Mayor Brown at the Terminal
We were honored to spend about an hour with Mayor Brown and City Counsel Alisa Lukasiewicz at Saturday’s clean up. We got to show them some of our ongoing projects and discuss the potential of bringing high speed rail to the terminal. I told the Mayor that we greatly appreciate his public support for this initiative as well as his past support of our project.
Thanks, Mayor Brown and Alisa, for the great opportunity to show you what we do!
I hope a few of our neighbors in Detroit visit our website and learn about our story. It might give them some inspiration to organize a preservation effort there for their own endangered Michigan Central Station. (The Detroit Free Press posted a photo gallery on it in last Thursday’s edition.) I wish them the best of luck if they go for it!
Any particular reason why the volunteers who made the day possible were cut out of the picture??
John, because this particular post was about the visit from the Mayor. The gallery from the clean up has many photos of the volunteers, as well as a few with the volunteers and the Mayor.
Paul G thanks for making us aware that Detroit is having an issue with their terminal. Like the BCT, it has an amazing history and demand for space was overestimated in the design (the top 2 floors were never used) The city council has approved demolition of the building and many people are fighting it. If they could get the building away from the owner, the BCT model would be great to keep the building alive.
JR, I submitted a guest opinion letter to Nichole Christian of the Detroit Free Press last week and she replied saying they would love to publish it. I’m waiting to hear back from her to see if it did get published. When I first saw the report on Great American Stations I thought I’d check it out. It was then I realized that maybe what the CTRC has accomplished so far with BCT would enlighten the Detroit preservation community to follow our example. I hope someone in Detroit is looking here for ideas to come up with a game plan of their own to save their station. All we can do is hope for the best for them!
Like I’ve always said. Cincinnati Union Terminal is a step ahead of us and the Michigan Central Station is a step behind us. Cincinnati is what the BCT may hope to become someday while the Michigan Central Station is still left to rot by the city and is open to vandals and the weather.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Central_Station
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_(Amtrak_station)
I hope the folks in Detroit can convince Mr. Moroun, if he is not going to do anything with it, to release MCS to the preservationists there for a reasonable price so they can at least start sealing it from the elements and intruders. They shouldn’t have to shame him into selling it like the Buffalo east side residents did with the Tuchmans, with a little help from the city housing court. From what I understand, he has a lot more money than either Mr. Telesco or the Tuchmans did. He doesn’t need to use MCS as a tax write-off! I don’t know where they got the $3 million figure to demolish it. Judging by the size of it from the photos I’ve seen, even if they imploded it, it would probably cost much more than that to haul the debris away and dispose of it, since it is probably full of lead and asbestos! And then again too, it may be too sturdy to implode, if oversized steel was used to frame it. That would drive demolition costs to a prohibitively high level. It was estimated last year, to demolish Midtown Plaza in Rochester it would cost about $50 million, and that’s not nearly as big as MCS! All things considered, they might be better off preserving it and finding new commercial, residential or institutional occupants for it. I’ll be watching that saga with interest.
Why do we care about Detriots run down building? This post/website is about our building it’s challenges and it’s future! This post alone was about the Mayor visiting The Buffalo Central Terminal, NOT the MCS! PLease we have our own issues here in buffalo take your ramblings some where else! Thanks you and have a great day!
John,
Relax…you seem too tightly wound. It is only a post on a website. Good luck with your plans for the terminal.
Don’t you think that talking about Detroit’s Building or the Cincinnati Building is a great way to put the BCT in perspective? The fact that we are coming back on here and conversing is a good thing. These posts inspired me to compare the histories of both the Detroit and Buffalo Terminals. There are many similiarities. John, you would probably have a point if we had 1000 people comparing terminals. But there are only a hand full of posts and I don’t see how they take away from the BCT efforts.
What’s happening in Detroit to Michigan Central is heartbreaking and has been the topic of conversation more than once among CTRC members who are VERY interested in that station.
Most of America’s grand train stations were/are endangered at some point after the passenger rail decline. We have always been interested in the success stories as well as the failures. It helps us to know if we are on the right path. We’ve been in contact with people in Cincinnati, as well as Kansas, to understand how they succeeded. It’s helpful to understand all of these different situations and learn from them.
Thank you, Mike. Thank you, JR. Points well taken. Our achievements and achievements by other groups with similar efforts with other rail stations can be shared on sites such as this one. It’s a good way for such groups to exchange information and help each other out with ideas. It gives us all a chance to swap stories. If any endangered, but preservable rail station gets spared from demolition, and its re-use is a real possibiliy, in the big picture everyone involved in the preservation community wins!