Detroit, an urban basketcase, is seeing development again

Detroit, an urban basketcase in recent decades, is going through a resurgence. Massive development projects in the city include two stadiums and three casinos (scheduled to open in 2001). Furthermore, General Motors is preparing to move its world headquarters into the Renaissance Center in the city’s downtown. This activity has fueled demand for housing in the city, says Doug Townsend, of Crosswinds Communities, a developer that is planning a traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Detroit. Crosswinds has hired UDA Architects of Pittsburgh to do the master plan, and Zimmerman-Volk Associates of Clinton, New Jersey, to do a market study. The firm is negotiating a development agreement with the city, which is acquiring parcels. Unlike many other “inner-city TNDs,” Crosswinds’ project would consist of market driven, market rate housing, Townsend says. The project is located in a 10-block area called Brush Park which was, 100 years ago, a fashionable neighborhood for Detroit’s upper class. Today, says Townsend, it consists of mostly vacant lots and a few crumbling, vacant mansions. Crosswinds is planning 500 to 600 units of all kinds of housing, along with shops and other typical neotraditional amenities like neighborhood greens. The developer has gathered the names of 3,500 people who have expressed interest in the project, he says. “A good 40 percent of these people live outside of Detroit. There is a tremendous demand for housing in the city. And this is a city that, for three years running in the late eighties, did not issue a single building permit [for a new home].”