One of downtown Detroit's largest vacant lots is sailing towards residential redevelopment. Yesterday, preliminary DEGC approval was granted to a project called Statler City, a sprawling apartment/retail complex promising to rise from the empty Statler Hotel site in 2016.
The lucky developer is none other than Village Green, the Michigan-based housing company known in Detroit for renovating two high-rise apartment buildings--Renaissance City and Detroit City apartments, the latter of which is Statler's next-door neighbor. Here are the details we know so far:
· Apartment Count: 200-250
· Unit Square Footage: 400-1,200
· Total Cost: $35-$40M
· ETA: Two years
According to the free press, Village Green is targeting this development towards—you guessed it—young professionals, so expect the place to be festooned with whatever horrendous aesthetics VG thinks young whippersnappers are MySpacing about in 2016. Right now, they seem pretty excited about that giant image of woman's face nuzzling a paczki. Does anyone else see that? What is that thing?
As terrible as VG's tastes can be, one must applaud their commitment to making this design pedestrian-friendly. There's first-floor retail on Washington Boulevard and parking is completely underground. According to a quote in the Free Press, VG claims to be in negotiations with a pet store, restaurant, an ice cream shop, and others. This approval also spells doom for the Fitzgerald Square proposal for this same site, which involved a series of towers atop a giant parking deck.
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