As I cross the Ambassador Bridge from Canada, the Detroit skyline unfolds to my right. Past downtown’s tight cluster of 19th- and 20th-century skyscrapers, the Renaissance Center asserts a dramatic and slightly isolated presence. The knot of gleaming tubular forms designed by John Portman features a commanding 73-storey tower at its centre; it’s the tallest building in the city and in the state of Michigan. A couple of streets to the north, SHoP Architects’ ongoing redevelopment of the former Hudson’s Department Store site by billionaire Dan Gilbert — will rise to nearly the same majestic height. I’m driving past it.
Just northwest of downtown, the evolving Core City is an entirely different milieu. As in much of central Detroit, the urban fabric is a patchwork. Driving up 16th Street, I see houses, apartment buildings and handsome churches interspersed with stretches of grass and broken sidewalk where homes, businesses and schools once stood. Then, an elongated Quonset hut appears; stretching out in front of the 59-metre span of shimmering steel is a wooden deck and a rich woodland landscape. Another block up, eight smaller Quonset huts are nestled among trees and grasses. I leave the car at the corner where 16th Street meets Grand River and Warren avenues, on a triangular lot; the parking spots are nearly swallowed up by a lush, permeable landscape of junipers, maples, sumacs and native flowers.
Across the street, at Cafe Prince, I meet Philip Kafka, the developer behind the Quonset huts, the parking lot and much of the surrounding neighbourhood — including the coffee shop where we drink espresso and eat raw carrots. An erstwhile professional tennis player turned New York City billboard entrepreneur, Kafka is an unconventional local real estate mogul.
