The big buildings are safe — the ones that are left, that is. The Book-Cadillac opened in 2008, squeaking in just before the recession choked off the development pipeline for a few years. The David Whitney Building opened a few years back, joining the Kales and the Broderick on Grand Circus Park, a bustling hub of apartment rentals, restaurants and bars. The Book Tower's epic power-washing this summer fascinated passersby, clean stone exposed as years of accumulated grime was swept away.

But there's more to historic preservation than iconic skyscrapers. Detroit has more of everything than most places, and that's as true of old buildings as anything else. And the hundreds of smaller historic buildings, spread across Detroit, are just as important to the city as a downtown skyscraper, say preservationists — and no less an advocate than Maurice Cox, Detroit’s new city planner (two years on the job, but this is Detroit, so he has at least another decade of “new” ahead of him).

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It's a radical shift from the prevailing mood in Detroit for at least two decades. Demolition has left gaps in the skyline, and the streetscape. Cox understands just what the city stands to lose by tearing its architectural relics down — and what the city stands to gain if those buildings are preserved.

“When I think about neighborhoods — schools, libraries, banks, pools — they’re the same thing. They’re going to be first in for renovation in neighborhoods,” Cox said. “These buildings are responsible for collective cultural identity in neighborhoods, and the first in for renovation in neighborhoods are going to be these iconic buildings. And if we tore them down, we would be in the same predicament as other cities that did not have this incredible collection of historic buildings to work with.”

But Cox's ability to preserve the buildings he believes are necessary for the city’s future success may be limited: by the city’s capacity to account for its massive inventory of historic buildings, the legal frameworks available for preservation, the free market and the intentions of private developers — and the challenge of shifting the narrative around old structures, for Detroiters, and Detroit developers.

In path of arena

Preservationists worked for years to include the Hotel Ansonia, a 1914 Georgian Revival, and the 1915 Beaux Arts Atlanta Apartments — owned by Olympia Development of Michigan, and located in the shadow of the new hockey arena under construction by Olympia — in the Cass Park Historic District. When that didn’t happen — because historic districts’ boundaries must be contiguous, and the Ansonia and the Atlanta are slightly offset from other Cass Park buildings — advocates pushed for the creation of a second historic district that would include the two buildings.

Vacant for the last 10 years, both have been eyesores for decades. But each bears the signature of a specific architectural style, and that means that each is a contender for a historic designation, a status that would protect the structures from demolition or radical change.

Olympia pulled demolition permits for the structures back in June, but struck a deal with the Detroit City Council: To avoid an interim historic designation, the company agreed to freeze the permits. Last week, the presence of workers removing asbestos from the buildings stoked fears that demolition would proceed, regardless, but an Olympia spokesman said the work was routine. The primary historic review process is ongoing.

The Ansonia and the Atlanta are the kinds of buildings Cox believes are vital to Detroit's neighborhoods.

“Clearly those buildings add to the mix of old and new in the arena district,” Cox told the Free Press last month. “The thing that makes the arena district feel like a real neighborhood is the long lifespan of the buildings. We’ve worked hard with Olympia to have them hold on to historic assets … I just took the pulling of the permits as some kind of … it may have been a panic on their part, I don’t know, but it triggered the regulatory process that kicks in to save these buildings, and that’s what happened. They’re going to have to go through a process and they won’t be able to demolish the buildings.”

That's welcome news to preservationists.

"When you’ve lost so much as we have in Detroit, you can’t afford to lose anything, and you have to be so careful about the remaining structures you have in place," said Francis Grunow, a public policy consultant with expertise in historic preservation.

"There’s some missing pieces, some gaps in logic if you’re talking about creating a district in Detroit using what’s left of the lower Cass Corridor, and saying if you want to make like Georgetown or Greenwich Village — those places are built with the layers of time and human experience and built environment, and really they don’t work if they don’t have that."

When in doubt, demo

Detroit’s gone on demolition benders, a flurry of destruction ramping up to the 2006 Super Bowl XL, and at a slower pace in the years after, as the city rushed to spend state dollars allocated for demolition.

Lost were buildings like the Madison-Lenox and the Statler hotels in 2005, the Lafayette Building in 2009, and dozens more.

The rationale for demolishing aging historic buildings was always the same: the building was too far gone to save. Detroit’s economic decline coupled with the moribund historic redevelopment market made redevelopment prohibitively expensive. Demolition would result in cleared parcels prime for redevelopment.

Except it didn’t happen like that.

“There was a brief period of time (in the 1990s) when every major building around Grand Circus Park was vacant,” says David DiRita, a principal in the Detroit-based firm The Roxbury Group, which redeveloped the David Whitney Building and has undertaken other Detroit projects. “That included the Broderick, included the Kales, included the Statler, it included the opera house.

“Fast forward a decade, and every building is in redevelopment. Fast forward two decades and every building is occupied. Except the site of the Statler.”

Rehabilitation of historic buildings has taken prominence over new builids, DiRita says.

“What happens when you tear down a building of that scale and that history is you’re destroying value. The idea that the value is in the dirt hasn’t really born out … For all of its problems, (the Statler) was a 13-story, steel and brick building, which now has to be put back,” he said. “That was at the dawn of the redevelopment era, and we tore it down for the Super Bowl when all we had to do was slap a ‘coming soon’ sign on it. It was a complete unforced error.”

Cox points to the historic buildings downtown that have enabled billionaire Dan Gilbert’s buying and redevelopment boom, the backbone of a downtown revival that — while not free of controversy — in a matter of years has seen more buildings repaired and occupied than anyone could have imagined: "I think if the city had had the wherewithal to tear all of those buildings down, he would have had nothing to work with."

Historic preservation, DiRita says, can drive economic development and revitalization, in a downtown, a district or a neighborhood.

Sorting out history

Part of the challenge, Cox says, is that the city doesn't know what it's got — there's no inventory of historic buildings, not downtown, not citywide. Cox and his team have chosen to begin by building inventories for districts where historic buildings are most fragile, not the city's full 139 square miles.

But integral to his strategy is finding ways to secure and use portions of buildings, even while redevelopment or significant new investment may remain elusive for decades.

"You might occupy the ground floor with some retail businesses, mothball the rest of the facility, or the upper floors, until you find the right investment. We've been talking about more creative strategies that we think are going to be quite necessary maybe citywide if we can’t find all the investment we need today," Cox said. "We think this could take so many of the historical assets that are shuttered and get them off of the blight list and out of the perception that they’re a blight on neighborhoods."

Developing an effective strategy requires a realistic approach, he says, that takes into account regulation, access to financing and an understanding of other hurdles involved in completely or partially reusing buildings.

"It requires us to look at this systemically, because we have hundreds, hundreds of these cases in Detroit," he said.

Preservation is for everyone

Detroit's greatest preservation asset, Cox says, is that Detroiters are preservationists.

"I have found Detroiters may not pronounce themselves preservationists, but that’s exactly what they have been doing for decades — holding the line, putting money into their properties and keeping the character of their neighborhoods up," he says. "We're finally honoring their work, and we want to make sure everything that is done in those neighborhoods continues to enhance and continues to raise the bar on the excellence they richly deserve."

It's a shift, Cox says, from new construction to conservation — not when can we demo, but how can we rehab?

“There should be a way to preserve those buildings so some portion of them can be used. We have to turn it from blight to something that that people see could be an addition to the neighborhood," he said. "The saddest image I have had is a school reunion pitching a tent on the site where their school used to be. That should not happen.”

