Griswold Comes Along

It looks like Griswold is about to get some additional nightlife; rumor has it that the building at Griswold's northern terminus, at Clifford, is going to become a bar. Check out its current, rather sorry state:

Maybe they intend for it to be an open air establishment!

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.

Going, going, gone.

There is not much left of the musical hall down by the river...

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.

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.

Downtown Detroit's First Mobile Restaurant Doing a Brisk Business

El Guapo, Detroit's first fully legit downtown food truck, seems to be doing quite well for itself. This little restaurant/truck that could had them lined up along Randolph on Friday afternoon, waiting for some southwestern fare.

This is, I think, a good opportunity to editorialize - Randolph has lots of potential to be a lively street, with more scenes like this, but it is lined with parking structures and lots that really get in the way of that scene right now. If the city wants to get Campus Martius and Greektown and Bricktown and Broadway all connected with lively action, it will need to tackle Randolph.

Random Act of Culture at the Renaissance Center

Today around lunchtime an improvisational piano player known as Merton showed up at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit and began playing piano. He started singing about people coming down the escalator in front of the piano - people headed from their office work to the food court.

It was hilarious. As people came into his view and began uniting sound and picture, they would inevitably smirk. It made everyone's day. Kudos to the brain trust that made this happen.