The New York Times features a long, detailed look at what Dan Gilbert is doing downtown, a story that puts the skyscraper-buying and so-called "placemaking" in a national perpesctive.
David Segal writes in the lead business section article:
His plans, according to academics like Brent D. Ryan, author of “Design After Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities,” amount to one of the most ambitious privately financed urban reclamation projects in American history.
Opportunity Detroit, as Mr. Gilbert has branded it, is both a rescue mission and a business venture that, if successful, will yield him a fortune. When he started buying in 2011, the city was having what he has described as a “skyscraper sale.” Among the bargains was the Dime Building, a 23-story neo-Classical gem of glazed brick and terra cotta trim, designed by Daniel Burnham — of Flatiron Building fame — and completed in 1912. In August 2011, Bedrock bought all 330,000 square feet of it, reportedly for $15 million. There are high-end apartments in Manhattan that cost more.
If this area turns around, no one will profit quite like Mr. Gilbert, but the risk looks as great as the potential reward. Even with its auto industry in relatively robust, post-bailout health, Detroit has been on a long, distressing slide. A quarter of its population left in the last decade, and it has $14 billion in long-term debt. The financial situation is so dire that Michigan’s governor recently appointed an emergency manager. Detroit remains a national symbol of municipal decline, a victim of macroeconomic trends, poor planning and political corruption.
Mr. Gilbert is undaunted. Part-owner of a handful of casinos, he is familiar with big bets and steep odds, and, as they say in poker, he is all in. In 2010, he started moving his employees from a nearby suburb, and 7,600 people on his payroll now work downtown.
