Fox 2 News Headlines
The epic journey of Detroit's Fail Jail appears over, as Charlie LeDuff has discovered crews quietly disassembling the construction site, sending the $404M concrete shell to be crushed. Naturally, this makes Charlie go BANANAS. We'll leave the explaining up to him, but keep this in mind: If Downtown really is rid of Fail Jail, it's likely that Wayne County officials have directed their remaining brain cells towards choosing a new (re)developer.
The developers are bidding not only on the Fail Jail site, but a bundle of Wayne County's several nearby properties, including two old jails and the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. Here are the three proposals still in the running.
1. Rock Ventures—Greektown 2.0
It was Dan Gilbert's idea to have Wayne County bundle its entire criminal justice campus into one development, but his proposal doesn't paint a very vivid picture. So far, we know it's a $500M development sporting 1.7M square feet of hotel/residential space, plus 200K square feet of retail/parking. Gilbert's plan doesn't involve demolishing most of the buildings in place, but repurposing them.
2. Triple Properties—Soccer City
APOP is calling for a $1B development of epic proportions. Roughly 1M square feet of new residential space would be created by condos and two high-rise apartment towers. Next, another easy 1M square feet of office/parking, combined with 275K square feet of retail. All of that would surround a brand new soccer stadium, meant to bring Detroit its first Major League Soccer team.
3. Todd Fenton—Mystery Box!
Todd is a former Wayne County employee representing an undisclosed developer, which sounds like the sketchiest, most perfectly Wayne County choice of them all.
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