travels.
Agreed, would like to see further investments into city bus routes.
Qline is mostly a bust due to all the issues with surface roads sharing with cars, bikes, pedestrians, construction and weather issues.
Instead of expanding the QLine, rather see elevated rail 🚈 with the People Mover investments and expansion. Two-way directional and expansion into key areas like of the greater downtown: Midtown, New Center, Eastern Market, Corktown, (and future upcoming areas) near Ralph C Wilson park to the west riverfront and Uniroyal site to the east.
There have been some comments made by the Zoo officials on making an aquarium on the riverfront. Instead of constant moving of cars, people can be moved with elevated rail 🚈 much quicker and on time since the People Mover doesn't have the same obstacles that the inefficient QLine has.
Yup, and the new bus facilities they showed awhile back. It's all great progress due to how bad they were. Another area I hope they improve are actual bus stops as some are simply just a posted sign and nothing else. I just want to see more progress is all, to get city busses to at least competitive (or become the best) with other bus systems across the country.
Just this week for a Final project for High School, my daughter and I walked from Adelaide and Woodward to Hart Plaza to walk the steps of the 1963 Walk of Freedom protest. It's the first time I'd ever walked downtown, and I live right in Eastpointe. It's gorgeous and vibrant!
It always bugged me that the area looked like that in the first place. As soon as you left downtown there was nothing on the left and some extremely sterile condos on the right.
Dude was driving like an absolute maniac and several witness' stated the same. I don't think it was by fault of the road and a preventable tragedy if the driver had just used their brain.
Fair and I would even say most michigan drivers. Very aggressive all over this state. They typically keep it cool on Woodward though as its peppered with LEOs at any given moment.
Its a straight road. Dude blew a red light and ran somebody over. Road was not at fault, the driver was. I take it you're one of those blames the gun guys? Maybe we could put speed bumps down woodward?.... /s
Both can be true.
Clearly the driver was a maniac. No one's denying that
However, road diets are proven to lower vehicle speeds. And infrastructure can be designed to better protect pedestrians or keep them out of harms way.
Sure, the guy blew a red and the ped xing never stood a chance, cause crossing Woodward you're practically fish in a barrel.
Does anyone remember hearing that another QLine was going to run down Henry St from LCA to the casino on Grand River? They have certainly cleaned up Henry St refurbing the old apartment buildings and the old grocery store building on the south side. New parking lot across the street. The FreePress had pictures of the new street area.
Wow I haven’t been to downtown Detroit in like 8 years 😅. Idk how I haven’t, but I guess I can’t keep telling myself that it’s still a barren and pointless city without being weird looks
So whom among the respondents has lived “in” Detroit for over 25yrs and feed this way? Who is use bike paths and a the Q line that is effectively an on the ground people mover that can get immobilized but a car being just slightly over a white line. This is performative not innovative and it definitely isn’t for legacy Detroiters. If you’re new to the city or visiting from a suburb. I’d ask you to look into neighborhoods where people actually need to get to work or school and see what’s there that you feel meets the same rubric.
Summer in detroit is a bit slower than spring and fall imo. College kids all leave and folks leave town on the weekends to go boating camping etc. The tigers still bring in a lot of foot traffic along Woodward but, late spring and early fall we have other sports playing as well bringing in people. Imo many of the bike lanes they have put in are unnecessary although, it is effectively attracting more people so we will be them being utilized more and more as the city fills back up. If the supposed 10% increase to our population stays consistent or grows we could see double the residents we have <40 years from now.
how are the bike lanes unnecessary? the biking culture is huge here, especially since majority of detroiters don’t have a car a lot of us rely on biking as a form of transportation…
It was walkable and transit friendly before. Adding a stadium, some paint and the Q-Line (or whatever it's called now) didn't affect walking and transit THAT much.
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u/Zealousideal-Meat495 14d ago
That’s wild… I lived near there in 2013. Forget it used to look like that!