History of Little Caesars Pizza
Explore the history of Little Caesars Pizza, from its 1959 founding by Mike and Marian Ilitch to its innovative ‘Hot-N-Ready’ model.
- The initial project will be a 13-floor graduate student housing building next to the University of Michigan Center for Innovation.
- Developers cited high costs, interest rates, and labor availability as reasons for the development’s slow start.
- Progress is also being made on a new hotel near Little Caesars Arena and the redevelopment of the Fort Wayne/American hotel.
The wait may soon be over for the first groundbreaking for the $1.5 billion District Detroit megadevelopment that was approved back in spring 2023.
But timing for the other projects in the 10-project bundle remains an open question.
Executives with the development’s codevelopers — the Ilitch organization’s Olympia Development of Michigan and New York-based The Related Companies — said on Tuesday night, Dec. 9, that they plan to start construction on the first of the 10 new buildings and building rehabs in March.
That project would be a new 13-floor, 313-unit graduate student housing building at 2205 Cass in downtown, next to the under-construction University of Michigan Center for Innovation, or UMCI. They would then aim to finish construction in time for the fall 2028 semester, or a year later than previously planned.
That construction timeline update was shared at a Tuesday night meeting about District Detroit’s progress on its community benefits agreement. At least one meeting attendee voiced frustration with the pace of construction. Under the development’s original timeline, the first groundbreaking was to happen in summer 2023.
“Can anybody lend some insight as to why it’s so difficult for these projects to get off the ground,” the attendee, Ryan Southen, asked via Zoom, “when many developers in the city have already built residential and hotels downtown that are smaller developers, that don’t have as deep of pockets.”
He added, “It seems like in Detroit we’re left waiting and waiting.”
Olympia Development President Keith Bradford offered a response.
“Development in Detroit is difficult,” Bradford said. “There’s no one in this room that wants to see something built more than I.”
The Olympia executive went on to cite various factors that can slow down a project, including “availability of labor to availability of materials to costs to interest rates to capital.”
“It’s a complex issue,” Bradford continued, “and there’s not a day where we don’t wake up trying to solve it. And our goal is to build, and to build a lot more than what you see today.”
Earlier in the meeting, Bradford said that two projects besides the U-M graduate student housing building are also moving along.
One is a 290-room hotel to be built next to Little Caesars Arena. Bradford said he has been in serious discussions with potential hotel operators for about the past five months.
“My goal would be to make a call on this in the very very near future on who that flag will be,” he said. “We’ll make that announcement and then lay out a development timeline.”
The other project is the redevelopment of the long-empty Fort Wayne/American hotel, 408 Temple St. near the Masonic Temple, into an 11-story, 149-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail.
Olympia and Related opted to increase the number of “affordable” apartments in that redevelopment to compensate for having dropped plans to put some affordable housing within the new 13-floor student housing building that is going next to the UMCI.
Now, 30% of the 149 apartments in the Fort Wayne/American hotel would be set aside at significantly below-market rents for those earning no more than 50% of area median income.
The developers faced a 2025 deadline to begin some construction for the District Detroit projects within two years of Detroit City Council’s March 28, 2023, approval of the megadevelopment’s Transformational Brownfield subsidy.
They met that deadline with the relocation of underground DTE electric lines for the future UMCI block, which is to consist of the UMCI residential building and a future UMCI incubator project, according to a spokesperson for the Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority.
UMCI already underway
Construction is well underway of the $250 million UMCI, which isn’t one of the 10 District Detroit projects, but is related to it. That project broke ground in December 2023 and is set to open in time for the 2027-28 academic year.
Related Companies Chairman Stephen Ross is giving $100 million toward the construction of the UMCI.
The 10 projects in the $1.5B District Detroit development
- 2205 Cass: A residential tower with 313 apartments and ground-floor retail space as part of the University of Michigan Center for Innovation campus, or UMCI.
- Hotel next to Little Caesars Arena: A newly constructed 14-story, 290-room hotel next to Little Caesars Arena at 2455 Woodward. The project early on was announced as an Equinox Hotel, but the actual hotel brand hasn’t been finalized.
- 408 Temple St.: The long-empty Fort Wayne/American hotel near the Masonic Temple would be redeveloped as an 11-story, 149-unit apartment complex with ground-floor retail.
- Fox Hotel: Adaptive reuse of the 10-story Fox Theatre office building at 2211 Woodward to become a 177-room Fox Hotel. The project will not alter the Fox Theatre.
- 2115 Cass: Adaptive reuse of the former Moose Lodge building into a four-story business incubator as part of the UMCI campus.
- 2210 Park Ave.: Redevelopment of the old 10-story Detroit Life Building into 16 apartments with ground-floor retail.
- 2250 Woodward: A 20-story building to go next to Comerica Park and contain 287 apartments, 27,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and a new underground parking garage.
- 2200 Woodward: A newly constructed 17-story office building with ground-floor retail next to Comerica Park, plus the new underground parking garage it would share with 2250 Woodward.
- 2305 Woodward or 2300 Cass: Two locations under consideration for an all-new, 22-story office building with ground-floor retail.
- 2300 Woodward: A new five-story office building with ground-floor retail.
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or [email protected]. Follow him on X @jcreindl
