For now, MDOT will not sell Greyhound station near Corktown

Last week, it looked as if the Greyhound bus station on Howard Street near downtown and Corktown wouldn’t be around much longer. But in a reversal, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), which owns the property, said it will delay selling it for an undetermined length of time.

The decision was made after a September 16 site visit to Detroit’s Amtrak station in New Center, which was thought to be a possible landing spot for Greyhound. Michael Frezell, communications manager for MDOT, wrote in an email to Curbed Detroit that,

The productive meeting allowed all parties involved to identify pros and cons at the location for buses being moved through the parking lot, as well as increased passenger counts through the facility. We conducted multiple tests with a typical intercity motor coach and determined the Amtrak facility is too narrow for these buses to safely pull out into traffic.

Frezell added that it will wait to sell the station and instead work with Greyhound and the city of Detroit to build a new multimodal facility, “which will include intercity service and shared costs for upkeep.” There’s as yet no timeline for when such a facility might be completed.

Last week, MDOT said that a number of developers had expressed interest in buying the 2.2-acre Greyhound site, and were likely to demolish the station to make way for a new development.

The site is in prime real estate territory and, MDOT told WDIV Local 4, the 31,000-square-foot building is in desperate in need of repairs and too costly to fix.

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MDOT informed Greyhound that it had to vacate by October 13, which left the bus company scrambling for a new location. As multiple outlets reported at the time, it couldn’t relocate to either the Amtrak Station in New Center nor the Rosa Parks Transit Center downtown because of lack of bus storage space and interior wait room capacity.

Around 1,000 passengers are served out of the Howard Street station every day. Greyhound currently leases the site for only $700 a month.