City of Detroit les suit against owner of abandoned shopping center

e city of Detroit, in its continued push to clear the city of blight, has led suit against the owners of a prominent abandoned shopping center on West Grand River Avenue.

e Mammoth Building, the suit contends, has been abandoned for more than 20 years after Mammoth Department Store closed in 2000. e three-story, 135,000-square-foot former Federal Department Store building at 15401 West Grand River Ave. opened in 1949; it has a pedestrian bridge over the road connecting it to what was then the Montgomery Ward Department Store.

City Council President Pro Tem James Tate said it’s long past time when the dilapidated structure should continue dragging the community down.

“We’ve seen the building steadily decay over the years,” he said. “ is parking lot used to be full.” e lawsuit, led April 25 in Wayne County Circuit Court, names three people and three companies; the city said in its ling it was not completely clear who the owner of the building is.

e individuals sued are Herbert Strather, Christine Strather and Carlotta Duraine Jackson, while the businesses are Grand River Place LLC, Green eld Penthouse Manor LLC and Park High Apartments — Phase I Limited Partnership.

Herbert Strather, who came to a press conference May 5 announcing the suit, said he was the building’s owner and is in support of its demolition. None of the other parties could be reached for comment or returned messages seeking comment about the suit.

Strather said he planned to announce a new project on the site, called e Experience. He said it would include about 100 apartments; he also forwarded a February email that included information about two planned buildings on the space, which would have a combined 197 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments.

An attached brochure said the project would also include retail, an entrepreneurship center and other resources that would help strengthen the community and be a hub for innovation. Strather said the plan is a continuation of other work he’s done in the area.

“We’re happy for them to tear it down,” Strather said of the Mammoth Building. “You don’t have to sue me.”

He agreed with a resident who said he had failed to keep the building clean and questioned the administration’s assertion that property owners were ghting back against the lawsuits, interjecting “Not me,” as Corporation Counsel Conrad Mallett spoke about the nearly two dozen suits the city has led.

“I’m not running from anything, let’s get that straight,” Strather said. “I am fully in support of this property being redeveloped and torn down.”

Mallett said the shopping center, which is on a list of the most blighted properties in the city, is “an example of the kind of degradation we’ve had to live with for 20, 30 years.” at level of disinvestment is unique in the city of Detroit, he said.

“ is is not how major cities ought to be operating,” he said. “I hope there is change. I hope there is progress. I hope there is compliance with the law.” e lawsuit says the building and the pedestrian bridge are both in disrepair and present a “signi cant hazard” to drivers and pedestrians, as well as to those who might try to access the building. e city has asked the court to appoint a receiver over the bridge and building, and asked that it authorize the receiver to demolish the property.

Mallett said there are holes in the ownership chain for the building, and said the title changes were obviously done with the “intent to confuse” people, a charge Strather disputed. Mallett said the city will continue to le blight-related suits, even if the ownership of a building isn’t completely clear.

“You can run, but you cannot hide,” he said, adding that potential owners are free to dispute their responsibilities in court.

Robert Hamm, who owns the Tower Center across the street from the Mammoth Building, said he’d like to buy the building and clean up the block. He applauded the city for its action.

“God bless them,” he said. “ at’s the right decision. Why would you allow it to just sit like that?” e ling comes on the heels of a series of blight lawsuits led by the city of Detroit. In March and April, the city led four blight-related lawsuits against longtime real estate investor Dennis Kefallinos and his son, Julian. ose followed suits against the un nished Perfecting Church, the owner of a proposed concrete crushing site, and the Packard Plant. e attorneys are rushing to unmask individuals behind LLCs that own a number of the dilapidated buildings, he said, so suits can be led and the legal process followed before the ARPA money runs out. He called it an opportunity to “really, profoundly, do something about blight.”

Other community members lauded the lawsuit as well, saying the possibility of improvement in the area was great news.

“So far, property owners are resisting,” he said.

Mallett told Crain’s previously that the systemic e ort is a result of federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars, which allowed him to hire seven attorneys to focus on blight cases in the city.

Contact: arielle.kass@crain.com; (313) 446-6774; @ArielleKassCDB e DEGC declined to make an executive available for an interview. ose changes to be sought would include dividing the property into three distinct parcels: One of 10.2 acres, another of 14.3 acres and a third of 11.6 acres. e speci cs behind any current development plan are not known. e development team declined comment.

Bettis, a product of Mackenzie High School, selected Detroit developer Roderick Hardamon, who has projects on West Grand River, Livernois and other key corridors in the city, to consult on the Uniroyal site.

C.J. Betters, a Pittsburgh-based developer, was originally part of the development team but at some point parted ways with the project.

But the time frame for any private development on the site remains in the air.

But in response to emailed questions, the quasi-public economic development agency said the development team is “ nalizing their programming” for the rst phase of the property, the westernmost chunk abutting Mount Elliott Park. Once that happens, the DEGC says, a new development agreement would be executed and City Council approval of an amended land transfer agreement would be sought.

Terms of the agreement include up to $100 million in private mixed-use development with at least 400,000 square feet on the 10.2-acre rstphase site; the 14.3-acre second-phase site requires at least $175 million in mixed-use development of at least 800,000 square feet; and the third phase on the 11.6 acres requires at least $125 million in investment with at least 500,000 square feet.

In terms of square footage, that would make it among the largest mixed-use projects in Detroit.

Some early proposals dating back to the Kilpatrick era include more than 1,800 residential units, 350 lofts/ live-work units, 285 hotel rooms and close to 400,000 square feet of retail space across the various development blocks under consideration, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Taller buildings would line Jefferson Avenue, with streets north of the thoroughfare — Beaufait, Bellevue, Concord, Canton and Helen — brought southward toward the river, and smaller buildings would be near the water.

Connecting to the river

It’s been a long slog to get the RiverWalk extension to where it is today, just a few months from completion. Plans to have the Detroit RiverWalk run through the site date back two decades, Wallace, of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, said. But obstacles were rampant.

ere were lawsuits between various companies and the state over who should pay for cleanup of the site, contaminated by decades of industrial use.

Even after designs of the project had been submitted, contaminants found in the sediments in the water around the site caused the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require additional remediation in 2020 — at a $3 million additional cost, with a required 20 percent match — so work could begin. Ultimately that was covered with Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding, Wallace said. And dating back to the early days of the vision, the eventual private development on the site was up in the air.

“ e DEGC was talking to a lot of people about what the future of that site would be,” Wallace said. “If it includes a marina or if it includes boat docking, that would impact what we build on the site, so it made sense that we were postponed,” Wallace said.

But eventually, with the help of tens of millions of federal funding the late U.S. Sen. Carl Levin secured, work on the broader eastern riverfront got done. at ranged from Mt. Elliott Park to the bridge at Robert C. Valade Park — and the Uniroyal site.

During community meetings leading up to the implementation of the 2017 East Riverfront Framework Plan, Wallace said the question he received the most was about when the Uniroyal section would be complete. e new section — which is to have a 20-foot landscape bu er from the private development site — in areas spans some 65 feet through an easement granted by the city. It passes under the Belle Isle Bridge and connects with Gabriel Richard Park east of the bridge and Mount Elliott Park on the site’s western edge, said Darrell Greer, project manager on the Uniroyal extension.

When complete, it’s hoped that the RiverWalk extension serves as a catalyst for the broader private-sector vision for the bigger site.

“ e investment in public space de nitely stimulates development in the adjacent areas,” Wallace said. “Every project that’s built on the RiverWalk is focusing on the RiverWalk and the parks as a key part of the value proposition.”

History of the site

It took more than a century for the land to be primed for mixed-use development.

From 1941 to 1978, the site was home to a Uniroyal tire manufacturing plant and a Michigan Consolidated Gas Co. coal-gasi cation plant. It had also been home on the eastern side to Detroit Stove Works, perhaps the rst major manufacturing operation in the region, according to the Detroit Historical Society.

“ at was our rst manufacturing facility basically anywhere in the region, the moment we shifted from trapping beavers to building stu out of metal,” Wallace said.

Crain’s reported in 1985 that demolition on the 50 or so buildings that were on the site began in the fall 1984.

Demolition was just the start of a long process to get the site ready for redevelopment.

Housing

From Page 3 e state declared in July 2014 that remediation of the westernmost chunk of the site was completed after more than 700,000 tons of dirt and other materials were removed. e cleanup, which began in September 2011, involved 150 workers and resulted in the installation of a 740-foot-long seawall going 115 feet deep — more than double the depth of the Detroit River. e middle parcel, with Michelin responsible for cleanup costs, was expected to cost around $6 million several years ago. rough a series of mergers and acquisitions, Detroit Stove Works came to be owned by Enodis plc, which was responsible for cleanup on the easternmost chunk of the site. e city bought the land from Uniroyal in 1981 for $5 million and spent another $3.6 million razing structures and clearing the site.

 Harper Woods-based American Community Developers is working on an a ordable and workforce housing project aimed at households earning 40% to 120% of AMI. e project would also include 4,000 square feet of commercial space. Half of that would be reserved for minority-owned businesses. ACD declined comment.

Remediation of just that alone cost Detroit-based DTE Energy Co., which owns MichCon; E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.; and Michelin USA Inc. around $35 million.

Jill Greenberg, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, said there is a four-step process for nishing cleanup on the middle portion of the site, and the rst phase — a preliminary screening — of that work is nearing completion.

EGLE would then further work to better understand the results of the preliminary screening and wait for private development plans so the department can “pinpoint the remediation or excavation at the site that would need to be done,” Greenberg said.

 Economic Growth Corp., a Rock Island, Ill.-based developer, also is working on another project several years out. e conceptual vision is for housing for refugee farmers.

 Develop Detroit, a nonpro t developer, continues to work on a housing project aimed at residents earning 30% to 80% of AMI. Willian said the project in the district’s south end along Gratiot Avenue would include 78 units as part of an approximately $20 million rst phase, and another $35 million to $40 million would be

Nearby developments

e property could bene t from the recent development and investor activity in the area, said Joshua Elling, CEO of Je erson East Inc.

Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC real estate company has been acquiring land and buildings on the other side of Mount Elliott Park during the COVID-19 pandemic, forging a large portfolio costing over $100 million not far from the Uniroyal site.

Gilbert’s team, at one point, had also been involved in the discussions over the site’s future, but it’s not known when Bedrock bowed out of those. An email was sent to spokespeople for the company seeking additional details on its previous involvement.

It’s important, Elling said, for there to be easy public access from Je erson Avenue to the waterfront, as well as a mixture of a ordable housing at the 50 to 60 percent Area Median Income level as well as market rate units.

“If you can have a design that’s really dense with a good mix of all housing types, maintaining public access through the site to the RiverWalk and to Belle Isle, I think those are some of the North Stars that we’re looking at,” Elling said.

But still, Elling and his team have been waiting for years for a vision.

“ ere has not been many public discussions at all about the Uniroyal site,” Elling said. “We’ve also not been asking because it’s been going on for almost a generation now. And it’s sort of like, wake me up when something happens, you know?”

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB spent on a second phase with 136 units. Construction on the rst phase could start early next year, contingent on solidifying nancing.

 Firm Real Estate, run by Sanford Nelson, continues to work on a 25unit redevelopment of the Atlas building on Gratiot Avenue. at project was announced in September 2020 but has not yet started. Crain’s emailed Nelson seeking details.

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB