Excerpt:  The corner of Hubbard and Porter streets hums with activity. Work vehicles have packed the ground out in front of the Whitdell apartment building into hard earth. Slabs of dumped concrete and mounds of sand adorn the ground outside, and a duo of portable johns graces the attractive courtyard, while tarps billow and flap above in the windows of the building’s imposing Moorish-influenced facade.

Though some houses down the street seem askew or overgrown, this building is the grandest of various “named” residential buildings — such as “The Murray” across Hubbard Street, or, cater-corner, the “Suffolk.” Unlike those quainter, older buildings, the Whitdell seems right out of the arabesque-crazed 1920s, with brickwork flourishes in beige, salmon, tan and brown, shaded at the corner by a twisting honey locust tree.

But unlike the luxury “loft” developments sprouting around downtown Detroit and Wayne State University, this building will have subsidized units for rent to artists, and even an art gallery.

Read the entire article here: http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=11807