i dea

n
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City architect Alex Pollock still
for Detroit.
envisions

magic

GEORGE CANTOR

Special to the Jewish News

nce he was magic.That's what Life magazine
called him in an article that ran 32 years ago.
Magic Alex Pollock. The quirky urban archi-
tect who would restore the flash to the fading city of
Detroit.
He wore a cape and a deerstalker hat. Ideas tumbled
out of him. Working on a budget of $1,600, he man-
aged to illuminate the city's fading Eastern Market,
brightening up its bleak sheds with vivid urban art.
Supergraphics, he called it.
Murals of a wild-eyed chicken. A row of meats.
Produce. He made it fun to go shopping for food in
the tired old farmers' market.
And that was just the beginning. There were won-
derful plans to revive the riverfront, the neighbor-
hoods — all the areas of the city that had been writ-
ten off as lost.
He didn't just think outside the box, he tore the box
apart and jumped up and down on the shreds.
Pollock is now 61 years old, and his gray hair is
thinning. He now wears a coat and tie to work in his
position as Detroit's "senior associate architect, plan-
ning and development."
The magic dried up long ago. It collided with the
harsh realities of Detroit's politics and finances.
"I've been fired twice and brought back both
times," he says. "I've found that in this business if
you're too successful, you're labeled as someone who is
not a team player. I sometimes think I'm stuck in a
19th-century government model that doesn't work
anymore in the 21st century.
"But in my mind, I'm still a kid. Sometimes it feels
like I'm running full speed and everyone else is stand-
ing still."

0

.

Beyond The Imagery

In Pollock's downtown office on the 20th floor of the
Alex Pollock with plans for a covered footbridge from Ford Field to the Eastern Market.
Cadillac Tower, there is an enlarged wall photograph.
It shows him riding on an elephant and playing a cor-
wasn't especially observant. Yet, he became a bar mitz-
in the early 1970s.
net, with an entire brass band seated behind him. The
vah at Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park and still makes
"I was told to go out and look for something —
picture was taken at a band festival in Kentucky, and
it a point to attend services on the High Holidays at
anything
positive
—going
on
in
some
city
depart-
playing antique wind instruments is one of his pas-
University
of Michigan Hillel in Ann Arbor, where he
ment,"
DeLisle
recalls.
"This
was
a
time
of
retrench-
sions. In fact, his brass band can be heard on the
has
friends.
He has also attended the Isaac Agree
ment,
doom
and
gloom.
Sometimes
I
thought
our
real
soundtrack of Ken Burns' award-winning documen-
Downtown
Synagogue
in Detroit.
job
was
to
make
sure
no
one
broke
into
the
City-
tary Baseball.
Pollock, divorced and without children, resides in
County Building on our watch and stole the fixtures.
But the imagery is almost too perfect. Magic Alex
Detroit's Old Redford neighborhood. He still lives in
"And here was this guy who dressed funny and had
on another quixotic toot astride the elephant while the
the
city he works for, he says, "although I don't have
all these incredible ideas. Magic Alex was a dream to
band plays on.
to
anymore.
Sometimes I wonder why, but I stay put."
promote."
The "Magic" label was hung on him by Tom
He
grew
up
in
Miami
Beach,
in
a
Jewish
family
that
DeLisle, a speechwriter for Mayor Roman S. Gribbs
IDEA MAN on page 14

1/27

2005

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