Word: ren
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This week "Ren Cen" celebrates its official dedication-though hammers and drills still echo through many of the project's cavernous passages. The 73-story Detroit Plaza Hotel has only three-quarters of its 1,400 rooms ready for occupancy. A reflective-glass cylinder, the hotel has an eight-story atrium lobby with a central pond and curved balconies-all standard elements of the style of Portman.* Few shops and restaurants have opened their doors, since the 350,-000-sq.-ft., tri-level mall housing most of them is still under construction. Ren Cen's four 39-story...
...same, Ren Cen is a prodigious accomplishment. Henry Ford is a man of considerable force, and when he talked about business showing a commitment to the salvation of downtown Detroit, other people listened. First he set up the Detroit Downtown Development Corp. as a subsidiary of Ford Motor and assigned top real estate and financial people to staff it. Next he discussed the project with his competitor, Richard C. Gerstenberg, then chairman of General Motors, over lunch at the GM building; by dessert, Gerstenberg had pledged his active support. Four months later, GM announced that it would invest $6 million...
...result: one of the biggest privately financed urban-development deals in history. Ren Cen's first mortgage loan came to $200 million, which Ford and friends say is the largest mortgage ever awarded to a single real estate project. Twenty-eight banks had to share the load for the up-front construction loan that the mortgage will cover. Among them: Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty, First National of Chicago and Bank of America. The 51 Ren Cen partners, for their part, coughed up $114 million in equity, much of it in staggered amounts as costs surged. Said one banking partner...
...Ren Cen's detractors cite various drawbacks. Some companies have already vacated office space in other downtown buildings to take up lodging in Ren Cen; that scarcely does much to invigorate other quarters of central Detroit. To keep older commercial buildings competitive, the city has given them real estate tax breaks, depleting total assessed valuations in town (outside Ren Cen, that is) by $6 million. Critics contend that the self-contained character of Ren Cen will do little to encourage people to use the rest of downtown Detroit, which remains a fear-filled area despite a recent slowdown...
...René Auberjonois). A debonair English visitor (Denholm Elliott), who is a lively connoisseur of filly flesh, helps the comedy peak to Feydeau-like farce...