Signature Associates

Old Kmart HQ site redevelopment in Troy slated to start in 2025

Posted By:  The Detroit News on September 11, 2024.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

Plans for the former Kmart headquarters in Troy are taking shape.

During a meeting before the city’s planning commission this week, Nathan Forbes, president of the Forbes Company, highlighted plans for project called Somerset West along West Big Beaver Road at Coolidge Highway.

According to a proposed concept development plan, the project could include a mix of restaurants, retail, residential, hotel, office and public spaces, including pedestrian walkways.

“Energizing these spaces … drawing the public to come here to eat at the restaurants, to spill out onto the sidewalks, to walk to a gourmet market,” Forbes said. “If they live here, obviously the residential community, the residential people that live in the vertical units above will love their ability to be able to park their car once and then have a walkable community that is not too over-densified. But every use on this piece has got to be meaningful.”

Forbes said plans are for construction to start in summer 2025 and for the development to open in 2027.

The presentation Tuesday comes after the University of Michigan Health System announced earlier this year that it would purchase 7.8 acres of the 40 acres to build a multi-specialty facility.

The Forbes Company bought the old Kmart site in 2009 for $17.5 million. Forbes/Frankel Troy Ventures LLC has maintained the vacant property and in the fall of 2023 applied for a permit to raze the complex. The site sits adjacent to the company’s Somerset Collection shopping center.

Forbes said the company will maintain ownership and control of the developments on the site. He noted the company’s residential projects with 1,000 multifamily units across developments in West Bloomfield Township, downtown Birmingham and Ann Arbor.

“Our company will be doing all the retail so we’ll have great control over architecture, maintenance and everything,” he said. “I wouldn’t let this go in someone else’s hands.”

Somerset West will surround the centerpiece of the site, where Forbes said UM Health System plans to build a four or five-story medical facility of 230,000 to 250,000 square feet with a parking deck with 1,400 spaces and an entrance attached to each level of the medical facility. The focus during the meeting Tuesday was on the southern section of the site.

“The remaining parcels that service or support that will take many different shapes and forms over the years,” Forbes said.

He expects the rental residential facility to be about five stories tall. If a condo building or hotel is developed on the site, those buildings could reach seven stories tall, he said.

Officials brought up the previous proposal presented in 2007, Pavilions of Troy.

“It’s an exciting project,” said planning commission member Michael Hutson. “Three of us on the commission tonight were here with the original proposal of the Pavilions. We were enthralled with it. And here, right on the money with this one.”

During the meeting, Forbes apologized to the commissioners for taking so long to present a project.

“So number one, I want to apologize to this group for being 17 years,” he said. “And it gets me in the gut. We paid taxes on the property, kept it clean, kept security on it. But for the first time, we’re bringing something forward we think has some merit and has some value to the community. We cannot mess this up. This is the gateway to our city.”

Forbes said they are not interested in creating density for its own sake.

“We’re not interested in maximizing every square foot of development on that piece that we could,” he said. “We have spent a lot of time to create a public realm on this property that will serve the community well and serve as a buffer to our retail partners to the east and our residential partners to the west.”

Commission member Jayalakshmi Malalahalli expressed concern about the amount of surface parking in the project and asked about increasing gathering spaces to serve as a central gateway.

“The rendering are absolutely beautiful,” she said. “Those ideas that you have there: low-level tables, the dogs being walked and people sitting around. I envision this to be that. It’s such a wanting for this community … I just want you to look into the feel that we want to create. For me, I envision this space to be a 24-hour usable space.”

Forbes said the proposed parks were generous at a total of more than an acre. He said they will look to maximize the two park areas in the plan and enhance the public spaces while using the proposed parking to serve the restaurants and retail.

The architectural style for the buildings will be an ode to Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, who designed Cranbrook and inspired the design for Somerset Collection.

“I don’t want to be too tricky and too kitschy, but we want to pay an ode to Saarinen, pay an ode to Somerset, pay an ode to Cranbrook,” he said. “We want to contemporize the materials, contemporize the aspects of the building to really speak to the modern day and the current consumer and their lifestyles that we’re dealing with today.”