Detroit Boat Club building on Belle Isle faces demolition — and it’s a big mistake | Opinion

I honestly thought we were over this.

But here's the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, dropping a Facebook post late Tuesday afternoon that presents the demolition of the historic, 121-year-old Detroit Boat Club on Belle Isle as practically a fait accompli.

The case for demolition, of course, is the claim that the boat house, built in 1902 and sometimes called the Belle Isle Boat House, is practically falling down, and that the cost of rehabilitation would be an exorbitant and unwise use of taxpayer dollars — the DNR says rehab would cost $43 million. (If you're not familiar with Belle Isle, the boat club is the large white building on an islet to the east of the MacArthur Bridge; the Detroit Yacht Club is further east on the island's north bank.)

The Facebook post, and the website it links to, is chock full of pictures showing the dilapidation of the structure.

Here's the problem: Both are cherrypicked, says Henry Goitz, president of the nonprofit Friends of Detroit Rowing, the Detroit rowing club that has leased the boat house from the city since 1996, fielding rowing teams and programs for veterans and youth.

Goitz and Stephen Malbouef, a rower and architectural associate who wrote his thesis on the boat house, say the building is in far better shape than those isolated pictures show, and would cost far less to repair.

That $43 million figure comes from a 2019 Smith Group assessment of the club, Goitz says, and it's a wish-list rehab: "Not just the boat house, that’s restoring the sea wall, the grounds, the bridges on and off the island, the pools ... that's to make everything the way it was back in 1902."

The Smith Group report offered two other options at just a fraction of that cost, Malbouef said: $3.5 million to mothball the building, securing and preserving it for future rehabilitation, or $3.8 million for what the report calls "partial occupancy," what Malbouef says is about 99% of the building.

Belle Isle Boat House photos:See the Detroit Boat Club through the years

The case for demolishing the boat house is a retread of the case against every historic building we've demolished in Detroit in the last 30 years: Too old, too expensive to save, no one wants it, anyway; come on, let's just knock it down already.

It's the argument former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick made when he shuttered the Belle Isle Aquarium in 2005, saying the city was too broke to support a frill like a historic Albert-Kahn-designed aquarium, even after residents voted overwhelmingly to keep it open.

It's the same argument that saw the Statler Hotel and the Lafayette Building and the Madison-Lenox Hotel demolished; too old, too far gone, no one, no one, was ever going to rehab these costly, outdated buildings because they didn't have value, an argument often premised on the belief that Detroit didn't have value.

It was the argument for demolishing the Eddystone Hotel and the Metropolitan Building and the Michigan Central Depot, the train station I used to drive by with out-of-town guests because it was so dilapidated you could see through it.

And — listen to this part — those buildings are still here, thriving and useful. Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert's downtown buying spree brought new life to dozens of buildings even staunch preservationists feared would not survive. Ford Motor Co. is turning the train station into a high-tech mobility center. The Belle Isle Aquarium re-opened in 2012.

Belle Isle Boat House photos: A tale of two buildings?

The boat house is the third to bear that name on Belle Isle. It's a Moorish-revival building, constructed out of concrete with a stucco facade because fires destroyed the first two boat houses. It's not a large building — about 40,000 square feet, per the Smith Group report, which Malboeuf believes is an overestimate — but it's dotted with beautiful historic fixtures: balcony spindles carved like sea horses, chandeliers, richly hued wooden pillars and large, light-filled windows.

The DNR is taking comment via its website through the end of the year. For demolition, DNR spokesman Tom Bissett says, the state has allotted $2 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars, a sum that seems to steeply underestimate the cost of demolishing a structure built over a river. Those dollars must be allocated before the Sept. 30 end of the state's fiscal year, but Bissett said the DNR hopes to decide the boat house's fate more quickly.

Neither Goitz nor Malbouef dispute that the building needs work.

Goitz says Friends of Detroit Rowing has spent hundreds of thousands on the boat house, purchasing a new boiler, repairing the roof and restoring the ballroom through volunteer labor.

Nonetheless, the boat house hosted 50 weddings in 2019, the year before the pandemic shut most venues down, taking in about $100,000 in revenue, Goitz said. The boat house, he notes, would make a great Belle Isle Welcome Center, showcasing the history of the island and its rowing club.

The areas of greatest damage, Malbouef says, are along the north façade, where the stucco has separated from the concrete behind it, and where the roof of a porch and ceiling of the oar room collapsed in early 2022. That's when the state called in an outside contractor, deeming the building unsafe, and shutting Friends of Detroit Rowing out.

Restorations of larger buildings in worse shape have been accomplished for less than $43 million, Malbouef noted. Detroit's 100,000-square-foot Metropolitan Building re-opened in 2019 after a $33 million renovation. Abandoned since 1979, it had long been open to the elements. Trees were growing in it. The 55,000-square-foot Wurlitzer Building re-opened in 2017 as the Siren Hotel after a $22 million renovation.

"We've often been involved in buildings people said were too far gone to be restored," said David DiRita, principal of the Roxbury Group, which restored the Metropolitan and the Globe Trading Center Building, now the DNR's Outdoor Adventure Center on the riverfront. "Frankly, in the case of the Metropolitan Building, they were almost right, but in the end it was viable to restore it, because there was an economic proposition behind the restoration."

At $43 million, DiRita said, it's hard to make an economic case. "But that's clearly a very large number for the size of the building."

Belle Isle Boat House:Demolition discussed at park meeting

There's a new hole in the boat house roof, Goitz said, that the DNR is eager to point to as evidence of the building's disrepair — but hasn't been fixed. "It's like they're waiting for something to happen, but they haven’t patched it. They’re trying to make a case to just tear it down. They're not even trying to preserve anything."

With the millions the state has spent on Belle Isle, Malbouef says, "It’s taking me aback how quickly they're jumping to demolition with this building, and how little thought they’re putting into it."

Who will decide?

During Detroit's bankruptcy, the city's emergency manager and financial oversight board leased Belle Isle to the State of Michigan for 30 years, a solution that promised to take the cost of maintaining the island park off the city's books. The state has spent about $120 million on island improvements, from drainage and forestry to roadwork to repairs to the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory, Bissett said.

Because of the lease, the state has the authority to make decisions about island infrastructure, buildings and amenities, even though the island and its buildings remain under city ownership.

A spokesman for Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan hasn't taken a position, saying this is "entirely a state matter." Nor has the Belle Isle Conservancy, says interim President Maud Lyon: "We think this is something the public really needs to weigh in on."

The DNR, it seems, can make this decision unilaterally.

Should it?

When the state lease agreement was signed, many Detroiters feared relinquishing control of an island literally and figuratively important to so many of us, to a state department that feels worlds away from our city and our island. But, on balance, the state has invested in Belle Isle. Longtime drainage and infrastructure issues have been addressed. Unhealthy trees have been replaced, and the island's forested areas have been well managed. A new playground opened out by the nature zoo; the giant slide even re-opened last summer. Other buildings, like the police station and the stables, have been repaired.

The DNR says it's eager to hear what the public thinks. But Goitz and Malbouef believe the state is simply looking for cover to proceed with a decision it has already made: demolition.

In conversation, the building's current use — "leased to a private entity," Bissett said — seemed to be a problem for DNR officials reluctant to use taxpayer dollars for what it perceives as the rowing club's benefit.

That's the wrong way to look at it.

"Nobody should be making a decision about a historic building so important to the city of Detroit and Belle Isle as the Detroit Boat Club based on the cost of demolition or the cost of rehabilitation to the nth degree," DiRita said. "That's the beginning point of the conversation, not the decision."

It's important for everyone involved in decision making to understand how the boat house fits into Belle Isle, DiRita said — whether its value is economic or as a public resource.

The DNR should be judicious with public funds. But it ought to change the way it gauges value. From the vantage point of 2023, few believe the demolition of the Statler or the Madison-Lenox or the Lafayette were sound decisions.

If the problem is how the building is used, change that. If the problem is taxpayer funds, solicit outside donors. But it's exhausting to perceive that we have learned few lessons; that we still believe it makes sense to tear our history down.

Nancy Kaffer is the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com.