Chalmers Square Rising (Again)

On East Jefferson, near the Grosse Pointe border, Chalmers Square is getting a serious rehab. The building, boarded up for quite some time, had a beautiful facade, but some creaky bones. Its rehabbers gutted the inside, but left the facade standing. It made me quite nervous to drive by while they left it like that for some time. This morning, however, I am pleased to report that the building has all new bones and the facade is being improved, too. Its starting to recapture some of its former glory, as seen below.

Chalmers Square has a sister building two blocks down that looks similar, but is in the "pre-rehab" state. I hope that the successful renovation of Chalmers Square encourages developers to get that building in better shape, too.

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.