Crain's Detroit Business

10/24/2025

A new destination park will open Detroit’s west riverfront to the public for the first time in more than a century this weekend.

Where industrial buildings, rail yards and train tunnels once blocked access to the waterfront, the 22-acre Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park now beckons.

There are places for visitors young and old, from animal-themed slides to cherry trees and a grassy hill for taking in events during the summer and sledding during the winter.

The park is a feat in its own right, but its biggest impact may be the connections it creates throughout Detroit.

With the opening of a nearby boardwalk 17 feet off the river’s edge, visitors will soon be able to travel almost 5 miles along the Detroit River, from the entrance to Belle Isle west to the former Joe Louis Arena site and over the new boardwalk into Wilson Park. From there, the path leads up the Southwest Greenway trail to the developing 27-mile Joe Louis Greenway.

“We dreamed big, but I don’t think we ever dreamed of having the opportunity to create a park like we have with the Wilson park,” said Matt Cullen, founding chairman of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, the driving force behind the park.

“It’s the capstone of everything we have been working towards.”

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/nonprofits-philanthropy/ralph-c-wilson-jr-centennial-park-transforms-west-riverfront?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

10/23/2025

Tony McGhee has been driving 40 miles round-trip for the past nine months to manage a city where he can’t find a house.

McGhee in January became the city manager of Buchanan, a largely agricultural Berrien County community of about 4,300 residents and 20 miles inland of Lake Michigan. His housing predicament reflects a broader shift across rural Southwest Michigan, where buyers from Chicago and South Bend are driving up costs after being priced out of traditional lakeshore destinations.

“New Buffalo and the Harbor Country area, six, seven years ago, really got (cost) prohibitive for people, so those people moved inland,” McGhee said, referring specifically to the Three Oaks area, about 10 miles east of New Buffalo. “Now, Three Oaks has been bought out, and so that pressure is starting to move our way.”

However, Buchanan is preparing for that growth. The city is in the middle of a $20 million redevelopment of its downtown infrastructure to add all-new water, sewer and roads. With state and federal grant support, the work will mostly wrap by November.

Buchanan is also joined by other Southwest Michigan communities that are buying up obsolete industrial properties for mixed-use conversions, ushering in zoning reforms to help lure developers and turning to the state for funding support. It’s all a game of catch up after decades of stagnant housing construction.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-estate/michigan-towns-confront-housing-crisis-chicago-buyers-move?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

10/23/2025

A planned $2.4 billion, 2,350-job electric vehicle battery parts factory in Michigan is dead after the state declared the controversial project to have been abandoned by Gotion Inc. and no longer eligible for incentives.

The Michigan Strategic Fund said the subsidiary of China-based Gotion High-Tech Co. Ltd. is in default of its obligations under a 2022 grant agreement.

The state's economic development arm is seeking to recover nearly $23.7 million that Gotion got to buy land near Big Rapids. It suspended a performance-based subsidy that has not been disbursed — a $125 million Critical Industry Program grant to Gotion that will be terminated. It will also cancel the remaining $26.3 million of $50 million that was given to a regional economic development organization to help assemble and prepare the megasite.

"I don’t foresee a world in which this project goes forward,” Christin Armstrong, chief operating and performance officer at the Michigan Economic Development Corp., told Crain’s. “Even if it was to go forward, just given the passage of time and the circumstances on the ground, it’s not the same as what it was (when) approved in 2022. The world has shifted so significantly since then. I think it’s safe to say that the project is not going to happen as we had originally foresaw or planned or hoped."

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/politics-policy/michigan-pulls-plug-gotion-ev-battery-parts-plant?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

10/22/2025

Plans for the revitalization of Sugar Loaf Ski Resort in Northern Michigan are moving forward after the nonprofit that’s overseeing the 285-acre property’s revival hit its $8 million fundraising goal months ahead of a deadline.

The Leelanau Conservancy hit the fundraising target on Sept. 26, two months after announcing its plans to redevelop the Leelanau Peninsula mountain as a year-round community park after the property owner agreed to donate it to the conservancy.

Once a premier winter destination in Michigan, Sugar Loaf operated a skiing school and resort with an airstrip, hotel, lodge and condos in its heyday in the mid-1970s, attracting thousands of skiers daily.

It’s now poised for a fresh start as a year-round community park with trails for cross-country skiing, hiking and spaces to gather outdoors, as the Leland-based nonprofit plans to revitalize it for the next generation.

More than 1,100 people donated $1.6 million to the conservancy’s project, according to Brighid Driscoll, communications director for the Leelanau Conservancy.

The full revitalization is expected to take around five years.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/sports-recreation/sugar-loaf-ski-resort-revival-moves-forward-after-raising-8m?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

10/22/2025

Urban Science is leaving the Renaissance Center, another blow for the struggling downtown Detroit skyline landmark that is targeted for a $1.6 billion-plus overhaul.

Detroit-based Urban Science is downsizing its office footprint to about 35,000 square feet in the Dan Gilbert-owned One Campus Martius building. Its new offices will be next door to Hudson’s Detroit, where General Motors Co. will be moving its longtime headquarters in January.

Construction on Urban Science's 15th-floor space in the One Campus Martius building is expected to begin later this fall, with expected occupancy in May or June.

Urban Science is a data-mapping company focused on the automotive and car dealership industry.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-estate/urban-science-leave-renaissance-center?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

10/21/2025

Timberland is opening a downtown Detroit store next month.

A spokesperson confirmed the New Hampshire-based maker of boots, shoes and other outerwear is opening Nov. 14 in about 1,400 square feet in the Traver Building at 1217 Woodward Ave. Grand opening activities are planned for the weekend of Nov. 15-16.

It's the company's first standalone store to open this year, the spokesperson said.

The store is another notch in the city's retail belt, having lured the likes of Apple, Alo, Tecovas, Gucci, Savage X Fenty, GW Home, Free People and others to the downtown core in the last few years.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-estate-insider/timberland-open-downtown-detroit-store?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

10/21/2025

It’s perhaps 10 p.m. at the West Bloomfield Township headquarters of Encore Real Estate Investment Services and associate adviser Marcel Pearl is still working on helping a small Detroit business find its ideal space in the city. Or his latest retail building sale around the country.

Pearl has been landing deals around where he grew up at Seven Mile and Livernois in the Bagley neighborhood — not to mention leases and sales around the city and around the country.

Pearl’s rise in commercial real estate has not followed any sort of traditional trajectory.

He spent a few years working for Comerica Inc. Doing sales for Comcast for a bit more. He’s worked overnight shifts in a Detroit warehouse at I-96 and the Southfield Freeway that shipped out the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, sometimes even delivering the papers himself. He’s been a party promoter. Not to mention the franchise cleaning company he started with his wife called K&M Cleaning Services.

But by 2016, he was burnt out with the long travel to western Oakland County’s suburbs, overnight hours, sleeping during the day and struggling to find people to work in the cleaning business.

“That’s when I decided to go get my real estate license,” Pearl said.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-estate/marcel-pearl-went-cleaning-buildings-selling-them?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

10/20/2025

The new state budget slashes Michigan’s tourism advertising campaign nearly in half, marking the second cycle in a row that deep cuts have followed a high-spending year while irking tourism groups over inconsistent support.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Oct. 7 signed the new fiscal year’s spending plan through September 2026 that includes a 46.6% cut to the Pure Michigan campaign. The $16 million general fund allocation includes the option to receive an additional $1 million in contributions from private investment partners, such as local convention and visitors bureaus.

The general fund allocation is nearly half of the $30 million allocated in the last budget, which also included an influx of federal funding.

Kelly Wolgamott, vice president of the Pure Michigan ad campaign, said that her office will make the best of the 2025-26 allocation. She described this year’s state funding as in line with last year’s, which also was supported by $14 million in one-time federal American Rescue Plan Act funding.

However, tourism industry leaders said the smaller budget will make it tougher to draw tourists.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/hospitality-tourism/michigan-budget-cuts-pure-michigan-campaign-funding-half?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

10/20/2025

Many of the new condos in Dan Gilbert’s Hudson’s Detroit tower will cost $1,000 per square foot — more than triple the $330 average for downtown units and a new high-water mark for the city’s residential market.

The 96 for-sale units covering floors 26-45 of the still under-construction tower along Woodward Avenue have yet to be formally listed for sale. But as construction on the tower — developed by billionaire Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC real estate company — continues with condos and a hotel as the planned uses, the building’s developer is seeking a tax incentive for residential buyers.

Detroit City Council is slated to vote Tuesday on approving a Neighborhood Enterprise Zone tax abatement for the 96 units, allowing would-be buyers to see significant savings on their property tax bills — a “huge” incentive, according to Jerome Huez, a Detroit-based real estate broker with The Loft Warehouse focused on the condo market.

Condo units — dubbed The Residences at The Detroit Edition — would be priced starting at about $550,000 and expected to top out around $3 million.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-estate/hudsons-condos-seek-record-price-and-tax-break

10/20/2025

Hunter House, the beloved downtown Birmingham slider and french fry joint, has been at its current location since the Eisenhower administration.

That’s about to change as it relocates about a mile south to a former KFC at Woodward Avenue and Lincoln Street effective Nov. 1. Its last day at the northwest corner of Woodward and Maple Road in the central business district is set for Oct. 31.

The move is the byproduct of not only a lengthy legal battle with Hunter House’s landlord but also need for updated space, said co-owner Kelly Cobb.

“On top of all of that, we have a 73-year-old building that has aged," Cobb said. "It was built for 20% of the volume of people we serve today. We have too little parking for the number of cars that come through our lot. Moving to this new spot gives us the opportunity to provide much faster service, more parking and an upgraded facility for our kitchen that we desperately need in the back of the house."

At first, patrons will eat in a semi-permanent large heated tent on the site as the space is built out to virtually replicate the long-standing restaurant. Because the building had been a restaurant prior, back-of-house functions like cooking can take place inside, including on the existing Hunter House grill that's being relocated. The renovated building is expected to be complete early next year.

Read more here:

Hunter House, the beloved downtown Birmingham slider and french fry joint, has been at its current location since the Eisenhower administration. That’s about to change as it relocates about a mile south to a former KFC at Woodward Avenue and Lincoln Street in the Triangle District effective...

10/18/2025

As the long-anticipated RH flagship store nears its completion and opening next month, downtown Birmingham is also adding a handful of new retailers to its tenant mix.

The new users are taking over spaces vacated, or about to be vacated, by prominent retail users in the last year or so, bringing new men’s and women’s fashion, plus home goods, to the swank Oakland County shopping district.

New additions to downtown Birmingham include Vuori, Rag & Bone, J.Jill and Design Within Reach.

Vuori, known for its active and leisurewear, is taking over roughly 4,000 square feet that had been the space RH had occupied on a temporary basis as its new 55,000-square-foot building at South Old Woodward and Brown Street was being built. The location at 100 S. Old Woodward Ave., owned by Birmingham-based developer and landlord The Surnow Co., is expected to open in the middle of next year.

In addition, men’s and women’s fashion label Rag & Bone is opening at 110 S. Old Woodward Ave. in another Surnow-owned property. The retailer, which is owned by Guess? and WHP Properties, is taking about 2,000 square feet and opening in early 2026.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-estate/vuori-rag-bone-jjill-stores-coming-downtown-birmingham?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

10/17/2025

Michigan's first chief growth officer, Hilary Doe, has left state government to launch an outside entity focused on growing the population.

Doe, whose last day at the Michigan Economic Development Corp. was Oct. 10, told Crain's she is forming the Michigan Institute for Growth and Opportunity to "ensure that this work has long-term partnerships and really that it continues beyond any one administration, which has always been the goal from the first day."

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer touted Doe's hiring at the 2023 Mackinac Policy Conference in conjunction with creating a council to propose ways to boost Michigan's stagnant population growth. Doe was executive director of the Growing Michigan Together Council, which released a report later that year, and led the new Michigan Growth Office for over a year.

Doe said Thursday she had been working on the transition for "some time" and is "really excited to get the chance to launch this." She said she also is considering other ways to "serve the state I love."

"It will really be the first statewide institute that's focused on this topic of healthy population growth," she said, adding that the new nonprofit, which will be dubbed MI-GO, will partner with the state and local communities by providing policy, research and other guidance.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/politics-policy/hilary-doe-leaves-job-michigan-population-growth-officer?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own