I-375 redo in Detroit should be about flow, connecting neighborhoods and synergy | Opinion

John Gallagher

Contributing columnist

The wish list is long for what can and should happen along the near east side of downtown Detroit, if and when the state revamps the I-375 expressway.

After the freeway is actually raised to surface street level as the state plans, everyone agrees the newly available land, about 30 to 40 acres by some estimates, ought to pay tribute to the old Black Bottom neighborhood wiped out by urban renewal and the expressways decades ago.

But there’s more. Various interests hope to see opportunities for entrepreneurs to open businesses there. There could be new residential projects built. Nearby residents in Lafayette Park want more of a say. And public safety experts fret over how emergency vehicles will get up to the Detroit Medical Center once the expressway is replaced by narrower, and slower, surface lanes.

How to reconcile all the competing interests?

A view of Interstate 375 through downtown Detroit in April 2021.

Connection and synergy

Here’s the key: Whatever happens, there should be less of a destination and more of a link between east and west and north and south. Downtown to the west, Midtown to the north, Eastern Market nearby, the RiverWalk close at hand — these nodes of activity still need networking to reach their full potential as lively urban districts.

As Mark Nickita, a partner in the urban planning firm Archive DS told me, “Success is about connecting and synergy. It's hard to just place something on a site and hope for the best. You really need to think about connections.”

Now, the landscape bordering I-375 today is hardly promising. The west side of I-375 today is dominated by two hulking parking decks, one serving the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan campus and the other Greektown Casino. Two churches along that stretch, Holy Family and Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral seem land-locked and lonesome beside these towering neighbors. Street life is largely absent.

The Wayne County criminal justice complex there will soon be emptied out as the county moves those functions up to its new center near Warren Avenue and I-75. That will create yet another blank spot on the map. As Nickita said, "There’s a lot of dead space on the western edge of 375."

And along the east edge of I-375, an abandoned school academy, a rather anonymous apartment block and a vacant lot provide an equally bleak viewpoint.

None of it on either side of the existing freeway makes for attractive street life. Any hope of creating a vibrant, walkable district there needs to start from scratch.

This is why this I-375 re-do is so crucial, not just for moving traffic but for creating the kind of downtown we want and deserve in Detroit.

The photograph on the left shows an aerial view of Hastings, near Mack Avenue in 1959. Hastings was once the center of commercial activity for Black Detroit. The photograph on the right, while not the exact vantage point, shows the construction of Interstate 75 just north of the interchange with Interstate 375 in 1961.

A corridor, not a barrier

We know what to do: We see in Midtown and Corktown and other lively urban districts that what works well is mixing public amenities — public art and bike lanes and greenspaces — with housing and commercial and civic activities.

And we know what not to do: We ought not let auto traffic and parking decks and blocky anonymous buildings overwhelm the cityscape as we’ve done far too often in the past.

So the key, as Nickita said, is not to create a static monument to Black Bottom, but rather to remember all the connections we want to make. It’s about the flow – the connections from downtown to the east and especially from the riverfront up to Midtown and Eastern Market. Enjoyable in itself, yes, but whatever happens along the remade I-375 route should create a corridor, not a barrier; a pathway, not a stop.

Will we get that sort of lively walkable landscape? The record in Detroit over many decades is mixed. I-375 itself, destroying neighborhoods along its route, showed the sort of epic blunder Detroit made in decades past.

But we’ve also created enough wonderful new urban spaces in recent years — think the RiverWalk, Campus Martius, Capitol Park — that at least there’s reason to hope. We may yet get it right this time.

John Gallagher was a reporter and columnist for the Free Press for 32 years prior to his retirement in 2019. His next book, Rust Belt Reporter: A Memoir, will be published in September by Wayne State University Press.