The Michigan Central Station — yes, that Michigan Central Station — will almost certainly be redeveloped as Ford Motor Co. is in the waning stages of finalizing a purchase and development agreement with the Moroun family.

Long Detroit's towering emblem of decline, disinvestment and decay, the hulking station has for decades been considered the most daunting and perhaps unlikely redevelopment opportunity in a city where Crain's once tallied nearly 50 vacant, abandoned properties totaling 7.2 million square feet in the downtown core alone.

With the Dearborn-based auto giant swooping in to make the depot the anchor of what is expected to be a large campus in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood, west of downtown, another of the city's neglected urban ruins is slated to be erased from the once long list of neglected real estate all but left for dead.

Two and a half years ago, Crain's detailed the remaining vacant eyesores in the central business district, with nine highlighted based on interviews with brokers, developers, architects and other real estate experts. In those 30 months, two-thirds of them have been purchased and viable redevelopment plans have been revealed, leaving a handful of large buildings left to renovate and bring back online.

The dearth of vacant buildings is undeniably a good thing, but it also creates a market squeeze. New construction costs are higher than renovation costs, and not everyone in need of good real estate has the pockets of Dan Gilbert, the Ilitch family or Ford to build a new office property.

"Detroit for so long had a 60-year decline and now it is back in vogue," said Dennis Bernard, founder of Southfield-based Bernard Financial Group that does real estate finance in downtown and the suburbs. "We have technology, we have growth, and now we are needing to come back to just the water level where other states and cities are in terms of population and growth and occupancy and buildings. We only have so many existing buildings we can fill."

Those large, vacant properties in need of rehab remaining on the list are the Fowler Building, owned by New York-based Sequoia Property Partners; the Loyal Order of the Moose Lodge, owned by the Ilitch family; and the Executive Plaza Building, owned by Danou Enterprises Inc., for years with no progress or tenancy.

What follows is a look at the buildings that have seen new life following years of neglect.