Flagpole installation inDetroit, MI

Flagpoles in Detroit

Michigan's biggest city and its densest commercial ground: a downtown rebuilt office by office, a hospital and university district behind it, and plant and warehouse frontage running out along every avenue. We cover Detroit and the Wayne County area, including Campus Martius and the Woodward Avenue core, Greektown, Corktown and Michigan Central, Midtown and the Cultural Center, the Detroit Riverwalk, New Center, Eastern Market, Belle Isle and the Jefferson Avenue plant corridor.

Wind here. Detroit sits in a dense urban, river-influenced area, which works out to roughly 105 mph under the code your town uses. That figure decides how wide and how thick the pole has to be, so we check it against your address before we quote. Detroit has a long list of local historic districts. Inside one, the Historic District Commission has to sign off on how the pole will look — that approval is called a certificate of appropriateness — before the Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department will issue a permit, and doing those two in the wrong order costs weeks. The ground is the second Detroit fact: old glacial lake bed, heavy clay that holds water and works against a footing through every freeze and thaw, so the hole is dug for what the auger brings up rather than for the height on the order. On a cleared or Land Bank parcel there is a third question, which is what is still buried. Old foundations, slabs and abandoned services sit under a great deal of vacant ground in this city, and we settle that before we price a hole.

Most of the people who call us from Detroit are downtown offices and hotels, hospital and university buildings, vehicle plants and their suppliers, churches, union halls, city facilities, veterans posts and the developers rebuilding neighbourhood commercial blocks.