  Prokopowicz Member Username: Prokopowicz Post Number: 28 Registered: 02-2005 |
http://www.safehaven.com/artic le-10420.htm The article is titled "Second Great Depression in Detroit." It gives an outsider's view on the prospects of a contrarian investment in Detroit real estate right now. | ||
Detroitrise Member Username: Detroitrise Post Number: 2282 Registered: 09-2007 |
Ok, it was a near perfect article, but why did he go off in a rant about a suburban bank that's not even based in Detroit? All in all, he does have a good handle on the situation around here and understand what needs to happens. He probably was trying to say the lifestyles we've built for ourselves will backfire as well if we don't do something. | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 4430 Registered: 10-2003 |
How long before someone discredits the author entirely for referring to the Lodge as "Highway 10"? | ||
Mackinaw Member Username: Mackinaw Post Number: 4887 Registered: 02-2005 |
That was a fairly good appraisal. I think that he would feel strongly about investing in Detroit once Woodward light rail gets moving (clearly hinted at that towards the end), and I'm sure D-A2 commuter rail might be viewed as important by him. Someone like that will also keep on eye on new corporations like QL moving into the City, and I expect he would become more bullish over time, especially as downtown becomes enough of a center and destination to set off a real wave out housing redevelopment outward from the core. | ||
Rob_in_warren Member Username: Rob_in_warren Post Number: 106 Registered: 11-2007 |
It is a fair article. The author seems to really want to be positive about Detroit and he cared enough to investigate the city. How many people around the US care nearly as much as this guy? How many people in Detroit's suburbs care as much about the fate of Detroit? He wants to believe we can turn it around, but can't bring himself to do it. This guy, in a couple of internet searches and a quick trip found out the major things lacking in this region: regional planning, mass transit, a secondary economy, and civic pride. This guy figured it out, so why don't our regional leaders have a clue? Instead of fixing our mess we abandon our old cities and build roads to new ones. We are an absolute organizational mess is what's reinforced by the article. | ||
Higgs1634 Member Username: Higgs1634 Post Number: 479 Registered: 10-2005 |
quote: "leaders" is probably being generous...but in any event.. the clueless 'leaders' are only there because we keep putting them there. we have only ourselves to blame. | ||
Mackinaw Member Username: Mackinaw Post Number: 4888 Registered: 02-2005 |
Great post, Rob. | ||
Bragaboutme Member Username: Bragaboutme Post Number: 263 Registered: 02-2008 |
The point about Southfield was spot on, as well as the City core. The Article was good, aside from the "I was only in detroit 1 day and 1/2" thing he was trying to do. The other point about how G.M. bought the rail lines was something I didn't know, and will have to research. The thing that was interesting about it was this effect that took place back then is proving to be the down fall today. | ||
Thecarl Member Username: Thecarl Post Number: 1262 Registered: 04-2005 |
the commentary by this author is thoughtful, insightful, and intelligent. detroitrise, you ask "why did he go off in a rant about a suburban bank that's not even based in detroit?" the author suggested that the glimmering tower housing the 5/3 building in southfield might become a futuristic twin of the abandoned train station in detroit. the decline, desertion, and decay of the train terminal - an ornate and majestic shrine to commerce and transportation - was probably as unthinkable to people of a bygone era as it would be to imagine the southfield center vacant and crumbling today. | ||
Retroit Member Username: Retroit Post Number: 175 Registered: 04-2008 |
The author of this article should have taken the time to study the history of Detroit. I disagree with almost everything he said, except the part about Detroit being full of abandonment. His belief that GM destroyed the streetcars was laughable. Do us a favor: don't "invest" here. We have enough "investors" sitting on property waiting to be offered top dollar. This city needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. We don't need out-of-towners coming into the city bidding up the price that the city will eventually have to pay to buy these properties for that rebuilding. | ||
Detmi7mile Member Username: Detmi7mile Post Number: 45 Registered: 12-2007 |
Well I don't find it a coincidence that the city which is home to the automobile and has all three major automakers headquarters here also has no mass transit system. Yet it is filled with highways and nobody wants to walk or ride a bike anywhere. I would say he has a pretty good argument if were on a debate team..it'd be hard to argue with him...at least talking about the Detroit area. | ||
Rid0617 Member Username: Rid0617 Post Number: 166 Registered: 03-2008 |
What Detroit needs is more people like me wanting to purchase something, restore it, help make it a city and a home and not be looking for the property to flip and make money on. | ||
W_chicago Member Username: W_chicago Post Number: 37 Registered: 01-2008 |
Detroit already has the soul. But I'd love to see the city revitalized. Only, I don't what to see it get gentrified. I know that as soon as the Woodward light rail goes up that rent prices in Downtown, Midtown, New Center, etc will skyrocket and the area will be intensely developed for mostly white suburban people. I hate to think of it as a colonization, but looking at historical examples of gentrification in other cities, I think its legitimate to worry about displacement, and countless other effects of gentrification and wider issues of economic injustice. A nightmare will ensue if we allow the suburbs to become new ghettos, filled with displaced former-residents of the city of Detroit, completely disconnected from quality transit. I do not, however, think development is bad thing. Development can be good, but too often it is only good for the few. I'm a total transit advocate, but I would hate to see it become exclusive to privileged constituencies in society. So I firmly believe that a transit system must be comprehensive and not be limited to one line. There should be 5-10 lines, and should reach many places in the city, and should be accessible the the most marginalized segments of society. Transit for all! | ||
Rid0617 Member Username: Rid0617 Post Number: 167 Registered: 03-2008 |
A system like MARTA in Atlanta would be great. It serves multiple counties, rich and poor neighborhoods. | ||
Mackinaw Member Username: Mackinaw Post Number: 4895 Registered: 02-2005 |
W_Chicago, Detroit is way too big for that scenario to happen. What you paint is a Manhattan-like picture, and Detroit won't be able to come anywhere close to that within 50 years even with a steady pace of investment and gentrification. It will only be a good thing across the board in the City-- including for all the rougher neighborhoods, if a particular corridor becomes heavily gentrified. There will finally be resources to put forth for better services and schools across the board, and the success of one transit corridor could lead to multiple new ones, and the concentration of economic activity along Woodward or around downtown will create a burgeoning service economy and jobs that could never exist today-- giving opportunities to the hundreds of thousands of people who live off the gentrified corridor. Gentrification, even if it is quite strong, doesn't mean that pockets of affordable and even low-income housing won't exist even in the central corridor. I know Ann Arbor isn't a big city, but it still retains plenty of cheap places in the central neighborhoods. As for the suburbs eventually becoming slums-- I think they are setting themselves up for it. There are no means for getting around without a car, there are no redeeming qualities to the vast majority of their built environment because in 30-50 years those poorly constructed homes will be crumbling, and they are far away from where people will want to be living and working and getting cultured when free, vehicular mobility is limited. Location is destiny, and West Bloomfield and Auburn Hills aren't exactly set up to prosper in a future era of central city consolidation (granted that this happens). But I also anticipate the possibility that an amazing technological breakthrough might occur and vehicular transport could become easier and cheaper than ever (granted hydrogen isn't too expensive to make), and in that case, suburbs will prosper again and metro Detroit and all of Michigan will become the driver's free-for-all paradise that Henry Ford envisioned. | ||
Lefty2 Member Username: Lefty2 Post Number: 1375 Registered: 07-2007 |
What a relief, East coast speculators will be less likely to be artificially pushing up prices by investing here. Maybe Detroit can have a tourism boom by having people come here to do low price house tours  Does he even know how many people were out of work in Detroit in the Depression vs now? Totally different. At least now you can get some job if you have a high school education. He skated around the root of the cause why so many abandoned the city but alluded to part of it by saying. "A third strike against the city, and Michigan in general, is the high prison population. If the prison industry is the best growth industry a state can muster, then I'm afraid investors must consider other locations, if only from a moral standpoint." He stole my line - "there are good reasons why they are low." | ||
Dtowncitylover Member Username: Dtowncitylover Post Number: 164 Registered: 02-2008 |
...Woodward Blvd...unbelievable...M-10, funny. I liked the video he gave about the death of the electric street care by GM. | ||
Alan55 Member Username: Alan55 Post Number: 1757 Registered: 09-2005 |
"I was only in the city for a day and a half, and there is certainly plenty about the city that I do not know." His observations of city buildings and neighborhoods were accurate, but he should stay away from financial predictions or investment advice. Did he speak to any local realtors, businessmen, community leaders, activists? No. He read a couple of magazine articles. His advice is worth the effort he took on research. Not much. (Maybe we should fly him into Baghdad for two days to solve the problems there.) | ||
Bigglenlake Member Username: Bigglenlake Post Number: 33 Registered: 05-2008 |
Guy seems to have painted a pretty accurate picture. Why are some people angry at him for doing so? It is, to put it simply, quite stupid to be glad that anyone from anywhere has chosen not to invest in the Detroit area. I see people on this board getting excited because a new toilet paper brand is a available in the city limits, whooopeeee! But a person who takes a serious look at investing, maybe moving to Detroit and decides against it is told "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out". Not a smart stance for people in this region to take. In fact it verges on being imbecilic. | ||
Lefty2 Member Username: Lefty2 Post Number: 1381 Registered: 07-2007 |
I'm not angry at all, just a little, ah what should i say, frustrated, at journalists, experts, analysts predicting, telling people what to do when really they only have a slight clue. An that goes for most of News on TV now. Real estate, always has been and always will be, a local investment game. People can come in and try to push prices or what not but you have to know the local neighborhood. That is why local Realtors will always have business. He was correct about the water issue. One day so many people will be moving into this state because they are dying of thirst, Michigan will not know what to do. |
