Quote Originally Posted by Ben View Post
You know people have been saying that were getting downtown retail for pretty much 2 years non stop. In fact the first post on this thread says retail would be announced in January 2013, 1 year ago. Maybe Gilbert contacted retailers and they told him that they are not interested in urban markets. I still feel like this is just one big wet dream by yuppies and people that can't face the reality that Detroit is not just one big happy problem-free playground and in fact is a city that has major issues that need to be addressed before retail can succeed.
The large-scale opening of downtown retail [[especially in the lower Woodward corridor) will happen after the M1 rail construction is complete. The M1 rail construction was originally planned to start over a year ago, but there were delays that pushed the start of construction back. Once the construction of the M1 rail line is closer to completion, you can expect to hear announcements about the new retail.

Opening a slew of new stores just as a major street and transit construction begins would be terrible for the new stores, so it makes perfect sense to hold off for a year or two until the construction is complete, and then open everything at the same time.