tapezord

indeed, very cool shot Adam! I love freighters

Looks great! Reminds me of the old GENERAL MOTORS signage.

those are the buildings that they are building in place of cabrini green, right?

i think there is an interesting correlation between the former NYC world trade centers and the ren cen. When you think of the new york skyline, it is still hard to think of it without the WTC. But as we all know, the WTC was far from the greatest examples of architecture within the city. Much is the same with detroit. While most of us on this board probably won't list the ren cen as our favorite building, it is, for better or worse, the most recognizable structure in our downtown. We all know the ren cen was an effort by Detroit boosters and FoMoCo to revive detroit's downtown, but the WTC was part of a movement by the real estate folks of Lower Manhattan, the banks located on wall street and the port authority to save lower manhattan (during the post war years, all of the corporations were moving to mid town instead of lower manhattan). And by all accounts, in the early days, the construction of these towers actually flooded the office market adding more supply to an area where supply was prevalent. The same could probably be said for the ren cen. As much as I didn't care for the ren cen in the earlier parts of my life, the changes made since 1996 cannot be ignored. The things that they have done... improving circulation in and out, opening if up to the river and of course the prospects of the river east project, its hard not to get excited about the area around the ren cen and I guess even the ren cen itself. great picture by the way, zissou

a great capture

I think that downtown detroit is approaching a point where they will have to get more serious about on-street parking. The current set up on Woodward, Washington Boulevard and Broadway where there are distinguished curb bump outs are fine, but the laissez-faire parking situation present on streets like larned, congress and griswold needs to be addresed. Moreover, the amount of valet parking needs to be limited. I think that the way downtown is currently set up is ok for the current demands, but as downtown grows, a number of traffic issues will need to be strongly considered (example, timing the damn lights).

The rails in Ypsilanti by the *future* commuter rail station in depot town.

hard to tell...

probably a month or two. It is not a fast process by any means. I will yield to the preservationists as I am one for the most part... for whatever reason though, this building never did anything for me... too simple I guess.

from this saturday... kind of fun to watch Demolition when you know something cool will replace it.

This guy gives you an idea of the height of the grade... note the white castle in the back

they are not at grade. If you drive around, you will see that they are easily 10 feet above the elevation of a given roadway. I was checking the proposed terminal site on Sunday and while the roads do drop a little, the tracks are certainly elevated on an earthern embankment. Like I said, they are pretty much on this embankment from delray junction to milwaukee junction.

my only fear is that a partial soluation is a recipe for failure. Politicians will look at the ridership numbers and say, hey, look it doesn't work and we'll be set back 10 more years. If you build it right, the ridership becomes far more certain and the liklihood of future projects also grows greatly.

if this is to be the true downtown terminal that everyone seems to point at, that station still looks horribly undersized and does not appear to account for any expansion should the commuter rail ever come to fruition. There are I believe 4 tracks there right now (2 norfolk southern/csx shared asset and 2 canadian national...if there is to be a true commuter station, you are going to need to add some sidings to stage equipment and allow boarding. The more i think about a mid-town terminal, the more i hate it. The terimnal needs to be downtown. This would be a fine in-line stop, but comes up woefully for a terminal.

next time any of you need a Detroit ego boost, drive through mexicantown along vernor from say Livernois to the I-75 service drive. SW Detroit is really something to get excited about... lots of cool restoration and a good deal of quality structures still fronting the street.

posting 2 because the tigs need some love too!!!! Lets go Tigers!!!

don't bother watching the msu-um game... those happen every year. Its been 19 freakin years since we've had a playoff game in detroit. plus, i've divested myself in msu for this game... fool me once, shame on you, fool me for 23 straight years... shame on me.

you're a bold man...

un freakin believeable.

reinforced concrete is designed to have cracking in sections where tension occurs (usually microscopic ones though, typically on the underside of beams under loading).

don't you ever feel sorry about a spread like that... outstanding!