Construction is ready to start on a new 13-story residential building in downtown Detroit that will house graduate students and faculty for the future University of Michigan Center for Innovation.
The 313-unit building at 2205 Cass Ave. will be named Founders House, and represents the first of 10 planned projects in the $1.5 billion District Detroit megadevelopment. District Detroit was approved back in spring 2023 as a joint venture between New York-based The Related Companies — founded by Detroit native and U-M donor Stephen Ross, who is 85 — and the Ilitch organization’s Olympia Development of Michigan.
Ross and Chris Ilitch were among those in attendance Friday, April 17, at a groundbreaking ceremony on the site of the residential building project.
“Today marks another meaningful milestone In the District Detroit,” Ilitch said during the ceremony.
Founders House will be situated across Cass from under-construction U-M Center for Innovation. Construction of the residential building is expected to begin within days and finish sometime in 2028.
The U-M Center for Innovation is an academic research campus for the university in high-demand fields, such as robotics. It is expected to be finished and open by summer 2027. A major U-M donor, Ross, is contributing $100 million toward the $250 million cost of the innovation center.
“The most important thing, when you think about why this is here, is really to help bring Detroit back, create jobs and bring people back to this city,” Ross said. “Because really bringing back Detroit is bringing back jobs. It’s such a great city and all of the basics that are needed for growth are all here.
“We were at one time the greatest city in this country and we really propelled the greatness of this country.”
The Founders Hall name reflects the fact that the University of Michigan was founded in Detroit in 1817, before relocating to Ann Arbor in 1837.
Plans for the Founders Hall building, as well as the overall District Detroit development, have undergone several changes since they were first approved at the city and state levels three years ago.
The residential building was originally planned as a general apartment building with 18 floors and 261 units, and with 20% of those units set aside at below-market rents with acceptance of Section 8 housing vouchers. However, the developers have since removed the affordable units from the building and say they intend to shift them over to the other three residential projects in the District Detroit development.
The developers have also adjusted the sequencing of the 10 District Detroit projects.
Under the original plan, the first project was to break ground in late summer 2023 and be a 17-story office tower at 2200 Woodward, next to Comerica Park. But the developers have since indefinitely postponed that project because of the challenging post-pandemic environment for new office space.
Andrew Cantor, a Related Companies executive who spoke at Friday’s groundbreaking and previously helped to shepherd through the District Detroit development in the city’s approval process, declined to comment on which of the other nine projects would break ground next. The U-M Center for Innovation was not one of the 10 projects.
The $1.5 billion District Detroit development was approved in 2023 for $182 million in tax breaks and local subsidies plus a $615 million Transformational Brownfield subsidy, which allows developers to capture various future streams of local and state tax revenues generated by their new projects.
Proponents of Michigan’s Transformational Brownfield program emphasize that developers only benefit from the subsidies if they actually build the buildings, as there is no upfront money involved.
Because Founders House will no longer have affordable housing, the developers have said that they will forgo some previously approved local tax abatements for the building and only capture 50% of the state income taxes paid by the building’s future residents, instead of 100%.
A city of Detroit spokesperson said the State Tax Commission removed the site’s tax abatement earlier this year.
This story was updated with new information.
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: District Detroit’s first project breaks ground at Cass Avenue site
Reporting by JC Reindl, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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