DETROIT | Development & Construction: Motown Lowdown

[DetroitSky]

The latest updates on the Joe Louis Greenway as end of planning phase nears

The planning phase for the much-anticipated Joe Louis Greenway is entering the home stretch. After 48 public meetings over the past year—some city-led, some hosted by community groups—the last scheduled event ahead of the release of the framework plan took place Tuesday, December 10 at the Unity Baptist Church of Detroit.

Christina Peltier, project manager with the General Services Department (GSD), gave a brief update about the 32-mile non-motorized trail that will loop around Detroit and pass through parts of Hamtramck, Highland Park, and Dearborn. Posters outlining possible path types, routing, amenities, and more were spread around the room with cards available for residents to make comments. Consultants Sidewalk Detroit set up a filming area for people to talk about their relationship to biking, transit, and green space.

City planners have been stressing the importance of community engagement in shaping the greenway. “Resident input has affected probably every dimension of the plan,” Meagan Elliott, GSD chief parks planner, says.

The route was originally 26 miles, but due to resident concerns about safety, it’s been expanded to 32 miles in order to take as much of the greenway off road and to intersect with parks, amenities, and bus routes.

Detroit’s Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation Grants $10M to Invest Detroit to Support Commercial Corridors, Parks

Invest Detroit today announced a $10 million grant from the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation in Detroit that will support the Strategic Neighborhood Fund over the next five years to support commercial corridors and parks in 10 neighborhoods across the city.

The grant is part of the foundation’s place-based investments that are aimed at driving job growth, building community wealth, and generating additional economic development.

Comerica Bank in Detroit Begins Offering Services in Lobby of Michigan Headquarters

Comerica Bank Monday began offering banking services inside the lobby of the Comerica Banking Center, the bank’s Michigan headquarters in downtown Detroit, located at 411 W. Lafayette.

The location provides customers with street-level access to services during operating hours – 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday. Services during this time include account opening, servicing, consultation and advising, and cashless transactions such as making deposits or tax and loan payments.

DTE Energy to implode old Detroit power plant swapped in FCA land deal

DETROIT – DTE Energy will demolish the old Conners Creek Power Plant in Detroit on Friday, a piece of the land exchange made with the city to make room for a new Fiat Chrysler plant.

The plant was retired in 2008. The demolition will take place via the explosive felling process, which uses strategic explosives to bring down a structure in a controlled manner, DTE Energy says.

Cleveland brewery Saucy Brew Works opening Detroit location in 2020

As Detroit's beer scene continues to grow, another brewery will soon make their debut in the Motor City.

Cleveland-based Saucy Brew Works is expected to open their first Michigan location next spring, stated marketing manager Shelby Nicholson via email Tuesday. The brewery will be part of Bedrock's mixed-use City Modern development that is currently under construction in Brush Park.

"We're excited to join another market that is similar to and near our home market of Cleveland, Ohio," said Nicholson.

[Innsertnamehere]

wait, Comerica Bank does not have a branch at their downtown offices? What kind of bank does that? Every single bank in Toronto has a massive super luxury branch in their main downtown building (one even includes a ~20 storey atrium!).

Mind you Toronto's bank HQs are the global HQs for most of them, I'm not sure if that would change the situation. Even then it just seems odd to have your offices in a major downtown location and not provide a branch to service customers.

[DetroitSky]

Comerica has other locations in and around downtown. I’m not sure why they waited so long to open one in their regional headquarters. I agree it is strange, especially because Comerica’s corporate headquarters was in downtown Detroit until 2011 or so.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Mind you Toronto's bank HQs are the global HQs for most of them, I'm not sure if that would change the situation. Even then it just seems odd to have your offices in a major downtown location and not provide a branch to service customers.

Comerica is incompetent garbage and they do absolutely nothing right.

[seabee1526]

Are there plans for highrise waterfront residential tower(s)?

[DetroitSky]

Originally Posted by seabee1526

Are there plans for highrise waterfront residential tower(s)?

There's the Stone Soap development, if that ever gets off the ground. Would be about 7 floors. Then on that same block there's a planned hotel and apartment development, about 8 floors. No solid plans have been announced for that yet. Then there's the Jefferson Van Dyke project, which is a 7 floor apartment building. There's also this project, but obviously that's a few years off still.

Then there's potential towers at the Joe Louis site, Jefferson and Grand Blvd, and the Uniroyal site, but we haven't seen anything announced yet.

I haven't heard anything about it, but I doubt we're far off from seeing the Whittier renovated too.

[DetroitSky]

So Crain's recently change how their paywall works and the old method of googling the article to get around it no longer works. I don't feel like paying for news I can mostly get elsewhere for free. Call me cheap, but it is what it is. Hopefully another forumer is a Crain's subscriber and can post the articles for the rest of us. They put out articles today about Detroit and FCA are starting a $1.8M home repair program in the vicinity of the new Mack plant and how a planned apartment building at John R and Garfield across from the DMC received state financing.

New Wayne County jail complex rising rapidly near I-75 in Detroit. Here's a look at its progress.

Looks like the second time's the charm for the effort to build a new Wayne County Jail and courthouse complex.

Construction officials led reporters on a hard-hat tour Tuesday of the building site for the future Wayne County Criminal Justice Center, located east of I-75 a couple of blocks north of Warren in Detroit.

Set for completion by third quarter 2022, the jail and courthouse complex recently began seeing more visible progress as steel went up for the planned seven-story courthouse and the first walls were erected for the new Adult Detention Facility, or jail. The work is visible from I-75 and nearby streets.

In all, five buildings are planned for the new site — the courthouse to replace the existing Frank Murphy Hall of Justice downtown, the adult jail, a juvenile detention facility, an administration building and a utilities building. The total cost was budgeted at $533 million. The project is currently over budget by something less than $40 million as construction costs have risen sharply.

Courthouse


Courthouse rendering


Adult detention center

Highest structural beam placed on Fiat Chrysler's new Detroit plant

The top-most steel beam of 299 at Fiat Chrysler Automobile NV's plant on Detroit's east side was put in place with an actual evergreen on top to mark the successful and safe completion of the job. The milestone comes four months after the first beam was in put in place.

The $1.6 billion project is transforming the former Mack Avenue Engine Complex into an assembly plant for the next-generation Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV and a new three-row, full-size Jeep SUV. It will employ 3,850 people. The vehicles are expected to begin rolling off the line by the end of 2020.

Gallery: Detroit Lawyer Revives Popular Shrimp Shack In Highland Park

Detroit lawyer Todd Perkins is known for representing high-profile clients including former Detroit Councilman George Cushingberry and Floyd Merriweather Jr., a middleweight champion boxer.

Now, in addtion to his downtown Detroit law practice, Perkins has reopened a popular carryout restaurant, Miley & Miley Shrimp Shack at 13548 Woodward Ave. in Highland Park, that had been closed for about a half-dozen years.

Perkins has renamed the restaurant Lanette's Shrimp House after his wife Jetuan Lanette Perkins, who passed away in April 2016 from complications from Lupus, a long-term autoimmune disease. She was a social worker who became a stay-at-home mom who was active in community affairs.

Opening a restaurant, Perkins said "was an idea that my wife and I had." He said the idea was that the family, including the two young children, would work there.

[DetroitSky]

Curbed released an article today about the Garfield - John R project, and, unsurprisingly, it has been scaled back due to rising construction costs:

$36.6M Midtown apartment building secures funding, ready for 2020 construction

A mixed-use apartment building in the Sugar Hill Arts District of Midtown is now ready for construction after a delay caused by financing challenges.

A joint venture by nonprofit developers Develop Detroit and Preservation of Affordable Housing Inc., the new building at John R and Garfield streets will bring 54 apartment units, 11,800 feet of ground-floor retail, and a 160-space parking structure.

About 25 percent of the apartments, 14 in total, will be reserved as affordable for those making between 50 to 60 percent of the area median income. The Sugar Hill development is across from the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center, and many of those units will be targeted to homeless veterans through the HUD-VASH voucher program.

The total development cost is estimated at $36.6 million. Construction is expected to begin in early 2020 and take around 18 months.

[Innsertnamehere]

Why the heck do they need 160 parking spaces for 54 units? That’s like 3 spaces per unit. No kidding it needed to be scaled back.

[SperamusMeliora]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Why the heck do they need 160 parking spaces for 54 units? That’s like 3 spaces per unit. No kidding it needed to be scaled back.

City ordinance requires 0.75 spaces for every unit in this building plus another 0.75 spaces for every 200 sq ft of retail space (100 sq ft for restaurants) because it’s within ¼ mile of a street-car/light rail or bus rapid transit line. So that’s 40.5 spaces for the residents and 44.25 to 88.5 for the retail space, giving us a total of 85 to 129 required off-street parking spaces.

I’d guess the extra 30 spaces are just for good measure.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Why the heck do they need 160 parking spaces for 54 units? That’s like 3 spaces per unit. No kidding it needed to be scaled back.

It's unacceptable, it needs nowhere near that amount of parking.

[DetroitSky]

The parking lot currently on the site is used by a lot of people visiting the DMC and vets hospital so they’re probably trying to maintain that revenue.

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by DetroitSky

The parking lot currently on the site is used by a lot of people visiting the DMC and vets hospital so they’re probably trying to maintain that revenue.

I thought the same thing, especially to offset the operating costs of the low income units.

[Innsertnamehere]

The cost of constructing a structured parking space is rarely profitable compared to the revenue it brings in. You can’t finance commercial parking on $10/day parking prices.

Parking is usually subsidized to service a specific tenant / use, separated general commercial parking rarely works out financially unless the parking rates are extremely high. I’m not sure about in Detroit, but in Toronto it generally costs about $50,000CAD to build a structured parking space, so to break even you need about $350CAD a month ($260USD), remembering that a parking space isn’t “sold” every day and weekends/holidays bring in much lower revenue. I’m sure it’s cheaper to build in Detroit but I’m doubtful these spaces would pull even half that revenue.

[DetroitSky]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

The cost of constructing a structured parking space is rarely profitable compared to the revenue it brings in. You can’t finance commercial parking on $10/day parking prices.

Parking is usually subsidized to service a specific tenant / use, separated general commercial parking rarely works out financially unless the parking rates are extremely high. I’m not sure about in Detroit, but in Toronto it generally costs about $50,000CAD to build a structured parking space, so to break even you need about $350CAD a month ($260USD), remembering that a parking space isn’t “sold” every day and weekends/holidays bring in much lower revenue. I’m sure it’s cheaper to build in Detroit but I’m doubtful these spaces would pull even half that revenue.

I don’t think you understand the situation. The structure is attached to a residential/retail building, so most of the parking will go to those renting/shopping in the building. It’s across from the largest hospital in the state, and since we don’t have the transit options Toronto has, parking is in high demand around here. I can guarantee spaces will be considerably more than $10 a space. But this garage isn’t being built just as parking for hospital guests. We’re talking just a few dozen spaces.

And in Detroit there are plenty of garages that have been built that aren’t for any specific building/use. A lot of garages in the downtown area exist to service buildings in the immediate area as well as visitors to downtown in general.

You need to keep in mind that driving personal cars is the main mode of transit in metro Detroit and that causes parking spaces to be in high demand.

[animatedmartian]

From data I can find, most parking garages in Detroit tend to be profitable albeit not really any more profitable compared to surface lots.

If comparing Detroit to Toronto, what makes a big difference for Detroit is having 3 stadiums next door to each other near the core of downtown. That means there's actually very limited parking space if there are any special events during a normal workweek/summer weekend. In addition to Detroit's general lack of mass transit, this makes the price of parking higher than it otherwise would be.

[DetroitSky]

Silicon Valley tech accelerator to open space in downtown Detroit

Detroit — A Silicon Valley innovation platform that helps to grow start-up companies plans to open a technology hub in downtown Detroit this spring.

In the latest sign that the city is becoming a tech center, Plug and Play said Thursday it is partnering with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and the Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council to provide Michigan companies better access to young companies that are looking to shape the future and bring them to Detroit. It also will emphasize businesses owned by women and minorities.

"We have five locations focused on automotive mobility," said Sobhan Khani, vice president of mobility for Plug and Play. "There's one in Silicon Valley, in Stuttgart (Germany) in Europe, in Japan, in Beijing and Shanghai. In the U.S., we felt one location was missing in the automotive industry."

"Plug and Play Detroit powered by AmplifyD" (Amplifyiversity) plans to secure space in downtown Detroit for the innovation hub in the first quarter of 2020 to open with its first class by June.

Classes typically include 15-20 start-ups from around the world who apply. Two classes typically are held each year. Plug and Play provides its platform to help these entrepreneurs access mentoring, financing and space to research and develop their technology.

Gordie Howe bridge project scores $15 million in federal funds

The first U.S. funding for customs and border protection for the Gordie Howe International Bridge was part of a $1.4 trillion spending package that President Donald Trump signed into law at the end of last year.

The package allocated $15 million for inspection and screening systems at the upcoming bridge, which will connect Windsor and Detroit and is expected to be completed in 2024.

U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, pushed for the funding, which "will allow for faster, more effective examinations of cargo and passengers," according to a November letter Peters wrote to other lawmakers.

The Henry Glover House Project's Facebook page posts regular updates on the renovation. Here's some photos from today:











Lowell on DetroitYes posted some photos of projects in Milwaukee Junction:




Chroma




This might be demolition. They've removed a lot of overgrowth and debris, though. I'll have to go by soon and take a look.


These apartments are just south of Fisher Body Plant 21. Apparently a worker told Lowell they were being renovated.

Curbed put out this article today listing some of the major projects expected to be completed this year.

[uaarkson]

Originally Posted by DetroitSky

If this were a demolition, would they have bothered to painstakingly removed all the overgrowth? Hmmm.

With that said, the structure looks totally done for.

[SperamusMeliora]

Originally Posted by uaarkson

If this were a demolition, would they have bothered to painstakingly removed all the overgrowth? Hmmm.

With that said, the structure looks totally done for.

Just did some light digging in the city's open data portal... The property was sold by the DLBA to Deluxe Real Estate LLC in mid-October. I could not find what permits were pulled demolition, or otherwise as the portal only includes up until 2 days after the sale date. (parcel no. 01003671)

[SperamusMeliora]

Design revealed for Gordie Howe bridge pedestrian spans over I-75

As part of the Gordie Howe International Bridge construction, five arched pedestrian bridges will be built over the span's interchange with I-75 in Detroit.

The pedestrian bridges are planned over the highway at Solvay, Beard, Waterman, Junction and Lansing streets. Gordie Howe bridge construction contractor Bridging North America will build them between 2020 and 2024, according to a news release.

The paths will be 10 feet wide, with arched sides ranging 33 feet above the road, the release said. The bridges will be made of concrete with bronze-finished steel arches, metal alloy railings and LED lighting. They will accommodate cyclists and those on foot.

Elmwood Park Plaza tower to be renamed, renovated in $25 million effort

Construction on City Club Apartments Lafayette Park, formerly Elmwood Park Plaza at 750 Chene St. between Larned and Lafayette streets, is expected to begin this month with residents moving into renovated units starting in the spring.

Among the renovations are an 18th-floor lounge, greenery added to the building's facade, new landscaping, extensively renovated and redesigned apartment interiors, a fitness center, heated pool and hot tub, a beach volleyball court and a outdoor grill.

Market rents will be $1,250 to $1,550, according to City Club Apartments.