UM plans larger residential tower for downtown Detroit campus

The University of Michigan board is expected to consider a measure related to a new residential tower to be built next to its under-construction Detroit satellite campus, the University of Michigan Center for Innovation. 

The Board of Regents meets virtually at 9 a.m. Thursday to consider a 40-year lease for the building that would house UMCI students and faculty.

The residential building to be constructed at 2205 Cass Ave. at West Columbia Street is expected to have 313 units with a budget of $186 million, both of which are increases from previously released project details, according to a board briefing memo. Previously, the tower had been described as having 261 units and costing $147 million. 

Crain’s has emailed spokespeople for the Ilitch family’s Olympia Development of Michigan real estate company as well as Related Cos., the New York City-based development company founded by Stephen Ross, which is also working on the District Detroit effort. Questions about the project were also sent to spokespeople for the university.

The regents document says construction is expected to be complete in the fall of 2028, a year after UMCI — a graduate school-type campus focused on things like AI, robotics, cybersecurity and tech, among other things — opens in the fall of 2027. 

Previously, a Related executive had said the UMCI and the residential tower would open at about the same time.

It’s not known where UMCI students and faculty would be housed in the interim. 

The tower was originally supposed to have 54 of the 261 units designated as affordable housing, but that was scrapped at the request of the university so it could house students. 

The building would be the first of the 10 development and redevelopment projects as part of the Olympia/Related District Detroit effort that received approval for $615 million or so in transformational brownfield funding more than two years ago. 

At the time the Michigan Strategic Fund signed off on the tax incentive package, the 10 projects were anticipated to cost $1.53 billion. Total public funding committed for the effort is about $800 million. 

It’s again been a difficult slog for The District Detroit, the first sweeping vision for which was announced 11 years ago this month. That 45- to 50-block vision did not materialize in the way it had been presented to the public, and much of the area remains surface parking lots and previously announced projects either languishing, partially built or never starting construction at all. 

Then, in late 2021, Ross, the university’s largest donor, and the Ilitch family announced they were teaming up to build the UMCI — at that point, known as the Detroit Center for Innovation — and other projects. 

Those, too, have faced delays and setbacks, with the development team pivoting and pushing back construction timelines amid market pressures, including weak office space demand and high interest rates, among others. 

Work has been underway on the UMCI since December 2023, and separately on a 170-unit housing redevelopment of existing buildings by Olympia and Lansing-based Cinnaire Solutions that started construction in late August.