Finally DTE Breaking Ground For Their New Park

[Gistok]

Yikes! I didn't know that the Alibri family wanted part of MotorCity Casino... talk about asking for a pound of flesh from the Ilitch's.

I imagine that with the long, and at time vindictive memory they have.... that whatever the Ilitch's eventually build around the Alibri parking lots... they will make sure it does nothing to help the Alibri land values.

[emu steve]

The DTE park parcel was at one time owned by DTE and an Ilitch entity and was planned as commercial development. There was a lot of publicity, much negative, about the deal at the time [[when the Tigers ballpark was slated for the site.)

Make no mistake, the site behind the Fox was always the preferred site of a Tiger Stadium. When it comes down to it, money does not hinder Olympia's development plans, but when they could not make a deal with the Alibri family, who insisted on a piece of Motor City in addition to cash for their lots, they had to move to the current site. When you consider how much the Alibri family turned down for their sites you'd have to consider them idiots. However, recall that the city condemned their lots in order to turn them over the Olympia, [[Alibris were forced under the quick take condemnation statute to take what the City offered, and they did, but sued to overturn the "sale" and won; they paid back the City the amount they received and retained title to their lots.) Then they refused to sell. They have enough money and it didn't make any difference to them. [[Mama Alibri had sold most of her land East of Woodward to Olympia to permit the current stadium to be built.) Revenge is sweet, even though costly at times.

It is no surprise the Ilitch family never sells any land they've acquired. Mike and Marian view the family as a dynasty and their long term plans go out as long as a hundred years. They do have long term plans for everything they own.

This post suggests to me one reason why I do NOT criticize, second guess, etc. folks who are trying to do site assembly for something big.

This story is one for a real estate text book.

This also gives reason to why I'm in favor of limited eminent domain. Much of rhetoric is that people are 'rational actors' and will do the 'right thing', so make them a fair offer...

So getting back to a discussion: Development behind the Fox. So that area is like a DONUT. The Ilitches own most of it but there is a BIG HOLE in the middle of it.

Ugh!!

[Gistok]

This post suggests to me one reason why I do NOT criticize, second guess, etc. folks who are trying to do site assembly for something big.

This story is one for a real estate text book.

This also gives reason to why I'm in favor of limited eminent domain. Much of rhetoric is that people are 'rational actors' and will do the 'right thing', so make them a fair offer...

So getting back to a discussion: Development behind the Fox. So that area is like a DONUT. The Ilitches own most of it but there is a BIG HOLE in the middle of it.

Ugh!!

No, that post makes perfect sense.... it suggests to me that you think that the Ilitch's are going to start selling off some of the unused parcels they own to others to develop and make Detroit a better place. So far 3WC's view of the Ilitch's is based on the reality of the past and present, yours is based on dreams for the future....

We need to see what the future will hold. I can guarantee you one thing... the arena will be finished and not a single parcel of land will have been sold by the Ilitch's by then. They love all the revenue that all those surface lots provide way too much!

[3WC]

EMU Steve: The law of eminent domain has radically changed in MI since the Alibri situation.

Currently, in MI, a municipality or the state may only condemn property for traditional public uses, such as roads, public buildings, parks etc. Under no circumstances may the sate or municipality condemn property for the use of others. The infamous Poletown case [[Condemnation of private property for the GM plant) decided by our Su. Ct. opened the floodgates of eminent domain abuse across the country. Our Su Ct reversed itself a few years later and prohibited condemnation for other purposes and our Constitution was amended to prohibit condemnation for other than true public uses [[and that doesn't include alleged blight control or similar public policy interests.)

Property owners have much more economic and other protections now, even where property is taken for true public uses.

[emu steve]

3WC, I hear you. I'm generally familiar with eminent domain in D.C. As far as MI, "not too much."

I followed closely the efforts by D.C. to acquire the land for Nationals Park in D.C. [[10 years ago) and more recently their efforts, including eminent domain, to finish the site assembly for the new D.C. United stadium [[ground was broken back in April. I was there).

The D.C. United site assembly was generally 'friendly.' The owners had no objection to the sale but the legal system was going to determine the fair price.

The case with Nationals Park was a drawn out war between the hold out owners and D.C. government. I'll try to look it up, but I think a court ruling was necessary to allow eminent domain to proceed. The holdout owners sued in court, I believe, trying to stop eminent domain. There were owners who simply did NOT want to sell regardless of the compensation.

Can be tough business...

EDIT: BTW, an article on D.C. and Nationals Park...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102501354.html

[DetroitHabitater]

It will be interesting to see if anybody goes to this park.

The biggest problem I see is that DTE has spent a lot of time 'Superblocking' itself to keep people away from it. Buying up lots and buildings, closing roads and making large distances between access points are not going to work well for this park.

The best parks work when there are residences and restaurants and shops around the perimeter of them so that people naturally end up in them. Because of this parks location, its not going to have people incidentally stumbling upon it.

I think DTE has made this part of the city low density on propose, and I think this park is going to suffer from those efforts.

I bet this link has been posted here before, but it does a good job identifying the struggles I think this park is going to endure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ

[mikeg19]

It will be interesting to see if anybody goes to this park.

The biggest problem I see is that DTE has spent a lot of time 'Superblocking' itself to keep people away from it. Buying up lots and buildings, closing roads and making large distances between access points are not going to work well for this park.

The best parks work when there are residences and restaurants and shops around the perimeter of them so that people naturally end up in them. Because of this parks location, its not going to have people incidentally stumbling upon it.

I think DTE has made this part of the city low density on propose, and I think this park is going to suffer from those efforts.

I bet this link has been posted here before, but it does a good job identifying the struggles I think this park is going to endure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ

I think at the least, a good portion of DTE's 3,500 downtown employees could use the park. But to your point, there needs to be a residential element near the part, which is severely lacking in that space. The Leland is adding residential soon I believe, so that could help, but there needs to be development from the east of Grand River near Bookies and the UA Theater. That's where the Illitch Columbia Park comes in. What that entails is a guess at best, but hopefully we see residential/retail development by them or they sell off the sea of parking to developers who will do it.

[ekleezy]

http://www.dailydetroit.com/2016/10/...downtown-pics/

Making good progress. Planning to finish the foundations of the park before it gets too cold. Hopefully we'll see some developments surrounding the park soon.