Plan to ‘cap’ I-75 in downtown Detroit moving ahead

Detroit is moving forward with a plan to cap part of Interstate 75 which bisects downtown, cutting the central business district off from a burgeoning entertainment and residential district immediately north.

The plan would also help complete a massive renewal in the central business district itself and integrate a plan for the $1.5 billion District Detroit residential, office and sports neighborhood as well as a new University of Michigan Center for Innovation.

The area earmarked stretches half a mile east to west, and extensive planning to date — including input from more than 200 community meetings — has resulted in three proposed “caps” over the six-lane expressway with matching service drives.

These are at Brush Street on the east, Woodward Avenue, the city’s main north-south commercial thoroughfare in the center, and 3rd Avenue on the west.

Up to now $6 million has gone into planning with another year earmarked for “formalizing the design” and preparation for submitting application for construction funding, which could amount to $200 million.

The project would dovetail on another proposal to deconstruct the moat like one-mile-plus auxiliary north-south I-375 just east of Brush Street with plans to convert it into a boulevard to connect the downtown’s eastern flank with eastside residential neighborhoods.

Detroit wouldn’t be the first city to cap core or inner-city freeways.

They have been a feature of urban renewal largely this century, perhaps the most famous is Boston’s Big Dig. But other projects include Capitol Crossing in Washington DC, Interstate Freeway Park in Seattle and Park Over the Highway in St. Louis.

The source of Detroit’s plan dates to the 2021 federal bipartisan Reconnecting Communities Act which sought to reconnect communities divided by earlier barriers like highway design and “repairing some of that past harm,” caused by post-war infrastructure, Eric Larson, CEO of the more than 100-year-old Downtown Detroit Partnership (DDP), the project’s lead, said.

I-75 was built in the 1950s.

DDP’s partners are the City of Detroit and Michigan Department of Transportation.

In terms of construction, “one of the things we’re being very cautious about” is the length of each cap, Larson said.

“If you extend beyond roughly 800 feet it becomes a tunnel and that presents all sorts of other interventions including ventilation and hazardous material routes.”

Pivotal to the caps is not just the physical structure but the amenities on top, Larson said.

“We have a strong interest at the DDP to create more public space in an area of the city that really has been absent of that because of the expressway,” he said.

So, some of the costs and budgeting will relate to how the cap will be used — “how does it get programmed” — including landscaping, buildings, transit and possible revenue generating food and beverage services.

The caps could host bikeways and “commuter pods” for micro mobility like scooters and bikes, he said.

The three areas targeted are designed “to make a very important reconnection east and west and north and south,” Larson added.

The 3rd Avenue connection would assist what is developing into a residential area around the UM Center for Innovation. Meanwhile central artery Woodward’s south side is the CBA along with sports facilities like Comerica Park and Ford Field and the theatre district, the second biggest ion the country.

To the north is Little Caesars Arena, restaurants and condo developments.

Brush Street connects “a very historic” neighborhood, once home to mansions of Michigan lumber barons, to Paradise Valley, the once thriving African American entertainment district now with small business and a “large and growing residential population.”

Larson is “very optimistic” of securing construction funding due to a recognition of changing mobility needs and “the fact communities that were seriously impacted need to be reconnected.” He believes the federal government, even with the recent change in administration, “continues to recognize that as not only a social but an absolute economic driver in these communities.”

Construction could be phased or built all at once depending on cost modelling.