in the long-empty buildings of the Motor City's manufacturing past, technology firms are shaping new workspaces for the 21st century
(Young tech professionals are making their way to Detroit, working in newly renovated early 20th-century buildings such as the M@dison)
Detroit's well-publicized bout with municipal bankruptcy is masking some positive trends taking place in the teetering city. Among the most important: technology firms are flocking to its downtown core, bringing an influx of young workers and remaking many of its older 20th-century buildings into high-tech havens.
From two- or three-person startups to mortgage giant Quicken Loans, companies of all sizes have set up shop in long-neglected structures. Some are embracing the gritty industrial buildings by preserving rugged finishes, taking up the mantle of toughness and quality they embody. Others are turning to the showpiece offices of previous eras while gutting the interiors to suit a new generation of digital industrialists. These projects have given rise to a series of slogans that capture some of the city's new energy and its hoped-for revival: “Detroit 2.0,” “Outsource to Detroit,” and, in a nod to the main boulevard, Woodward Avenue, “Webward Avenue.”
(MICHELLE & CHRIS GERARD)
Some 10,000 new workers have arrived in the past few years, and in the technology sector, they tend to be young, educated, and eager to live near downtown, driving up apartment rents in Detroit's Midtown, Corktown, and Eastern Market neighborhoods and fueling the city's rapidly reviving bar, restaurant, music, and retail scene. Their influence can be seen in the growing number of bicycles on city streets, as well as in new brew pubs, wine bars, and coffee shops. Longtime Detroit staple Avalon International Breads opened a new 50,000-square-foot bakery in February, and in Midtown, the Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company is one of the hot venues of the moment, transforming into a bar and staying open late. Its interior is outfitted with wood from a demolished Detroit home.
(A slew of new bars and coffee shops have opened in Midtown, including the Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company. GREATLAKESCOFFEE.COM)
Like that café's salvaging mementos of the city's past, much of the vibrancy of Detroit's tech scene stems from the look and ambience of the converted structures it inhabits. Local architectural firms including Neumann/Smith, Rossetti, and Kraemer Design Group have evolved a style that keeps the industrial rawness of the original buildings but livens it up with colorful custom-built furniture, fabrics, and artwork. A five-story 1917 structure known as the Madison Theatre Building recently reopened as the M@dison a hub of digital entrepreneurial activity. “When we were developing the M@dison concept, we were given the task of making it cool — make it open, make it collaborative, make it worthy of somebody who would want to be at Google or anywhere out on the West Coast, and then make it even cooler than that,” says Jennifer Gilbert, founder and CEO of Doodle Home, which designed the interiors. “The younger generation doesn't want to sit at a desk. On Monday they want to work one way, and on Tuesday they may want to work in a completely different way.”
(Avalon International Breads, a neighborhood staple, recently opened a new 50,000-square-foot production facility in a vacant warehouse. MARVIN SHAOUNI)
Like that café's salvaging mementos of the city's past, much of the vibrancy of Detroit's tech scene stems from the look and ambience of the converted structures it inhabits. Local architectural firms including Neumann/Smith, Rossetti, and Kraemer Design Group have evolved a style that keeps the industrial rawness of the original buildings but livens it up with colorful custom-built furniture, fabrics, and artwork. A five-story 1917 structure known as the Madison Theatre Building recently reopened as the M@dison a hub of digital entrepreneurial activity. “When we were developing the M@dison concept, we were given the task of making it cool — make it open, make it collaborative, make it worthy of somebody who would want to be at Google or anywhere out on the West Coast, and then make it even cooler than that,” says Jennifer Gilbert, founder and CEO of Doodle Home, which designed the interiors. “The younger generation doesn't want to sit at a desk. On Monday they want to work one way, and on Tuesday they may want to work in a completely different way.”
