But the future of retail in the area remains an open question. For one thing, the resident population necessary to support retail—as opposed to those retailers aimed at visitors—remains small. According to figures compiled by the Greater Downtown Partnership, the projected population in 2005 of the Lower Woodward area would be 12,382, slightly down from 2000's 12,601 total. (Lower Woodward is a mile radius from the intersection of Griswold and Congress, and takes in all of the city's CBD.) Even more telling is the income statistics for the same area: nearly 40% of households earn less than $15,000 per year.
Still, it's been a heady time for retail in Detroit's CBD, which is anticipating a big boost in the run up to Super Bowl XL in February 2006, which will be at the relatively new (2002) Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions. Au Bon Pain was chosen this summer to be the only retail establishment in Campus Martius Park, and has opened even before that park, which is set to be complete by the end of this year.
"There's nothing in that area now," Tjader Gerdom, VP of the Retail Division at Insite Commercial Group, tells GSR. "But it's certainly a good fit for the park, which will host a number of events and be destination in and of itself. Au Bon Pain has a history of locating in signature sites, such as Faneuil Hall, the Empire State Building and Union Station in Washington, DC. This fits the pattern."
The two-acre public park will serve as a centerpiece for the Campus Martius redevelopment, featuring trees and shrub-lined sidewalks, lawns, benches, and lights, all features that Downtown Detroit could—by almost universal consensus—use more of. The Campus Martius redevelopment, by Schostak Brothers & Co., has been under way for a number of years now, and is best known for the Compuware headquarters, which occupies 1.1 million sf of space in Downtown Detroit, employing about 4,000.
According to Gerdom, who represented the developer of the park, the nonprofit Detroit 300 Conservancy, a lot of restaurant companies were interested in the site. "It was a laborious process, even after it was finally winnowed down to four finalists," Gerdom. "In the end it was decided that Au Bon Pain had the best match for the kind of public space that the conservancy wanted to create."
The Nike deal will involve the sportswear retailer opening a a 9,200-sf concept store ("Niketown") underneath the Lofts at Woodward Center, an apartment building two blocks from Campus Martius Park. The store, which will be similar in concept to the Niketown store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, but only about a third of the size, should be open in time for this Christmas.
"It's a good fit," Cindy Ciura, VP of marketing and retail for the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. (DEGC), tells GSR. "Our goal is to promote for Downtown Detroit the kind of destination retail you'd find on Chicago's Michigan Avenue."
The DEGC provided Nike with a $200,000 retail development loan, repayable over 15 years, as an incentive to locate in the Woodward Center, which was developed by Southfield, MI-based Farbman Group. Besides Au Bon Pain, the new Nike store joins Border's and the Hard Rock Café, both of which opened in downtown in late 2003.
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