Friday, August 19, 2011

Making Movies on Monroe, Remaking the Broderick Tower

A quick stroll through downtown today at lunchtime revealed a slew of activity. On Monroe, police had cordoned off part of the street for apparent filming on a movie, which also seemed to be happening on Randolph near the Old Wayne County Building. Here's a shot of the camera truck filming a view of the in-street parking garage and a yuppie pretending not to notice.

On Woodward, crews continued to plow ahead with the renovation of the David Broderick Tower. One especially voracious team was scrubbing the lower facade. Based on a ground's eye view analysis of the blocks above, they still have their work cut out for them, if they plan to clean up that facade as nice as the Book Cadillac's facade was cleaned up. Here's a shot, showing all the dust they were generating and explaining the need to block sidewalk access below.



Monday, August 8, 2011

Chase Tower Gets Some Dan Gilbert Love

Like each of the buildings recently acquired by Dan Gilbert, Chase Tower near Campus Martius in downtown Detroit has been getting some much needed love and investment. Visitors to the building of late have had to navigate scaffolding from workers above, cleaning and repairing the building's massive facade on all sides. There is even a rumor that Gilbert plans to push the lobby of this mid-century skyscraper closer to Woodward Avenue, making zero-setback retail a real possibility.

Today, I stopped in at the first floor Chase Bank branch and found another Gilbert change: the ceiling in the building's lengthy lobby had been painted green. Not sure how this will tie into future renovations, but it sure was a startling change from the entirely white setting that use to greet visitors. I am very excited for this building's future, now that it has an active investor as its owner.