In local parlance it’s known as the “fail jail” site, a partially constructed eyesore that has been sitting idle for more than a decade on the de facto northeast entranceway to Detroit’s downtown.
The original purpose of the excavation was for a regional jail. But the proponent, the Municipality of Wayne County, which includes the City of Detroit, balked at escalating costs and abandoned the project and people were indicted over misappropriation of funds.
A few years later it struck a deal with downtown Detroit’s premier developer, Dan Gilbert and his firm Bedrock. The company has rehabilitated and built scores of buildings in the once ghost-like downtown, one of the most notorious examples of U.S. Rust Belt urban blight and a magnate for “ruin porn” tourists.
Bedrock tossed around various ideas for rehabilitating the 14-acres, which sat with unfinished columns and a partly constructed first floor, including for a 25,000-seat soccer stadium.
But Gilbert and NBA Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores abandoned that $1 billion mixed-use development including restaurants, an office tower and hotel. That’s because of improvements to nearby Ford Field, home of the NFL’s Detroit Lions.
Meanwhile, Gilbert swung a deal with Wayne County to swap 11 acres of land two miles north, with the fail jail site. The new plan was for a massive mixed-use development with a vision to create an appealing “gateway” to the downtown. In return, Gilbert would build a new $670 million jail for the county at the other site, which opened last fall.
Now, eight years later, that vision has turned to reality with the announcement of a $300 million, 220,000-square-foot life science innovation building at the center of a four-mile innovation corridor on land Bedrock also owns, some of which was former government buildings.
The Daily Commercial News sought did not receive a comment from Bedrock.
The building and related corridor would help create a new dimension to the city’s core, which has been centered on traditional office workers, entertainment and sport. Committed parties are BAMF Health, Michigan Innovation Headquarters, a “start-up factory,” Ferris State University as well as Wayne State University and its TechTown Detroit entrepreneurship hub.
“This collaboration is poised to create a vibrant ecosystem that supports innovation, drives economic growth, and positions Detroit as a leading player in the knowledge and life sciences sectors,” Bedrock said in a release.
Repositioning the area from criminal justice to life sciences, innovation and research “is a much better client base for sure,” Noah Resnick, associate dean with the school of architecture and community development with the University of Detroit Mercy, said.
It also dovetails on a thriving 110-acre seven hospital Detroit Medical Center campus several blocks north.
Initial renderings “don’t really mean anything at this point but they at least show an encouragement of wanting to have public space that is well-designed,” Resnick said. “Bedrock has certainly had a healthy track record of hiring good designers to be able to accomplish this.”
And the concept is a “way more appropriate use of this parcel than what the county originally intended for it.”
Resnick called the wider so-called innovation district a “sort of nebulous idea. I think that it’s more marketing speak than anything. My gut says it’s essentially specialized office space, and that’s OK.”
Resnick said he hopes the development also would tame the “incredibly fast-moving traffic” on six-lane Gratiot Avenue, which borders it.
“Urbanistically it’s a pretty terrible space” with acres of wide open lots.
And how the other adjacent thoroughfare, I-375, may be redeveloped from a sunken expressway to a surface boulevard to encourage pedestrian traffic and link neighborhoods will be a “huge, huge factor, particularly in the success of Bedrock’s plan.”
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