Residents push back on new District Detroit $1.5B proposal for downtown development

Detroiters not sold on latest pitch by Olympia Development for $1.5 billion downtown plan

District Detroit developers took their case to the people during a public meeting at Cass Tech High School to learn what the gigantic, long promised $1.5 billion plan for the Woodward-area could mean for the city, years after it was initially discussed.

DETROIT (FOX 2) - The Ilitch family's Olympia Development of Michigan and developer Stephen Ross have proposed a $1.5 billon development for downtown Detroit. But not all residents are excited for the idea.

District Detroit developers took their case to the people during a public meeting at Cass Tech High School to learn what the gigantic, long-promised $1.5 billion plan for the Woodward-area could mean for the city, years after it was initially discussed.

"There’s an office building of just under 500,000 square feet and this speaks to a couple of things," said Andrew Cantor. "One, I think the need and the benefit of density in terms of being able to drive jobs and opportunity, retail jobs and walkability, and energy on the streets."

But residents came armed with evidence of what they call broken promises from the past.

"Here’s the Wayne State School of Business that never materialized," said one resident with photos enlarged on poster boards. "The City gave them a million dollars and this is how it’s left today? Isn’t that a beauty?"

Leaders from the Ilitch-run Olympia Development of Michigan and Related Companies operated by Stephen Ross, highlighted ten projects for the District Detroit area ranging from a major hotel to large office spaces, shopping centers, luxury apartments and affordable housing - all in the spirit of what they call mixed-income neighborhoods.

"We’ve built these across the country, and we really believe that this type of mixed-income housing is critical to the fabric of strong communities," said Cantor.

Six of the buildings will be new. The others would be refurbished artifacts, like the Fort Wayne Hotel…to be updated with floor retail and residential space.

But attendees still had questions.

"Are any of these projects actually hold over from earlier promised projects, so things that were promised that would have been done for example in connection with LCA, but were not done?" asked one resident. "And I suppose finally, given all of his recent history with development in the city why should we believe anything promised?"

"The previous plan -- I’m not going to get into specifics of every single building -- but by and large, a lot of what you see today is still continuing that vision that was kind of mapped out back then," said Keith Bradford, Olympia developer.

Development officials say they’ve laid out a five-year timeline for work to be completed and claim that the pandemic slowed things down considerably. Still, they say a lot has been accomplished already.