I used to really hate Flint, MI.  Because everytime I go there it is very depressing.  Just a few years ago, I remember the river was crowded with factories, now they are all gone.  Just south of the downtown is a massive industrial wasteland of open concrete and broken down warehouses.  But little by little, the bad areas are filling in with new development.  The downtown is already seeing some significant changes, but there is still a long way to go.  If there was one city to choose in Michigan that needs the most help, it is Flint.  By far, it has lost the most jobs/population.  Hopefully the large amount of redevelopment that has occurred downtown will continue, but it only will if new jobs will come.

 

I was on my way back to Ann Arbor, so I figured for once I'd stop and take some pictures.  Unfortunately, it was getting late, my camera was set on auto, and the roads were icy.  So I was in constant motion taking these pictures.  I figured to make them post-worthy, they would need to be photoshopped a bit.  Especially the blurry ones.  Hope you enjoy.

 

Coming attractions: None

 

Genesee Towers looms in the distance.  A sign beneath it warns of falling concrete.

 

Window Art

 

Mott Foundation

 

Saginaw St.

 

Believe it or not, the facade on the corner building to the left is brand new.

 

More Saginaw St. Bldgs

 

"I want some of your brown suga...."  nvm..

 

Looking back towards the city center.  The vacant, but soon to be renovated Durant hotel stands to the left.  A massive hole is visible in the center of downtown when planners once though surface parking would bring success.

 

Odyssey House.  Really?

 

Advertisement on an optical shop.  Didn't know Rhino brand made glasses..er scopes

 

Forgot the name of the building on the left

 

The lights are on, but no one's home

 

Apartment building close to downtown

 

Apartment building close to downtown.

 

Dryden building.  Renovated in 2004

 

Saginaw St. Businesses

 

Masonic Temple

 

Newer addition to the back of the Genesee County Courthouse.

 

Tha end

...or is it tha beginning?

 

I worry about Flint. Roger and Me offers up many cautionary tales, and quite a few about development (by the way, almost everybody I know from Flint HATES Michael Moore). A mind-blowing number of dollars gone into fueling post-industrial visions for Flint, but it's easy to wonder how Flint can ever hope to succeed in the the face of ongoing phased withdrawal of dollars and bodies. A semi-recent article on that topic:

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13689698/

Cool shots, I stop by Flint every time on my way to my grandparents in Clio.

Wow, there are a lot of good sized buildings, Flint must have been an impressive place back in the day.

 

Thanks for the pics!

Not as bad as I thought, but that's not saying a whole lot

 

 

I love the pics, but I still cant belive that facade on that building is new!

Great shots!

There are some cool details on that bldg in the middle of this photo...gotta love it!

I found this page from a post on detroityes.com, I thought I would fill in some information for you guys. The building in the second pic that UncleRando comments on is the Capitol Theater Building. It contains a once-beautiful, long-closed atmospheric theater designed by John Eberson and operated by WS Butterfield and completed in 1928. If by chance you've seen the State Theater in Kalamazoo, Mi, it is similar, although is designed as a roman courtyard. You may find this interesting, if you're the theater type like I am, it has some pictures and a video regarding the restoration: http://www.capitoltheatrebuilding.com/

 

The B&W picture of Saginaw st below the picture of the Mott Foundation Building, has the Rowe Engineering building being constructed in dead center. It combined three older buildings into one which will contain a restaurant, a nightclub, lofts, and the offices/headquarters for Rowe Engineering, a civil engineering firm. Probably one of the best projects going on downtown, since it brings jobs, entertainment, food, and living space to the downtown area. The two buildings just outside this picture on the right are also slated for redevelopment, housing the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, lofts, and hopefully retail and a restaurant.

 

Just below that, the building to the left on the corner, does indeed have a new facade, based on old photographs of the building. it has been renovated with loft apartments recently. (having been inside them, i can say they're beautiful and i wish i could live there). The building just to the right of that is the Land Bank Center, which was recently renovated from the former Hughes and Hatcher Building.

 

The Durant Hotel is planned to be student housing of sorts, mostly for grad students, to complement the new dorms that UM-Flint will be constructing soon.

 

The 'building on the left' the name of which was forgotten is the Northbank Center, owned by UM-Flint, and right across the street from the Durant Hotel. Behind this is the former site of Autoworld, and the site of the new White Building, part of UM-Flint, which owns the entire AutoWorld site.

 

The Berridge Hotel is also slated for redevelopment as condos.

 

The factories along the river you speak of, I believe you refer to the old Delphi West (Chevy in the hole) plants. Look for a lot of great things happening there, from R&D to parks to new residential. There's some discussion going on now on how to handle it exactly, like whether they go for a wide or narrow river plan. Not to mention the hesitation to jump into any large project all at once after the AutoWorld fiasco. Most of the things happening now are piecemeal, a bit at a time, and probably more likely to last.

 

A lot of good things happening in Flint, at least downtown. A lot of problems to overcome, no doubt about it, by no means is all hope lost.

 

And kingfish, I also hate Michael Moore. :)

^THANKS for the info!!! Is there any website for the building with the new facade or additionial photos? I find that absolutely fascinating.

Not a problem, it's nice to see interest in Flint from outside the area.

 

http://www.uptowndevelopments.com/home.html is what i would guess is the 'official' site, although it is somewhat confusing to navigate. It does have a rendering of the loft, however.

 

if you're looking for larger, closer pictures of the First Street Lofts building, this topic has several from the renovation: http://urbanflint.com/forum/index.php/topic,169.0.html

There are more pictures elsewhere on that forum I believe.

^Thanks! Being able to see the cornice upclose is interesting. Was the whole building covered in that material, or did they just replace the cornice, storefront/lower level, etc.? I found this, and 120 pieces doesn't sound like it would cover the whole building: http://www.davenportmasonry.com/projects/projects/firststreetlofts.htm

 

Great forum as well!

The first floor used to be covered in granite slabs, and the original cornice had been removed, both of which were corrected in the restoration. The rest of the building is pretty much the same on the outside, although it's been cleaned.

 

there's a picture here - it's not my pic, so i'll just link to it. The rest of the site has some more pictures of flint, particularly under 'uptown reinvestment', just keep in mind, these are some pretty old photos, but can give an idea what has happened in the past few years.

 

http://www.roweincorp.com/focusweb/UptownReinvest/URC_large_view_of_republic_bank.htm

^Thanks again, thats quite an improvement!

 

It sure looks like there is a lot going on, I'm going to have to make it up there someday.

Thanks for the excellent info scottr.  You've helped me learn a lot about the city as well.  My hometown is actually Saginaw, MI which is about 25 minutes north for those who don't know.  While I've always been close to Flint, it's a city I've never really learned much about.  The vivid images in my head from the Flint of the past was when I played football in highschool, we had a playoff game in Atwood Stadium.  I remember the heavy industry nearby.  The stadium was in pretty horrible shape then.  Parts were closed off because of structural weaknesses, but the field was brand new.  I've heard there will be improvements to the stadium, which is wonderful.

Hayward, you'll be happy to know that about 2/3rds of the seats were replaced with new padded seats last year, and i believe other renovations went on too. The west portion remains to be done last I knew. Just from the little I have seen of it, it's in fantastic shape compared to when I was in high school. I probably saw it at its worst, having been there for a marching band competition my freshman year, and then it was closed the next year, in 1992. I remember the talk about renovating it back then - I never imagined that 15 years later we would still be waiting for it to be completed, but at least it is getting done, however slowly.

Closed in '92?  So I guess when I played there the stadium really wasn't in operation.  I mean, portions of it were literally destroyed.

No, it was back in use by then - it reopened in 1995. The playing surface had been declared unsafe, so it was replaced and i'm pretty sure there were a few other safety improvements - just enough to get by though, since it needed a multi-million dollar overhaul (just that part was $2 million). Since then, they've done a bit at a time as they've raised the money. I believe it's getting pretty close to completion, actually.

What's with the lighted arches in downtown Flint? A century ago, Columbus was known as the Arch City because of lighted arches downtown. A few years ago, new high-tech lights and arches were erected north of downtown in the Short North, but there were major flaws. Five years and  few lawsuits later, the arches are still dark. But Flint evidently figured out how to do it.

Flint first put them up in 1899 to replace the old gas lanterns that lit the street before. They took them down 20 years later. A few years ago they put up new replica arches with donations from individuals, organizations and businesses. The northern and southernmost arches say Flint -Vehicle City as a tribute to the city's history as the worlds largest producer of horse-drawn carriages - not cars as many think.

 

I didn't know that about Columbus, it seems very similar to what happened in Flint - we just didn't have any problems with our new ones. I'm not sure how hi-tech Columbus' arches are, but these in Flint are controlled by photocells and timers and can be adjusted for different brightness levels. They look great at night and in my opinion do a lot to give downtown a unique appearance - at least compared to other cities in Michigan, apparently.

The Flint story is very similar to that of Columbus. The first arches were wooden, with gas lights, installed in 1888. They were replaced by steel arches with electric lights in 1896. The arches were gone by 1914, in favor of light poles. In 1995, a Columbus developer first mentioned resurrecting the arches north of downtown. After years of talk, the new arches -- each with 60 fiber optic light globes -- were installed beginning in late 2002. The city initially pledged half of the $1.5 million cost, with the local special-improvement district raising the rest, but the city bore the brunt of cost overruns. Within about six months, the lights (they could be dimmed and change color) began failing. Supposedly, all will be back in operation this year.

 

The Flint arches are very attractive. I don't recall them when I passed through Flint in August 2003.

 

Columbus also was a major carriage manufacturer a century or so ago, but never made the transition to making horseless carriages.

You just missed them by a couple months - they were installed in November of 2003. That's a shame that they had so many problems down there, ours surprisingly went flawlessly. Perhaps ours were a simpler design - i don't think ours are fiber optic or could change color. In any case, I hope it works out soon; looking at pictures of them, they look fantastic. The entire area looks much like many of us hope downtown Flint will look like in a few years, at least from what i can tell of the pictures I've seen.

 

I did read that about Columbus' carriage industry, apparently the largest manufacturer was located there. We had several companies, which gave us the distinction of producing the most total. It's surprising how closely parts of the two cities' histories mirror each other.

They probably stopped mirroring each other decades ago -- after the decline of the carriage industry,  Columbus never embraced large-scale manufacturing. To be sure, there was heavy industry -- mining equipment (now gone), garden tools (now gone), Timken bearings (now gone), rail car components (still here) and a few others. But never a dominant industry. Over the years, Columbus became more white collar (insurance, banking, research, state government, etc.) with an important dose of small manufacturing scattered around. Overall, a fairly balanced economy.

But we still couldn't get our arches right.

Can you provide some information on why concrete is falling at

this building? Or provide the name of it?

 

What you may find depressing is like a gem to me ;)

 

Nice photographs! Dad lived there for a bit when it was actually booming.

UrbanSurfin: Yes, they have gone their own ways over the years, but i still find the parallels interesting. I wonder if perhaps the idea for the original arches in Flint came from Columbus? I imagine there was some interaction between the two cities back then with the connections in the carraige industry, so i would guess that is possible.

 

Seicer: The ornate building in the foreground is the Capitol Theater Building, but it is the tall building further down the road that has chunks of concrete falling off. (I wasn't sure which you were referring to, but the Capitol is somewhat neglected, but in decent shape.) The tall building is called Genesee Towers (plural, although there is only one, and no other was planned) and was built in 1968 as at the headquarters for Genesee Savings Bank, which after a series of mergers is now a long-forgotten part of Chase. It is the tallest building in Flint (19 stories) and has been vacant since 1997. The lower portion is a parking garage, the top part office space.

 

It's been poorly maintained and has been rapidly deteriorating for years. I'd guess it was poorly built in the first place, given its condition. The current owner has done little to stop its demise and the city is considering condemning it for numerous code violations as well as its crumbling facade. Most people around here tend to think of it as an eyesore, especially compared to the art deco Mott Foundation building next to it which is still in use and in great shape. I don't think many will shed a tear should they choose to demolish it. A quick google search for 'Genesee Towers' and you will see that there is little, if any, good to be said about it from almost any source.

I was in Genesee Towers back in 1995 for a radio contest.  The place was a dump then, so I'm sure its much worse now.  It's called tower(s) because it is referring to the bottom portion (the parking structure) and the top portion (the offices) as seperate towers.  I've always hated this building, and wouldn't mind seeing it go...although an empty lot would probably be a bigger eyesore IMO.