How Detroit's Renaissance Center got its name
General Motors CEO Mary Barra's announced April 14 that the automaker will vacate the Renaissance Center in 2025 and move its global headquarters a few blocks north to Dan Gilbert's new Hudson's site development. Today’s Free Press Flashback recalls how the famous glass-tower complex on the riverfront got its name, as it reprints a story that ran on page one March 23, 1973. The winner’s $5,000 would be worth about $35,000 today, adjusted for inflation.
A young man who did not know that he had entered the contest won $5,000 Thursday for naming the riverfront project begun by the Ford Motor Co. “Renaissance Center.”
Roger Lennert, 21, a technical-creative writer for Ex-Cell-0 Corp., was one of 353 persons who entered "Renaissance Center," but the reasons he gave for the name were judged the best.
Lennert was named the winner and given his award at a ceremony Thursday morning.
He conceded somewhat sheepishly that he had thought up the name and the reason behind it only after his mother nagged him to do it.
And she sent in the entry without his knowing it.
“You're supposed to be the writer in the family,” he recalled his mother telling him at his sister's birthday party Jan. 28, the day the contest was announced.
Lennert, who was once feature editor of “Gassette,” the Michigan Consolidated Gas Co.'s publication, agreed. He tossed out a few names, then hit upon Renaissance Center.
His mother, Madeline Lennert, a secretary for the Wayne County Civil Service Commission, made shorthand notes of the name and the reasons Roger chose it. Her son soon forgot about it.
Last Sunday, when a Ford official called him to tell him the good news, Lennert was dumbfounded and a little suspicious. He made the official carefully identify himself.
“The reason I was so surprised was my mother never told me she mailed in the entry,” Lennert said.
Mrs. Lennert had mailed the entry in her son's name Jan. 29. It was the family's only entry in the competition.
How about ‘Torque City?’
Completing the statement “I like this name because …” Lennert's entry said: “It captures the hope of the people that this center will lead the way to a rebirth of the city of Detroit.”
Wayne Doran, president of the Ford Motor Land Development Corp., the Ford Motor Co. subsidiary that coordinated the contest, said Lennert's description “best captured the spirit of the name's use.”
There were 141,537 entries in the contest, which was begun because Ford officials did not want the project known as the “Ford development.” Many other corporations have invested in the project.
The two most popular names submitted were “Motor City Plaza” and “The Hub,” 542 entries each, Ford officials said Thursday.
Someone suggested “A Site for Shore Eyes,” and a few submitted "Drof Center" and "Saedi Retteb Center" (“Ford” and “Better Ideas” spelled backward). Automotive entries abounded: “Autopia,” “Radiator Square,” “Torque City,” “Carmelot,” “Carmopolis” and “Carnicopia” among them.
Lennert said he has a “romantic feeling for Detroit. Anytime somebody knocks Detroit, I jump in and un-knock it.”
Chrysler on board
Chrysler Corp. announced Thursday that it too would invest in the “Renaissance Center.”
The announcement of the $1.5 million investment came as something of a surprise since Chrysler Chairman Lynn Townsend had told a press conference last Feb. 8: “We have felt that it is more constructive for Detroit to have us doing our own thing.”
Asked about this, a Chrysler spokesman said Thursday: “We didn't have any turnaround.”
He cited other Townsend statements in the press conference, including one in which the chairman said: “We have not at this point made a decision to take any equity interest. We've gone our own way up to this point.”
Chrysler will invest In Renaissance Center through a subsidiary, Chrysler Realty Corp.
Chrysler becomes the 40th company to participate in the partnership, which will build the project. The first phase of Renaissance Center, scheduled for completion in early 1976, includes a 70-story hotel and four 39-story office towers.
The next day, the paper’s Soundoff feature, an unscientific poll in which readers phoned in their votes and comments, revealed significant opposition to “Renaissance Center.”
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Detroit's Renaissance Center got its name
