Two nonprofit developers, Develop Detroit and Boston-based Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH), are joining forces to build a new mixed-income, mixed-use development on a vacant one-acre lot in Midtown Detroit’s Sugar Hill Arts District.
The $32 million development will include 84 studio, one-, and two-bedroom apartments, a 300-space parking garage, and commercial and retail space. Twenty-one units will be affordable to households earning 50% to 80% of the area median income.
Sonya Mays, CEO of Develop Detroit, says much of the development accomplished in the city as it has emerged from bankruptcy has appealed to younger suburbanites coming to the central business district for the first time and hasn’t benefited long-term Detroiters to the same degree.
The nonprofits’ Sugar Hill development, which is expected to break ground in September 2018, is aimed at providing safe and healthy housing to a broader swath of Detroiters.
“The Sugar Hill project for us is reflective of that ladder principle,” says Mays. “We pulled a team together that had the strength and expertise that would allow us to compete with traditional marketplace developers.”
Both Develop Detroit and POAH are members of Housing Partnership Network (HPN), a business collaborative of 100 of the nation’s leading affordable housing and community development nonprofits.
“We have known POAH to be one of the strongest mixed-income, mixed-use affordable housing developers east of the Mississippi,” says Mays. “They had senior housing investments in Detroit and had been looking for opportunities to deepen their investments. They bring this broad deep development and urban transformation experience, and we’re the local gritty start-up that has the local connections and understanding of the market.”
The developers also brought in accomplished architects to help create a building that will be representative of Detroiters. “The two architects who are attached to this are important for technical reasons but also for what they signal,” Mays says.
Project design will be headed by internationally acclaimed architect Phil Freelon, design director at Perkins+Will, who led the design team for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and was the design architect for the National Center for Civil Rights in Atlanta. Freelon will partner with Detroit-based architect Michael Poris of McIntosh Poris Associates. Poris has been at the forefront of a local movement to preserve Detroit’s local architectural gems, says Mays.
The development team is currently working on the financing stack for the project with its city and state partners. The sale of the land will go before the Detroit City Council for approval later this year.
Founded in 2015 and sponsored by HPN, Develop Detroit will continue its mission to build vibrant and resilient communities and expand opportunities for residents in Detroit. The nonprofit currently has almost 700 units of housing in the development pipeline.
