Business

UM Students' Detroit Project Earns A+ and Instructor's Money

March 23, 2017, 5:15 PM by  Alan Stamm


Construction is due to start soon on Baltimore Station, a project by three UM graduates to turn two vacant commercial buildings into stores, residences and offices. (Illustration from The Platform)

An A+ grade was the first reward for an impressive final project by three graduate students in a Real Estate Essentials course at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

Later, instructor Peter Allen went further by putting his money where his confidence in the trio is.

The former students, who earned master's degrees in 2014 and 2015, now are turning their class concept into a Detroit development at the corner of Woodward and Baltimore avenues -- with Allen as an investor. 

“It’s the dream of my life” to see a student project take off, he says in a UM blog post. “I’ve done development professionally, and now I want to continue what’s happening with these students."

From the start, Dang Duong, Myles Hamby and Clarke Lewis "were determined to pursue the project in real life," the write-up adds.

They plan to redevelop a couple of modest, vacant, city-owned buildings . . . a few blocks from the Fisher Building. . . . Now, everything they started planning a few years ago is taking shape.

Allen's 2013 assignment challenged the business, urban planning and architecture students to create potential real estate development deals. Other "student teams tended toward ambitious but unfeasible and expensive mixed-use projects," the university posting says.

Called Baltimore Station, the project will transform two vacant commercial buildings into new retail, residential and office space. The team expects to close on financing this month, with groundbreaking to follow shortly.

A wood-fired barbecue restaurant [Woodpile BBQ Shack of Clawson] has already signed a lease for part of the commercial space, and other tenants are in the works.

Allen, owner of an Ann Arbor real estate firm, has been an adjunct lecturer at Ross since 1981. His end-of-semester project unites students in multidisciplinary teams. Duong was studying business and law, while Hamby was earning an urban planning master's and Lewis was studying architecture.

Hamby and his wife bought a Detroit house before starting grad school. In UM's blog item, he recalls saying of the classwork:

“I want to treat this as more than an academic exercise. I want to do this as a real deal. . . .

“This is my passion. I’m in the exact place I want to be,” Duong says. “I’m committed to living in Detroit for the long run. The city is getting better and better every day. You can see it and you can feel it.” 


Peter Allen: “I’m having the time of my life."

The post adds:

The student team approached Midtown Detroit Inc. President Susan Mosey, who suggested they consider a site at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Baltimore Avenue.

Long vacant and owned by the city, the buildings sit right on the new QLine streetcar route and just a stone’s throw from the Detroit Amtrak station. Regular bus service and easy freeway access are other pluses.

“I loved that it was an area that hadn’t received investment. There is a lot of activity in that area right now, but at the time we were looking at it, there was not much,” Hamby says. “We saw its potential as a transit-oriented site.” . . .

Finding additional financing was a challenge, Duong recalls. The team made close to 100 pitches. “They all loved the story,” he says. “But at the end of the day they never invested.”

Then they met Peter Cummings of The Platform. Having recently closed deals to buy the iconic Fisher and Albert Kahn buildings just blocks away, Cummings and partner Dietrich Knoer were the perfect people to complete the puzzle.

“We were in his backyard and he saw the potential of the deal,” Duong says. Cummings initially offered advice and guidance, and last May he agreed to invest in and oversee the project.

Cummings hired Duong and Lewis to consult on the venture, and now they and Hamby are all full-time employees of The Platform, where they can work on their own project. They expect construction to begin soon and to take about nine months.


Read more:  University of Michigan


Leave a Comment:

Photo Of The Day