Rust Belt Reductionism

There's a lot more happening in Rust Belt cities than decline or revival. Much of the coverage fails to capture the nuance and subtlety of cities like Flint and Detroit. Richey Piiparinen and Anne Trubek of The Atlantic Cities report:

Many dispatches from the industrial north are written by writers who fly to report what they saw during a day or a weekend, and almost invariably, the memes get in the way, or more likely, were in the writer's head before she arrived. Looking around cities like Cleveland, it's easy to draw hasty conclusions, to either sentimentalize the old, gritty working class blocks now abandoned, or be all gobsmacked to find signs of modernity and life. The resulting picture looks too black and white: "this is where the good stuff is—the rebirth!—and this is where the bad stuff is--the ruin!" Truth is, the Rust Belt is a very gray place: it is both in ruins and reviving. It’s a fascinating time and place for the region, particularly for urbanists. But the ruin and revival memes flatten out complexity.

Decay on an Olympic Scale

The decaying Beach Volleyball Stadium from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

If you want a sure fire way to add even more abandoned buildings to Flint, simply have the Vehicle City host the next Olympics. FLAVORWIRE has a fascinating post on abandoned Olympic sites that makes me even happier that San Francisco has never managed to land the Olympic Games. Developers usually clean up but taxpayers in the host cities lose big.

More On Civic Park School Vandalism

Blake Thorne of The Flint Journal reports on the urban miners stripping Civic Park School:

Authorities have been called to the school at 1402 W. Dayton St. seven times between June 7 and 21, said Stephen Todd, Flint’s 911 administrator.

Some of the calls were for reports of suspicious people, two were for malicious destruction of property and at least two callers also requested the fire department, Todd said.

Flint School District officials are aware of the problem, and workers will secure the openings “as soon as possible,” said district spokesman Robert Campbell.

“It’s an old, tired game of keep-away,” Campbell said. “You secure the structure, you do what you can do to keep people out of it and the vandals do what they can to get in.

“It’s extremely frustrating and disappointing,” he said.

Go here to see the earlier Flint Expatriates post on the vandalism, including photos.

Civic Park School in Decline with Photos

Some disturbing, yet predictable, news from a friend living in Civic Park:

I've heard several scanner calls, with no cars available to take, about people hauling metal out of the school. This morning, we drove around the building. All the 1st floor windows on the West (Humboldt) side & most of the 1st floor windows at the back of the building are gone. They've been torn out to get the metal window frames. You can see right inside the building. A lot of the 2nd & 3rd floor windows are broken.

Photos coming soon.

UPDATE: Here are the photos...

Photos and cutlines courtesy of Dave Starr.

Flint Fantasy: Genesee Towers Reborn

The unofficial rallying cry for Genesee Towers is probably "Tear It Down!" In a city that seems to love leveling old buildings, no structure has generated more wrecking ball lust than the two stacked boxes marring the view of the Mott Foundation Building. But instead of eliminating Flint's tallest building, what if we tried to improve it?

An architecture competition to repurpose the tallest building in Flint, Michigan yielded original concepts and raised questions about downtown development for the restructuring industrial town.

The building is a 19-story former bank tower with eight parking levels, an open-air service deck, and ten floors of offices. It fell into disrepair in the 90s: the previous mayor, a car dealer, ordered it condemned and, he hoped, demolished. After years in court, Flint homeowners were soaked last year with an additional average tax of $130 for acquisition of the building and legal fees. Previously Genesee Towers was disliked and considered an eyesore. Afterward it was bitterly hated.

This past September, the 40-member-strong AIA-Flint launched a competition to save the structurally sound 1968 high-rise and program it for future development. The results, announced April 8th, generated lots of local interest. “It showed people in Flint that maybe there is something that can be done with this building rather than just tearing it down,” said John Gazall of Gazall, Lewis Architects, who organized the competition and displayed the boards in his glass-walled office next door.

From Ruins to Grand Boulevards and Striking Vistas

GaryG gets visionary about Flint's possible future:

On a visit to Flint a few years back, I was struck by the vistas that had materialized as an unintended consequence of the vast areas of land that had been cleared over the years. The hilltop prominence of the Hurley Medical Center was never more visually apparent than it has become since so many of the surrounding blocks have evolved into an expansive podium of lawn and trees. Even more surprising, was the view of the stately columns and pediment of the MSD Faye Hall, as clearly seen from the distant Kettering campus. They appear in the distance as apparition-like symbols of the community’s cultural and institutional strength, stubbornly surviving through turmoil and neglect.

Out of the wasteland resulting from a hundred thousand missing persons, there may be some unique, extremely visionary urban design opportunities that even the most attractive cities out there could never attain owing to the density and value of their built environment. The first might be the construction of grand boulevards visually connecting these places of prominence noted above, vis-a-vis the manner in which L’Enfant used the monuments, Capitol building, and White House in his plan for Washington DC. New development would be encouraged to locate along these new public esplanades in the hope of creating a series of vibrant and leafy urban links that would start, stop, and transition at the best areas the city has to offer, using abandoned lands that today sit idle.

The second idea consists of the construction of several millpond sized dams that would transform some of the worst portions of the urban wasteland into waterfront property. The creation of in-town lakes, supplemented by strategically planned parkways and the creation of inspired vistas, could be what it takes to attract the kind of urban dweller that can contribute to the vibrancy of the reinvented city.

Impractical pipedreams? You bet. But alas, with the right vision, inspiration, coordination, cooperation, (and star alignment), pipedreams sometimes can come to fruition. I once dreamed that the Durant Hotel would one day be restored and live on as an enduring monument to the great and colorful history of this ultra-challenged town. A funny thing happened on the way to oblivion, an impossible dream came true.

Do You Recognize This Building?

Anyone know the exact location of this building? It's described as an "abandoned water treatment plant just outside the city," although that might not be accurate. Look familiar? A reader is trying to figure out what and where it is. Thanks.