BERLIN—On each of his last 15 visits to Detroit, Dimitri Hegemann has visited his old friend, Fisher Body 21.
“We really stay in touch,” says the 60-year-old Berliner with flowing blonde-and-white hair. “Fisher Body is my first real love.”
Fisher Body 21 is a decrepit six-story building that is covered in graffiti, lined with smashed windows and, according to state authorities, dangerously contaminated. Built in 1919, the former auto-parts plant in Detroit was deserted two decades ago.
But where others see a case for the wrecking ball, Mr. Hegemann and his friends see the first step toward the revival of America’s abandoned city. The asbestos-filled ruin, he says, “has a special aura…and I have plans for it.”
Mr. Hegemann, founder of a Berlin nightclub and record label, is spearheading a project called the Detroit-Berlin Connection, an effort by the movers and shakers in this city’s music scene to help restart the Motor City. The Berliners compare Detroit to their city after the fall of the Berlin Wall and say it has all the ingredients for a similar rebirth as a center of underground culture: deserted buildings, cheap rents and a gritty reputation.
They gave lectures on cultivating a music scene, circumventing government bureaucracy and recapturing abandoned buildings. Amid meetings with community organizers and local developers, the Berliners toured ruins, dined at a Zen Buddhism cafe and danced at a techno-music festival.
Berlin and Detroit have a deeper connection than tough times. The Berliners say they want to pay Detroit back for giving Berlin a crucial element to its own recovery: Techno music.
While on a trip to the U.S. in 1987, Mr. Hegemann discovered a demo album of strange industrial beats. Intrigued, he called the number scrawled on the label and reached the artists, a few young DJs from Detroit. “It reminded me of factory sounds,” he said. “Later I found out that everybody from Detroit has at least one relative that worked at” an auto factory.
Mr. Hegemann released the album under his German record label and brought the Detroit DJs to play in Berlin. As the Berlin Wall fell, techno exploded here, fueling all-night dance parties in the city’s abandoned spaces. “Detroit techno was the soundtrack to reunification,” he said. “It was a key to bring the kids from East and West Berlin together.”
Techno music—generally synthetic beats laid over repetitive bass tracks—now powers Berlin clubs that open on Friday and close on Monday. They attract millions of visitors every year.
Katja Lucker, head of the Berlin Music Board, a government-funded agency that promotes the city’s music scene, said she is discussing funding a Detroit residency for German artists with officials in both cities. Ms. Lucker, a political appointee who wears Adidas high-tops and a Detroit Tigers jacket around town, said her trip to Detroit this May made her see the city as “a healing place” that would rejuvenate burnt-out artists. “People are jogging in the streets because there are no cars,” she said. “It’s so inspiring.”
Detroit City Council Member Raquel Castañeda-López, who met with Ms. Lucker and Mr. Hegemann while in Berlin recently, said she is “100% in support” of their projects.
Mr. Hegemann founded Tresor, one of the world’s most famous techno-music clubs, in the abandoned bank vault beneath the bombed-out Wertheim department store after the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago. He has since turned a former East Berlin power plant into an 86,000-square-foot event space. On the roof, he keeps 120,000 bees, whose honey he sells in the basement nightclub. “We call it Techno Honey—a natural energizer,” he said.
For his next act, he is targeting Fisher Body 21. For the project, he has enlisted a Detroit real-estate developer, a Detroit architect and a Swiss foundation that helps redevelop abandoned buildings. Mr. Hegemann is confident the contamination issues can be overcome, but if not, he said he would turn his sights to the deserted Michigan Central Station in Detroit.
“The Germans’ love of Detroit is palpable. When they were here it was expressed daily and often,” said Walter Wasacz, a Detroit music journalist who is Mr. Hegemann’s Motor City point man.
Detroit’s view of the Germans isn’t always as romantic.
Berlin gardener Erika Mayr is trying to get Detroiters to use vacant lots there for commercial beekeeping, arguing it would create jobs and improve neighborhoods. “Where there are bees, things are growing and getting more colorful and more happy,” she said.
But after eight trips to Detroit in 10 years, she said no locals have bought in. “They say, ‘If it’s such a good idea, then why don’t you come and do it?’ ”
Some Detroiters say that while they welcome the interest from Berlin, they discount any comparisons with their city, which faces far deeper problems of crime, race and economics. “They can provide inspiration,” said Cornelius Harris, manager of 25-year-old Detroit techno-music group Underground Resistance. “But there are issues in Berlin that people in Detroit wish they had. There’s no real comparison.”
Ed Siegel, the Detroit developer who is working with Mr. Hegemann, said that it is unclear if what Detroit needs is a techno club. “I have to balance the romanticized version of Detroit internationally with what people here actually want,” he said.
In the control room of his former East Berlin power plant, where red leather sofas now accompany antique 7-foot computers, Mr. Hegemann showed off pictures of Fisher Body 21 and ticked off his ideas for the 536,000-square-foot abandoned factory: pop-up restaurant, art festival, startup co-working space, techno club.
Forget the look of the building, he said, “it’s about the soul.” To turn it into a techno club, Fisher Body 21 “just needs red lights and a kicking sound system.”
