Motown Meets the Renaissance

Detroit has more industry and less charm than any other large American metropolis, and its downtown is not regarded as one of the world's great garden spots. Businesses have been fleeing for years to the northern arid western suburbs, with the result that the city center has become little more than a financial hub by day, a graveyard at night. Fortunately, Henry Ford II decided five years ago to preside over an enviable rebirth on the Detroit River. The big "catalyst," as Ford put it, would be construction of the $337 million Renaissance Center, consisting of shops, offices and the world's tallest hotel, all designed by John Portman, the Atlanta architect-planner-financier.

This week "Ren Cen" celebrates its official dedication--though hammers and drills still echo through many of the project's cavernous passages. The 73-story Detroit Plaza Hotel has only three-quarters of its 1,400 rooms ready for occupancy. A reflective-glass cylinder, the hotel has an eight-story atrium lobby with a central pond and curved balconies--all standard elements of the style of Portman.* Few shops and restaurants have opened their doors, since the 350,-000-sq.-ft., tri-level mall housing most of them is still under construction. Ren Cen's four 39-story, octagonal office towers are finished, but only 68% of this is rented--much of that because Ford Motor Co. leased a whole tower for 1,700 employees (many of whom would have preferred to stay in Dearborn, eleven miles from the city center).

All the same, Ren Cen is a prodigious accomplishment. Henry Ford is a man of considerable force, and when he talked about business showing a commitment to the salvation of downtown Detroit, other people listened. First he set up the Detroit Downtown Development Corp. as a subsidiary of Ford Motor and assigned top real estate and financial people to staff it. Next he discussed the project with his competitor, Richard C. Gerstenberg, then chairman of General Motors, over lunch at the GM building; by dessert, Gerstenberg had pledged his active support. Four months later, GM announced that it would invest $6 million and form a subsidiary of its own. (Gerstenberg eventually put up another $6 million.) With Ford Motor as the managing partner, legions of other megacorporations pitched into Ren Cen as limited partners: Allied Chemical, Amoco, Burroughs, Goodyear, Gulf & Western, Kresge.

The result: one of the biggest privately financed urban-development deals in history. Ren Cen's first mortgage loan came to $200 million, which Ford and friends say is the largest mortgage ever awarded to a single real estate project. Twenty-eight banks had to share the load for the up-front construction loan that the mortgage will cover. Among them: Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty, First National of Chicago and Bank of America. The 51 Ren Cen partners, for their part, coughed up $114 million in equity, much of it in staggered amounts as costs surged. Said one banking partner, watching his contributions swell and anticipating little return for years and years: "We look on it as a write-off."

Ren Cen's detractors cite various drawbacks. Some companies have already vacated office space in other downtown buildings to take up lodging in Ren Cen; that scarcely does much to invigorate other quarters of central Detroit. To keep older commercial buildings competitive, the city has given them real estate tax breaks, depleting total assessed valuations in town (outside Ren Cen, that is) by $6 million. Critics contend that the self-contained character of Ren Cen will do little to encourage people to use the rest of downtown Detroit, which remains a fear-filled area despite a recent slowdown in violent crimes. And the center's rentals to date fall short of expectations.

The center's supporters concede that it is too early to call the project a success. Says Ford Financial Expert Stanley Seneker: "We are looking ahead to something like four or five years to make this a reasonable business proposition." Ren Cen, however, was intended not to enrich its backers but to revitalize the city. Here, too, judgment of its effectiveness is premature, but there are already a few stirrings of rebirth downtown. A new riverfront plaza is under construction near by; it boasts an obelisk and a fountain by the noted sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Part of Woodward Avenue will soon become a covered mall, and streets leading into colorful Greektown will be widened to encourage traffic. The University of Detroit put $5 million into its old law school building, adjacent to Ren Cen, mainly because the project was going up. Ren Cen's creators are confident that ultimately 75% of its tenants will be emigrants from the suburbs or businesses that had verged on flight from downtown.

Art from Italy. Henry Ford and his colleagues are in a mood for celebration. This week Bob Hope will zing his one-liners in the hotel's vast Renaissance Ballroom at a $300-per-couple dinner to benefit the Detroit Symphony. One guest will be Elio Gabbuggiani, mayor of Detroit's "sister city" of Florence, Italy, who was initially refused a visa by U.S. authorities because he is a Communist. With the mayor comes a loan of the priceless bronze Boy with a Dolphin by Renaissance Sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. The Detroiters had thought that they had the loan of Donatello's David locked up--a sure-fire draw for the new Ren Cen--but the Italian culture ministry said no.

* Portman also built the second tallest hotel, Atlanta's 70-story Peachtree Center Plaza Hotel.

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