DETROIT (AP) - Work is set to start on a 410-unit residential development considered the largest group of new homes in Detroit in decades.
City Modern is expected to appeal to people seeking to move close to Detroit’s popular downtown where professional sports teams and other entertainment, restaurants and cultural attractions are located.
The project’s price tag is more than $100 million. It will feature townhomes, duplexes, carriage homes and apartments in 20 buildings on 8.4 acres of land in Detroit’s historic Brush Park. Just over 300 units will be leased. The rest will be for sale.
The community is intended to be high-density and walkable. Public spaces will be connected by landscaped pathways.
Crews will break ground within a week on one of the new buildings. Some units are expected to be completed by early 2018.
“Another day, another major step forward for Detroit,” Mayor Mike Duggan said Tuesday at a ceremony where details of the project were released.
Brush Park is one of Detroit’s oldest neighborhoods and more than a century ago was home to some of the city’s wealthiest residents. But like other parts of Detroit it succumbed to abandonment and blight as hundreds of thousands of people left for the suburbs beginning in the 1950s.
Many of the original homes and Victorian-style mansions have long since crumbled and were torn down. But one mansion was renovated last year and three others will get makeovers as part of City Modern.
Karissa Holmes, 32, has lived in Brush Park since 2012 and said smaller developments already have started nearby, but City Modern “is a game changer.”
The corporate attorney is a member of the Brush Park Community Development Corp.
“The task we’re charged with is kind of facilitating development in our neighborhoods,” she said. “I always knew Brush Park was going to be a popular place because of its location. There’s always that ’if you build it, they will come’ attitude.”
The project is being spearheaded by Bedrock Detroit. In early November, the developer announced that it was bringing 218 furnished “micro-loft” apartments downtown.
City Modern is “a joint mission between private developers and the city - and they want the same outcome,” said Dan Gilbert, Quicken Loans founder and Bedrock co-founder.
“We’re all in and continue to be all in for Detroit,” Gilbert added. “We believe in Detroit.”
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