After last week’s feature on Detroit’s historic apartment buildings, it was wonderful to learn more about your favorites — the Coronado building and The Kean, to name a few. Renee Rogers told me she lived in The Palms at 1001 E. Jefferson Ave. from 1944-2018 and would love to see the building restored to its former glory. It does still have woodwork and clawfoot tubs to make one swoon.
Now we’re taking a look at another building in need of a restoration, the Horace H. Rackham Educational Memorial building. Rackham sits right next to the Detroit Institute of Arts and is owned by the University of Michigan. It could be feeling a bit left out as the university showers attention and resources on its plans for the Center for Innovation.
But first, we’re dropping in on the renegotiation of the Detroit Land Bank Authority’s contract with the city. Its 2020 agreement expired at the end of last year. The Land Bank and the city are now negotiating what power and responsibility the authority will have for the next few years.
This week in Detroit development: Is beautifying a parking lot like putting lipstick on a pig? Should we hide them behind tiny houses instead? How about using our cars less? That might get easier (emphasis on “might”) if the Detroit Department of Transportation sticks to its newly finalized plan to upgrade its system. And just when you thought it would never happen, land contracts could get some much-needed federal regulations.
The Dirt
A land contract crackdown? Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith has introduced a bill that would require all states to enact additional safeguards for people buying homes on land contracts. Smith was spurred by investigative reporting in her home state of Minnesota that found unscrupulous sellers were using land contracts to take advantage of people. The bill would require sellers to file land contracts with local offices that record deeds (for us, that would be the Wayne County Register of Deeds). It would also prohibit contract owners from evicting people who fall behind on their land contracts, making them use the foreclosure process instead. Detroiters have been complaining about scam land contracts for years, and reporters and even the City of Detroit itself have tried to draw attention to the problem. At least Minnesota was listening. (If you’re thinking about buying this way, first read our guide on how to buy a house on a land contract in Detroit.) (U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, ProPublica, Outlier Media, City of Detroit)
That’s quite the hotel bill: Details have emerged through the community benefits process on how much public money developers want for the proposed Hotel at Water Square near Huntington Place downtown. Developers expect the project to cost just shy of $400 million but want incentives that could cover more than one-third of the project costs with different tax break programs over 30 years. Most of those breaks would come from a Renaissance Zone designation from the city that the developers are hoping for. (The state would reimburse the city for $48.5 million of those subsidies.) A Renaissance Zone designation would keep developers from having to pay city and state income tax, a utility users tax and county property taxes. In nearby development news, The Residences at Water Square just opened, and even the studio apartments cost a pretty penny. (City of Detroit, Outlier, Crain’s Detroit Business, WXYZ)
How beautiful can a parking lot be? It’s a fair question when about $828,000 in tax-financed improvements are coming to privately owned parking lots downtown in the name of “beautifying” them before visitors show up in April for the NFL Draft. Among the parking lot owners getting a discount on improvements? The founder of the Greektown Casino-Hotel (now Hollywood Casino at Greektown) and the developers of the Capitol Park Lofts. (Outlier)
Parking lot gatekeeping: If the Downtown Development Authority is trying to pretty up parking lots with fencing and flower planters, a Midtown developer would like to up the ante with a whole house. Crain’s reports a business owned by developer Robert Slattery is looking to get permission from the city’s Historic District Commission to build a four-unit apartment building and “gatehouse.” The development on West Alexandrine Street between Cass and Second avenues would put a fancier face on a 19-spot parking lot behind it. The area is getting busier as more upscale restaurants, like Mad Nice, have moved in. (Crain’s, Outlier)
Imagination station: The Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) has released its final blueprint for improving transit after three years of strategic planning. The plan hits some recommendations we’ve seen before, like more frequent service and an increased focus on “Bus Rapid Transit-lite” (with no mention of dedicated lanes or signal prioritization) along some of the city’s busiest corridors. There are also recommendations that were noticeably absent in previous versions of the plan, like building more bus shelters and improving safety at bus stops. Carrying out the full “reimagining” of DDOT’s bus service would more than double DDOT’s weekly miles and the required number of drivers on staff. The plan is projected to take 7-10 years to implement. (DDOT, New York Times, Detroit Free Press)
Mind your miles: And hey, for those of us doing more driving than bus-riding, the Michigan Department of Transportation has a survey it’d like you to take. Sound off about road usage charges, which would replace state gas taxes with charges based on how much you drive. (State of Michigan)
Entrepreneurship is prospering in Detroit
By Darlene White
Entrepreneurship is booming in the United States. Census Bureau survey data states that the total number of business applications doubled in 2020 compared to years prior. In Michigan, entrepreneurs filed over 148,508 business applications in 2023, with Wayne County entrepreneurs launching over 39,000 small businesses — the most in the state.
There are, however, substantial challenges to business ownership for Detroiters. The biggest hurdle, lack of access to vital resources and capital to run and sustain a business, is one that ProsperUs Detroit is working to address. ➡️ Keep reading
Content produced in partnership with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. #ad
Dig This
Detroit Land Bank Authority in talks to strike a new deal with the city
The Detroit Land Bank Authority is renegotiating its contract with the city right now. What’s in the contract? What’s not?
Join Outlier Media for our free upcoming events! We’ll be at Rosa in Grandmont-Rosedale on Feb. 8 buying coffee for readers from 9:30-10:30 a.m. Check out the Eventbrite for more info. On Feb. 15, we’re paying tribute to the Detroit people and places we love at Spot Lite from 5-8 p.m. (Get crafty with us!) Check out the Eventbrite. Outlier will release our annual report at our annual meeting on March 6. Join us virtually or in person to ask your questions about what’s next for our organization. Register on Eventbrite!
One Good Building
An old engineering haunt ready to shake off the mothballs
Only a few hundred yards south of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), just across Farnsworth Street, sits another somewhat similar building. The Horace H. Rackham Educational Memorial building is likewise imposing, with a perron and set of columns that are also made of marble.
But it faces the DIA, almost like it has turned to talk to its neighbor. The intimacy makes the whole building feel less austere and more welcoming than such a stately structure might otherwise be.
It feels obvious there must have been a vision for an arts district when the Rackham building opened in 1942, almost a decade after Rackham died. These two buildings are still attempting to be in conversation with each other and not just with Woodward Avenue.
Rackham wanted the building to be used for the education of engineers. He was not one himself; instead, he had made his fortune from the good luck of being a fledgling lawyer who happened to live near future auto giant Henry Ford. Rackham bought some of the earliest Ford stock, and it worked out for him in Gilded Age fashion.
In about a decade, Rackham gave up working altogether to become a full-time philanthropist. Gifting (most of) the building to the University of Michigan was part of that legacy. Maybe he didn’t fully trust the university because he kept the eastern wing of the building and a significant amount of land tied up in the Rackham Engineering Foundation. The University of Michigan bought it out in 2018.
In 2021, the university announced it was committing $40 million to the building’s renovation. University leadership has changed since then, and renovation plans don’t appear to have much momentum. A university spokesperson did confirm the money is still committed for the project.
The classrooms and office space inside the building have only been used sporadically over the last several decades. Other areas have been almost entirely mothballed. Right now, only the lobby is truly accessible to the public. Paul Draus is the director of the University of Michigan Detroit Center. He wants to see the building returned to more productive use.
Draus has started hosting some small public events in the lobby and inviting ideas for future uses of the building. It does require some imagination. The floors are torn up, ceiling tiles are missing and paint is peeling in much of the building. A deep clean is in order. The biggest issue, Draus says, is that an overzealous steam-powered heating system keeps the building uncomfortably hot. It requires fans and open windows — even in the middle of a Michigan winter.
There is, however, real beauty and potential throughout. A theater with a setback and heavily curtained stage could entertain around 1,000 people, each in a red velvet seat. There’s an old bowling alley in the basement with beautifully incongruous, sci-fi-esque chandeliers where engineers had fun in style. On the second floor sits a library painted in light greens and peaches with almost floor-to-ceiling windows, a balcony surrounding the reading room and card catalogs. A study with a carved marble fireplace sits on the western corner of the first floor and is easy to imagine as the setting for a past or future cozy gathering.
The university has focused attention and resources on plans for the upcoming downtown Center for Innovation, Stephen Ross’ contemporary echo of Horace Rackham. Both are attempts at defining a legacy, one ambitious construction project at a time.
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