Seventy-five Detroit high school students traded their classrooms for construction sites Thursday, getting hands-on experience in skilled trades at the historic Lee Plaza.

Two new affordable housing complexes are being developed in Pontiac.

If you’ve driven down West Grand Boulevard, you’ve seen it. Honestly, you can’t miss it. It’s Lee Plaza, a 16-story abandoned hotel that has stood empty since it closed in 1997, casting a dark and deteriorating shadow over Northwestern High School.

It has long stood as an iconic symbol of Detroit’s decline, the old Lee Plaza Hotel on West Grand Boulevard has sat vacant for decades, but that’s soon going to change. This is the towering Lee Plaza; it’s been abandoned and ransacked for 25. Now it is getting a new lease on life.