A Commerce Township development long in the works is moving forward as a developer has purchased more than 30 acres of land for a new lifestyle center.

Birmingham-based Robert B. Aikens & Associates LLC has closed on the $4.25 million purchase of about 34 acres for the first phase of what is being referred to as the Five & Main development at M-5 and Pontiac Trail.

There, the developer plans the first of two phases of retail development that in the end is anticipated to total about 500,000 square feet of lifestyle center space akin to the Village of Rochester Hills project that Aikens completed in 2002 with 375,000 square feet at the northeast corner of Adams Road and Walton Boulevard.

Uses ranging from restaurants to retail and entertainment to hotel space are planned, providing an expansive commercial anchor to the hundreds of acres of land that has been assembled by the Downtown Development Authority beginning in the early 2000s for the effort.

The project has been delayed several times, but those involved say construction should now begin next year on the first phase with some of the outlot development. In 2014, Aikens anticipated both phases opening by the end of 2017.

"The Village of Rochester Hills, we started working it in late 1980s and opened in 2002. These are very complex transactions, and tenants are very powerful in their own minds," Bruce Aikens, vice chairman of Robert B. Aikens & Associates, said with a chuckle.

Randy Thomas, the president and CEO of Commerce Township-based Insite Commercial which worked on the deal, said the sale closed at the end of October.

"He's been working on it for almost five years and these types of developments aren't easy," Thomas said. "Retail is tough now, so it's tough to aggregate the necessary tenants and get this thing financed, but it's definitely moving in the right direction. He has a couple anchors, a high-end market and a theater in there."

Aikens declined to reveal tenants during an interview, but said that in the age of Amazon and with the rise of e-commerce, tenant makeup has gone from 60 to 70 percent apparel and other retail in a typical shopping center a few decades ago has shifted to 45 to 50 percent entertainment, such as theaters and restaurants.

"The apparel/fashion component is down to 25-30 percent," Aikens said.

Ken Nisch, a retail expert who is chairman of Southfield-based JGA, a brand strategy and retail design firm, said physical retail isn't dying. Instead, it's adapting, although perhaps slowly.

"It's not that Amazon is killing brick-and-mortar retail, but it's changing the dynamic into not a 'build it and they will come' mentality, but more, 'How do we serve the market in different ways?' Amazon has impacted the future more than the past, it has taken the need for that additional stores out of the market."