What I find so impressive is how many people, so far, have been willing to shell out deposits for million-dollar units, sight unseen, this early in downtown's revitalization. I mean, this is in a city where many of these new residents will have to drive to the edges of, our outside of, the city to get fresh produce and quality, every-day retail. A city where many of them actually work way out in the outer suburbs. This is serious.
Ricardo Thomas / The Detroit News
Project Manager Tim Kamego of Sky Development in Warren works in the 25-story residential building at 1001 Woodward.
Condo demand rises downtown
Future residents have paid deposits on units costing $1 million or more in city high-rises.
April 14, 2007
Louis Aguilar / The Detroit News
The future owners of the next $1 million condominiums in downtown Detroit will get their choice of commanding views.
If they buy one of the north-facing glass-walled units at 1001 Woodward, they can peer down on home plate in Comerica Park, just six blocks away. If their swinging pad faces another direction, they can gaze at the city skyline and Detroit River.
In fact, at this price range, prospective owners can design their own layout and choose their own view.
Wherever he looks, Timothy Kamego sees plenty of buyers.
"The location and the view is obviously a big part of why we have faith," said Kamego, project manager at the 25-story skyscraper across the street from Campus Martius and Compuware Corp. headquarters.
Faith wasn't a word real estate developers used much to describe the downtown Detroit housing market until recently. Now, 1001 Woodward adds to the growing number of high-end condo developments, a market that received a boost last October when the nearby Book-Cadillac sold two $1 million-plus penthouses sight unseen.
Since then, the @water Lofts (pronounced "Atwater"), the first condo project planned for Detroit's east riverfront, accepted deposits just last month for two of its $1 million penthouses, said Dwight Belyue, the Detroit developer behind that project.
The 1001 Woodward skyscraper could end up with three floors of condos at seven-figure prices. Two years ago, the consortium of suburban developers behind the project planned to offer the top nine floors as residential and use the rest as commercial space.
But downtown's current office vacancy rate of 32.2 percentprompted the developers to turn 22 floors into dwellings. Only the ground level, which houses a branch of Charter One Bank, will remain commercial.
The project joins a counter trend that banks on downtown Detroit becoming more affluent and populated even as the city overall loses 10,000 people a year and the state economy sputters.
"We already have strong interest," in the properties, Kamego said, noting that more than 350 people have contacted the developers about 1001 Woodward.
Strong interest also was clear March 31, when the Griswold Capitol Park project, a new development next door to 1001 Woodward, announced that it already had received deposits on half of its 80 units, said Pete Van Dyke, a spokesman for the project.
Three studies released in the past year by the University of Michigan, Katherine Beebe & Associates and Washington think tank Social Compact show more people are living in downtown Detroit, and have higher incomes than previous data indicated.
Some of the findings show:
- The $59,300 average income of downtown residents is 33 percent higher than previously thought.
- About 4,000 new residents moved downtown from 2000 to 2005. The downtown core, roughly defined as the area bounded by the Detroit River, the Lodge, I-75 and I-375, had 6,259 residents in 2005.
- Two out of three new downtowners came from the suburbs and one third work outside of Detroit.
Developers have responded with 2,400 new housing units since 2000, including 1,400 built since 2004. The studies predict demand for an additional 1,700 units in the next five years in the downtown core alone.
Yet the downtown core is not self-sustaining. Incentives to developers, such as financing from public sources, and to residents, such as property tax breaks, still are needed, the studies said.
"What we are seeing is pent-up demand," said David DiRita, a principal of the Roxbury Group, the developers behind Griswold Capitol Park.
You can reach Louis Aguilar at (313) 222-2760 or laguilar@detnews.com.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...=2007704140347
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