PICS, RENDERINGS: Large Brush Park project to start construction next week

The Brush Park neighborhood of Detroit at one time was full of the stately homes of some of the big leaders in the city.

There was a ton of buzz about the rehabilitation of the Ransom Gillis house last year, but there’s more to what’s going to happen to the neighborhood just east of Woodward and steps from the new Little Caesars Arena and the new QLINE.

Later this week major construction will kick off on what some estimate to be a $70 million or more investment into an area just larger than a city block that is going to remake this section of greater downtown Detroit.

The name of this is “City Modern Detroit,” designed as a walkable community whose website quotes urbanists like Jane Jacobs. The construction style is very modern set next to historic homes. The rough boundaries are going to be John R., Alfred, Brush and Edmond Place. It’ll contain about 410 residential units (up from previous estimates in the 330 range) and something like 20,000 square feet of retail.

In fact, the design has already won an award before being built. It took the Grand Prize at the Congress for New Urbanism’s 15th Annual Charter Awards. The project is being developed by a group led by Dan Gilbert.

Previously, it was said that about 20 percent of the new construction will be reserved for those with incomes at or below 80 percent of the area’s median income, which calculates to approximately $21,000.

Hard costs aren’t released yet, but estimates by others put the tag of this development at north of $70 million. Although there will be townhomes, carriage homes, “duplettes,” and flats available, pricing is not.

A neighboring project opening in just a week or so, The Scott, is fetching from the high $900s per month to more than $2800 per month for their larger units. There will also be units available for purchase.

We know that this was talked about back in June; but since shovels are actually going to be put in the ground, let’s take a look at what’s happening.

Here are some renderings and headed out to Brush Park to show you a couple of the before and after where we could.

Looking down John R. at Alfred. Mouse over (or tap) to move the slider.

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Another street-level look is down Edmund Place.

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Here’s where one of the large buildings is going to go. It was most recently the Brush Park community garden.

And below is a rendering of what is going in this spot. We couldn’t get a close enough fit to do a nifty slide gallery.

Here’s a gallery to flip through of the most recently available renderings of the project form the City Modern website. Keep in mind that often, these kinds of details — or new details — are announced at groundbreakings.