New York —
Hudson’s Detroit, the Motor City’s first new skyscraper in nearly half a century, is a symbol of Detroit’s transformation from bankruptcy to boomtown.
The recently opened $1.4 billion skyscraper on the site of the former J.L. Hudson’s department store will eventually feature high-end stores, luxury condos and a five-star hotel.
Detroit “was probably at the bottom of the barrel in this country – from crime and unemployment to everything in between,” Dan Gilbert, the billionaire who has helped catalyze Detroit’s revival, said in an interview with CNN. “It’s been a 180-degree comeback.” Gilbert’s real estate company developed the complex at the former Hudson’s, a shopping mecca for generations that closed in 1983.
Hudson's department store on Woodward Avenue in Detroit in July of 1982, months before it closed. Bettmann Archive/GEtty Images
Detroit’s population is growing for the first time in nearly 60 years. General Motors is moving its headquarters to Hudson’s. JPMorgan is growing in Detroit, too, having announced a big push to invest $100 million in the city more than a decade ago.
But Detroit’s improbable comeback remains incom
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