Details are starting to emerge about the highly anticipated new luxury condos at the Hudson’s site in downtown Detroit — and how much the developer will be asking for them.
Recently submitted documents to Detroit City Council reveal how the developer, Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock, has been building 96 for-sale condos on the upper floors of the trophy skyscraper at 1208 Woodward, specifically floors 26 through 45.
The condos will come in a variety of sizes, the documents say, with an average size of 1,667 square feet. And the units would sell at an expected price of $1,000 per square.
Those figures suggest that many of the 96 condos — perhaps even the majority — will be brandishing $1 million-plus price tags.
Bedrock has been hush-hush on details about the building’s luxury units and there are no publicized listings yet for them, even though the skyscraper is expected to open in 2027.
The developer did announce last year that the condos will be branded “The Residences at The Detroit EDITION” and feature interiors by the renowned design studio Yabu Pushelberg.
The 96 condos would be above the building’s floors that will contain an EDITION Hotel. EDITION is a Marriott-owned luxury brand that was conceived by hotelier Ian Schrager, who was co-creator of the legendary New York nightclub Studio 54.
A $1,000-per-square-foot price point for a condo building is unprecedented in downtown Detroit, according to Jerome Huez, co-owner of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices/The Loft Warehouse in Detroit.
“We don’t have to go as far as New York — that’s what we see in Chicago. They have buildings like that and prices like that,” Huez said. “I so much want them to be successful. We need a top of the market in Detroit that can elevate everything for us, bringing more investment and more people to the city.”
Bedrock did previously announce that New York-based real estate brokerage Douglas Elliman is in charge of selling and marketing the skyscraper’s residences. A Douglas Elliman agent handling the condos didn’t respond on Monday, Oct. 20, to a message seeking comment for this story.
Huez said there is an existing “super luxury market” for condos in metro Detroit. That is located in Birmingham, where there have been three reported sales at or above $1,000 a square foot in recent years.
The actual sale prices of those Birmingham condos were between $2 million and $5 million, he said.
For Detroit, the closest parallel would be some of the new housing in Brush Park, the occassional sale of a high-end condo at the Book Cadillac and the condos on the top floors of The Exchange building near Greektown at 310 Gratiot.
But not all of the dozen condos in the 16-story Exchange building have sold, Huez said, and the asking prices have dropped significantly since the building opened in 2024.
So the Hudson’s condos could represent a building creating new demand, rather than filling a gap in the Detroit housing market where there appears to be unmet demand.
“It is a product that you need a daring vision to put in Detroit,” Huez said.
The potential buying pool for the condos would likely include people from outside Detroit and even outside Michigan who are seeking a second home in the city, which is sometimes called a pied-à-terre.
“If you look at other markets, spending $1 million on a second home is very common,” Huez said.
The recent City Modern development in Brush Park attracted some such buyers from the suburbs who desired a place near downtown, Huez said.
Tax benefits, challenges
Bedrock is seeking City Council approval of Neighborhood Enterprise Zone certificates for the 96 condos, known as NEZ tax abatements.
NEZ tax abatements are standard at most new condo and townhome developments in Detroit and give significant reductions on city and county millages for homebuyers in such developments for up to 15 years.
Yet one challenge for Bedrock could be NEZ rules that require newly constructed residences to be used as principal residences for their buyers to be eligible for the tax abatement.
Those rules might thwart some condo sales for potential second-home buyers, Huez said, as the costs for uncapped taxes on the average unit described in the NEZ request documents — 1,667 square feet, sold for $1,000 per square foot — might run around $50,000 to $60,000 a year.
The $1.4 billion Hudson’s Detroit development is composed of two side-by-side buildings: the 45-floor skyscraper with the condos and hotel and a 12-story building with office, events and retail space.
The project broke ground in December 2017 and has taken longer to build than its original 2022 completion date.
Bedrock recently opened the 12-story building, part of which will be the new headquarters for General Motors in January.
Unit details
The number of bedrooms in each of the new Hudson’s Detroit condos would break down as follows, according to city documents:
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Prices for Hudson’s site luxury condos would set Detroit record
Reporting by JC Reindl, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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