The Michigan Department of Transportation is nearing a request for proposals for a key property in Detroit's TechTown area.

The end result would be a new intermodal transportation facility, the department said, and developers have long salivated over tacking some mixed use on the property along with it across its 3.1 acres. That's about 50 percent larger than the Hudson's site downtown.

The MDOT site — on the west side of Woodward Avenue between Amsterdam Street to the south and Baltimore Avenue to the north — has been of developer interest for years as the QLine streetcar was built and eventually completed in 2017. I wrote about it most recently in January 2016, and the department said at the time that it planned its RFP around then, but it kept getting kicked down the proverbial road.

MDOT spokesman Jeff Cranson said last month that a meeting of key stakeholders — including MDOT, the city, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, Amtrak, Greyhound, Indian Trails, the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan, Detroit Department of Transportation, M-1 Rail and the Suburban Mobility Authority on Regional Transportation — was held April 10.

It also included nearby property owners and representatives of surrounding developments, Cranson said.

The RFP, which MDOT now hopes to issue this summer, would solicit a predevelopment plan that would help assess "the transportation facility needs, the local market, project benefits and project risks including capital funding, operations and maintenance funding, and environmental impacts," Cranson wrote.

"The plan will provide a framework to solicit a master developer in the future. Working with the various stakeholders and local community on the plan will allow for the project to assess different development scenarios and associated benefits before engaging a developer. This engagement will better inform the potential transit-oriented development in the surrounding area (and) be seen as an important step in laying the groundwork for a successful development."

MDOT purchased the land from General Motors Co. in 1994 for $889,000. The land actually consists of two parcels bisected by railroad tracks. The property north of the tracks houses an Amtrak station that is likely to be demolished. The land south of the railroad tracks is a surface parking lot.