Iconic eyesores: exploring do-it-yourself preservation and civic improvement at abandoned train stations in Buffalo and Detroit

Abstract

This inquiry documents two citizen-driven campaigns to reclaim iconic train stations and their adjacent landscapes, assessing their effectiveness as agents of preservation and civic improvement, and potential as catalysts for local development. Examining grassroots efforts to conserve and reuse Buffalo’s Central Terminal and Detroit’s Michigan Central Station and the adjacent Roosevelt Park, it considers a unique form of preservation practice – one devoid of significant public sector funding and the conventional market-based adaptive reuse strategies that are ineffective in declining settings. Driven by idiosyncratic collectives of residents, business owners, cultural entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and planners, these groups coalesce around a shared desire to conserve local landmarks and play an active role in the physical rebuilding of their cities. Their incremental and incomplete transformations are driven by an ethic that transcends both typical market-oriented targets (private sector profits or “pays-for-itself”) and the “fully restored” end states that are the goals of conventional projects. While these acts of reclamation are far from complete, they have the potential to inform similar locally driven efforts in settings of decline.

Keywords:

• historic preservation
• do-it-yourself
• tactical urbanism
• shrinking cities
• Buffalo
• Detroit

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the following individuals who helped facilitate field research or provided feedback on preliminary versions of this article, including Dave Franczyk, Paul Lang, Noah Resnick, Brent Ryan, Anne Leonard, Justin Hollander, and Emily Talen.

Notes

1. See Philadelphia’s “Neighborhood Transformation Initiative” and Buffalo’s “5 in 5” Initiative documented Ryan (2012), Baltimore’s “Vacants to Value” program (Baltimore City website http://www.baltimorehousing.org/vacants_to_value.aspx; accessed September 2013); and Detroit Works Project Long-Term Planning Steering Committee, Detroit Future City: Detroit Strategic Framework Plan (2012).

2. In 2013, the corporation created its first paid staff position, an executive director.

3. The outrage over the Moroun portfolio of properties has recently grow when The New York Times discovered that tons of coke (a byproduct of petroleum refining) are being stored on Moroun-owned, riverfront properties in massive open piles near the MCS and within close proximity of many Westside houses (Austen 2013).

4. Author interview of Karen Nagher, (now former) Director of Preservation Wayne (March 11, 2010). In 2012, Preservation Wayne changed its name to Preservation Detroit the better to reflect its mission to “preserve, promote and protect the neighborhoods and structures that define Detroit” (Preservation Wayne 2012).

Additional information

Funding

Funding. The author acknowledges the generous financial support of the Smart Family Foundation.