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Time to Take Down Detroit's Most Freeway-Visible Ruin Porn Towers, Former Home to Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson

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It's the ruin porn most visible via the Freeway! (What better way to say "Boo!" to scared suburbanites on the way to a Lions game?) If you are cruising down I-75, it is hard to miss those four decaying, windowless 14-story towers that at part of the Brewster-Douglass public housing complex. Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson once lived in this low-income housing on a 30- acre site that includes two six-story apartments and rows of burned-out town houses. Eye-sore is an over-used Detroit phrase, but what else can you say about something so derelict? So Mayor Bing is thinking demo and redevelopment for the site sounds like the way to go. "You've got a piece of property that is in a prime location, and we aren't getting anything out of it right now," Bing told the Free Press on Friday, adding that he met with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Director Shaun Donovan on Thursday. "I think we can get the funding." It is supposed to take $9.8 M to clear away this ruin porn graffiti park which will be replaced by some mix of housing and commercial space.

· Storied Brewster-Douglass housing projects in Detroit may soon be demolished [Freep]

Brewster-Douglass Public Housing Complex

2700 St. Antoine St., Detroit, MI