By Josh Long
Each year, the Downtown Detroit Partnership and the Downtown Detroit Business Improvement Zone (BIZ ) produce the Downtown Detroit Community and Development Update. This publication illustrates investments that help dictate pedestrian and automotive traffic patterns, park planning and amenities, and safety and security needs, which can spur future development decisions.
Highlights from the Development Update are shared at DDP’s annual, signature event Fall Forum: A Real Estate Update, which was held at Cambria Hotel Detroit this year.
We also reported on the completion of two major, long-term renovation projects that reclaim massive pieces of our city’s history — The Book Tower and the Michigan Central Station. These historically significant and long-abandoned structures took years to renovate, and billions of dollars to complete.
At the same time, several new projects are under construction in the greater Downtown area that will also shape the city’s future for years to come: Hudson’s Detroit, The University of Michigan Center for Innovation, and the Henry Ford Health Detroit campus expansion.
In addition to these current and recently completed investments, many of the upcoming projects in the pipeline and developments “on the radar” have the potential to be unprecedented in their impact going forward, including the Gratiot Life Sciences Building (formerly referred to as the “failed jail” site), the former criminal justice complex, the Renaissance Center, the JW Marriott Hotel that will be located next to Huntington Place, and the I-375 Reconnecting Communities Project, to name a few.
We’re tracking 54 total projects, with eight recently completed and 12 currently under construction. The Downtown developments currently under construction — not including the Henry Ford Health Detroit campus expansion — represent over $2.7 billion in investments.
Downtown Detroit’s hotel and residential market is a major concentration of current development. Downtown investors and stakeholders had already begun to focus on supplying residential and hotel units, based on an identified need, before the pandemic. The increase of remote work has sharpened this focus. Together, residential and hotel projects are 2/3 of the developments that are currently under construction Downtown.
Residential units saw a 14% increase over the past year with 500 units having been recently completed in the Central Business District. There are 272 units under construction; once completed, it will bring nearly 800 new residential units to Downtown.
The pace of change in Downtown Detroit has been incredibly fast, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon. Projects that are happening now will benefit present and future generations.
