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Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan (AP file photo)

((AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File))

Real estate developers gathered at the colorful Gleaners Community Food Bank on Detroit's east side Thursday, March 13, 2014 for a conference titled "Old Schools, New Uses: Reinventing Vacant School Buildings & Sites in Detroit for Innovative Redevelopment."

DETROIT, MI -- Mayor Mike Duggan wants to make it easier for entrepreneurs to transform vacant property in Detroit, and he wants to make it harder for speculators to buy cheap land and sit on it.

Duggan, during a Thursday conference of real estate developers gathered to discuss available Detroit Public Schools properties, said that the city next month will begin a broad campaign of filing nuisance abatement lawsuits against land owners who let their properties rot.

He also plans to streamline real estate sales and permitting procedures for entrepreneurs with viable plans for developing vacant properties.

"If you have a real plan to develop, I'm going to be your best friend," Duggan said.

"The flip side is: If you're buying one of these properties because it's cheap and you don't have a plan and you're there sitting on it as a speculator, there's an excellent chance in the next 12-18 months that I'm going to sue you."

The mayor said the city, county and state own a total of about 85,000 parcels of land in Detroit.

He said those publicly owned properties have historically been controlled by nine different land banks, housing authorities and other bureaucratic agencies.

"Nine different entities, everyone of them good people, going in nine different directions," he said. "... We’re not going to speak with multiple voices anymore. We’re going to do one thing... We’ve moving all 85,000 parcels into the city land bank."

As the city sues absentee land owners and seizes more vacant properties starting in April, the Public Lighting Authority will be installing 500 LED streetlights a week, the economic development department will be issuing permits rather than building and engineering department and the land bank will make it easier for developers to purchase surrounding properties, Duggan said.

"I’m trying to maximize the value of what we’re selling as we go through, neighborhood by neighborhood," he said.

"... The days when people could sit on land like it was some kind of lottery tickets in the hopes that somebody was going to come around and pay you a big amount of money, that's going to be gone, because the price of the lottery ticket it: you're going to have to fend off a nuisance suit because I'm going to try and take the property from you.

"We're going to get a culture in this city that people who are true entrepreneurs are going to be really excited because this is where you want to be, and people who are speculators are going to be complaining that the mayor's a real jerk, not the kind of place where you want to hang on to money."

More from the conference:

-Agriculture, entertainment or housing: Detroit seeks developers with ideas for closed school buildings

-Closed Detroit high school campus to become 27-acre farm

Follow MLive Detroit reporter Khalil AlHajal on Twitter @DetroitKhalil or on Facebook at Detroit Khalil. He can be reached at kalhajal@mlive.com or 313-643-0527.