Renaissance Center

History of Renaissance Center

The Renaissance Center built between 1973 and 1977 and was part of a larger Urban Renewal program to replace what was then still a largely abandoned industrialized Detroit Riverfront, it was envisioned as a "city-within-a-city," and was meant to anchor a wider redevelopment of the then declining city of Detroit. It was designed by architect John C. Portman which had a large influence on his hometown of Atlanta GA. The basis for the Renaissance Center was the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta also built by Portman, Peachtree was built just before the Renaissance Center and serves as a exact build of the Central tower of the renaissance center in Detroit. Furthermore the sky bridges connecting the Renaissance Center to the locations such as the Millender Center are identical to the sky bridges connecting the Peachtree Center Complex in Atlanta. While the exteriors of each of the towers are the same between the Peachtree and the Renaissance Center they both have wildly different interiors from each other. Upon Completion the Renaissance Center was the tallest building in Michigan and the tallest hotel in the Western Hemisphere until 2017. The top three floors of the hotel hosted an upscale restaurant, The Summit, that rotated to allow a 360 degree view of Detroit that later closed in the early 2000s. In 1981 the final two towers being Towers 500 and 600 were finished, this would complete the 7 tower layout of the Renaissance Center, with One large center tower followed by 4 towers 100-400 surrounding the Center Tower. While the Renaissance Center was to mean’t to revive the downtown space of Detroit, it largely killed it due to tenants moving into the Renaissance Center’s new complex, leaving many older skyscrapers largely vacant and abandoned shortly after one by one, a probelm that wouldn’t be fixed until the 2010s. For the tower’s first 19 years, Ford Motor Co. occupied one of the office towers. But in 1996, sold the building to GM with plans to make the Renaissance Center their new World Headquarters moving from the historic Cadillac Place in New Center. Between 1996 and 2003 the Renaissance Center was renovated by GM, this renovation would add the last major part of the Renaissance Center being the Wintergarden retail atrium completed in late 2001 and featured 150,000 square feet (14,000 m2) of retail space and 40,000 square feet (3,700 m2) of contiguous main floor exhibit space which was used by the media during Super Bowl XL of 2006. Along with this a 20,000 sf space on Level 2 of Tower 300 for executive meetings and conferences was built. However this renovation was not all good as it killed one of the staples of the tower being the Summit restaurant on the top floors of the Central Tower, a staple of the Renaissance Center since opening, when Summit was replaced in 2004 by another restaurant called Coach Insignia. While the Coach Insignia was a upscale and well liked it was largely not seen as better then The Summit due to the choice to remove the 360 degree rotating view.