Hey friends, Jer here.

There are some things in life where you have to laugh — or else you'd cry.

I got my hands on the (new) future plans for the Gratiot Life Sciences building on the old "Fail Jail" site on Gratiot at I-375 in Downtown Detroit.

I find them disappointing. Let's step down memory lane for a moment.

To refresh your memory, over the past almost decade and half this site was a partially built Wayne County jail...

Then a soccer stadium was floated...

Then the idea was a life sciences campus (this view is with I-375 turned into a boulevard)...

That was scaled down to five stories and 211,000 square feet...

And now is going to be a two-story building that looks like something off of a suburban mile road instead of the heart of a major midwest downtown.

And will only be half full to start.

This information is from documents filed with Detroit's City Planning Commission for tonight's 5p meeting.

To catch you up, the project was going to be a complex for cancer research and outpatient treatment.

Some of the spaces were to be used for molecular imaging and theragnostic services (combines diagnosis and therapy into a single treatment strategy) in addition to life science research and radio pharmacy support. Other spaces in the building would house shared instructional learning spaces and amenities. Lastly, the building was also to act as an incubator laboratory space for start-up subtenants.

That has been scaled down.

In a letter to the CPC, a representative for the developer Bedrock says, in part, the following:

In August, our largest tenant unexpectedly withdrew from the project due to the loss of a principal investor. This required us to quickly implement a design change.

The revised plan features a reduced overall square footage, reducing the building from five to two stories. The ground floor remains dedicated to our tenant, BAMF Health, a company which specializes in diagnosing and treating advanced cancer and neurodegenerative disease.

To capture future growth, Bedrock has added a second floor of speculative life science space.

BAMF’s schedule is dependent on previously approved, time-sensitive grant funding from the State of Michigan that is to be used on start-up costs including medical equipment procurement, necessitating a rapid delivery timeframe.

The $1.5 million performance-based grant they're referring to is referenced here with the goal of bringing at least 90 new jobs with starting wages of $35-$55 an hour.

I'm all for jobs. And this project seems like a positive for patients.

But I can't help but ask: Why are we building a new two-story building in the heart of downtown Detroit?

We have a lot of vacancy right now. It feels like this is a missed opportunity... or concerningly, is this the best we can do?

And I'm aware in this case it seems that timelines are short to get that grant money spent.

Part of the appeal of downtowns is that they've got some size. Some scale. It's supposed to be where things are happening — and not just on special event days.

We still have a lot of vacant space

The shooting yesterday at the Rosa Parks Transit Center (RPTC) highlighted to me some issues around vacancy and underuse in downtown Detroit.

The giant AT&T building across the street from RPTC is basically empty, the Leland is in visibly bad condition and stuck in some sort of estate limbo.

Plus elsewhere downtown, the Penobscot sits as a shell of its former self, and nearer to this I-375/Gratiot site the old elementary school site in Lafayette Park across the freeway has been sitting vacant for quite awhile now.

Not to mention, we're talking about knocking down at least two Renaissance Center towers.

I think there's been progress. There's been some interesting new announcements. And some of this is due to changes after the pandemic.

But it's also clear to me that the work is nowhere near done.

In my opinion, I'd hope we could do better and build bigger than two stories in the downtown core of not just Detroit, but serving Southeast Michigan.

And a conversation for another day? Maybe we shouldn't put all of our eggs in one or two developers to do almost all of it.

Not because of Bedrock. They're clearly motivated and capable. But dynamic cities don't lean so much on one group.

Or maybe, and I say this tongue-in-cheek: It's simply that this site is cursed.

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Usually I have a song for you out the door, but this one I had to get out pretty quick. Next time.

Remember that you are somebody,

-Jer