Property owners, city records aren’t always in agreement

ARIELLE KASS

Chet Pitts has given up trying to redevelop a vacant apartment building in the city of Detroit.

e 21-unit building at 1602 Lemay St. in East Village was slated for demolition 20 years ago. It didn’t happen then and, in 2016, Pitts said, the building was donated to MET Plus. Pitts said he wanted to use his nonpro t to create permanent supportive housing in the city.

He went to the City Council, met with o cials and tried to get the property o Detroit’s demolition list. It still shows up on the M100 list of the most blighted properties in the city.

“I’m not getting anywhere,” he said. “I feel defeated.” e city’s M100 list — which has ballooned to 150 properties — includes major areas of blight, like the Packard Plant, Lee Plaza and Fisher Body No. 21 Plant, all high-pro le buildings in various states of disrepair. But a number of the privately owned properties are neighborhood buildings like Pitts’. Several of those community owners are frustrated by their experiences with the city, or by information on the list that is simply incorrect. e windows are boarded up and Pitts said the property “de nitely needs rehab,” but said he’s done some work on it.

When Pitts got an October notication of the planned demolition, he went to members of City Council to protest the action. at led to meetings with city o cials, but the property was already moving forward with a pre-demolition environmental review, con rmed Rudy Harper, a demolition department spokesman. e property still appears on a list of those in the demolition process — in that review stage — but a new application for a deferral rescinded in 2018 was deemed acceptable. e environmental review was completed.

“I’m doing the right thing in the community, I’ve been doing it,” Pitts said. “Fast forward to now, I’m tired. ... e city building department, they won’t get their foot o my neck.”

Pitts said he felt defeated by ongoing battles to save the building. He has listed it for sale for $300,000.

“It’s like they don’t want me to succeed at all,” he said.

John Roach, a Detroit spokesman, emphasized that the M100 is an internal working document that can change daily. Mayor Mike Duggan said it is updated on a weekly basis. But the list, which includes ownership information and whether a property is slated for demolition or rehabilitation or is in legal limbo, has information on it that is sometimes months or years out of date. e property is one of 115 earmarked on the M100 for demolition. Dockery, executive director of the Sta ord House, said she’s furious that the building could be torn down while she still has plans to save it.

“All involved departments have access to the central list and update it when necessary, and su cient checks and balances are in place,” Roach said in an emailed statement.

Patricia Dockery is another local resident frustrated with e orts to try to save a vacant building. She has architectural plans to transform 9301 Oakland Ave. in the city’s North End neighborhood into a co ee shop, engineering training center and 10 units of a ordable housing. But at the end of January, she received a notice from the city of Detroit threatening to demolish the 98-year-old structure.

“ ey’re not stabbing Dan Gilbert in the back, or Roger Penske,” she said. “ ey’re coming after small people who are doing the work.” e city sees Dockery’s project di erently than she does. A February request from Sta ord House to defer the demolition was denied, according to information from David Bell, director of the city’s Buildings Safety Engineering and Environmental Department, or BSEED. e city’s demolition department currently has the property on a list of buildings that it’s doing environmental work on before sending it to be bid for removal.

To delay a demolition, permits need to be secured within 10 days and work on a property needs to be completed in six months, an email from Bell said. e Sta ord House application indicated no permits will be pulled for seven months, Bell’s email said, while design and development work continue for the site. Concept sketches, he added, show multiple code violations and parking on land the Sta ord House does not own.

Dockery told Crain’s she put close to $100,000 into pre-development for the property, including gutting it, and removed people who were living in the vacant building. She said she expected construction to start in April or May. e organization had been maintaining the property, Dockery said, though Roach said there was absolutely no sign of renovation.

“We’re ghting it tooth and nail,” Dockery said. “We’re ghting it.”

Roach emphasized repeatedly that the M100 document is ever-changing. While he said Dockery’s case was going through the proper process, discrepancies elsewhere in the list don’t necessarily mean errors, he said — just that something has changed and the list needs to be updated.

No building is demolished without the city completing a full title search on the property to ensure that the current legal owner is aware of the proposed action and has a chance to respond to it, Roach said. e only exception, he said, is emergency demolitions, when a structure poses an immediate threat of collapse and is a danger to residents.

Dockery said it wasn’t until she received the January demolition notice that she learned the city had been trying to communicate through an address Sta ord House hadn’t used since 2016. She said she was particularly frustrated to learn that because she had hosted Duggan in her home and had been involved in the North End Neighborhood Framework Vision process.

“It’s not like the city didn’t have access,” she said. “ ey’re very lax, extremely lax, about city business.”

Another property, at 24623 W. Grand River Ave. in a northwest Detroit neighborhood called e Eye, is also still listed on the M100 for demolition, though another demolition department spokesperson said it was removed in September, after the owner complied with a court order to replace a missing roof.

Shelly Steciak, the owner, said the building was burnt when she bought it in 2021; she’s thinking of putting a day care or a car wash there now. Electricity was going in.

“ at ain’t even a blight anymore. It’s been refurbished,” she said of its inclusion on the list. “I don’t want my building to be demolished after I put all this money into it.” at’s also the case when it comes to the ownership of some properties. Prater Commercial Carpentry is listed as the owner of 10123 W. Grand River Ave. in Midwest Detroit, but Ryan Prater said he hasn’t owned the property since 2013.

Julieta Allen, a real estate agent with Clyde Realty who helped Steciak with the purchase, said the property was not supposed to be on the list and the city was behind in updating its information.

“We’ve constantly been sending bills back to the city of Detroit,” he said. “We don’t own the building at all.”

He added that it was “in decent shape” when last he did. e build- ing is in the demolition process, according to the city’s department, and environmental work is being done on the building before it is bid out for removal. e city is pursuing legal action against the owners of the property at 12802 Kercheval Ave. in the Riverbend neighborhood — the owner is still listed as Dinah Might on the M100 list. Valvona said Kafka sold because there wasn’t enough time to correct the violations on the property.

Kelli Wiley Valvona, the registered agent for Dinah Might LLC, said in a message that developer Philip Kafka had planned to turn the former Continental Motor Co. property into “an ode to the urban industrial history of Detroit” in the form of an indoor public park or museum. But Kafka sold the Albert Kahn-designed property in 2021, Crain’s previously reported.

“As far as I know, it was purchased by a large national company that has torn down a good portion of the historic site, and plans on using what remains as public storage,” she wrote. “ e city has a challenging task on their hands — to keep the city safe and deter absent owner speculators. At the same time, we are saddened to see such a magnicent piece of history destroyed in the name of ‘progress.’”

Even those whose information is accurate are sometimes experiencing frustration. Athanasios Koikas, the owner of 5014 Grandy St. in Poletown East, said he had no idea the four-unit at he owns was considered a blighted property — certainly not among the most blighted in all of Detroit. e city demolition department is currently preparing the request for proposals that would include the demolition of that property.

“ at don’t make any sense,” Koikas said, saying the property was “some building in its day.” “I can’t see how it’s the most worst. It’s boarded up and everything. Other properties are wide open.”