Robert Allen

Detroit Free Press

The red ball atop the Penobscot building — an iconic orb that has been part of Detroit's nighttime skyline for nearly 90 years — has now been dark for about nine months.

It's a stark contrast to the increasing number of lights turning on inside long-vacant buildings across downtown Detroit. And for many, the replacement of the neon tubes spanning the orb in April 2015 was an exciting signal of Detroit's revitalization — one visible in the skyline for up to 40 miles.

The fully-illuminated ball would flash on and off at several-seconds-long intervals. But by the end of October, just six months after the tubes were replaced, most of them had burned out.

Alex Loewy, Penobscot account manager with Triple Properties, which manages the building, said then that he'd hoped to have the orb fully illuminated within a couple of weeks. It didn't happen.

The Free Press has left messages for multiple times over the past several months with Triple Properties, but none has been returned.

Red Penobscot orb disappearing from Detroit skyline

Todd Farnum of Green Light Detroit replaced the bulbs in 2015 and said he wasn't surprised the neon burned out as quickly as it did, and he said he saw bad wiring with too many transformers, overpowering the lights. Farnum said energy-efficient LEDs would be more reliable.

But now, there are wide chunks of light not glowing when the light flashes on. Farnum said it cost about $1,600 to have the bulbs made, and Triple Properties paid for it. An LED system would cost about $16,000, he said.

The orb was first illuminated when the 47-floor tower opened in October 1928, at the time the city's tallest building and the eighth-tallest in the world, according to the website HistoricDetroit.org. It's now the city's third tallest building, behind the 727-foot tall Renaissance Center and the 619-foot tall One Detroit Center, formerly the Comerica building.

Contact Robert Allen @rallenMI or rallen@freepress.com.