The first phase of Tony Soave’s plan to build more than 400 apartments and tens of thousands of square feet of new retail space in a five-block Corktown development has received $6.9 million in state financing.
It’s the first time Soave, president and CEO of Detroit-based Soave Enterprises LLC, has tried his hand at residential development in the city where he was raised as the son of a neighborhood grocer.
“Nobody brought me anything [development opportunities] from Detroit,” Soave said in his office on East Lafayette Street.
“I kept on watching, thinking, ‘I ought to buy a couple of these buildings.'”
The planned Elton Park development is expected to begin with the construction of more than 150 apartments in multiple buildings starting in the spring.
The project includes a rehabilitation of the historic Checker Cab building and construction of new mixed-use buildings with retail space on the first floors. The first phase is expected to be complete by December 2018.
All four phases of the project are expected to cost about $125 million; construction details on the other three phases have yet to be determined.
“If we get them preleased and are covering our debt service, we are going to keep going,” said Lisa Payne, chairman of the board for Soave Enterprises and president of the Soave Real Estate Group, a division of Soave Enterprises.
The for-rent units in the $43.8 million first phase are expected to include primarily one-bedroom apartments, but also a smattering of two- and three-bedroom units, said Tysen McCarthy, vice president of Soave Real Estate Group.
He said units are expect to rent for about $2 per square foot.
“Clearly, Detroit is beyond rebound,” said Steve Arwood, CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. “I would call it rapid redevelopment.”
Arwood called the Corktown project “fascinating” and pointed to Woodward, Michigan and even Jefferson avenues as priority corridors when it comes to development. The state’s long-term interest in Detroit is to continue growth in order to attract new people to live and work in the city, he said.
The planned development is named after Elton Park, which sat at Elizabeth and Eighth streets at the eastern edge of the planned development area until it was built over during construction of the Lodge Freeway in the late 1950s.
“The historic names of the whole neighborhood really kind of resonated with us, and one of the places we found inspiration were in the parks that existed in the early, late 19th century that really abutted the end of our neighborhood,” McCarthy said.
Built in the late 1920s at 2128 Trumbull Ave., the Checker Cab building is expected to be turned into 52 loft-style apartments, while new construction is expected to bring:
- a new four-story building with about 45 apartments,
- a new five-story building with about 40 apartments,
- a pair of three-story buildings with about 10 units
- and four new three-story townhomes.
A so-called green alley is planned as part of the project connecting from Trumbull Avenue to Eighth Street, McCarthy said.
“Retail, open space … it will be pretty powerful,” Payne said. “A nice little bar, neighborhood retail stuff.”
Soave Enterprises purchased Checker Cab, which is expected to move to another Detroit location as part of the redevelopment efforts, in 2002.
The next year, Soave started buying property surrounding the Checker Cab building, and has accumulated 18 parcels on Trumbull, Elizabeth, Brooklyn, Plum and Eighth streets, largely in 2003 and 2004, although a pair of additional properties in the development area were purchased in 2013 and 2014.
Soave founded City Management Corp. in 1961 and built it into a multistate waste-management firm, selling it to Waste Management Inc. seven years later.
His Soave Enterprises has varied business interests, ranging from metal recycling to industrial services and hydroponics.
Also on the development team is Detroit-based The Roxbury Group, which is a consultant on the project. That company has been responsible for the redevelopment of the David Whitney Building and others in the last decade.
The construction manager is Eastpointe-based Monahan Construction, while project architects are Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson Associates and Quinn Evans Architects, which has offices in Detroit and Ann Arbor.
Soave has developed large residential properties, including one under way in suburban Washington, D.C., where he is working on around 12,000 units in Louden County. He has also developed condominiums along the beaches of Naples, Fla.
The company says it has a real estate development portfolio of approximately $2 billion in six states.
Soave also has residential complexes in Michigan, including Huron Pointe in Huron Township, The Milltown in downtown Rochester, The Overlook in Rochester, The Moors of Oxford in Oxford Township and Tullamore in Oxford Township.
By KIRK PINHO, Crain’s Detroit Business, and Lindsay Van Hulle, Bridge Magazine reporter
