Just outside of downtown, and a short walk from the Detroit River, developer McCormack Baron Salazar is planning to build a new neighborhood of town houses, apartments, and retail on mostly vacant land - a $60 million bet on the city's future.
Not all the news coming out of Detroit these days is bad. "A national developer plans to build five blocks’ worth of apartments, town houses and small-scale retail on Detroit’s east riverfront, one of the biggest such projects since the recession and a bet by the company that urban living in Detroit will remain popular with some young professionals," reports JC Reindl.
The east riverfront project and the $28-million transformation of the abandoned Strathmore Hotel planned by St. Louis-based developer McCormack Baron Salazar, "underscore what appears to be a dichotomy in Detroit’s real-estate market, where a few trendy areas in and around the city’s core continue to attract young professionals and empty nesters as most other city neighborhoods cope with a decaying housing stock, abandoned structures and rock-bottom land prices."
FULL STORY: $60M east riverfront development in Detroit to bring housing, streetscape

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Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research