DETROIT | Development & Construction: Motown Lowdown

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by animatedmartian

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...-lawrence-tech
Sucks for that McDonalds though. Guess they'll have to adopt a more urban design if they want to retain visibility.

The ground space could go to a hungrier and better local cook, though. Small businesses are so great for their creativity... They never mentioned any boring major restaurant franchise.

Midtown is cool anyway. That's where it's at.

[animatedmartian]

State would demolish Joe Louis under plan for new hockey arena
By Bill Shea. December 13, 2013



The state will pay to demolish Joe Louis Arena after the Detroit Red Wings move into a new facility sometime in 2017 or 2018.

The hockey team has played at the city-owned arena since 1979.

News of the arena’s fate was disclosed Friday afternoon during a Downtown Development Authority special meeting to approve sending to the city council a concession management agreement between the DDA and Olympia Development of Michigan for a new $650 million arena and entertainment district at I-75 and Woodward Avenue. ODM is the real estate arm of the Ilitch family, who own the Detroit Red Wings.

The cost of the demolition and what could be built on JLA’s riverfront location haven’t been determined, said George Jackson, chief of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., the quasi-public agency that staffs the DDA under a contact with the city.

Jackson said the demolition would happen not long after the Red Wings move out, pending an agreement with the state.

....

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...w-hockey-arena

[animatedmartian]

Building made of shipping containers planned for Detroit's Corktown; Construction could start in January
Dustin Block. December 13, 2013





DETROIT, MI - Construction on a 4,400-square-foot office building made out of shipping containers in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood could begin in January, according to the company behind the project.

Three Squared Construction, a Detroit-based company that uses recycled shipping containers to create homes and offices, says it hopes to finalize financing by Christmas and break ground next month on a model center on Michigan Avenue near the Grinnell Place Lofts.

The company plans to use half the space as an office and demonstration site for larger projects planned for Detroit, said Three Squared CEO Leslie Horn, who splits time between San Diego and Detroit. The other half would be available for lease as a custom built workspace, she said.

Once approved, construction would move quickly on the project named "Michigan Avenue Squared," Horn said. The company would have the building framed within four hours of breaking ground and built out by February. Fast, low-cost construction is a major benefit of building from containers, she said.

Three Squared hopes the project is the start of a successful 2014. The company has $300 million in potential projects in the works for the next two to three years, is applying for patents on its construction system, and made a splash this week when it announced Eric Lloyd Wright, the grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright, was joining the firm as its lead architect. Wright will work out of Los Angeles with the aim of making shipping container construction energy efficient and attractive, Horn said.

....

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/in...ping_cont.html

[hudkina]

That's an interesting concept for Michigan Ave. It looks like they'll create an historic facade for the building to blend in with the neighborhood.

A lot of announcements, BTW. I'm also excited about 3550 Cass and the Davenport. These will help bridge the gap between "Midtown" and the Cass Park area. I'm excited to see what this area will look like in the next five years.

[animatedmartian]

Yea, things are really picking up heading into 2014 and beyond. I can't think of a time where so much activity was building up momentum.

[Rizzo]

That shipping container building looks great! Nothing like shipping containers which is why I like it.

[JonathanGRR]

While not development news per se, this is a pretty good piece about I-375 and Black Bottom (with some Corktown history thrown in!):

When Detroit paved over paradise: The story of I-375
John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press | December 15, 2013

If the state rips out I-375 to make Detroit more accessible to pedestrians, as some urban planners have urged, the move will come 60 years too late for older black Detroiters who remember how freeways destroyed the city’s historic Black Bottom district.

Named for the rich dark soil that French explorers first found there, the Black Bottom district in the 1940s and ’50s housed the city’s African-American entrepreneurial class, with dozens of thriving black-owned businesses and the Paradise Valley entertainment zone, where Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie performed.

But the builders of I-75 and I-375 plowed multilane highways right through Hastings Street, the commercial heart of Black Bottom, and projects such as Lafayette Park and the public housing projects to the north destroyed the rest in the name of progress.

“Black Bottom, Paradise Valley, was indeed a paradise for black entrepreneurial businesses,” said Sidney Barthwell Jr., 66, a 36th District Court magistrate whose father, Sidney Barthwell, ran a chain of pharmacies and ice cream shops in Black Bottom. The Barthwell business network, among the most important black businesses in America at the time, was mostly wiped out by the freeway construction.

“Funeral homes, doctors — there were a dozen different black-owned hospitals (in Black Bottom), because in those days, they wouldn’t admit you into the major hospitals if you were African-American,” Barthwell said. “The Detroit black community in its heyday was absolutely fantastic. It was better than Harlem.”

Historian Joe T. Darden of Michigan State University, co-author of the new book “Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide,” said the Detroit experience needs to be remembered for what was lost to urban renewal and expressways in the 1950s and ’60s.

“Some people may not know that history, so if nothing else, it’s important to put that into perspective and say more about it,” he said.
...

Detroit Free Press

[LMich]

To be clear, while the proposed I-94 is further along than I feel comfortable with, it's still far from a done deal. It could easily be cancelled or delayed with the change in state government depending on how the 2014 elections turn out. If I remember correctly, Granholm was the one who originally iced the I-75 expansion in Oakland County. I think what's different this time around is people are finally calling out MDOT on this silliness. State Rep. Jim Townsend has promised to give this process hell (MDOT is using an Environmental Assessment from the 90's for the I-94 expansion). And, just symbolically, since they serve two different purposes, but what's looking like the tearing out of I-375 will put pressure on MDOT, no doubt, to re-examine freeways expansions, in general.

This fight is far, far from over. Hey, if MDOT re-studies I-94, and they find that they need to reconstruct the freeway, and move and/or lengthen certain ramps and add some technology to make traffic flow better, I'm all for it. But, even a laymens glance at this shows you there is no need for a generalized expansion. It's not like trucking companies and industrial business have been screaming for some imminent expansion. I know the road lobby is hurting, but that's no excuse. MDOT needs a major culture change.

[EuphoricOctopus]

I don't get why they would want to widen the freeways when congestion has never been a huge problem. Compared to other cities our freeways do a good job moving traffic even during rush hour.

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by LMich

To be clear, while the proposed I-94 is further along than I feel comfortable with, it's still far from a done deal. It could easily be cancelled or delayed with the change in state government depending on how the 2014 elections turn out. If I remember correctly, Granholm was the one who originally iced the I-75 expansion in Oakland County. I think what's different this time around is people are finally calling out MDOT on this silliness. State Rep. Jim Townsend has promised to give this process hell (MDOT is using an Environmental Assessment from the 90's for the I-94 expansion). And, just symbolically, since they serve two different purposes, but what's looking like the tearing out of I-375 will put pressure on MDOT, no doubt, to re-examine freeways expansions, in general.

This fight is far, far from over. Hey, if MDOT re-studies I-94, and they find that they need to reconstruct the freeway, and move and/or lengthen certain ramps and add some technology to make traffic flow better, I'm all for it. But, even a laymens glance at this shows you there is no need for a generalized expansion. It's not like trucking companies and industrial business have been screaming for some imminent expansion. I know the road lobby is hurting, but that's no excuse. MDOT needs a major culture change.

If you look at other similarly sized metros, it would appear that Metro Detroit's network of freeways doesn't suffer for infrastructure. In fact, it seems to be overbuilt. Despite this, traffic volumes can be astounding along the 4 and 5 lane freeways during peak times, and backups are very common. The sad thing is that the majority of these vehicles have single person occupancy. We do not have a good culture of ride share/transit use in part because of the relentless freeway development. But, as we know, the freeway demand has always caught up with supply and then we're right back where we started.

Are HOV lanes worth it? Most growing cities I've visited in the last few years have had these lanes, but I've never used them consistently enough to know their value.

[LMich]

From WeAreModeShift.org:

Is This Really Necessary?

The I-94 expansion is supposedly intended to reduce congestion and increase safety along the highway. It is debatable, however, if this benefit would ever be realized. The FEIS ignores the phenomenon of induced demand, by which motorists quickly consume any newly-generated highway capacity simply by taking more frequent, or longer, trips. Adding concrete to our urban centers only encourages people to move further away from work, shopping, and entertainment, increasing rather than reducing traffic and congestion. Urban planners figured this out over a decade ago, and expressways in many cities around the world are being scaled back or eliminated altogether, often resulting in an increased quality of life for everyone in the region – not to mention a huge savings in tax dollars.

It’s not the 1990s anymore. Automobile use is becoming increasingly unattractive as gas prices (which often dipped below a dollar per gallon while the I-94 expansion was being planned) are now pushing four dollars per gallon and don’t show any signs of decreasing. Telecommuting is on the rise. A younger generation of working Americans is electing en masse to live closer to downtown employment centers, and residential development in downtown Detroit is progressing steadily even in the midst of a nationwide housing collapse. Funding is in place for both commuter rail and bus rapid transit in southeast Michigan.

It was the lack of consideration given to truly multimodal, transit-oriented solutions that prompted Transportation Riders United, a Detroit transit advocacy group, to write a scathing 53-page response to MDOT’s draft Environmental Impact Statement. As TRU points out, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments 2020 land use projections (upon which the demand for an expanded I-94 was foretasted) used a model which assumed sole reliance on the automobile.

TRU cites the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration, who, in a 2000 review of SEMCOG’s methods, criticized regional authorities for lacking “operational mode choice or transit network assignment models for the region, [without which] the ability to … analyze tradeoffs among transit alternatives and between transit and highway projects is extremely limited.”

TRU also challenges many of MDOT’s dubious and unsubstantiated claims regarding supposed positive side effects of the project. According to FEIS Chapter 5: Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts, the expansion of I-94 will bring about an increase in property values and property tax revenues in the vicinity of the highway (somehow), enhance pedestrian and bicyclist mobility (never mind that nine bridges over the highway will be removed without replacement), improve aesthetics within the I-94 corridor (if you like the way freeways look), and create construction jobs (but so would an equal investment in mass transit).

Adverse Impacts

Perhaps the most significant impacts of the planned expansion will come not from the widening of the highway itself, but from the addition of two-lane service drives and wider freeway on- and off-ramps. Although MDOT often makes the claim that the service drives will increase “neighborhood connectivity” and “pedestrian and bicycle mobility,” local traffic flow parallel to the expressway never seems to have been a problem.

...

According to the EPA, “[the project would] combine vehicular bridges with pedestrian bridges and eliminate stand-alone pedestrian bridges [without consideration of] how these changes would impact pedestrian and bicycle activity in the area.” The City of Detroit’s Planning and Development Department concurred that “pedestrian mobility will be seriously restricted” and recommended that MDOT “[e]xplore the feasibility of a scaling back [the project] … creating funding that could be used for potential mass transit” and pointed out recent changes in federal funding priorities that increased the viability of mass transit alternatives to highway expansion.

Detroit’s City Planning Commission held a public hearing on the MDOT project and reported “all non-MDOT speakers had serious concerns about the project.” The CPC and Detroit City Council also opposed the gratuitous taking of residential and commercial properties for expanded expressway service drives.

Perhaps the strongest and most significant local government opposition to the MDOT project came from the City of Ferndale, located six miles north of I-94 and thus removed from any immediate adverse impacts. The City Manager and City Council of the suburban community described the expansion as “too large, too costly, not coordinated with any regional mass transit plan … a detriment to regional and community development.” A resolution from Ferndale’s City Council lamented a plan that would, in its view, “aggravate urban sprawl, disinvestment from the central city and its older suburbs, and does nothing to help those who may not have private transportation options.”

...

Pedestrian-only Bridges to be Removed Without Replacement:

Brooklyn over I-94
Canfield over M-10

Pedestrian/Automobile Bridges to be Removed Without Replacement:

Third over I-94
John R over I-94
Beaubien over I-94
Lucky over I-94
E Ferry over I-75
Piquette over I-75
Saginaw over I-94
Eastbound Harper over I-94
McClellan over I-94

This whole this is overwrought and overdesigned and the process rigged. Of course Detroit has chokepoints as would any other area of this size, but the traffic here is and was nothing by comparison. There is a false choice being presented in all of this, which is support these expansion, as is, or do nothing. What needs to be done is that this needs to be re-studied to provide more up-to-date information. Some of the most recent data is ten years old, now, not even to speak of the age of some of the environmental data. Thank goodness Metro Detroit is finally back in population growth, mode, but the place is still down approximately 150,000 people since some of the more recent data was complied, and it's not going to gain all that back by decades end.

[animatedmartian]

Midtown Detroit's neon hammer & nail building coming down for new projects
By John Gallagher. December 15, 2013.



Detroit’s thriving Midtown district will see two important new structures going up soon and one landmark coming down.

Cleveland developer John Ferchill said last week he hopes to break ground on a new five-story medical arts building at 3750-3800 Woodward Avenue. Ferchill, best known as the developer of the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel, told the Detroit Downtown Development Authority that the project will cost upwards of $60 million and contain more than 150,000 square feet of office space and a parking deck with more than 600 spaces.

The project means the razing of a Midtown landmark, the office tower at 3800 Woodward that’s emblazoned with the iconic neon hammer coming down on a nail atop the structure. Ferchill told the DDA he tried to save the tower to convert it to dorms for Wayne State University but the economics didn’t work.

The new five-story building will house the offices of Wayne State physicians and the Detroit Medical Center will take the fifth floor. A smaller retail building also be built on the site. Work should start in the spring.

....

http://www.freep.com/article/2013121...-arts-building

The other building mentioned is the LTU building down the street (with extra rendering).

[LMich]

I'm still genuinely confused by the project. Whatever you think of the aesthetics - which is to say that it doesn't matter, in this context - the Professional Plaza isn't a run-down, abandoned property, and it fronts Woodward. It could have done a better job of it, but it's still on Woodward. What they are proposing is tearing down the existing property - which was also home to a lot of medical offices - to make room for medical office building of nearly the exact same size as the Professional Plaza. You get the mention of the little side building, but it still feels like an odd waste of effort.

I guess the only thing I find admirable about the whole thing is that they are going to replace the giant parking lot with a parking garage which will have retail, but even then that's only if the garage doesn't end up abutting Woodward in any way, and I can't tell from the rendering exactly how everything is placed on site. It looks like the main building doesn't even really front Woodward, but a side street, so does that mean we get some driveways, maybe a bit of surface parking fronting Woodward in between the three different structures that will be built?

[animatedmartian]

I get the feeling that there were always plans to vacate the Professional Plaza. If they were looking into converting the building into dorms while the building was still in use, then yea, it seems like there was going to be a point that the medical workers were going to move into a new building. It could very easily be that Professional Plaza is just too outdated to support the needs of the medical workers. No matter the condition of the building, it just might be cheaper and easier to build a new one entirely instead of trying to retrofit the old one.

The rendering leaves a lot to be desired in terms of showing how the site is laid out. It does look like there's a little drive way or side street coming off Woodward, but I can't really tell if that goes all the way to John R. I can't even really tell if the main building itself reaches John R. It certainly seems long enough.

I do like the nice little prominent feature on the building though. Seems like it adds just enough interest to stick out along the Woodward streetwall but not so much that it's a distraction.

[LMich]

I was talking more about the Woodward side of this development. Whereas the Professional Plaza ran the block creating a streetwall, this will leave some wholes in the streetwall. It seems that you'd want to retain the streetwall on Woodward and tuck the garage on the back of the site. This seems like the orientation of the new building a downgrade from an urban perspective given what's currently on the site. We're looking southeast in that rendering, right? I see a lot of unsued space on Woodward, and I'm hoping it's not a parking lot or lawn, but what else could it be?

[RCDC]

I don't know if it's been mentioned but here's another reason to stop I-94.

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by LMich

I was talking more about the Woodward side of this development. Whereas the Professional Plaza ran the block creating a streetwall, this will leave some wholes in the streetwall. It seems that you'd want to retain the streetwall on Woodward and tuck the garage on the back of the site. This seems like the orientation of the new building a downgrade from an urban perspective given what's currently on the site. We're looking southeast in that rendering, right? I see a lot of unsued space on Woodward, and I'm hoping it's not a parking lot or lawn, but what else could it be?

Yea it could be that. But on the one hand, that might be there for future development. At worst it could be a parking lot for a strip mall, but I don't think that's the case.

I actually have a big gripe with developments that take up the whole streetwall and leave a lot of space behind them (or fills it with a parking garage). It's more old school to build perpendicular to the street than it is to build along it unless it's needed.

For example:




IMO, the Ellington and the office building across from it in the first picture waste a lot of space. However, it can be forgiven since they sit on the corner. Though even in that respect, they still could have been built better. Both of them could have been more perpendicular to Woodward. Especially since the office building makes Parson's street entirely less interesting because of the parking garage. Even if the garage fronted Woodward, it wouldn't take up much streetwall space if built perpendicular to Woodward a la this parking garage fronting John R.

If you see in the lower picture, the old school apartments are built away from the street towards the center of the block. This fills up much more of the block than if you just had one apartment filling the streetwall entirely. Another plus is that there's less risk for overbuilding. While it does leave holes in the streetwall, they're not huge holes. You could very easily build a slender apartment building on any of those empty lots.

That could also mean that you don't have to spend so much money on filling space (in turn, needing less money for financing), and instead you can build market-rate prices while also spending a little more on aesthetics. While it's a slower method of development, I think it's a better method.

I would hate to see something like this filling up Detroit's blocks.





I dunno, those just don't seem very human-scaled to me. They also look kind of ugly and cheap from the street. I think Detroit would do well to focus on quality instead of quantity and keep things at a human scale.

[LMich]

I guess I just disagree. Were the city really booming and this were a perfect world, then perhaps I could tolerate it with the realistic expectation that you'd see infill. But what would likely happen in a place like Detroit is that you get a perpendicular building with a parking lot that stays there for a decade or more while new development doesn't fill in, but rather build on another block entirely with it's own parking lot on Woodward.

BTW, read the curbed article on this, finally, and the parking garage will be right on Woodward. Maybe it will be perpendicular to Woodward (still unsure of the site plan), but they are pretty explicit about the large garage having at least some of its frontage on Woodward. This is a downgrade as far as I'm concerned with the only saving grace, again, being that it will have ground floor retail. This makes me think that the garage is going to be on the southwest corner of the site, the medical arts building on the northwest corner leaving the little retail building somewhere in between the two, and definitely set back from Woodward, whether there is a parking lot or lawn in front of it will be little consequence as far as I'm concerned. This is just bad planning. We should be trying to hide parking on the backlot at every opportunity we get on Woodward, and with this site being so incredibly large and the parking already out back, that's where it should have stayed.

[animatedmartian]

I was under the impression that the Ellington was in the background to the right which put the building on the southwest corner which would put the backside of the building directly next to the parking garage that's already there.

Ugh, I just hope they come out with more renderings at some point.

[animatedmartian]

In other news, the LTU building had its groundbreaking ceremony earlier today, and the Brewster Projects are in the second phase of demolition which are the midrise towers on the north side of the block.