Inside look: Michigan Central Station restoration
After a six-year restoration by Ford Motor Co., Michigan Central Station is reopening to the public on June 6, 2024. Here’s an inside look.
Detroit Free Press Staff
The magical space created by the restoration of Michigan Central Station in Corktown has officially opened its doors to the public for a month of winter celebration and holiday shopping with gifts unique to the historic site.
Over the weekend, more than 3,000 visitors stopped by to check out the holiday display that was promoted on Michigan Central Station social channels, station spokesman Dan Austin said.
Two dozen vendors are featured inside, some staying long-term while others bring the pop-up presence known to attract so many shoppers to Detroit every holiday season.
It may look and feel — for families who remember the 1913 Beaux-Arts Building in its heyday — like the sparkling Detroit of decades ago. To walk through its grand halls and shops, filled with uniquely designed items ranging from handmade Christmas ornaments, children’s clothes with tiny train insignias and jewelry inspired by the classic architectural space to leather goods, furniture and Michigan Central Station photography books, is simply breathtaking.
Glass Christmas ornaments have been commissioned from as Poland while Michigan businesses play a key role. Popular Detroit brands Shinola and Carhartt and Pewabic are included, too.
For many visitors, it may be hard to believe the building just opened this summer after six years of restoration and reconstruction. But it’s easy to see why travelers from all over the world are coming through now.
Hours and tickets
Families from around Michigan and throughout the region will want to take guests from New York to Los Angeles to the iconic 15th Street site for coffee or lunch or just to take in sights that look and feel like stepping into a storybook. (Those of us who used to go to Hudson’s downtown as children feel a special kind of nostalgia for our city during this season.)
Winter shopping hours run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Saturday, Dec. 28, The station is closed Sundays and Mondays.
Fridays and Saturdays feature special Winter at the Station events, and crowds are expected to be large, so tickets are required. Live music is part of every Friday during the 5-10 p.m. public hours, which require a $10 ticket. Saturday hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. are free but do require tickets for entry. Tickets are available at michigancentral.com
Parking is available at lower cost during the holidays at the Bagley Mobility Hub parking garage a couple blocks away at 1501 Wabash St.
The woman quietly making it happen
Behind every spectacular experience is a curator, and the visionary behind the scenes is Roslyn Karamoko, 39, of Grosse Pointe, a retail and brand strategist who established the global clothing brand Detroit is the New Black.
Her focus over the past two years has been bringing to life the immersive shopping experience and partnerships that exist today and will continue to evolve in the springtime.
They include Yellow Light Coffee, whose owners also run Johnny Noodle King and Green Dot Stables in Detroit. Neighbor x Folk, one of the retail concepts within the train station, will host book clubs, candle making and other community programs, Karamoko said. She held up a wrist to show a delicate forever bracelet like the kind that will be sold in the Shops at Michigan Central.
Karamoko, a fashion merchandising graduate of Howard University and member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, worked at Nordstrom in Seattle and later as a buyer and planner for Saks Fifth Avenue in New York. Later, she moved to Singapore to be an international buyer and learned about Hong Kong, the Philippines, Australia and global cultural trends and branding and pricing and all the logistics involved.
It has been incredible preparation for now.
‘If you had an idea here, it was really possible’
So much life has happened since she moved to Detroit in 2013.
“It was a different city for sure. … I was, like, this is downtown?” Karamoko said. “My friends and family were all confused, asking, ‘Why Detroit? What are you doing there?’ I was so inspired by it. There was such a vibe here that felt untouched (less commercial than other cities) and it felt quite raw. It was like if you had an idea here, it was really possible. … There was a freedom to the city … just an energy that felt like you could do and say and be anything.”
The Michigan Central team recruited Karamoko in February 2023.
“I was minding my business and Josh (Sirefman), the CEO of Michigan Central, reached out to me. He sent me an email and said, ‘Hey.’ Toby from Lafayette American introduced him to me, not the coney but the ad brand agency. Toby Barlow — I’ve known him through my previous work. Josh was looking for retail or creative expertise in the city and Toby threw my name in the hat.”
At the time, Karamoko confessed, she didn’t understand what Michigan Central was going to be. Then she took a private tour. “There was so much at stake.”
Now she handles every imaginable detail related to products and branding and design. Wrapping paper depicts the train station floor plans. A candle maker out of New York designed a scent specifically for Michigan Central.
“They loved Detroit. … We developed the Porter’s Daughter candle, thinking about the station,” Karamoko said, holding the candle. “It’s like grapefruit, cedarwood, paper, eraser, salt. Kind of has that Old World feel with that fresh grapefruit as a future-facing note.”
She then tells about a young woman she met at an art fair on Belle Isle, shopping for her young son. So Karamoko reached out to ask the artist to design a children’s railroad line of overalls, backpacks, hair clips.
Past meets present meets future
Looking out over the city, Karamoko explains how the products reflect the city, its people, their creativity and Detroit’s past and future.
“We really wanted to tap into the heritage of Ford and interpret it in a contemporary way,” she said, using different kinds of historical imagery and highlighting a range of artists. “There’s a good mix of a bit of old and new, thinking about contemporary Detroit and future-facing and heritage craft, which is the most exciting for me.”
Karamoko is a Seattle native who never imagined being in Detroit one day. She is the daughter of blue-collar parents — a retired mail handler for the U.S. Post Office and a city worker.
“I really come from work,” she said, proudly. “I really know how to work.”Raised in the AME (African Methodist Episcopal) church, singing in the choir, Karamoko went on to become an athlete in track, swimming, karate and gymnastics. She grew up thinking about diversity and perspective.
“My mom is a little person, she’s a dwarf,” she said. “Just having a different mom, proportionally, even, just trained my eye and my ability to connect with people that were different than me — and see everyone as the same. I think that dress and how people clothe themselves is such an obvious way to communicate who you are. So that’s how I always thought as a small child. I always knew what I wanted to wear, and how I wanted to feel.”
Her older sister is a Ph.D. nurse and educator, while Karamoko has always focused on fashion, she said. “I can remember as early as 4 years old knowing what color stockings I wanted to wear with my church dress.”The family would shop Sears to JC Penney to Macy’s. As a child, she would go home with fashion ideas and her mother would sew it. She later would write up tailor orders in the men’s suit department at Nordstrom, as the Nordstrom brothers strolled the floor.
“I would take the tickets for the tailors. They would come down to fit the men, and I would just, like, write it, like ‘2 off the hem,’” she said. “I felt like I was in Paris.”
The beauty of Detroit — the brand
A passion for immersive shopping is what Karamoko brings to Michigan Central.
“Through retail I want to have a conversation,” she said. “Create a space for people to respond, and create product for everyone in a way they feel seen and welcome.”
Being in the space of Michigan Central, the architecture, it’s majestic feel brings an honesty and experience unlike any other, she said. “It makes you think of what the city was at its best, and just who has come to the city and how. People were coming up from the South for jobs in Detroit, and people were going off to war. You see how class and race and opportunity and economic mobility intersected. I think that’s the beauty of Detroit, as just this iconic American city. This is the place where all of that was born. That is Detroit’s brand — it’s carried through in innovation in music and automotive and all the exports from the city. This is, like, the physical manifestation of the American Dream, for better or worse.”
While her coming to Detroit shocked her family, Karamoko brings her family to the city to see its evolution up close. She can’t imagine leaving now.
“I don’t know where I would go,” she said. “Detroit is the right fit for me. I always want the underdog to win. And I always just see the beauty in the origin of what something is — the architecture here, the people here, the spirit here. It’s inspiring, and I don’t know that there are a lot of cities that still feel that way.”
Detroit, too, rarely gets credit for all it deserves.
“There’s such a fabulous piece of this city that I want the world to see again and know again,” Karamoko said “If I can do that, in the smallest way through retail, I want to do it.”
People not in Detroit can shop for Michigan Central Station merchandise at shop.michigancentral.com.
Phoebe Wall Howard, a Free Press auto reporter for nearly seven years, covers cars, culture and sailing on Substack at phoebewallhoward.substack.com Contact her at phoebe@phoebehoward.com.