ANN ARBOR, MI — By next spring, Ann Arborites could see a $100-million riverfront transformation underway.
City Council voted 10-1 Monday night, Sept. 21, to approve plans for the Broadway Park West redevelopment of the old DTE Energy property at 841 Broadway St.
Detroit-based Roxbury Group plans to build four six-story buildings with 96 condos, a nine-story hotel with 148 rooms, a riverfront restaurant, commercial spaces, public green space, walking trails, an event pavilion and more.
The site is just north of downtown, along the Huron River, next to where the city is building a new tunnel pathway to the riverfront.
Take a video tour of $100M riverfront redevelopment proposed in Ann Arbor
“For decades, these 14 acres of land were some of the dirtiest and most polluted in the county,” said Council Member Zachary Ackerman, D-3rd Ward. “This was home to a coal gasification plant where one of the dirtiest energy sources on earth was burned and dumped. Now the Roxbury Group, in partnership with DTE, is putting forward a very different vision.”
It will be a truly mixed-use neighborhood with architecture, site planning and building materials better than most developments the city usually sees, Ackerman said, and the public park components are even more exciting.
The developer is proposing outdoor recreation and open space on roughly six acres, including an ice rink, interactive water feature, a potential canoe/kayak rental area, a watercraft launch area and a 9,722-square-foot pavilion and concession building for outdoor events.
The project will turn blight into something beautiful and make the city proud, said Mayor Christopher Taylor.
“I think the open space is going to be attractive and used. I think the commercial areas will be a boon,” he said. “I think, in the end, we are going to be the beneficiaries of a transformed riverfront and I, for one, am delighted.”
The former MichCon site owned by DTE Energy on the Huron River in Ann Arbor on June 3, 2019. Jacob Hamilton/MLive.com
The project also will provide funds for dam maintenance along the river and the developer is contributing roughly $2 million to the city’s affordable housing fund, city officials said.
Council Member Jeff Hayner, D-1st Ward, cast the lone dissenting vote against the project, arguing it’s inappropriate to build in a flood-risk area along the river.
“We basically have a war on flooding coming, and we even recognize that with our A2Zero plan,” he said.
Hayner also expressed concerns that not all of the legacy pollution at the site would be fully cleaned up, saying some of it would just end up being “capped with housing.”
He also had concerns about building height and the fact that the buildings would rely on burning natural gas rather than being electrified. He pointed out that’s not in line with the city’s carbon-neutrality plan, which calls for moving away from fossil fuels and powering the community with 100% renewable energy.
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Council Member Ali Ramlawi, D-5th Ward, said he knows there are some issues and there would only be a partial cleanup, but the city would lose out on a lot without the development.
“We have a site that’s been long neglected,” he said. “This is our best chance of doing something with this site or we’re going to look at what we’re looking at now for another generation to come — not having any housing, not having any additional cleanup, not having $2 million in the affordable housing fund, not having tax money coming from it, not putting money toward fixing the dams to a higher level.”
Council Member Jane Lumm, I-2nd Ward, said she enthusiastically supported the development.
“I’ve not been able to say this about a lot of development projects recently, but there is much to like with this one,” she said.
Council Member Julie Grand, D-3rd Ward, recalled serving on the city’s North Main Street corridor task force several years ago and helping put together a future vision for the DTE site.
What’s now planned is “better than we could even have imagined,” she said, adding it still has elements important to the parks system and for connectivity in the area.
“This really is what I hope will be a turning point in enabling us to have a true waterfront and help us also make improvements on North Main, get connectivity,” she said.
It could really activate what has been “a problematic entrance to our city,” Grand said.
Discussing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, David Di Rita, Roxbury founder and principal, said the project is several months behind schedule, but the development team will be moving diligently to get work underway in spring 2021.
The plan is still to do the project in two phases, with the hotel and commercial aspects being the second phase.
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