Detroit’s Revival Is Anchored in Its Train Station

Train travel, however, was king in the early 1900s. Michigan Central Station opened in 1913, replacing a station that had burned down. In the station’s heyday in the 1940s, more than 4,000 passengers passed through each day.

After World War II, car travel surpassed train travel, and the city faltered over the decades for political and economic reasons, its plight exacerbated by race riots in 1967. The last trains, operated by Amtrak, departed Michigan Central Station in 1988, after which the station closed and fell into disrepair.

The city hit a low point in 2013 when, billions of dollars in debt, it declared bankruptcy, the largest by a municipality in the United States.

In 2018, Ford announced it would acquire Michigan Central Station and several nearby properties, investing $740 million in the project. Ford began by winterizing, drying out and securing the 640,000-square-foot train station. Now, construction workers are repairing the steel structure and replacing damaged terra cotta, limestone and brick that make up the station’s exterior.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/detroit-ford-train-station.html?emc=rss&partner=rss