From rubble to revival, Detroiters hope new Hudson’s development can help reshape the city

DETROIT (AP) — Before the arrival of sprawling suburban malls featuring amusement park rides and stores peddling anything from jeans to jelly beans, there was Hudson’s in downtown Detroit.

The towering department store mirrored the growth and opulence of the auto-manufacturing town, but its fortunes — like the city’s — soured with population shifts and economic downturns.

In 1998, more than a century after J.L. Hudson’s Co. opened shop, the 25-story building was demolished, leaving — literally and figuratively — a deep hole as a reminder of what Detroit used to be.

Until this year.

Standing on the Woodward Avenue site are a gleaming 45-story tower and a 12-story office building. The new 1.5 million-square-foot (140,000-square-meter) is relocating its headquarters there and a five-star hotel is slated to open in 2027.

“People are saying this isn’t your father’s or grandfather’s Detroit anymore,” said Dan Gilbert, whose property management company Bedrock developed the $1.5 billion construction. “You don’t even have to look at the numbers. You can just feel it walking around — you’re going to feel a different Detroit.”

A reversal of fortune

The old Hudson’s building commanded attention and demanded respect, according to Jeremy Dimick, director of collections at the Detroit Historical Society. The new one is just as impressive. Its tower rises 685 feet (210 meters) over downtown Detroit.

Its arrival is the latest chapter in the city’s recovery.

Mired in debt, Detroit once struggled to pay its bills and keep the streetlights on. It filed for bankruptcy in 2013, when its credit rating was at junk bond status.

The city emerged from bankruptcy in 2014, built up a general fund balance of more than $1 billion, and has since recorded 10 consecutive years of budget surpluses. Moody’s Investment Services gave Detroit its 11th consecutive credit rating upgrade this year and named the Hudson’s development in its report.

“You feel the energy when you’re walking downtown,” said Gilbert, whose company, Bedrock, owns more than 100 properties in downtown Detroit. “There’s been just significant change.”

‘The reason to go downtown’

Launched in Detroit in 1881, the J.L. Hudson store initially specialized in clothing for men and boys. After occupying various downtown spaces, it set up shop at the Woodward Avenue site a decade later and expanded its wares, according to the Detroit Historical Society.

The building grew over the years. About a dozen of its eventual 25 stories were used as retail space in what was considered the world’s tallest department store for more than half a century.

Dimick called it a Detroit institution.

“That was the reason to go downtown,” he said. “It had been around so long that it became this multigenerational experience of shopping. ‘I went there with my parents and I’m going to take my children.'”

The grand department store offered fine linen, tableware and kitchen appliances. Factory workers could find overalls there. But most of all, Hudson’s provided holiday magic.

Bedecked in color, sounds and excitement, it was the center of downtown festivities. Thousands of shoppers entered the store every day, moving from department to department on escalators and in elevators. The longest line was of children waiting to sit on Santa’s lap and whisper wishes of gifts.

For 76-year-old Randye Bullock, a childhood trip to Hudson’s was far more than shopping.

“My grandparents made a point of dressing me up and we’d take the streetcar to Hudson’s. It was like we were going to Sunday dinner somewhere,” said Bullock, a retired public relations executive.

Her most vivid memories are of the store’s toy department.

“I did look forward to going every year around Christmastime because that’s when they introduced their new toys,” Bullock said. “I liked dolls and stuff, but I also liked trains.”

Detroit historian Michael Hauser remembers Hudson’s as a “store for everybody.”

“You had the budget basement store,” Hauser said. “Two whole floors of fashion, home goods. They had their own cafeteria. You didn’t have to be wealthy in order to dine or shop.”

Reminiscing about hot fudge sundaes at Hudson’s soda counter, Gilbert — the billionaire owner of Quicken Loans and the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers — said the new Hudson’s will try to replicate that magic.

“It will feel like back in the day,” he said.

A city — and a store — in decline

It was a grand and exciting time to be a Detroiter until — like many big manufacturing hubs — the city began to change. New freeways were built. Middle- and upper-class families left the city for new suburban homes with big yards.

In the mid-1950s, Northland Center — then the largest mall in the U.S. — opened just north of Detroit, providing more options for suburban shoppers.

Detroit reached its population peak of 1.8 million that decade before a trickle of people leaving became a flood, taking their money with them and hitting Hudson’s bottom line. The city’s population only started to see growth again in 2023.

The old Hudson’s building downsized and eventually closed in 1983. It was imploded into a hulking mound of rubble, stone, steel and dust on Oct. 24, 1998.

“It was sad,” remembers Bullock, who watched the implosion from her brother-in-law’s downtown apartment.

What was left was worse.

“If you put all your stock, memory and nostalgia into this one place, when that place goes away it leaves you with a literal and figurative hole,” Dimick said.

Gilbert, 63, says it will take decades to get a return on his Hudson’s investment, but that isn’t the point of the development.

“We’re doing this for ourselves,” the fourth-generation Detroiter said, “but we’re also doing it for the city.”