Letter to the Detroit News
April 13, 2009

Dear Editor,

The old Michigan Central Train station must not be demolished. It is an iconic building that's become an international tourist attraction. It's also become a frequent movie setting as well as a print advertising element. There's an old saying that when you have lemons, you should make lemonade. Detroit has many ruins of the industrial 20th century. Those ruins that can't be adaptively reused should be cleaned, the grafitti removed, and converted into architectural and industrial museums. We can make them into great ruins.

If the Detroit City Council were the Rome City Council I predict they'd want to demolish the great Colliseum since it's a ruin that's outlived its economic usefullness.

Here are two suggestions for adaptively reusing the Michigan Central Station: Make the grand lobby into a transportation/auto museum; An alternative use would be a market/bazarre similar to the Philadelphia Terminal Market.