A Toronto developer who outraged preservationists when he announced he was considering demolishing Detroit’s historic State Savings Bank has backpedalled, and a co-founder says they hope to repurpose the building.
“I toured the building. The building is fantastic, it’s gorgeous. So beautiful,” Steve Apostolopoulos, co-founder of Triple Properties, told the Windsor Star. ”Our first choice is not to knock it down.”
Triple Properties, which also owns the Penobscot buildings next door and the Silverdome in Pontiac, recently purchased the State Savings Bank for about $700,000. The downtown Beaux Arts-style structure, which spans an entire city block, was built in 1900 and is the only building in the city designed by McKim, Mead and White, the architectural firm that created New York’s Penn Station.
Following the sale, the Detroit Free Press and the Toronto Star quoted Apostolopoulos’s father and Triple Properties owner Andreas Apostolopoulos as saying he wanted to tear the building down and build a parking garage. His remarks were roundly decried by heritage conservationists and downtown economic development boosters alike, with hundreds of people signing an online petition to save the building.
