KCRag Forum

KCMax wrote: An interesting, albeit radical idea on how to transform Detroit:

http://www.urbanophile.com/2009/08/09/d ... -frontier/

All in all, it’s a purchase of 517,000 square feet and brings Gilbert’s downtown holdings to more than 80 properties. That’s 13 million square feet of real estate the magnate now owns.

Take a drive anywhere in Detroit and you will see them—abandoned, boarded-up, or windowless buildings. You see them along highways. You see them downtown. You see them on neighborhood corners. Thousands of these structures fill the city.

Yet, from this widespread state of decay, Detroit is emerging as a national leader in the adaptive use of commercial buildings. It is not just the redevelopment of former Class B or C office spaces into residential lofts, as has happened in so many cities. What is really flourishing in Detroit are innovative and even exotic reuses of long-vacant or historic structures.

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Rising Rents

With all the redevelopment and adaptive use activity, market rental rates have been rising, providing a new incentive for further investment. At the bottom of the city’s real estate market, for instance, apartments rented for just 60 cents per square foot ($6.46 per sq m). But recent projects are getting $2 per square foot ($21.53 per sq m), which makes traditional lenders more willing to finance projects.

“Right now, if you can open an apartment in Detroit, you can sell [prospective renters] on the idea of renting downtown,” says Brian Rebain, architectural director at the locally based Kraemer Design Group, which worked on the David Whitney Building redevelopment.

In recent years, out-of-town speculators have been buying up properties in a modern-day land rush. But redevelopment in Detroit still requires mavericks—creative risk-takers like the Cooleys, the Carletons, Burton, and Landrum. Or Joel Landy.

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The project is being referred to as "Detroit's largest residential development in decades." It will include the construction of up to 400 new residential units, ranging in size from apartments to townhomes, and the renovation of four historic mansions, all within a dense four-block community that aims to be a "catalytic" development for the city.

While bureaucracy slows residential development in many other cities, Detroit is moving at historic hyperspeed to increase available housing in a downtown where 100,000 people work but less than 6,000 people live.

Quicken Loans Inc. founder Dan Gilbert said 3,100 of his workers live in Detroit, up from the 77 who lived in the Motor City when Gilbert first moved his online mortgage firm downtown in August 2010.

If they could find a place to live in the city, “there would probably be another 2,000 ...,” Gilbert said.

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He moved downtown to continue to attract young talent, who increasingly told Gilbert and Bedrock officials they didn’t want to work and live in the suburbs.

“I (would) always say to myself: If we just come down here and just be in two buildings, we might as well be in the suburbs,” he said when asked why he and Bedrock started to amass downtown property. “If we are going for this, we are going to do as much as we can. Let’s make as much impact as we can. It was one of the best decisions we ever made.”

Bedrock said it has invested nearly $2.2 billion in acquiring and renovating 80-plus properties downtown. He possesses prized skyscrapers, a major chunk of Woodward, the Greektown Casino & Hotel and at least 17,000 parking spaces.

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The biggest rumor in Detroit was finally confirmed earlier this week: Ford Motor Company bought Michigan Central Station and will start to build a big presence in Corktown. The company will unveil its plans June 19 in a community celebration at the old train station. Then, we’ll start to learn about what seems to be a very big change for the neighborhood—and for Detroit. Below, we answer a few questions we’ve heard since the rumors started earlier this year.

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