Sounds like a lot of people in Detroit are out of touch with reality just as they are in Greece.
What amazes me is how much money there is for tickets to Detroit Tigers baseball games (and has been through all the city's travails). Check out those attendance figures in the box scores.
You are correct in calling it Michigan Central Station because it is a station not a terminal. At least it was when it was built. The New York Central ran through from New York to Buffalo to Detroit across Canada and on to Chicago, which was a very direct route. The station has not functioned as such since AMTRAK because no through routing exists. In this sense it has become a Michigan Central Terminal. The Detroit Chicago train used to originate at the terminal until city fathers saw fit to locate a relatively minor structure near the Grand Circus Park area of Detroit, basically abandoning the use of Michigan Central Station as a rail passenger facility.
Detroit being an automotive city has not held rail transport of much esteem and consequently there is not effective public rail transportation. General Motors bought up the city street car lines and scraped them in the 1950's. There exists a substancial rail plant however for industrial use. Tracks radiate from the city in all directions. Grand Trunk north east, Conrail north, Grand Trunk north west, Conrail west, CSX south west, and Norfolk Southern south. Two belt rail structures exist around the city at about the Outer Drive location. Much of the outer rail belt that circled the city has been pulled up for rails to trails and other purposes that could have built a substancial urban passenger rail network.
The city population remains mostly ignorant about the existing rail plant owing to gross neglect of the subject by local media. When discussions of starting a rail network begin the topic usually centers around starting a complete rail system from scratch. Taking land for eminent domain, pulling down existing structures and duplicating the existing rail system. Cost projections are astronomical with such fool ideas as rebuilding the freeway system with monorail trains down the center. Meanwhile, the existing rail plant is totally ignored.
Michigan Central Station would make a fine center for this urban rail network hub and interface with AMTRAK long haul rail systems but Mr. Maroun and others are lost to the usage. One thing the station is good for is the new major industry of Detroit. Scraping old buildings and the theft of anything stealable. No abandoned building exists for long without the entire copper electrical system being removed - any bronze or other metals do not last long then the bricks go.
Large chain link fences with barb wire protected Michigan Central Station but they were stolen along with the marble walls, all the copper windows all the plumbing all the wiring all the doors even the steel iron chimney disapeared off the building last year. Mr. Maroun rebuilt and wired up a couple of floors of the station a few years ago along with replacing the windows. The Detroit police force has been unable to stem the tide of theft. The state legislature passed laws to restrict scrapping but it does not seem to have helped.
The local Detroit Public Schools have been basically put out of business by issue of vouchers to residents to allow those students to travel to the suburbs for education. The public schools were scrapped within weeks.
Talk is to put Detroit under the plow for agriculture. If so it will be the only farm areas with gas mains, sewers and public service under the fields. Residents can purchase any ajoining property to existing residences for $1 in an effort to manage the land.
Over half the city residents are refusing to pay for water and the city has offered amnisty, and payment plans to begin to deal with this. Efforts are on to cut off water to half the residents for non payment. Discussion among citizens is that water is a "right" and should not have to be paid for.
Michigan Central Station looms over the city with memories of its mighty past as the New York Central rail hub for this major city of industrial America.
Doc
The best part of the agreement between the city and Mr. Maroun is the City can use his non-compliance with the recent agreement as an excuse to sieze the building from him using eminent domain.
Really, I think Detroits lack of money and somewhat lack of interest has prevented them from doing so to date. However, Detroit can use eminent domain to take back what it deems as vital public infrastructure from a private company if it is just letting it rot. It can also fine the property repeatedly for not being maintained, place a lien on it and take it over that way.
Detroit has so far played nice with Mr. Maroun but the city has tools in it's tool chest to get what it wants from him. The fact that the Mayor of Detroit has his eye on that building should be a concern to Mr. Maroun and if he was trully smart he would sell the building now while Detroit is pre-occupied with bankruptcy matters.
Will be interesting to see how this pans out.
I did not know that Manny Maroun who owns the Ambassador Bridge also owns the MC station! No Idea! I drove across the bridge and asked the American customs guy about that after we concluded the formalities and he kind of went into a rant after I asked him if it was true that one guy owns that bridge. (I still have a hard time grasping that fact) He went on about how the building that he works out of is falling down, there's no hot water and Manny gets over 1 million bucks a year from the Federal government for the use of the building. This makes me think that regarding the station, it's all going to be a big hand job that pays Manny big time with nothing really being improved. I'll believe it when I see it.
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