The mayor says an environmental and legal review of the property and deed by the owner of the 17-story Corktown neighborhood structure, Warren-based CenTra, Inc., is taking longer than expected. "They have to do the review so they can determine exactly what they have there and exactly what we would be getting," Kilpatrick tells GlobeSt.com. "Once they give that report to me, I will have it to city council within 60 days."

Kilpatrick says CenTra has given the city permission to access the property, so a city review of the building's condition is already taking place. Kilpatrick wants to turn the train depot, created in the early years of the 20th century, into a 21st-century police headquarters facility. The city's police department has long said that its existing headquarters on Beaubien is inadequate for modern police needs.

The train depot has been abandoned since the early 1980s. Numerous plans have been put forward over the years about what to do with the property, which is located within sight of the CenTra-owned Ambassador Bridge, linking Detroit and Windsor. At one point, CenTra wanted to create a US Customs center at the depot, but those plans never materialized.