Detroit: Huntington Place#

Opened: 1960 (as Cobo Hall). Renovated: 2015 ($279M). Exhibit space: 723,000 sq ft. Walk Score: 91. Transit Score: 84.

One of the largest convention centers in North America, built on one of the most documented cases of convention center displacement of Black communities. Three names in five years. The building that ate Paradise Valley.

What Was Here Before#

Black Bottom and Paradise Valley — Detroit’s Black residential and commercial districts, destroyed through urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s.

Detroit: Michigan Central + UM Center for Innovation#

Two innovation campuses being built within a mile of each other in Detroit — one corporate-anchored (Ford), one university-anchored (University of Michigan). Together they represent a third model of large-building reuse: corporate campus + urban innovation zone, distinct from both the nonprofit commons (MassRobotics) and university research (CMU RIC) models.

Michigan Central#

The Building#

The Michigan Central Station — Detroit’s iconic Beaux-Arts train station, abandoned in 1988 and left as a ruin for 30 years — was purchased by Ford in 2018 and restored as the anchor of a mobility-focused innovation campus. The $950M restoration is one of the most expensive adaptive reuse projects in American history.