Detroit’s Renaissance Center, home of General Motors, is an immediately recognizable part of the city’s skyline. It’s also nearly empty and only getting emptier, but GM has plans for what to do with the building after its offices have fully moved out. It wants to renovate three of the center’s towers, and demolish the other two, but only if it gets some of your tax dollars from the city and state. Otherwise, the company may just tear down the whole thing.
The Detroit Free Press spoke with GM representatives about the plan, and the company confirmed its ultimatum: Either GM gets cash from Detroit and Michigan, or the city loses a good chunk of its skyline. The outlet also spoke with a local urbanist and architecture professor, who put things more plainly:
GM confirmed in a statement to the Free Press that full demolition is a possible alternative to its proposal to partially demolish and renovate the complex, after it faced pushback from a chorus of lawmakers opposed to helping publicly fund a plan to tear down two towers and renovate three. That plan has also drawn critics from the architectural and preservation communities, who called it shortsighted and ill-conceived.
By threatening to tear down the group of skyscrapers that includes Michigan’s tallest if taxpayer support doesn’t come through, the developers are trying to force their vision on the public, said Detroit-based urbanist and University of Michigan architecture professor Craig Wilkins.
“It’s not uncommon that big corporations, when they want to do large-scale projects, present things in an either-or fashion to shape the debate in the direction they would like,” Wilkins said. “The idea of ‘if you don’t go with this, then we’ll just tear it all down’ seems like extortion to me, and I don’t think the public should allow itself to be extorted.”
The alternative local news outlet, the Detroit Metro Times, minced its words even less than Wilkins did to the Free Press. The outlet dug into the finances at play to show just how comical the dollar amounts involved really are:
It’s hard not to be cynical about this shit.
Yet again, obscenely wealthy corporations and billionaires are banging their little tin cups on the pavement, seeking handouts. And if they don’t get them, well, the public might just get fucked.
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All they want is $250 million from the state, and maybe $100 million from the city.
It’s not like these entities are paupers. GM, which to its credit is promising to donate any of its future profits from the Ren Cen project to education nonprofits (for a succulent tax write-off, no doubt), finished last year with net income of $10.1 billion on $171.8 billion in revenue. That’s a shitload of Silverados and Sierras, and triple the annual GDP of the country of Belize.
Dan Gilbert [owner of the Detroit Hudson skyscraper to which GM is moving], meanwhile, is estimated by Forbes to be worth almost $24 billion, meaning he and his business empire have easy access to astronomical sums of cheap cash. He’s the 85th richest of Earth’s 8.2 billion humans.
It seems Detroiters recognize that GM doesn’t really need the money — it wants the cash, but is doing just fine without it. Detroit wants its skyline intact, and locals don’t think they should need to foot the bill. And it’s keeping the tire, too.