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A scaled-back proposal for a long-stalled development in Midtown calls for construction to start in early January.
A public presentation from the development team behind The Mid project on Woodward Avenue north of Mack Avenue and the Whole Foods Inc. grocery store says a planned Thompson Hotel, part of the Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp. family of hotel flags, should be complete by January 2027.
It is slightly reduced in scale to 216 rooms across 15 floors, down from 225 or so as originally conceived.
It’s the first time in years updated plans have been revealed for the project, which was first announced in March 2019 and ran into the COVID-19 pandemic buzzsaw that pinched financing a year later. The most recent cost projection was $377 million, although the current development cost is not known.
“The ensuing disruption to the financial markets resulted in the project’s lenders quickly withdrawing their commitments in March of 2020,” the presentation says. “In addition, the subsequent economic downturn and softening in hospitality and residential demand made a large-scale Midtown project all but impossible.”
The updated plans are pared back considerably.
The first incarnation of the project from March 2019 included a 25-story hotel and condo building with 225 hotel keys and 60 condos, plus a 30-story, 250-unit residential tower. They would be among the tallest buildings built north of Mack since the 1920s. Also included were a 12-story building with close to 200 co-living units, a 750-space parking garage, and 75,000 to 100,000 square feet of retail.
Emery Matthews, one of the developers long behind the project, said Thursday evening during a City Planning Commission meeting that they “are prepared to move forward today.”
Matthews also said permits and financing are being finalized.
Crain’s reported earlier this month that the development team, with a looming deadline to keep nearly $9 million in tax credits, submitted plans for the hotel in late September, the first sign of life for the broader project in years.
“We look forward to sharing much more detail about this important development in the very near future,” Dietrich Knoer, president of Southfield-based Q-Partners LLC, said in an emailed statement earlier this month.
Through a spokesperson, the development team declined comment on Thursday afternoon in advance of the City Planning Commission meeting.
Q-Partners LLC is connected to Mohammad Qazi, president and CEO of Southfield-based Ciena Healthcare, who paid $15 million for the site in 2018. Knoer has previously been a top executive with Southfield-based Redico LLC, Peter Cummings’ The Platform LLC and the Eastern Market Development Corp.
It’s been five and a half years since Qazi and his development team first floated the ambitious project.
But since then, little has happened. Years have passed since the original 2019 construction start timeframe. The site remains empty, with a fence and scrim making promises for a development that has long remained dormant.
Under legislation that was approved a year ago, Michigan lawmakers said the project needed to have seven stories of a 15-story building completed by the end of 2026 in order to receive $8.97 million in previously approved brownfield tax credits, which representatives of the project have said is needed in order for it to move forward. It was the second such deadline extension, with one also approved in 2021.
The property is adjacent to a tower, The Plaza, a former office building-turned-apartment-building that is now going to be turned into an extended-stay hotel under the Marriott Bonvoy flag.
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