Detroit Development News

The People of Palmer Park group is working to bring back the 12 miles of trails in and around the park, starting with going for a $50,000 grant.

The non-profit activist group has been making great strides to improve the quality of life in Palmer Park and the neighborhoods surrounding it in recent years. Some of its wins have included planting fruit orchards throughout the park and planting sunflowers along Woodward Avenue.

People for Palmer Park is now going for a $50,000 grant to improve the trail system throughout the park. The Tom's of Maine contest is awarding $150,000 in grants to six nonprofits from across the U.S. The Palmer Park project is the Michigan representative. The project with the most online votes wins a $50,000 grant while the next four runners up each receive $12,000 grants. Voting closes out today.

People for Palmer Park would use the money to restore and rebuild the trails and path throughout the park, along with adding signage to notes the area's historic and natural assets. "There is a lot of history in the park, like Native American history," says Sarah James, a board member for the People for Palmer Park. "We want to highlight the whole area."

Source: Sarah James, a board member for the People for Palmer Park
Writer: Jon Zemke

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The Palmer Park/University District communities are undergoing a bit of grassroots rebranding this year now that a growing number of local residents and stakeholders are referring to the area as Uptown Detroit.

"We just kind of came up with the name," says Sarah James, a board member for the People for Palmer Park. "We were thinking of the Woodward corridor and how there is downtown and Midtown and we are the farthest up Woodward."

Uptown Detroit will encompass the Woodward corridor between McNichols Avenue and 8 Mile Road. The area currently consists of a variety of neighborhoods, including Palmer Park, Palmer Woods, State Fair, Sherwood Forest, Green Acres, University District, Chaldeantown and Highland Park.

Local stakeholders like James are hoping to leverage a fresh, all-encompassing brand to boost the momentum that has come from a number of new developments, such as the redevelopment of a number of Palmer Park's apartment buildings and the planting of fruit orchards throughout the park.

The collection of neighborhoods that now fall under the Midtown Detroit banner underwent a similar transformation a decade ago when local leaders combined a fresh brand with the momentum from local developments. The people behind the Uptown Detroit effort are hoping to follow the same game plan to success.

Source: Sarah James, a board member for the People for Palmer Park
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Looking for your chance to own a major of architecture by one of the world's most renowned architects? Detroit has your opportunity.

The city has taken control of the Lafayette Towers, a marquee part of the Lafayette Park neighborhood designed by world-famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The apartment building had been foreclosed on by the U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development and handed over to the city of Detroit to find a new owner. The Detroit Economic Growth Corp is soliciting redevelopment proposals for the city.

This high-rise apartment complex consists of two, 22-story buildings on nearly 10 acres of green space. The complex offers 584 market-rate apartments, along with a fitness center, laundry room, community space, pool and parking garage. A solid majority of the complex is leased and the city is looking for a developer with deep pockets to take over the complex and maintain it as a residential area.

"Somebody has to come in with a minimum of $16 million in financing," says Bob Rossbach, a spokesman for the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. "This is a going concern that is significantly rented."

For information on the request for proposals send an email to tdsmith@degc.org or click here.

Source: Bob Rossbach, a spokesman for the Detroit Economic Growth Corp
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

One of the most-traveled stretches of road in Detroit is about to become more sustainable.

The Michigan Department of Transportation is installing 308 new LED streetlights along I-94 on the city's east side. LED lights are the poster child for energy-efficient lighting technology, consuming far less than half of the energy of traditional street lights.

"The lights that currently there were put in during the early 1970s," says Rob Morosi, a spokesman for Michigan Department of Transportation. "You can expect a lifetime for the lights of about 30-40 years."

The lights are going in on a five mile stretch of I-94 between French and 8 Mile roads. Of the 308 new LED street lights, 244 will illuminate the main section of the freeway. Another 64 LED street lights will light the on- and off-ramps along the freeway. The lights along the main trunk of the freeway will be mounted along the sides of the road, instead of in the middle of the expressway.

"That way they are much easier for maintenance crews to access and its safer for motorists," Morosi says.

Work is set to begin this month and wrap up by next spring.

Source: Rob Morosi, a spokesman for Michigan Dept of Transportation
Writer: Jon Zemke

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The retail space for the Auburn apartment building in Midtown is nearly leased out with a combination coffee bar/ice cream shop close to taking final space.

"Ice cream is something that has been lacking in the neighborhood," says James Van Dyke, vice president of development at The Roxbury Group, the developer behind the Auburn.

The 3-story mixed-use development at Canfield and Cass avenues consists of 58 apartments above a ground floor dedicated for retail stores. The original plans could accommodate as many as 11 shops but it appears that eight retailers will occupy the ground floor when the building opens in November with a few of the businesses taking up larger spaces.

Among the businesses that are set to open in the space are:

HUGH, the men's accessory store that won last year's Hatch Detroit contest;
NORA, a sister store for HUGH dedicated to contemporary design and housewares;
Topsoil, a vegetarian eatery brought to you from the folks behind the Russell Street Deli;
GoCycle, the Royal Oak-based spinning business is bringing its indoor cycling studio to Midtown;
Sy Thai, the popular Birmingham-based Thai food restaurant is opening a location in Detroit;
Center Street Properties, the leasing company for the Auburn will also have a ground floor office;
Source Booksellers, the independent book store is moving across Cass to the Auburn.

All but four of the 58 apartments are one-bedroom units. The other four are studios. Prices range from $700 for a studio apartment to $900 for a one-bedroom apartment. The first residents are set to move in during the first few days of November. The retail spaces will be turned over to the businesses shortly afterward. Van Dyke expects the businesses to begin opening a few weeks after that.

Source: James Van Dyke, vice president of development at The Roxbury Group
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

The city of Detroit is preparing to release a formal request for proposals for the city's soon-to-be former Fire Dept. headquarters in downtown.

The Detroit Fire Dept has called 250 W. Larned St. home since the building was constructed in 1929. The 5-story structure at the corner of Washington Blvd. features 62,910 square feet. The building is zoned PCA, Restricted Central Business District and could accommodate a high-density re-development.

"We want something that will complement downtown," says Brad Dick, director of the General Services Dept for the city of Detroit. "It could be mixed-use, like condos with a business downstairs."

The Detroit Fire Department is preparing to move to the city's new public safety headquarters in the former MGM Casino on the west end of downtown next summer. It will completely vacate its current home during the move.

Jones Lang LaSalle is acting as the city's agent in this process. It is playing up the site's proximity to the newly renovated Cobo Hall and the People Mover. Financial incentives are also available for the redevelopment. The city has been floating the idea of redeveloping the site for several weeks and has conducted about 20 walk-throughs to potential developers. The city hopes to have a deal in place within the next 9-12 months.

"We'd like to have an agreement to do something as soon as possible," Dick says.

For information, contact Sterling Howard at 313-967-4108 or at sterling.howard@am.jll.com.

Source: Brad Dick, director of the General Services Dept for the city of Detroit
Writer: Jon Zemke

 Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

The push to renovate a baker's dozen of mansions in Boston-Edison is heading toward its home stretch now that two of the homes have been renovated and the remaining 11 are set to be done by January.

The city is partnering with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority and the Detroit Land Bank to turn 13 mansions in the Boston-Edison into a high-end, sustainable homes that will remain viable places for middle-class families to live for decades. The project is leveraging millions of dollars in federally-funded Neighborhood Stabilization Funds on the project with an average investment of a little more than $200,000 per house.

Each house is for sale and goes for its appraised value. Most of the list prices are about $100,000. These homes are also available to the city's Project 14 program, which focuses on moving more city employees, such as police officers, into the city. Some families have already purchased the finished homes and begun to move in.

"We're excited that people are seeing this as a vibrant and vital neighborhood," says Marja Winters, deputy director of Planning & Development Dept. at the City of Detroit.

Each home has high-end features in both its aesthetics and sustainable core systems. Each house has Energy Star appliances, granite countertops, comprehensive insulation and a number of other sustainable features.

"Some of these even have geothermal (heating and cooling systems) that make it much more sustainable and viable in the longterm," Winters says.

Source: Marja Winters, deputy director of Planning & Development Dept at the city of Detroit
Writer: Jon Zemke

 Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

La Feria Tapas has won the 2012 Hatch Detroit contest and plans to use the prize money to help speed along its opening next spring.

La Feria Tapas, a Spanish-style tapas restaurant, is turning a vacant, non-descript building at 4130 Cass into a showpiece near the rapidly developing intersection of Cass Avenue and Willis Street. The stretch of Cass between Alexandrine and Canfield streets is quickly becoming a commercial hub in Midtown.

Five years ago it was best known as the home to Avalon International Breads but now it houses a number of other boutique business, such as Slows To Go and Curl Up & Dye, and several other newly renovated commercial spaces. The location helped make the decision easy for the co-founding trio of Pilar Baron-Hidalgo, Naomi Khalil and Elias Khalil.

"In my mind it's a no-brainer," Elias Khalil says, adding Detroit's lack of Spanish-style tapas restaurants has created a void in the market. "If you go to any other big city there are a lot of them. Here it's a major missing link."

La Feria Tapas plans to use the $50,000 first place prize from Hatch Detroit to pay for a large chunk of the kitchen equipment. The trio of partners have been working on the restaurant since January and expect to open in April.

Source: Elias Khalil, co-owner of La Feria Tapas
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

If both art and beauty are in the eye of the beholder, how long should that shelf life last when it comes to public art?

As Detroit becomes a bigger and bigger canvas that attracts more and more street artists, the works often draw both praise and criticism. However, as time and the artists move on, their work stays. More often than not it deteriorates and becomes a part of the blight it was often meant to stand in stark contrast with.

Not so with Hopscotch Detroit. The 3.75 mile installation lined the sidewalks of the Lower Woodward Corridor between Campus Martius and Wayne State University's campus. Ajooni Seth, Dylan Box, Ellen Rutt and Laura Willming partnered with Imagine Detroit Together to create the hopscotch trail in late September.

The group of young people used an organic paint made of water, corn starch, flour and sugar. They tested for a few months beforehand to make sure it would wash away within a few weeks. Much of the paint has already faded and disappeared entirely in some spots a few days after the installation was finished.

"The idea is having a temporary piece of art like this living in the moment," Willming says. "Hop now because if it rains within the next week you won't be able to."

Source: Laura Willming, co-creator of Hopscotch Detroit
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Development of all kinds in Hamtramck is about to take a few major steps forward now that the city is close to putting a federal housing lawsuit behind it.

Hamtramck is at the tail end of putting the nation’s longest-standing housing discrimination court case behind it. The city is partnering with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority to build or rehab 200 homes, leveraging federal Neighborhood Stabilization Funds.

So far 130 homes (both for sale and rentals) have been finished and the rest are on schedule to be done by the end of 2013. The city and its partners (Wayne County, Michigan Association of REALTORS, Michigan Home Builders Association and Huntington Bank) are launching $50 million construction program plans to build or rehab 100 homes in that time.

Hitting those goals will clear the way to lifting the court-ordered ban on the city for selling municipally-owned land. Hamtramck has about 500-600 vacant city-owned residential lots that will soon become available for sale and additional new home construction when that happens.

"Being able to sell those lots is a fantastic opportunity for us to plan what can happen in this city," says Susie Stec, community & economic development coordinator for the city of Hamtramck.

Traditional development (both commercial and residential) is an obvious candidate to take off in Hamtramck. However, urban agriculture is another avenue that could benefit from the ban's lifting. While plans for large-scale, commercial urban agriculture have stalled in recent years, smaller community gardens in side lots have flourished.

Hamtramck's bevy of potentially available lots could be a boon for that sort of community garden agriculture. Stec sees concentrations of vacant lots in the city, such as the area on the south side of the city between Holbrook and Denton.

"There is a lot of interest in urban gardening, and doing more intensive types of agriculture," Stec says.

Source: Susie Stec, community & economic development coordinator for the city of Hamtramck
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

The Gateway Project is in its final stages now that the ramps to the Detroit side of the Ambassador bridge are open to traffic to primary expressways connecting to the international bridge.

"We're about 95 percent done," says Rob Morosi, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Transportation. "We have reached the milestone where we can open ramps to the plaza from I-96 and I-75."

The opened ramps will take the traffic off of the service drives and other local roads in Southwest Detroit in adjacent Mexicantown and Corktown. The open ramps will also allow motorists the option to access toll booths directly or visit the duty-free plaza before proceeding to the Ambassador Bridge.

The remaining construction consists of roadwork on the surface streets that traffic had been diverted to for years. That roadwork consists of Rosa Parks Boulevard between Fort Street and Michigan Avenue and on the I-75 services drives.

The opening of the ramps comes less than seven months after Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Prentis Edwards directed the Detroit International Bridge Co to cede control of their portion of the $230 million project and ordered Michigan Department of Transportation to complete the remaining work. In the March 8 Opinion and Order issued by Judge Edwards, the Detroit International Bridge Co was directed to deposit $16 million into an account to fund construction.

Source: Rob Morosi, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Transportation
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Hatch Detroit is down to its four finalists, a small group of promising business that have designs for creating jobs across the Motor City.

The four finalists include Detroit River Sports which plans to bring Kayak rentals to the city and offer tours through the canal districts around Belle Isle, downtown and elsewhere; Detroit Vegan Soul Café which plans to open a storefront business selling vegan food with a soul twist in West Village; La Feria which aims to open a Spanish tapas wine bar in Midtown and Rock City Pies, which specializes in unique combinations such as Salty Apple Carmel Pie and Blueberry-Custard Pie.

"We're happy with the diversity of this final four," says Ted Balowski, co-founder of Hatch Detroit. "Not only the diversity of ideas ... but the geographic areas they want to open."

These four contestants are competing for $50,000 in seed capital to open a retail location for their business in Detroit. Balowski and Nick Gorga launched Hatch Detroit last year as a vehicle to champion, support and grow locally-owned retail businesses. The nonprofit accomplishes this through funding its $50,000 contest, education, exposure, and mentoring. The bottom line is providing a stimulus that helps revitalize the city and inspires others in the community to create change.

Source: Ted Balowski, co-founder of Hatch Detroit
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

The third Woodward Tribute statue is up and glowing, this time in Highland Park. It joins similar tall, cylindrical sculptures in Ferndale and Pontiac.

The statues are part of the Woodward Avenue Action Association's Tribute Project, which is installing these sorts of sculptures along Michigan's Main Street as way to promote the corridor's history and culture through public art. The 30-foot-high columns are made mainly of glass and concrete.

The Highland Park Woodward Tribute sits at the intersection of Woodward Avenue and Gerald Street in a median on Gerald. It is framed by a mural on a drug store behind it that depicts the smoke stacks of the Ford plant where the $5 workday was made famous in the early 20th Century. The Woodward Tribute has images of a $5 bill and a dense figure in a top hat that looks like Henry Ford.

"It's (theme is about) what happened in the area," says Heather Carmona, executive director of the Woodward Avenue Action Association. "It's the story of Woodward."

Portions of these sculptures are being paid for by National Scenic Byway grants. The Woodward Avenue Action Association is still making plans to build another Woodward Tribute in Oakland County near the Royal Oak area and in the city of Detroit.

"That's our next target," Carmona says. "Where exactly we don't know."

Source: Heather Carmona, executive director of the Woodward Avenue Action Association
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Work on the Auburn apartment building is wrapping up this fall with the building's first residents set to move in within a few weeks.

Construction on the 58-unit apartment building began about a year ago at the corner of Cass and Canfield avenues in Midtown. The developers, The Roxbury Group, have signed on Center City Detroit to handle leasing and the building is now taking its deposits from its first residents.

"We expect to start moving in people in late October," says Michael Martorelli, sales and leasing manager for the Auburn. He adds that 128 people have put their names on a list to get one of the building's apartments. "We expect to be filled up by the time we start moving people in," he says.

The Auburn is a 3-story apartment building composed of four studios and 54 one-bedroom apartments. Prices at the new construction project range from $700 for a studio to $900 for a one-bedroom apartment.

Construction workers on the project have been plugging away at an accelerated pace over the last few months. Martorelli says they are now painting the units and installing the appliances. The ground-floor retail spaces are set to be ready before December.

"They're in the final stretch to get the units ready," Martorelli says.

Source: Michael Martorelli, sales & leasing manager for the Auburn
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

The final four of this year's Hatch Detroit competition are set to be named on Wednesday.

Voting to determine the four finalists for the second-annual competition finished yesterday. The contestants are competing for $50,000 in seed capital to open a retail location for their business in Detroit. This year's semi-finalists include some familiar names that have been growing their businesses from their homes and hope to leverage the Hatch cash to build a home for their budding businesses.

"There is a lot more experience in this group than what we had last year," says Ted Balowski, co-founder of Hatch Detroit. "A lot of them have worked through Eastern Market or the Rust Belt Market (in downtown Ferndale). They have worked very hard to build up their following."

Balowski and Nick Gorga launched Hatch Detroit last year as a vehicle to champion, support and grow locally owned retail businesses. The nonprofit accomplishes this through funding its $50,000 contest, education, exposure, and mentoring. The bottom line is providing a stimulus that helps revitalize the Motor City and inspires others in the community to create change.

This year's winner will be revealed on Sept. 27. Last year's winner, Joe Posch of HUGH, is close to opening his contemporary mens fashions store in Midtown. "He is going into the Auburn building, which still being built," Balowski says.

Source: Ted Balowski, co-founder of Hatch Detroit
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.