Rock Ventures LLC, the investment firm through which Quicken Loans’ founder Dan Gilbert has been revitalizing Detroit’s business and real estate landscape, wants to develop a $1 billion commercial project that would include a 23,000-seat Major League soccer stadium in downtown Detroit, in partnership with Platinum Equity’s Tom Gores, who owns the Detroit Pistons NBA franchise.
To get the land it covets for this project, Rock Ventures wants take ownership of the Wayne County jail site on Gratiot Avenue. In exchange for that transfer, Rock Ventures has offered to spend $120 million of its own money to construct a new $420 million consolidated criminal justice center on a separate site.
Rock Ventures is also asking the county for an “operational savings credit” to cover the projected efficiencies realized on the new site, for which the investment firm would assume all costs and financial risks.
MLive.com reports that the proposed site for this criminal justice center would be located about 1.5 miles from the existing jail site, at East Forest Avenue east of Interstate 75. The proposed complex would include a 1,632-bed adult facility and a 160-bed juvenile detention center, and a new criminal courthouse with 29 courtrooms. Nearly 400 beds could be added to the jail if the county kicks in another $40 million.
According to the Detroit News, Rock Ventures’ submitted its proposal—developed with AEC firms HOK and Barton Malow—just days before the county’s Feb. 10 deadline to move ahead with efforts to restart construction on the abandoned Gratiot jail site. However, only one firm, Chicago-based Walsh Construction, had responded to the county’s request for proposals.
Gilbert has been pursuing the Gratiot Avenue site for more than three years. His original plans were to turn the site into an entertainment complex that would create 5,500 jobs.
Construction of the 2,000-cell jail on the Gratiot Avenue site—for which the county has already spent about $150 million—halted half finished in June 2013 after revelations of potentially tens of millions of dollars in cost overruns. Litigation initiated by the Detroit Free Press forced the county to release an August 2013 draft report of an audit—which had been kept from county commissioners and members of the Wayne County Building Authority— that projected the new jail would run at least $41 million over its $300 million budget. The draft report showed that county officials had known about the potential overruns since 2011.
If the county accepts Rock Ventures’ proposal, the cost of the new soccer stadium, along with a hotel, office buildings and a residential tower, is estimated in the $225 million to $250 million range.
Related Stories
| Nov 27, 2013
Wonder walls: 13 choices for the building envelope
BD+C editors present a roundup of the latest technologies and applications in exterior wall systems, from a tapered metal wall installation in Oklahoma to a textured precast concrete solution in North Carolina.
| Nov 26, 2013
Video: Zaha Hadid's stadium for Qatar 2022 World Cup
Zaha Hadid Architects, in conjunction with AECOM, has released renderings for a major stadium being designed for the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup--an event that will involve up to nine stadiums.
| Nov 26, 2013
Construction costs rise for 22nd straight month in November
Construction costs in North America rose for the 22nd consecutive month in November as labor costs continued to increase, amid growing industry concern over the tight availability of skilled workers.
| Nov 25, 2013
Building Teams need to help owners avoid 'operational stray'
"Operational stray" occurs when a building’s MEP systems don’t work the way they should. Even the most well-designed and constructed building can stray from perfection—and that can cost the owner a ton in unnecessary utility costs. But help is on the way.
| Nov 19, 2013
Top 10 green building products for 2014
Assa Abloy's power-over-ethernet access-control locks and Schüco's retrofit façade system are among the products to make BuildingGreen Inc.'s annual Top-10 Green Building Products list.
| Nov 13, 2013
Installed capacity of geothermal heat pumps to grow by 150% by 2020, says study
The worldwide installed capacity of GHP systems will reach 127.4 gigawatts-thermal over the next seven years, growth of nearly 150%, according to a recent report from Navigant Research.
| Nov 7, 2013
Fitness center design: What do higher-ed students want?
Campus fitness centers are taking their place alongside student centers, science centers, and libraries as hallmark components of a student-life experience. Here are some tips for identifying the ideal design features for your next higher-ed fitness center project.
| Oct 30, 2013
11 hot BIM/VDC topics for 2013
If you like to geek out on building information modeling and virtual design and construction, you should enjoy this overview of the top BIM/VDC topics.
| Oct 28, 2013
Urban growth doesn’t have to destroy nature—it can work with it
Our collective desire to live in cities has never been stronger. According to the World Health Organization, 60% of the world’s population will live in a city by 2030. As urban populations swell, what people demand from their cities is evolving.
| Oct 18, 2013
Researchers discover tension-fusing properties of metal
When a group of MIT researchers recently discovered that stress can cause metal alloy to fuse rather than break apart, they assumed it must be a mistake. It wasn't. The surprising finding could lead to self-healing materials that repair early damage before it has a chance to spread.