Why Michigan Central Matters to Detroiters
The story of a train station and a changing community identity.
I can’t help but remember a friend once told me they would believe in Detroit’s “renaissance” when someone “did something” with the empty train station.
At the time, I thought yes that would be nice but how unrealistic. We were so used to seeing the abandoned station, how it sat towering in display, setback but always in sight. Eat at any Corktown patio and the giant soar of a space stares back at you while you have a beer and a burger. You could not escape it.
The train station was fifteen stories of decay. People traveled from all over to capture it’s image and paste it next to a news story about Detroit’s decline. It became the symbol for our failure as a region.
Then about six months after that friend’s comment, Ford announced their $90 Million dollar purchase of the ruin and their reinvention of the building into a tech campus.
This week the station opens to showcase its renovations. For a moment, Bamboo hosted several community events to gather feedback for the development. We kept hearing the same thing, the same comments about identity and place.
Many were concerned with a preservation of a past identity, while others were concerned with the creation of a new identity.
My fellow small business owners did not want to see their Corktown neighborhood change too much from the ripple effect of redevelopment. They believed it was the local community, local businesses, and local culture that made the area unique and attractive to redevelop in the first place, and a preservation of this identity was needed.
Some wanted to commune with a past they still remembered. Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents all had stories about the train station. The last train ran in 1988. This in it’s own way is a preservation of identity, of shared memory, of cultural importance.
But then there is the new identity given to it, the tech and innovation hub, a story of the future. Many like the friend above wants to see a fresh narrative, a change, and not the poster image of a city in decline.
For those reading this from outside Detroit, it is hard to capture the sense of defeat a resident might feel from decades of disinvestment, racism, and at times poor civic leadership. Not to mention the many times we’ve heard about redevelopments leading to a change that never came to fruition. Change can then be critically doubted but still desired. We carry with us a kind of defeated and yet deliberate hope, the kind of hope that only a Lion’s fan who’s taken so many losses, can understand.
As a writer, I’m interested in tension of the past vs future. In the way spaces or a place can signify something to us as a community.
As someone living and working in Detroit for a decade now, I’m interested in the future we can create together too.
So I guess we’ll see how things change and evolve, if the sentiment above in the story is right, or if it is just another redevelopment in our changing city.
Either way it’s great to see the space activated and alive again. If you aren’t familiar, you can learn more about it’s history and it’s future from Ford here on MichiganCentral.com
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PS
Baby Jack arrived safely. We’re adjusting to life as a family of four. His big sister is ecstatic he’s here. You all didn’t tell me the second time around is much easier!
While I’m home on leave, I’m reading a book every 48 hours. It keeps me up nursing, makes me still feel connected to the world. Send me your book recs.
What I’ve read: Everything by Colm Toibin, sparked by Oprah’s latest pick in Long Island. Morgan Talty’s latest Fire Exit. Detroiter Lori Tucker-Sullivan’s essays on Rock Widows - I Can’t Remember If I Cried. Highly recommend them all.
Send me your book recommendations, before I run out please.
See you on the other side of parental leave.