Baker College is targeting downtown Royal Oak for its new consolidated campus as it attempts to wedge a large new building onto a small site.
After abandoning a plan to build a new flagship campus in downtown Ferndale due to a parking issue in April, the not-for-profit school is now working on a deal that would involve buying and then tearing down Kinsey-Garrett Funeral Home Inc. at 420 S. Lafayette Ave. at West Fifth Street and constructing a new building on the roughly 0.45-acre site.
Multiple sources said that Baker, through an entity tied to a Bloomfield Hills-based developer, is looking to acquire the property and has it under contract, although Steve Garrett, owner/funeral director of Kinsey-Garrett, said there is "nothing to discuss" and that it's "business as usual" at the nearly 84-year-old funeral home. He declined further comment. A deal for the site is not finalized.
It would be a tight squeeze for the 75,000-square-foot building, which would rise seven stories and have two levels of underground parking, sources said. The school seems all but certain to blow through a self-imposed deadline for moving into its new campus as it had intended by the start of the fall 2020 semester.
It marks another shift in plans, however, for Baker after originally considering putting its new campus in a 100,000-square-foot building proposed at Main and Sixth streets downtown. Plans for that building collapsed this summer when the city commission opted against extending a development agreement for a city-owned 1.2-acre surface parking lot at 600 S. Main St.
In addition to the development, the city also gave up an estimated $400,000 per year in revenue for 12 years from a proposed parking arrangement on the property, according to a document obtained by Crain's.
Kim Gibbs, a city commissioner and real estate attorney, said she was in favor of extending the development agreement for an entity tied to Bingham Farms-based developer Burton-Katzman LLC, but was in the minority.
"The students are putting their time and effort, and they are going to get hungry and they are still going to have to go shopping for somebody's birthday present right after class, and that's good for Royal Oak's downtown," she said.
Multiple messages were sent to Jacqui Spicer, COO for Baker College, seeking comment last week. Mayor Michael Fournier did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Sources familiar with the matter said Baker College is now envisioning 75,000 square feet or so spread across perhaps seven stories, creating a building with roughly 11,000-square-foot floorplates, as well as two levels of underground parking.
Requests for proposals have been sent to various local contractors, including Pontiac-based Auch Construction and Southfield-based Barton Malow Co., plus about a half-dozen more, one source said.
Multiple sources have said that Baker is targeting the Kinsey-Garrett Funeral Home as the site of its consolidated campus, and that the property at 420 S. Lafayette Ave. is under contract.
Kinsey-Garrett was started in 1936 as the Virgo E. Kinsey Funeral Home, which was bought in 1964 by Daniel Garrett and renamed the Kinsey-Garrett Funeral Home Inc. three years later, according to the funeral home's website.
A pair of entities, CE-420 S. Lafayette LLC and CE-420 S. Lafayette Developer LLC, were registered to Stephen Carson in Bloomfield Hills in October, according to Michigan business records. Sources identified him as the developer.
He is the founder of Carson Equities LLC, which bills itself on its website as "a diversified real estate company" that "has completed over $800 million in acquisitions and dispositions with private and public companies."
Carson did not respond to repeated requests for comment last week.
One source identified Ann Arbor-based Edge Design Associates Inc. as the architect on the project. When reached by phone last week, Daniel Mooney, principal for Edge Design, said he was unable to speak about it due to a nondisclosure agreement.
When the city declined to extend a development agreement for the Main and Sixth Street project this summer, it marked the end of the road for the planned mixed-use development by Downtown Royal Oak LLC, whose ownership team includes executives from Burton-Katzman and other investors.
"I think the deal collapsed because the city wouldn't grant us an extension in order to finish the construction drawings," said Larry Goss, who was co-manager of Downtown Royal Oak LLC and partner at Burton-Katzman.
Todd Fenton, economic development director for Royal Oak, said the city commission granted a six-month extension in January 2019.
Minutes from a Dec. 17, 2018, city commission meeting say that within 30 days of the due diligence period expiring on July 9, 2019, the sale of the property was to have been completed and within 60 days, construction was to begin.
"The first extension we made to them with the caveat there would not be another, and (the city commission) stayed true to their word," Fenton said. "They didn't have a tenant signed up, so they weren't in a position to do construction documents, which would have to be submitted to the city for permits to be issued."
A site plan for the project, which was to have 80,000 square feet of office space and 20,000 square feet of first-floor retail, received planning commission approval in August 2017. The plan in a different form was unveiled in 2016.
From there, the developer had been in discussions with Henry Ford Health System as a tenant, but that fell through when the health system opted to have its outpatient medical center in a six-story, $70 million building in the Royal Oak City Center project that is expected to house more than 200 physicians, nurses and staff.
That building is under construction currently, expected to be complete in the first part of 2021, said Ron Boji, the lead developer.
A document obtained by Crain's sent to Fournier, Mayor Pro Tem Sharlan Douglas and city commissioners says that under a proposed revised development agreement, the city would have received $4.8 million in revenue from a new 428-space parking deck to be built for $12 million as part of the 600 S. Main St. project.
The document does not specify that Baker College was the planned user, but the user was described as "a 100-year-old, award-winning, fully accredited, Michigan-based college that wishes to consolidate its southeast Michigan administrative headquarters and classrooms."
According to the document, even though the building would be owned by the not-for-profit college, property taxes would be paid on the first floor of retail space.
The college would have charged the city $1 annually for 25 years to lease the parking structure, as well as give it rights to collect all parking revenue if the college gets 273 of the 428 spaces. That would mean at least 155 spaces for public use during daytime hours Monday-Sunday, as well as additional spaces during nights and weekends.
The document says that the revenue from parking would be more than the property taxes received if a private company occupied a similar building on the site rather than a college.
Baker would have paid for the parking deck construction.
In January, Baker College revealed its plans for a new campus that would serve about 1,500 students and 50 staff. At the beginning of the year, the college said in a statement that its Flint Township campus would be shuttered by the beginning of the fall 2020 semester, with operations moving to Owosso. In addition, it said it would move operations from Allen Park, Auburn Hills and Clinton Township to a new campus.
While the school didn't say at the time to what municipality it would locate, it was eventually revealed that Ferndale was the destination, up until April, when the vision there collapsed amid public criticism from Ferndale residents and an inability to work out a parking arrangement. It had planned its campus at the northwest corner of East Nine Mile and Bermuda and an adjacent city-owned parking lot to the east of Como's pizzeria.
"Following extensive exploration and a thorough due diligence process, Baker College has elected not to move forward with the City of Ferndale as the location for our new metro-Detroit campus," Spicer said in a statement emailed to Crain's at the time. "Throughout the Ferndale negotiations, we maintained work on contingency plans, and we remain steadfast and are committed to serving our students and supporting the communities of SE Michigan."
Bloomfield Hills-based Acquest Realty Advisors had been the developer and Bloomfield Hills-based TMP Architecture Inc. was the architect, although neither are working on the new iteration.
Baker had planned to start construction on the proposed three- or four-story Ferndale building by late summer, with completion in time for the fall 2020 semester.
Given construction timeframes, it will be virtually impossible to meet that original target.
It's not known when Baker would open its new campus in downtown Royal Oak, if plans materialize as currently envisioned.
"campus" - Google News
December 15, 2019 at 12:05PM
https://ift.tt/2ssmOAm
Baker College plans campus on site in Royal Oak - Crain's Detroit Business
"campus" - Google News
https://ift.tt/38dukQa
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Baker College plans campus on site in Royal Oak - Crain's Detroit Business"
Post a Comment