Commercial demolitions grind to near halt as Detroit focuses funds on razing blighted homes – Crain’s Detroit Business

Of course, not every building is going to spur the spending needed to save it. One example sits languishing in the Old Redford neighborhood, near the intersection of Lahser Road and Grand River Avenue near the Redford Theatre.

Trash lines the sidewalk of a multi-section, two-story building with a brick facade, windows open to the elements and fabric hanging down from them; two fenced lots next to and behind the building are overgrown with trees, greenery and trash, including a truck bed cap.

The properties at 17203 and 17205 Lahser Road and 22040 Argus Ave. are city-owned. The building at 17205 Lahser was home to the Redford Printing Co. and Detroit Suburban Newspapers Inc., which went bankrupt in 1986, according to Detroit Free Press archives.

Business owners on Lahser including Alicia George of Motor City Java House, now closed during the pandemic, have been advocating for years to get the building torn down.

"I'm always conscious that this is not a file in a filing cabinet in a storage room. This is something that's physical, tangible and we are witnessing this," George said. "Even if you can't demolish this, secure it, make it safe until something else is done ...

"When you go into a district, you begin to kind of see what it feels like. Is it inviting? Is it cool? Is it different? And with the abandoned properties and buildings that's over here, it's like, it just makes it look ugly and not look inviting, and then the spirit and the energy is kind of on guard It's depressing, it's not safe."/

Community advocates in Old Redford like George, her husband John George of Detroit Blight Busters and artist Chazz Miller have been boarding up and beautifying vacant commercial buildings for years. They see art and building reuse as intrinsically linked, Miller said.

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Commercial demolitions grind to near halt as Detroit focuses funds on razing blighted homes - Crain's Detroit Business