In 1981, the city of Detroit bought a recently closed tire factory on the riverfront with the idea of creating a bustling new development.

Now, after nearly 30 years have passed and four mayors have worked on the Uniroyal site, an end to the delays may be in sight.

A plan is finally in place that dictates which companies will pay for the cleanup of most of the 40-acre site and lays out an 18-month work schedule to start early next year.

And a resolution is close to being finalized for the remainder of the site, said Detroit Economic Growth Corp. President George Jackson, who has been working on the development deal for nine years.

"The bottom line is that we now have an agreement on how to move forward," he said. "And we're getting the level of remediation that we've wanted -- to have it brought to residential levels, not industrial."

The cost to remediate the portion under agreement is divided between Detroit-based DTE Energy Co.; Wilmington, Del.-based E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.; and Greenville, S.C.-based Michelin USA Inc.

The cost to clean up the site has been estimated in the past at $15 million to $20 million, but Jackson said the actual cost won't be known until crews start digging up the ground.

DTE will pay for cleanup of the three Michigan Consolidated Gas parcels and also will split the cleanup cost of the Michigan Ammonia Works parcel with DuPont.

Michelin will pay for another portion of the western half.

Those companies are set to hire a contractor, which will hire an engineer on an 18-month timeline to complete the work, said Michael Moidel, COO for Pittsburgh-based C.J. Betters Enterprise, a company affiliated with Bettis/Betters Development LLC, which was chosen to remediate and develop the site.

Yet to be completed are negotiations on the cost to clean up the eastern half of the site with Michelin and UK-based Enodis plc, Moidel said.

Jackson credits Moidel and the Betters team for staying involved and keeping the negotiations on track.

"That's why they were picked in the first place," Jackson said. "They've done some impressive work on brownfield projects. They know what they're doing."

The project has been plagued by delays since the site was purchased by the city of Detroit in 1981.

Developers have toured and later balked at the idea of developing the site, including Donald Trump, who toured it by helicopter in 1986 to much fanfare.

In 2006, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality assigned the cost of the cleanup to DTE, Michelin, DuPont and Enodis.

Since then, the companies have argued over how to split the costs.

Having an agreement for the western half of the site represents a deal for the most comprehensive part of the cleanup, Moidel said.

Moidel, who has led negotiations between the companies paying for the cleanup, said the near-term goal is to have a site free from contaminants.

Building something on the site will come next, he said. However the scope of the plans may need to be altered from what was proposed in 2004: a $500 million development with 2,000 residential units along with retail and office space.

"Given the current state of the economy, Bettis/Betters Development and the Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority may decide to revisit the overall development plan originally contemplated for the site in 2004," Moidel said.

There has been strong demand for people to live on the riverfront, said Paul Robertson, chairman of Bloomfield Hills-based Robertson Bros. Co., which manages the Harbortown Apartments and has listed condo units for sale in the Riverfront condominiums building, also on the river.

From an investment standpoint, more money can be made on riverfront units, he said.

"From a rental standpoint, you're seeing a nice premium on riverfront rentals compared to the suburbs," Robertson said. "Roughly $1 per square foot, compared to 85 or 90 cents in the suburbs."

The problem, Robertson said, is that the cost to build caissons into the soft riverfront land and to build vertical residential buildings will make any residential project too costly for developers to recoup their costs.

"It's expensive to go into the ground, it's expensive to go into the air," Robertson said. "With those two issues combined, the costs are too astronomical to make the numbers work for condos or for rental."

But it's not just development plans riding on the cleanup of the Uniroyal site.

Its access to the Detroit River makes it among the last unfinished sections of the 3.5-mile RiverWalk path, said Faye Nelson, CEO of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy.

She said the funds have been secured to build the RiverWalk on the Uniroyal site once the cleanup is finished.

"Once this site is made available to us, we can make a critical connection to make up the majority of the remaining construction," she said. "We're eagerly looking forward to beginning work there."

Jackson, who has been dealing with the cleanup of the Uniroyal site for his entire time at the DEGC, said that sometimes working on the project is "more like a history lesson than anything else."

"In the end, this is historic to have this pulled together," he said. "This deal will be part of my legacy, and for the city it's going to be a clean 40-acre site that will be developed."

Daniel Duggan: (313) 446-0414, [email protected]