A major article by the Free Press’ architectural reporter JC Riendl details the plans and tax abatement requests. It is exciting but a trifle eyebrow-raising.

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The request is muddied by the fact that the developments take place on lands held by the hospital which does not pay property taxes. So the $2.2B planned hospital expansion requests no breaks and land on which apartment properties will be built or converted does and will come back on the tax rolls.

Most of the total $296 million in requested tax breaks and tax captures would go toward development of three apartment buildings by a Pistons-related entity and billionaire Pistons owner Tom Gores, creating some controversy.

I had to get out Google maps to determine where all this is going on. I had assumed that it would all be adjacent to the hospital, most likely on the abundant and decrepit vacant land to the south of the W. Grand Blvd. -- which gives rise to the question mark in this thread's title.

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Instead I was surprised to find it was a quarter mile away on the other side of the M10-Lodge expressway on far more desirable land immediately south of Gore’s Pistons training facility. That area will include one new medical facility, the MSU Medical Research Center, but otherwise it is all apartments and a parking tower.

I’m amused as to how and why this has become glommed onto a project that far away such that it is appearing as one package. The only thing unifying all of it as that Ford hospital owns the land.

I’m a supporter of new development in Detroit, and hope it goes through, yet I am wondering if the incentives, for the apartments at least, should be a bit less generous.