Work begins on long-delayed Commerce Township retail center

Developers are breaking ground this summer on a long-delayed retail and residential center in Commerce Township. 

Robert B. Aikens & Associates, the development team behind the Five & Main retail “lifestyle center,” announced it has started $4 million in infrastructure work on a 45-acre site at M-5 and Pontiac Trail. Road construction, water, sewer and electrical work is underway, and full construction on new commercial space is slated for the spring.

The development is a walkable town center-style layout that will include restaurants, shopping, entertainment and residential spaces. Developers anticipate the town center to include 275,000 square feet of space in the first phase of development.  

“We are excited to take this critical step in the development of Five & Main,” Bruce Aikens, developer at RB Aikens and Associates LLC, said in a news release. “Our team is dedicated to bringing a dynamic, community-centric experience to life, and starting the infrastructure work is a key part of making this vision a reality.”

This summer, construction also is starting on a 300-apartment home residential community at the site. The project by Continental Properties is being dubbed Springs at Five & Main. The apartment homes will include studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units, each with private ground-level entrances and optional attached garages. Pre-leasing is expected to begin in the spring. 

The Five & Main has been in the works for at least a decade. The Downtown Development Authority had assembled hundreds of acres of land beginning in the early 2000s for the project.

“Commerce Township and the Commerce Downtown Development Authority (DDA) are very excited that the infrastructure work has begun on the commercial element of Five & Main in advance of the construction of the lifestyle center,” Commerce Township Supervisor Larry Gray said in the release. “That along with the groundbreaking of Springs at Five & Main on the residential side of this development, marks a very exciting time for Commerce Township.”

The development is expected to be similar to Aikens’ earlier project The Village of Rochester Hills, where he built a new commercial anchor at the northeast corner of Adams Road and Walton Boulevard.

The lifestyle center is one of several components of Commerce Township’s effort to develop the land surrounding the M-5/Pontiac Trail intersection, which had long been a thorn in the side of township officials until Martin Parkway, a north-south extension of the federal M-5 highway, was built in 2010 as a way to alleviate some of the heavy traffic congestion in the area.

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