{"id":227214,"date":"2025-09-14T22:35:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T22:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/227214\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T22:35:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T22:35:18","slug":"last-above-ground-piece-of-phoenix-center-in-downtown-pontiac-set-to-be-demolished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/227214\/","title":{"rendered":"Last above-ground piece of Phoenix Center in downtown Pontiac set to be demolished"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The final above-ground structure of the Phoenix Center in Pontiac, Michigan, is being demolished.<\/p>\n<p>Leaders for Oakland County and the city say this will spark development downtown.<\/p>\n<p>Historic buildings line both sides of Saginaw Street in downtown Pontiac. It&#8217;s where residents and visitors will find businesses like Pontiac&#8217;s Little Art Theatre &amp; The Green Room Caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It has been an adventure for certain,&#8221; Karen Platen Jorgensen, curator for Pontiac&#8217;s Little Art Theatre &amp; The Green Room Caf\u00e9, said. &#8220;I have met so many incredible people, and I&#8217;ve had a lot of hope that things would get better, so I&#8217;m still very optimistic, but realistic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It feels like a ghost town with very little foot traffic and lots of vacant buildings.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the last few years, since COVID, Pontiac, really, kind of like, went off the radar. But prior to that, it was booming. It was really good,&#8221; Cici Dedaj, manager of the M1 Grill, said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/detroit\/news\/pontiac-announces-revitalization-plans\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Demolition of the Phoenix Center<\/a> started earlier this year as part of a multi-million dollar revitalization project.<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/screenshot-20250914-044525.png#.png\" alt=\"screenshot-20250914-044525.png \" height=\"346\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\"  loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  A fence with a &#8220;Danger&#8221; sign sits in front of a staircase that was once the Phoenix Center in Pontiac, Michigan, on Sept. 14, 2025. The structure is set to be demolished on Sept. 15, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>                CBS News Detroit<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Every city that I&#8217;ve seen that&#8217;s successful is a walkable city,&#8221; Jorgensen said.<\/p>\n<p>The project includes renovating the vacant General Motors building into office space for up to 700 county employees, two new parking garages and two acres of green space.<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/screenshot-20250914-050950.png#.png\" alt=\"screenshot-20250914-050950.png \" height=\"342\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\"  loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  Remnants of the Phoenix Center in downtown Pontiac, Michigan, are piled up behind a fence on Sept. 14, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>                CBS News Detroit<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If that creates more jobs, obviously, people have more money to spend on anything. It doesn&#8217;t have to necessarily be here. It could be anywhere in the city,&#8221; Dedaj said.<\/p>\n<p>With more people working downtown, leaders are hopeful this will kick-start private investment in retail spaces and housing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve had so many buildings here waiting to be transformed, and there really needs to be more of an incentive for those people to come in here and take a risk to do this,&#8221; Jorgensen said.<\/p>\n<p>Demolition of the last pieces of the Phoenix Center is scheduled to start on Monday at 7 a.m.<\/p>\n<p>Renovations on the GM building on East Judson Street are expected to start before the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p>Note: The above video first aired on April 8, 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final above-ground structure of the Phoenix Center in Pontiac, Michigan, is being demolished. Leaders for Oakland County&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":227215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,66693,214,1589,122784,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-227214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-general-motors","12":"tag-michigan","13":"tag-phoenix","14":"tag-pontiac","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115205041488328987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}