Four years after opening the first $4 million phase of The Coe, a joint venture between Detroit-based developer Woodborn Partners LLC and Detroit-based North Coast Partners LLC has its eyes on a second phase next to it.
The second phase would be substantially larger than the 12-unit first phase, with 16 studio apartments and 37 one-bedroom units in one building and five for-sale townhouse units in a second building for a total of 58 residences at the corner of Van Dyke Avenue and Coe Street in Detroit’s West Village neighborhood, according to documents submitted to the Historic District Commission.
Woodborn Partners, led by Clifford Brown, expects to bring back the same team that worked on the first phase, Detroit-based Christian Hurttienne Architects and Detroit-based Sachse Construction. North Coast Partners is run by Peter Feinberg and Stephen Tobias and is new to the team.
Brown said construction should begin next year.
As part of the project, the development team is requesting HDC permission to tear down a pair of homes on the development site, one at 1514 Van Dyke and another next door at 1532 Van Dyke. The developers say that it is cost-prohibitive to renovate and/or move the homes, which has a price tag of $1.1 million for renovation, purchasing a new location for them and moving them.
In addition, the developers say SME Environmental performed a structural analysis of the homes showing “the structures are so fundamentally unsound that it isn’t even feasible to move them.”
There will be assistance with moving for the current residents, Brown said.
“We spent the last year thinking through how to do this,” he said. “The thought is they come back to the building once it’s built.”
He said North Coast owns property in the area that could accommodate the residents in the interim, or they could end up with a different landlord on a temporary basis.
“Our primary priority in this is to make sure we do right by the current residents who live there and do right by the larger neighborhood,” Brown said.
The second phase would be another new large development in the area, following the 92-unit Parker Durand, which is nearing completion at the intersection of its two namesake streets, as well as the first phase of The Coe.
