GM’s move to Woodward is the right one — for the company and for Detroit

Back in 2018, Chevy invited me to attend the Detroit Auto Show on the company dime to get an early preview of the then-newly redesigned Silverado. The trip involved a stay at the Renaissance Center — just a quick People Mover ride from the show. I’d been visiting Detroit in January for nearly a decade, and not once had I set foot inside General Motors’ glass-sided headquarters. I was intrigued, to say the least.

Thinking back on my time in the buildings that GM will leave behind when it departs for the new Hudson's site on Woodward Avenue, two things struck me. For one, its hotel rooms are cold in January. Sure, it’s glass towers designed in the 1960s and '70s; I calibrated my expectations accordingly. But when I could only barely see out of the place for all the ice forming on the inside of the glass, it drove home just how flawed this iconic structure is. 

My second and more pertinent observation was that the RenCen doesn’t really feel like it’s in a city at all, much less one as populous as Detroit. The complex is effectively severed from its surroundings by swirling ribbons of both river and asphalt. To the west sits the Windsor tunnel entrance; to the east, parking lots for nearly as far as the eye can see. To its north is the massive Jefferson Avenue and to its south, the Detroit River. You get the sense that if Henry Ford II and his team of investors had gotten their way, the whole thing would have been built offshore with the swirling channel doubling as a moat. This isn’t a building the draws the city in; it’s one designed to keep it out.

Frost on the inside of the RenCen hotel glass.

Contrasted with the new Hudson's project GM intends to move into, a mixed-use anchor with residential, office, retail and entertainment offerings smack-dab in Detroit's most vibrant district, the RenCen is a symbol of an era when each office in Detroit’s downtown was an island in a rising sea of dilapidation. Back then, those who fortified against the rapid erosion of Detroit’s urban bedrock stood the best chance of surviving. This was the era that brought us ugly skyways and eventually the People Mover — anything to help suburban commuters keep their metaphorical feet dry.