Development : In the News

In a provocative article, the Creative Class guru talks about the distinction between city and suburb today. He compares Motown to Urban-burbs like Ferndale, Royal Oak, Birmingham and Ann Arbor, metro Detrtoit communities that are evolving their urban design to adapt to changing community standards.

Excerpt:

"The old distinctions between "city" and "suburb" do seem to be blurring. Urban neighborhoods are improving safety, upgrading schools, adding parks and bike lanes to their existing urban fabric, while suburban ones are adding density, walkability and mixed-use districts to their existing safe streets and good schools."

Read the rest here.

This terrific first-person editorial on the current trends in American housing highlights both the virtues and concerns of moving toward a walkable, more compact rental market.

Excerpt:

"Beyond rentals, the clear changes in the residential marketplace also bode well for innovative approaches to smaller-footprint but nonetheless high-quality types of housing, such as “pocket neighborhoods” of cottages and slightly larger homes arranged around a common green, as championed by Ross Chapin. Downsizing trends may provide opportunities as well for more applications of the “Katrina Cottages” designed for quick rebuilding along the Gulf of Mexico coast following the loss of homes to Hurricane Katrina. A LEED-Platinum version of the latter was just celebrated in a cluster of 29 of the homes on two acres in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

(Marketing tip: it may be time to lose the “Katrina” part of the trademark for these cottages – whose concept I love – since the potential market might increase without the association with temporary housing in the context of a national tragedy.  Just saying.)"

Read the rest here.

It looks like Birmingham is becoming one of metro Detroit's hottest real estate markets for investors. Hmmm. Could it be the increasing density of its developing 24-hour downtown and walkable neighborhoods?

Excerpt:

"Birmingham land has more value than anyplace else in metro Detroit," said Bob Pliska, managing director of the Sperry Van Ness office in Birmingham.

"There's a high value for small parcels of land because everything is built up, and it's in the center of everything. It's Birmingham."

Read the rest here.

Metro Detroit is on track to open nearly three dozen new restaurants in 2012. Why so many in an economy that's struggling. Well, cheap real estate is part of the answer.

Excerpt:

"On top of that, he's confident in his restaurants' ability to succeed because, he said, he's giving people what they want: a nice restaurant with good food that isn't too expensive.

"It's not going to cost you $100 for two people to go out for dinner," he said. "We're not getting into fine dining because frankly there is no market for it."

Prentice isn't the only restaurateur adding to his stable of casual-upscale businesses."

Read the rest of the story here.

Yeah, it's cool that the Rustbelt Market moved into an abandoned Old Navy but how about a creative movement to revitalize shopping malls and strips? From golf to community farms to dog parks, cities around the country are getting creative with empty big box spaces.

Excerpt:

"Even at many malls that continue to thrive, developers are redesigning them as town squares — adding elements like dog parks and putting greens, creating street grids that go through the malls, and restoring natural elements like creeks that were originally paved over.

“Basically they’re building the downtowns that the suburbs never had,” along with reworking abandoned urban malls for nonshopping uses, said Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor at the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology."

Read the rest here.

Jeff Wattrick responds to Brooking Fellow Chris Leinberger's editorial on the abandonment of the xburbs and the possibility that inner ring suburban cities like Royal Oak and Birmingham may offer Metro Detroit's best opportunity for real density.

Excerpt:

"More interesting for metro Detroit is the increased demand for inner-ring suburbs—Leinberger calls them “suburban town centers.”

We actually do suburban town centers pretty well here. Birmingham, Grosse Pointe, Ferndale, Wyandotte, Royal Oak, Dearborn, etc are all first-rate communities. All have good housing stock, quality schools, well-maintained parks, walkable neighborhoods, and “Main Street” retail. Also, it's not impossible to be a one car family in a town like Royal Oak or Grosse Pointe.

No one should abandon Detroit’s fledgling recovery to declare “suburban town centers” as our fun new fad, but they are an asset too often ignored in the larger discussion about the city and the region’s future."

Read the rest here.

The Center for Automotive Research has found that nearly half of the shuttered assembly and parts plants in the country have been repurposed for new industries.  

Excerpt:

"About half of all U.S. automotive plants that have closed since 1979 are being reused, and much of that activity has come during the recent hard times for the industry and real estate market, according to a report released Thursday.

The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based nonprofit Center for Automotive Research’s report found that of the 267 assembly and parts plants closed during that period, 128 have found or are finding new life. Forty percent of the sites surveyed were bought for a new use between 2008 and 2010, during which the companies now known as General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC went through restructuring and bankruptcy reorganization."

Read the rest of the story here.

In similar news, Crain's reports that studies are being prepared to analyze the process and impact of repurposing plants in Michigan. Read the story here.

If you were lucky enough to attend Concentrate's November speaker event, you'd have heard Brooking's Fellow Christopher B. Leinberger weigh in on the importance of investing in walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. In this editorial he furthers that argument in his typically smart and insightful way.

Excerpt:

"Some critics will say that investment in the built environment risks repeating the mistake that caused the recession in the first place. That reasoning is as faulty as saying that technology should have been neglected after the dot-com bust, which precipitated the 2001 recession.

The cities and inner-ring suburbs that will be the foundation of the recovery require significant investment at a time of government retrenchment. Bus and light-rail systems, bike lanes and pedestrian improvements — what traffic engineers dismissively call “alternative transportation” — are vital. So is the repair of infrastructure like roads and bridges. Places as diverse as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Charlotte, Denver and Washington have recently voted to pay for “alternative transportation,” mindful of the dividends to be reaped. As Congress works to reauthorize highway and transit legislation, it must give metropolitan areas greater flexibility for financing transportation, rather than mandating that the vast bulk of the money can be used only for roads. "

Read the rest of the story here.

With the awakening of local construction projects, businesses and investors are snapping up historic buildings and breathing new life into them.

Excerpt:

"In Royal Oak, a former jewelry store and small office building is being turned into an architecture studio and residence.
A project to turn an old theater in Clawson into a retail space is also ready to start construction.

If there's a silver lining to the slow times in the past generation, it's the ready supply of buildings to be redeveloped, said Kent Anderson, principal in the Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson Associates architecture firm."

Read the rest of the story here.

Up the middle or down the sides? These are good conversations to be having about light rail along Woodward. Far better than the ifs, maybes, and "I don't knows" of the past.

(Ed. Note: As a former Portlander, I can attest to the claim that there's no way you can correlate Woodward's bi-directional boulevard with the Rose City's transit corridors. It is, indeed, comparing apples to oranges.)

Excerpt:

"Should the proposed Woodward Light Rail run down the center of the street or along the curb? It's the one issue that divides advocates for improved transportation options in metro Detroit.

The center-run alternative has vocal supporters, but Dan Gilbert stepped forward recently to offer a full-throated defense of the curbside option."

Read the rest here.