The Michigan Strategic Fund, part of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., today approved the transfer of the public areas of an emerging mixed-use development in downtown Northville to the Wayne County Land Bank.
The City of Northville Brownfield Redevelopment Authority, in coordination with Hunter Pasteur Northville, is redeveloping approximately 7.85 acres of a former horseracing track called Northville Downs and a brownfield site to include the daylighting of a river and the creation of an adjacent park.
Daylighting, in this case, refers to the removal of a 100-plus-year-old tunnel beneath the former Northville Downs horse track that spans more than 400 yards. The tunnel carries a portion of the Middle Rouge River.
The project will reactivate the property, some of which is contaminated, and bring the river closer to its natural state while creating an amenity and recreational area available to the greater public.
In 2018, Hunter Pasteur acquired the overall 48-acre site and has plans to build close to 500 homes, condominiums, and apartments, along with retail areas that include up to three restaurants, and 15 acres of public parks and green spaces.
The $350-million project is scheduled to be completed by 2028. Projects consultants include Neumann Smith Architecture, Elkus Manfredi Architects, Presley Architecture, Grissim Metz and Riese Associates, M Architects, and Sieber Keast.
In order to incur and be reimbursed for infrastructure eligible activity costs related to the daylighted river and park creation, the property will be transferred into the Wayne County Land Bank.
As a non-Qualified Local Governmental Unit, the City of Northville is not eligible for infrastructure improvement costs. However, per Section 125.2652(2)(o)(iv)(A) of Act 381, a property is eligible for infrastructure improvements costs if it is owned or under the control of a Land Bank Authority.
The Michigan Strategic Fund today waived the requirements in the Brownfield Program Guidelines to allow the property to be placed into Land Bank control specifically to access infrastructure improvement cost reimbursement because the project does not meet any of the three existing criteria.
This will allow the project to use state tax capture to reimburse the developer for public infrastructure improvement costs not typically available to the City of Northville.
The community seeks to leverage tax capture from the private investment in the housing development on the brownfield site in order to create a public amenity. The public benefits of the project include redeveloping a contaminated brownfield site and creating an “impactful” public park that will have ecological and recreational benefits for the broader community.
Founded in 1999, Farmington Hills-based Hunter Pasteur, the parent company for Hunter Pasteur Northville, is one of southeast Michigan’s largest homebuilders, as well as one of the region’s leading residential developers.
Over the past two decades, they have built and developed more than 1,500 single family homes and multifamily condominiums throughout metro Detroit, including Ann Arbor, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Clarkston, Commerce Township, Detroit, Lake Orion, Novi, Northville, South Lyon, and West Bloomfield.
For more information about Northville Downs, visit https://northvilledowns.info/.
