WIXOM, MI-Two developers are halfway to finishing a $220-million, mixed-use village center project that will become a new Downtown for the city. Bloomfield Hills-based Robertson Brothers and Farmington Hills-based Cohen Homes are building Tribute of Wixom, which will have 600 units multifamily and single-family homes, retail and office properties.
The city decided in 1998 to create a master plan for the project, and the developers agreed, with some city assistance, to put the plan in motion in 2002. The land along Pontiac Trail, about 348 acres, had been the village center until a massive fire in 1929.
Now, the two companies are finished with building three different attached condominium buildings, with units ranging in price from $129,900 to $189,000. Also, about half of the commercial properties, about 40,000 sf, are complete, with retail on the first floor and office condos on the upper floors. "Most of the retail is leased and the office condos sold," says Paul Robertson Jr., chairman of the firm. The city is also finished with their Downtown improvements, with a new fountain, better parking and lights to control traffic, and a village square with a bandstand for weekly music concerts. "We're reaching out to the Generation X and Y, they like that sense of community. We're trying to bring a fresh Downtown here, like in Birmingham, Plymouth and Royal Oak, the kind we're starting to learn to love again."
Next, the companies will begin building single-family homes starting at $265,000 in early 2008. Even though the Michigan home sales are down considerably, and the city just lost the Ford Motor Co.'s Wixom Assembly Plant, which employed 4,200 people, Robertson says the bottom has already been hit. "We're at about 35% to 40% where we were two years ago; sure, it's doom and gloom. But I remember in 1980 when we went from 18,000 starts to 1,800 starts, and interest rates were at 18%, and we still moved real estate," Robertson tells GlobeSt.com. "We've got to hang in there, we need to hang on another 18 months, it's not going to get any worse. We actually made a profit last year, and we're at break-even now."
Robertson is also working on other projects in the Southeast Michigan area, such as a townhouse project in the city of Gross Pointe Park. These condos will likely start at $170,000, he says.
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