John Gallagher

Detroit Free Press

Not since the Lafayette Park project a half-century ago has Detroit seen a residential development as ambitious as Dan Gilbert’s Brush Park project that breaks ground in a few weeks.

For one thing, the project — about 100 for-sale units and about 300 rental apartments on 8.4 acres just north of downtown — will come in at the top end of the price range for any rental or for-sale projects in the greater downtown when it opens in a year or so.

But more significantly, Gilbert’s people are breaking new ground architecturally. Gone are the faux historical styles that marked so many of Detroit’s recent projects. Instead of duplicating the peaked roofs, gables, chimney stacks and bay windows that pass for authenticity, Gilbert’s team opted for a bold modernist look.

This will be unlike any recent residential project in Detroit. The clearest analogy may be Lafayette Park. Built in the 1950s and led by modernist master Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, it introduced sleek glass and steel buildings with flat roofs and great expanses of glass married to a thoughtful park-like plan. It created something new in Detroit and remains among the city’s most successful districts.

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Gilbert’s team told me that the Brush Park project aims to do much the same — to usher Detroit into a new era of residential design that will set a standard for the quality of materials and urban planning. And it will do so by integrating the new modernist buildings with four of Brush Park's historic Victorian mansions that are being preserved and renovated.

“We didn’t play it safe,” said Steve Ogden, director of development for Gilbert’s Bedrock Real Estate Services. “It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile.”

The project cost was initially estimated at $70 million but will go higher, Gilbert's team said, although the final cost is not yet estimated.

Of course, we must await final construction to see if the reality matches the vision. Sometimes amazing designs get compromised because of budget constraints and other challenges on the way to a final ribbon-cutting. But so far this project promises to be what Detroit's planning director Maurice Cox calls something entirely new in modern urban development.

"I don’t think Detroit has ever seen anything like this," Cox said. "So many of the modernist new neighborhoods were done with a broad stroke, a demolition of entire areas, the removal of existing residents."

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But the Brush Park design aims to blend the new with the iconic Victorian mansions that remain without trying to imitate them.

"I felt really early on that we are on to something here that could really set Detroit apart from other neighborhoods being built, that we can show contemporary new architecture fits beautifully into historic districts," Cox said. "We're writing the new history of historic districts in Brush Park."

Eclectic neighborhood

Modernist in this case won’t mean an endless series of look-alike flat-roofed buildings. Gilbert’s team has worked with five architecture firms, led by Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson Associates, to produce a variety of styles that differ greatly in height, materials, and overall look. "It reminds people of the way neighborhoods used to feel, when you could walk down the street and there would be a variety of buildings," Cox said.

The designs range from multistory apartment buildings to two-story “carriage homes” and “duplettes,” or buildings featuring two apartments, one above the other, with extra tall ceilings. Materials on the exteriors of the various buildings range from glass and steel to brick and cedar.

Rooftop terraces — the project’s nod to backyards and community gardens — play a key role. They will be found throughout the district at various heights and configurations. Also weaving in among these various buildings are alleyways with surfaces that absorb rainwater and snowmelt and a park-like greenway open to residents and the public.

Stylistically, this projects jumps ahead of projects like the Crosswinds Communities units built along Woodward a decade ago in the Brush Park community. The design of the Crosswinds townhouses echoed some of the historic Victorian mansions that survive in Brush Park. Gilbert’s people rejected that approach.

“There’s still a few community members who say you should have just replicated Crosswinds, or just re-created single family historic Victorian homes,” said Melissa Dittmer, director of architecture and urban design at Gilbert’s Bedrock Real Estate Services. “In the end we felt that that would be almost disrespectful to the historic architecture that’s already there, and that it was best to design in a style, an aesthetic, for our time.”

Positive reviews

The project is already winning positive reviews. The Congress of New Urbanism, an architecture and planning association, held its annual conference in Detroit last week and awarded the project its grand prize for design.

Steve Rosenthal, a principal of Gilbert’s Bedrock real estate firm and president of Rock Companies, a real estate development company operating in six states, said anything that tried to replicate the classic Brush Park mansions would have failed anyway, architecturally and financially.

“What’s been done previous to us is not something that works in our mind,” he said.

Rainy Hamilton, cofounder and principal of lead architect Hamilton Anderson, said the contrast between the modernist style and the older Victorian mansions will create a dynamic project.

“I think it’s going to raise the bar,” he said. “This town hasn’t seen contemporary design in some time. So when these products come online, it’s going to be an eye-opener and very attractive and appealing.”

No prices yet

While the prices have not been set yet, the rental rates and purchase prices will reflect that progression, from entry-level apartments to more expensive for-sale units and then more affordable units for seniors.

The project will respond to calls for affordable living options for longtime Detroit residents on limited incomes by making all the units in the senior apartment building in the affordable range. Rosenthal said some other affordable units will be scattered throughout the project.

The rapid pace of redevelopment in the greater downtown has driven up rental rates and condo prices and makes a more upscale project like Gilbert’s effort feasible.

“I’m a firm believer that good design raises real estate value and it’s going to improve community aspects in all ways,” Dittmer said. “While this will cost more in the end it’s going to provide a better product and it’s going to provide a community that the existing Brush Park residents are proud of, and it’s going to raise their real estate values, too, all the way down to the historic homes that are existing there.”

'Amplified urbanism'

Dittmer said the team sought to provide a setting where residents can “age in place,” renting an apartment when young, then buying a carriage house when starting a family and finally retiring to an apartment for senior living. To provide needed services, the project also plans up to 20,000 square feet of retail and commercial space, a health center open to all residents, and multiple parking options.

Besides Hamilton Anderson Associates, other architecture firms designing portions of the project were Christian Hurttienne Architects of Grosse Pointe Park, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) of Los Angeles, Merge Architects of Boston and Studio Dwell of Chicago.

Lorcan O’Herlihy, founder of the LOHA firm, said the project builds in enough retail and other amenities to create what he calls “amplified urbanism,” a catalyst to nurture growth beyond the immediate district.

“This starts to create a neighborhood, and that’s always important, not only looking at the buildings in terms of the housing but the other amenities,” he said. “So that not only people living in Brush Park but people in adjacent communities will come to eat, to meet people, to shop, so it’s a very activated, vibrant urban area.”

Winning the project

Mayor Mike Duggan announced in May 2015 that a Gilbert entity, Brush Park Development Company, had won the right to redevelop the extensive site, which is bordered by Edmund Street to the north, John R to the west, Brush to the east and Alfred to the south.

Detroit business and civic leaders investing in the Brush Park Development Company include Marvin Beatty, Sam Thomas, Pam Rodgers, Darrell Burks. and Freman Hendrix and Gilbert's Bedrock Real Estate Services.

Gilbert’s team won the project in competition with eight other teams that submitted proposals. The winning proposal included commitments that 51% of construction workers would be Detroit residents and 31% of overall construction dollars would be spent with Detroit-based contractors.

Since winning the project a little over a year ago, the Gilbert team has engaged city officials and Brush Park residents in dozens of meetings where streetscape details and architectural designs were hashed out.

The project includes the restoration of four historic Victorian homes within the project district, including the recently renovated Ransom Gillis home at 205 Alfred Street. The other Brush Park mansions to be restored and renovated include 261 Alfred, 287 Alfred and 295 Alfred.

Detroit-based architect Brian Hurttienne, who worked on the preservation of the four mansions, said the City of Detroit deserves credit for mothballing the four homes over the past 15 years to preserve them for future renovation. And he added that the mix of Victorian and modern architecture will work well.

"What's being designed today is for today," he said, "and it's in complete contrast to what was built in the 1800s. So I think it's pretty appropriate that they blend and mix, and it's a really great urbanist design right outside downtown Detroit."

Five Cool Facts in Brush Park Project

1. Multiple rooftop terraces create the urban equivalent of backyards and community gardens.

2. Projects allows residents to "age in place," moving from rental apartments to family-style condos to senior living

3. A park-like greenway traverses the project as a recreational amenity.

4. Modernist architecture creates bold new look for Detroit's revival.

5. Lots of retail and commercial space built into the ground floors of some buildings.

Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.