Milwaukee Junction - the Next Hot Neighborhood?

So thinks Bill McGraw in his excellent article in Bridge Magazine 'Detroit’s next hot neighborhood is hiding in plain sight'.

With rents and occupancy soaring in the T-shaped 7.2 square mile Downtown to New Center 'Green Zone' the notion that properties on the peripheries are suddenly becoming appealing and speculative shouldn't be surprising. And if one wants grit and history MJ is filled with that. After all this is where the Model T was birthed.

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“Just about every time that I’m working outside my building, people stop by, sometimes a couple times a day, just asking if units are available to rent or buy,” he said.

“When you tell them there’s nothing available, they get very upset because there is nothing in the area.”

Siegel’s neighborhood is named Milwaukee Junction, once one of the world’s most productive industrial zones, the place where Henry Ford began experimenting with the Model T and the assembly line. It’s a sprawling area around the I-75/I-94 interchange that is old and beat up and exists mostly off the radar of local media and metro area residents.

While its dynamic past is gradually forgotten, Milwaukee Junction’s immediate future seems increasingly clear: It appears to be Detroit’s next hot neighborhood.

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This is one of the areas that could really be bolstered by a flourishing Midtown and CBD. As things pick up, more jobs are created and concentrated, more and more people will want to start living closer to work.

It's all part of the snowball that is gaining momentum and size.

Since there's very little residential in Milwaukee Junction, is the assumption that most of the warehouses and unused industrial stock will be converted? How many of these are superfund sites?

i think the area between corktown and woodbridge instead. Tons of empty lots and some abandoned stuff that could come down but some well kept homes as well. Connect 2 stable neighborhoods

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Originally Posted by rex

i think the area between corktown and woodbridge instead. Tons of empty lots and some abandoned stuff that could come down but some well kept homes as well. Connect 2 stable neighborhoods

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I feel like that triangle is at least 50% vacant lots and would require new construction to resume being a neighborhood. Milwaukee Junction at least has big industrial buildings that if converted, could easily house a lot of people.

In any case, the green zone is probably going to continue to expand willy-nilly in every direction.

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Originally Posted by Hamtragedy

Since there's very little residential in Milwaukee Junction, is the assumption that most of the warehouses and unused industrial stock will be converted? How many of these are superfund sites?

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This to me is a great opportunity for Detroit. Old industrial buildings transformed into valuable residential properties are the norm rather than the exception in Montreal. The funny thing is that a lot of the new projects next to the factories and warehouses that came on line int the past 30 years are imitative of the old. Detroit has these buildings in great numbers, and will do well in that area because the market is still affordable.

The best thing that can happen is the rehab of unused industrial into mixed use office and other stuff so that jobs are centred near these new residential areas. In my neighborhood near the old Lachine Canal, 35 years ago, everything looked pretty bleak, and Griffintown, an old Irish neighborhood replete with industry was pitiful, not unlike the disused parts aroud Corktown with a shared history. Now, the neighborhood is being transformed with condo projects, hotels, new retail [[a number of home furnishings stores, etc...) that cater to the area.

In the north central part of Montreal in the Casgrain and Chabanel streets district, the big sweatshops built in the sixties when the garment trade was in full force here are also being rehabbed into condos and offices. Bank head offices have moved some blocks of staff into these bldgs and startups more often than not choose these rehabs over new architecture.

This is a sweet area, as kids we always referred to it as "the graveyard", as in industrial graveyard. It's where we threw mad rave parties, learned how to spray, stored our wares, tested our big blocks, "The good old days." Hope these investors are serious as the area has huge potential, and should not be rezoned or converted into tons of residential, because areas like this are prime for the types of development that more dense residential neighborhoods consider NIMBY. I would live there only if I knew I could use my space to throw HUGE parties, paint my friends cars, walk across the street to a cultivation station and then next door to the booby bar for their lunch steak specials [[no dances, thank you).

I work right by this area & drive through it at least twice a week. Just from my drives, I have observed much new activity going on around there the past few years. If the momentum can continue or increase as the article suggests, this may be the next happening area.

It is certainly possible. I'd be inclined to think the area to the northwest of there between I-75 and the Lodge is better-positioned than the part of Milwaukee Junction on the east side of 75, but a lot depends on what sort of buildings the market ends up favoring.

I don't think the focus of development is east of I-75. It's the area east of Woodward and west of 75. Back in the late 90s/early 00s, there was an effort to convert the buildings at the corner of Milwaukee and Beaubien into condos. An apartment in the building on the southwest corner was featured on Curbed Detroit or the Lofts Warehouse site recently. That upper apartment was up for sale. At one time the buildings across the street had people living in the upper floors. They now appear vacant. Milwaukee and Baltimore have good widths that make for great walkable streets. There's a lot of vacant lots and parking lots that could be developed for residential and retail. That land east of the White Castle restaurant is prime for residential. Townhouse/rowhouse type of dwellings would be ideal for me. I would love to hear the sound of those sceeching trains.
Kudos to whomever renovated the rowhouses at the corner of Baltimore and John R. With M1 rail coming that area should see great improvements. A grocer chain store like Trader Joe's at the corner of Woodward and Baltimore would also be ideal.

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Originally Posted by mwilbert

It is certainly possible. I'd be inclined to think the area to the northwest of there between I-75 and the Lodge is better-positioned than the part of Milwaukee Junction on the east side of 75, but a lot depends on what sort of buildings the market ends up favoring.

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Where exactly do you mean? Techtown/New Center area? All the land there is bought up and probably reserved for big institutional-led developments [[i.e. Wayne State, Henry Ford Hospital). The east side of Woodward is much cheaper, with plenty of vacant buildings to rehab. I can imagine most of those buildings being rehabbed and the area becoming trendy like other parts of Midtown. Trow in a bit of new construction, new landscaping and streetscaping and you won't be able recognize the area anymore. Remember it's only steps away from the M1 rail, and really stands to benefit from this proximity -- the only other severely underdeveloped areas along the rail route are Brush Park and the future Stadium site, although not for long.

Also, I'm waiting for plans for New Center Station. I hope a really nice new station is built that covers the tracks completely and has direct transfer to M1 Rail. This is probably wishful thinking, and more likely we will get a modest upgrade.

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Originally Posted by casscorridor

Where exactly do you mean? Techtown/New Center area? All the land there is bought up and probably reserved for big institutional-led developments [[i.e. Wayne State, Henry Ford Hospital). The east side of Woodward is much cheaper, with plenty of vacant buildings to rehab. I can imagine most of those buildings being rehabbed and the area becoming trendy like other parts of Midtown. Trow in a bit of new construction, new landscaping and streetscaping and you won't be able recognize the area anymore. Remember it's only steps away from the M1 rail, and really stands to benefit from this proximity -- the only other severely underdeveloped areas along the rail route are Brush Park and the future Stadium site, although not for long.

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Brush Park is the best-positioned of the still somewhat neglected neighborhoods in the city, as I have said one way or another many times on this forum. But what I was trying to say here is that I think that the area going north from there between the Lodge and I-75 is also very promising, and the portion of Milwaukee Junction that is west of I-75 is included in that. As you suggest, some of that is already occupied by various institutions, so it isn't exactly virgin territory, but there are still lots of properties in there that aren't owned by institutions and I expect we will see redevelopment of those. However, my main idea is that Virginia Park and the North End will be redeveloped before the area east of I-75, for a number of reasons, but one of them is that it is easier to get a number of smaller projects going than a few really big ones. Of course, if some well-financed large-scale developer became interested in Milwaukee Junction, it could work out differently.

"Dennis Kefallinos, a well-known Detroit landlord, says he soon will begin to build 40 loft-style apartments inside the crumbling Fairmont Creamery on E. Milwaukee that he has owned for several years.
In November, Kefallinos, who also owns the Milwaukee Park Lofts in Milwaukee Junction and the nearby Russell Industrial Center, bought the three-story Perlex Building on E. Grand Boulevard, and says he is considering converting it to residences, though not immediately."


If Slumlord Kefallinos starts his level of "rehabbing" here watch out.........

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Originally Posted by Homer

"Dennis Kefallinos, a well-known Detroit landlord, says he soon will begin to build 40 loft-style apartments inside the crumbling Fairmont Creamery on E. Milwaukee that he has owned for several years.
In November, Kefallinos, who also owns the Milwaukee Park Lofts in Milwaukee Junction and the nearby Russell Industrial Center, bought the three-story Perlex Building on E. Grand Boulevard, and says he is considering converting it to residences, though not immediately."


If Slumlord Kefallinos starts his level of "rehabbing" here watch out.........

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His Milwaukee Park Lofts looks OK to me if you consider rents starting at 600$ and a month to month lease. I am curious to know what the bigger lofts go for. Does anybody know folks who live there to tell us how it is. In any case, his level of reno seems OK, not glamorous, but if he can't command the rents and doesn't provide the views and proximity of a downtown apartment setting, he at least has done his job of rehabbing here, IMO.

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Originally Posted by canuck

His Milwaukee Park Lofts looks OK to me if you consider rents starting at 600$ and a month to month lease. I am curious to know what the bigger lofts go for. Does anybody know folks who live there to tell us how it is.

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It's noisy and crazy people stay there [[like my friends). They pay $800 for an unfinished 1100 ft. corner loft with decent [[ie working) fixtures, not exactly what I'd call cheap by Detroit standards. They have also put their own money into building what amounts to a two story room, the upper space being a place for storage and a birds eye view of outside, which is an open field, old warehouses and some train tracks. The management is Kefallinos, so no more be said there, and there are many folks in transition, which is kinda what a place like that is supposed to be for. It's not supposed to be the Trumbull Lofts.

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Originally Posted by rex

i think the area between corktown and woodbridge instead. Tons of empty lots and some abandoned stuff that could come down but some well kept homes as well. Connect 2 stable neighborhoods

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Yep. The area around Motor City is pretty dumpy. A neighborhood there would flourish if we could get some new housing stock in the area.