Environment: Downtown Is Looking Up

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Jesus Chee-rist. Hines is only one of the new breed of developers who have found that good design pays—and pays. Another is John C. Portman Jr., who began his career as an architect, then branched out into development so he could be his own best client. His trademark is hotels—razzle-dazzle fantasy buildings full of gadgets (glass-enclosed elevators) and gimmicks (multistory lobbies garnished with trees, fountains and cafes). He has designed and helped finance completed hotels in Atlanta, San Francisco and Chicago, and has others under way in Los Angeles and Detroit. They are known in the trade as "Jesus Christ" hotels: when visitors walk in for the first time, their eyes bulge and they gasp, "Jesus Chee-rist."

Actually Portman's hotels are just a microcosm of what he wants for central cities—a sense of vim and fun. Only downtown, he says, can Americans find "the activities that make life significant." To carry out his own dictum, the architect-developer built Atlanta's Peachtree Center—$250 million worth of five office buildings, two hotels, a theater, restaurants and shops. Carefully included were gardens, flags, sculptures and other urban come-ons. He also joined with the Prudential Insurance Co., Banker David Rockefeller and Developer Trammell Crow to repeat the formula in San Francisco's $300 million Embarcadero Center. Both projects are financially viable.

The flamboyant Portman touch will next be seen in Detroit, a city that desperately needs help. It is beset by one of the modern U.S. city's grim reapers: an eroding tax base caused by middle-class flight and an exodus of businesses. The city was approaching a crisis stage in 1971 when Henry Ford II, chairman of Ford Motor Co., rounded up the corporate leaders of General Motors, Chrysler, Burroughs and other major firms and formed an organization called Downtown Detroit Development Corp. His goal: a project big enough to have a catalytic effect on the whole urban area —a critical mass that would set other, complementary projects in motion. His architect: Portman.

The result is spectacular. Named Renaissance Center, the 33-acre project on the Detroit River consists of four octagonal, 39-story office towers around a 70-story cylindrical hotel. When the complex is completed next spring, it is expected that the total cost will have reached $500 million, much of which was raised within Detroit's business community by Henry Ford. Wags have suggested that the symbol for Renaissance Center should be a twisted arm.

Will the project succeed? In a sense, it already has: plans are afoot for more developments along the riverfront, including a new park and an apartment complex. But Renaissance Center may also siphon tenants from existing downtown offices. "We have to take that chance," says Robert McCabe, president of a civic group named Detroit Renaissance. "If we did not build Renaissance Center, there would be nothing to compete with the suburbs."