City Considering Maybe Possibly Doing Something with Old Olga's Building
City councilman Darren Fletcher announced Monday that the city is contemplating the possibility of perhaps putting some sort of plan together to deal with the abandoned Olga's building at State and Washington, which has been empty since the fall of 1996.
"It occurred to me that maybe, you know, letting an address sit empty on a high traffic area with ridiculously high rent might be, um, not in the city's best interest," Fletcher said. "Perhaps we could get a developer or someone to come up with something within the next seven or eight years."
In 2000, the building seemed to be on its way to renovation when a Southfield developer purchased the land for the purpose of setting up a retail site. The city council turned down his proposal, stating at the time the land would be better utilized as a "mixed-use" site. A counter-offer calling for loft apartments in addition to retail shops was also shot down, with the city counsel stating "Okay, you got us. We just don't want to lift a fucking finger on that building, okay? Are you happy? We fucking said it."
Even today, Fletcher's proposal was met by a great deal of opposition from other city officials.
"No way, man," councilman Jake Rollins said. "We can't just put something in there. It has to sit empty as a depressing reminder of how goddamn much everything in this city costs, especially rent. What, next you're going to tell us we should find something to fill in the Pinball Pete's on State and Packard that's been sitting empty for five years?"
City councilwoman Jessica Barber agreed. "There's plenty of other ways that we can make money," Barber said. "I mean, we can just go ahead and declare a snow-emergency day right now, except not tell anyone, and then hand out thousands of 25 tickets to people for having their cars on the street. That's, like, way more than a day's rent from some stupid pita-sandwich restaurant.
"We just have to start having secret snow-emergency days everyday," Barber then added before laughing maniacally for several minutes.
Still, Fletcher holds out hope that the city can ultimately agree on some use for the empty property.
"There are so many great possibilities for a location like that," Fletcher said. "We could open a Starbucks there. You can never have too many Starbucks. Or perhaps a Coney Island. Or one of those places with the tea with the mucous bubbles on the bottom where you can go to pick up Asians. Those seem really hot these days."
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