RenCen (Photo by Deadline Detroit)
Last month General Motors and Dan Gilbert threatened to tear down the the five towers of the RenCen if it didn't get $250 million in taxpayers' subsidies to partially demolish and renovate the complex.
Now, the group is changing its tune.
Crain's Detroit Business reports:
An official involved in the rollout of a plan to partially tear down and overhaul the Renaissance Center said Thursday that a "mistake" was made and he should have emphasized that proposed taxpayer subsidies would cover public infrastructure, public spaces and the redevelopment of obsolete buildings — not demolition costs.
Jared Fleisher, vice president of Dan Gilbert’s Rock Family of Companies, also explicitly said the development’s backers want lawmakers to re-up the state's transformational brownfield tax incentives program, which he said is performance-based, requires no public money on the front end and "was made for projects like this." A cap would be raised to accommodate the RenCen redevelopment and others around Michigan.
"When we were launching this vision, and I'll take responsibility for this, we were just so focused on putting the puzzle pieces together," Fleisher said during a panel discussion about the RenCen at the Detroit Regional Chamber's Detroit Policy Conference. "It's a $1.6 billion project. We're in for a billion. (General Motors is) in for $250 million. And that's how we talked about it. It was a mistake, a mistake on my part, to talk about it from 'this is the number' rather than 'this is the policy and this is the use of the funds that we're talking about.'"
