10 new Detroit developments to get excited about in 2024
There is plenty to look forward to next year in Detroit development.
Some high-profile projects that have been under construction for years are expected to finish, such as Ford's ambitious rehab of Michigan Central Station.
Other much-awaited developments have 2024 opening dates, including a co-op grocery on Woodward and high-rise luxury apartments on the Detroit River. And plans for two transformative $1 billion-plus developments could finally get groundbreakings.
Here are 10 Detroit developments to get excited about:
Ford's Michigan Central Station
One of the most dramatic rehab jobs in the nation, the formerly abandoned Michigan Central Station off Michigan Avenue in Corktown, will reopen next year as new office, events and community space — and possibly later add a hotel.
The old train depot opened in 1913 and has been closed since 1988. Ford Motor Co. bought the landmark in 2018 and quickly started redevelopment.
Ford has yet to announce an official reopening date for the building, although it is expected at some point in 2024.
The new Michigan Central will be the centerpiece of Ford's Detroit mobility campus, which also includes the neighboring and newly rehabbed Book Depository building, now known as Newlab at Michigan Central Building.
Last month, a quarter-mile section of street outside Michigan Central debuted as the country's first wireless-charging public roadway for electric vehicles.
Joe Louis Arena site apartments, hotel
The former site of Joe Louis Arena is now the hottest riverfront development spot in Detroit.
A 25-story glass tower has been built where the old arena stood, and is expected to open in February. Known as The Residences at Water Square, the building contains 496 luxury apartments and went up fast by recent Detroit standards, taking roughly two years from start to finish.
The future residents will be paying top-of-the-market rents to enjoy the building's amenities and expansive views, with one-bedroom upper floor units asking over $4,000 a month.
The project's developer, Detroit-based Sterling Group, also has plans to build a massive hotel next door. Renderings show the future 25-story, 600-room hotel connecting to the apartments tower as well as nearby Huntington Place, formerly known as TCF Center and Cobo Hall.
Having a large hotel conveniently attached to the city's convention center has been a long-standing desire for local officials, who say it would help Detroit to land more big conventions and events.
More: Rehabs, demolitions and reopenings: 10 Detroit building projects of 2023
The proposed hotel would be the second largest in the city, behind the 1,328-room Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center. The project is scheduled to start the city approvals process next month and potentially break ground in the second quarter.
Potential Gordie Howe Bridge completion
Work crews have made significant progress on The Gordie Howe International Bridge. The six-lane, cabled-stayed bridge between Detroit and Canada has been under construction since fall 2018, when then-Gov. Rick Snyder met up in Windsor with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the groundbreaking ceremony.
Officially, the bridge is still scheduled to be done by late 2024. But there is speculation that it might not be fully ready until 2025. A spokesperson for the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority told the Free Press last week, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, that "we may see movement in the schedule" for completing the bridge.
Co-Op grocery
A new full-service grocery store is coming to 8324 Woodward in the North End.
The two-story, 31,000-square-foot Detroit Food Commons building will contain the Detroit People's Food Co-Op, a cooperatively owned grocery that will be open to the public. The building also will have community spaces and an incubator kitchen for food entrepreneurs.
The Black-led, community-owned development has taken longer than planned but is set to open in March.
Hudson's site getting closer
Dan Gilbert's Hudson's site development broke ground in December 2017 and is finally getting close to being done. The downtown project, 1208 Woodward, involves two new side-by-side buildings: a 49-story skyscraper and wider 12-story "office block." The office block building appears closer to being complete.
Gilbert's real estate firm, Bedrock, initially set out to finish the entire project in 2022, but construction ran longer than first anticipated. Development officials this year gave Bedrock a deadline of Dec. 31, 2024, for reaching "substantial completion," although time extensions — if necessary — are possible.
The skyscraper features a unique tapering design, and once finished, would be the second-tallest building in Detroit at about 680 feet, only behind the Renaissance Center (727 feet). It is expected to contain a 210-room ultra-luxury Edition Hotel and just under 100 condos.
The office block is to have 400,000 square feet of office space, plus meeting space and retail space. No future tenants have been announced.
AC Hotel
Further up Woodward, construction is underway of a new 10-story, 154-room Marriott International AC Hotel. The project includes the restoration of the 120-year-old Bonstelle Theatre — situated next door to the hotel — as future special events space. Both buildings could be finished in September.
United Artists Theater building
Redevelopment of the 18-story United Artists Theater Building, 150 Bagley St., into a 148-unit, mixed-income residential building called the Residences @ 150 Bagley has been underway since early 2022 and on pace for a possible summer opening.
The building dates to 1928 and was originally an office building attached to a United Artists movie theater. The office building had been largely vacant since the mid-1970s, and owned since 1997 by the Ilitch organization. The theater itself, significantly deteriorated, was demolished last year.
The redevelopment has been headed up by a Detroit-based and Black-led development team that includes Richard Hosey and Emmett Moten Jr. Asking rents for the apartments haven't been set, although 20% will be set aside at below-market rates.
More Tiger Stadium site apartments
The former Tiger Stadium site at Michigan and Trumbull was gradually redeveloped in the 2010s with upscale townhouses, apartments and retail spaces. They surround The Corner Ballpark, which features the original outfield dimensions of Tiger Stadium.
Now a new batch of apartments is getting close to opening on the left-field side of the old stadium site. The development — called Left Field — will eventually have two buildings and 113 total apartments, with about 40% set aside at below-market rents.
Construction crews are finishing the first building, containing 60 apartments, and expect to be done by June. The developer, American Community Developers, says it is still working on the underwriting and financing for the second building, which it hopes to break ground for in 2024.
Big New Center development
Several segments of a $3 billion collaborative development in Detroit's New Center area involving Henry Ford Health, the Detroit Pistons organization and Michigan State University are to get underway in 2024.
The biggest is a 1.1-million-square-foot expansion to Henry Ford Hospital. It includes a new 21-story hospital tower along West Grand Boulevard and allows for the conversion of all the hospital's patient rooms — an 877 bed count — into private rooms. Construction could begin in early 2024 for a 2029 completion.
A spring groundbreaking is possible for a nearby eight-story, 325,000-square-foot medical research center, at 6175 Third St., that would be a joint project between Henry Ford Health and MSU. One floor would house the Nick Gilbert Neurofibromatosis Research Institute, where research would happen on neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition that led to the death of Dan Gilbert's adult son, Nick, last May.
Later on, starting in 2025, a Pistons-related entity would develop three apartment buildings totaling 662 apartments. One of them would be conversion of Henry Ford Health's headquarters in the neighborhood into housing.
District Detroit + UMCI
Construction could be in full swing next year on two big separate yet related developments: the $1.5 billion District Detroit and $250 million University of Michigan Center for Innovation, or UMCI.
The UMCI is a future U-M academic building in downtown that broke ground just before Christmas. It's expected to take about 2½ years to build, and will offer U-M graduate degrees in areas such as robotics, computer engineering and entrepreneurship, as well as job training and certificates for the metro Detroit workforce and local nonuniversity students.
New York megadeveloper Stephen Ross is donating $100 million toward the project's costs.
Meanwhile, Ross' development firm, The Related Cos., is collaborating with the Ilitch organization on the buildout of District Detroit, a development of 10 new buildings or building rehabs in and around downtown.
District Detroit gained local and state-level approvals last spring and was cleared for groundbreaking. Yet construction, once expected to start last summer with a new 17-story office building next to Comerica Park, has yet to get underway. An updated timeline could come in the months ahead.
Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 10 new Detroit developments to get excited about in 2024
