Crain’s Detroit Business’s Kirk Pinho penned an article discussing the news that the Joe Louis Arena site might be sold from a city bankruptcy creditor to an unnamed local developer:
New York City-based Financial Guaranty Insurance Corp. has been in discussions in the last month with an unnamed developer about selling its interest in the redevelopment of the 9-acre property that until 2017 housed the Detroit Red Wings, Matt Walters, deputy group executive for jobs & the economy for Mayor Mike Duggan, told the Detroit City Council’s Planning and Economic Development standing committee last week.
The terms of a possible deal are not known and Walters declined further comment when reached Thursday afternoon. A message was left with Derek Donnelly, senior managing director for FGIC.
Walters said last week that he has a “very high level of confidence” that FGIC and the developer will reach a deal based on “the deals they have done in the past in the city of Detroit, their ability to execute.”
As it stands, the developer would then buy the city’s ownership interest in the property, which is being demolished, and own it outright.
Pinho continues, and this note is extremely accurate given the mess of freeways and parking structures around the Joe:
The property’s complex nature and an evolving commercial real estate market has made it difficult to submit a redevelopment proposal, Gotham Motown has argued in the past. One city official has called what surrounds the arena “an absolutely wicked entanglement of infrastructure” that makes redevelopment difficult.
