RenCen seeks rebirth, visitors seek directions: A day inside Detroit landmark

• Is a future without Renaissance Center possible, as vacancy rates fall and General Motors moves?
• Developers want taxpayer help to rehab the complex. Seeking answers, I went there during Detroit Auto Show
• I got lost. A lot. So have most visitors since 1976.

DETROIT — Walking from the hotel to food court sounds like a simple proposition at the Renaissance Center. So why is it harder than deciphering instructions to assemble IKEA furniture?

Does the hotel elevator go to that level? (No) Does the arrow next to the escalator indicate where to go next? (No, again) Where are the escalators that go down? (Who knows) Why can you see where you want to go but can’t get there? (A mystery) 

And why does a building map still feature a movie theater that closed in 2015? 

So it goes in one of Michigan’s most iconic buildings. The RenCen, as generations of Michiganders know frustratingly well, is a maze.

Related:

• RenCen seeks rebirth, visitors seek directions: A day inside Detroit landmark
• 2 Detroit RenCen towers could be torn down as part of new plan
• GM to exit RenCen, relocate to Hudson’s site that has received big tax breaks
• GM layoffs in Michigan an 'unmistakable sign the auto industry is slowing'

Decades after the five towers became an international symbol of Detroit, even owner General Motors has had enough.

The automaker is moving into the new Hudson’s Detroit skyscraper, built by billionaire Dan Gilbert on the site of the famous department store. 

GM is collaborating with Gilbert’s Bedrock companies on a $1.6 billion plan to remake the RenCen site. That would involve demolishing two towers. If the state doesn’t come through with $350 million, the partnership warns, the alternative may be demolishing the entire complex.

Michigan now considers the paradox: After 50-plus years, is the 5.5 million square-foot RenCen disposable?

Last week, I looked for answers during the Detroit Auto Show, spending the night at the Rencen Marriott.

I wanted to experience the building firsthand. I also wanted to find lunch.

Three times, I asked for directions between the parking deck and the hotel lobby. I winced at the towering, angled concrete walls. I felt defeated at learning that Burger King now stands alone amid a sea of tables in the food court. 

Stunning from the outside, the RenCen is “certainly an iconic building … even historic,” said historian Dan Austin, who operates the Historic Detroit website. 

“It defines the Detroit skyline.” 

Then, Austin uttered a familiar conclusion reached by visitors who have navigated the building since it opened in 1976.

“Form did not follow function,” Austin said. “It's a confusing, labyrinthian structure.”

Austin joked that I should bring my cellphone everywhere during my trip, in case I got lost. Even the most familiar among RenCen visitors struggle.

“My dentist is in Tower 500,” Austin said. “I still get lost, and I've been going to that dentist for years.”

For the people?

The towers were never meant to be a punchline.

They were built as a testament to Detroit’s resilience, a “city within a city” that would prompt broader redevelopment following the devastation of the 1967 civil unrest.

“This development is being built by the people of Detroit for the people of Detroit,” Henry Ford II of Ford Motor Co. said at its groundbreaking in 1973. 

“And I’m convinced as many other people are as well, that this will be a catalyst for the renaissance of Detroit. … This will be a great step forward.”

The project — which was notable for being privately financed — took three years to build and cost $337 million (nearly $2 billion today.) Its occupancy rate swelled, and as the exodus of residents from Detroit continued, its shops, cinema, restaurants and hair salons became a focal point for Black residents of the city, said Donna Givens Davidson, president and CEO of the nonprofit Eastside Community Network in Detroit.

“By 1976, white flight was in full force, and nobody was putting any money into the city of Detroit,” Givens Davidson said. “The RenCen was what we had.”

Critics weren’t so kind. Not only were the towers difficult to navigate, they were hard to access: a concrete berm in front of the entrance was likened to a fortress.

“The message is clear,” urban scholar William H Whyte said. “Afraid of Detroit? Come in and be safe.”

GM bought the RenCen for $73 million in 1996 and made it corporate headquarters. A $500 million renovation created the Wintergarden atrium overlooking the Detroit River, boosting commercial space and walkability. The concrete barriers came down.

By 2015, as downtown Detroit office restorations took hold, the RenCen kept its stride. Thousands of GM office workers joined thousands more from other tenants, fueling enough foot traffic for a CVS, Starbucks and other shops and restaurants. 

By the end of 2024, four years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the downtown Detroit vacancy rate was 23.4% of almost 18 million square feet of office space. 

About 6,000 of GM’s employees worked in the RenCen in 2008. Now, fewer than 1,000 do. Many days, it seems far less.

As the automaker leaves and other leases come due, vacancy is expected to increase, creating the prospect of a “rotting” RenCen, said Bedrock’s Jared Fleisher.

‘Great cities are always evolving’

The situation isn’t unique to Detroit, as skepticism increases of both the utility and cost downtown of high-rises.

Other buildings designed by the RenCen’s architect, John Portman, are going through their own existential reckoning. “His buildings often evoked oohs and aahs from the public, but were not always a hit with critics, who called them concrete islands,” the New York Times wrote in his 2017 obituary.

His Peachtree Center is a downtown Atlanta landmark. But before a renovation in 2020, it had “long since been forgotten and replaced by new public areas,” according to the Design-Build Institute of America.

In downtown Los Angeles, Portman’s RenCen-like Westin Bonaventure is well-known as a backdrop for movies, but knocked as a “cautionary tale” for a “future that never came.”

In Detroit, GM and Bedrock are seeking $350 million in public support for the proposed renovation: $100 million from the city and $250 million from the state.

Gilbert lobbied for the creation of the transformational brownfield program and has used it to finance other projects. Now, he’s seeking an expansion of the program that uses tax gains to reimburse developer spending.

Many community leaders support the move, saying that the massive office towers are functionally obsolete. The 1,300-room Marriott could still thrive with 500 fewer rooms, they say, a downsizing that could create space for residential penthouses.

“Great cities are always evolving,” said Sandy Baruah, CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber. 

Baruah called public support “a terrific leverage opportunity,” with the city gaining a $1.6 billion investment.

The plan would swap offices for housing, eliminate the two towers closest to the river to create public space and eventually add an entertainment venue nearby. 

“That whole maze … goes away,” in that scenario, Baruah said, as the waterfront opens further to Jefferson Avenue. 

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who is campaigning for governor as an independent, supports the plan. In November, he said “we will need a public-private partnership to get this done and avoid the decades of inaction that accompanied so many other Detroit landmarks.”

The proposal faces headwinds from a Legislature increasingly skeptical of tax subsidies. Rep. Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, the new speaker of the House, said he’s upset that GM is seeking taxpayer money at a time it is laying off 1,000 workers. 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has not publicly offered an opinion. Several days after a request for comment from Bridge, her staff on Wednesday deferred comment to state economic officials.

‘A beautiful building’

Developers nationwide now expect the taxpayers to underwrite building costs, said Craig Wilkins, University of Michigan associate professor of architecture.

That’s intensified as skyscrapers in cities like Chicago and Cleveland are converted from office to residential spaces to keep them occupied. Too often, the deals are structured so that the public contributes, but isn’t a partner entitled to returns, Wilkins said. 

In Detroit, Bedrock already has received $700 million from the state and city to build the Hudson’s skyscraper, GM’s future home. 

“We gave you money to build,” Wilkins said. “Now you want us to tear down something, too.”

Givens Davidson, who grew up shopping at the RenCen, worries the rehab will ignore Detroit history, following what she said is a trend of city landmarks being restored to make them palpable to suburbanites. The site of the city’s Joe Louis Arena, for instance, was replaced by a residential tower where one-bedroom rents are nearly $3,000.

“For many of us, it just feels like erasure,” she said. “Let's make Detroit back to what it was before all white people left. Let's bring back and create something that looks good.”

Others argue the RenCen’s value goes far beyond real estate and losing it would be a blow to the city's psyche. 

“We do love it. It’s a beautiful building,” city resident Geneva Muhammad said. 

Aspirational maps

It is a beautiful building, I concluded during my stay, but a confounding one.

Concrete is everywhere. Pillars rise above plant beds. The ceiling is impossibly high, the empty space wide and wasted. Circular walkways practically taunt visitors, whispering, “you can’t get here from there.”

Maps help, but are more aspirational than functional, starting people on their way but never quite delivering. Security guards and workers are happy to help, often calling to visitors and asking if they are lost.

But they have their limits.

“If you get down there,” one guard told me, “you’ll see other people who can help you.”

It’s easy to appreciate the RenCen from a distance, said JoAnn Yurgil, who drove from nearby Livonia for the auto show. The location on the Detroit River provides a beautiful view, she said, and the expanses of glass windows make her think “they should keep a part of it.”

That may be true, her husband, Jim Yurgil said, before offering a bit of perspective.

“It took us a half an hour to figure out how to get to the People Mover.”

Mike Morelli of Novi enjoys frequent visits to Detroit, and he’s experienced all of the RenCen’s shortcomings along with its upsides. He lists Joe Muer’s Seafood Restaurant, Andiamo, and the Marriott hotel. 

“The views are incredible,” he adds.

Others aren’t as charitable.

“Knock it down,” said Greg Burghardt of Clio, who visited Detroit last week for the auto show. “What a waste of money.”

Austin, the Detroit historian, said he thinks massive change to the RenCen property is inevitable. It can’t continue its path to becoming a ghost town, he said, while the rest of downtown rises.

Finding new uses, though, has to point to residential, once offices and commercial space is removed from the mix.

“What other options are there?” he said. “As far as I can tell, there are none.”

“Whatever decision comes from this,” Austin said, “is going to alter the skyline of Detroit forever.”