- Dore & Associates to start demolishing Northland Center building Thursday
- Land to be redeveloped is on Amazon HQ2 potential site list
- Macy’s building to be left standing; underground tunnels may be preserved
Demolition at the vacant Northland Center property in Southfield is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. Thursday.
The building that used to house a Target retail location will be the first to be demolished, after environmental assessments, asbestos abatement and remediation were recently completed, said Michael Manion, community relations director for the city of Southfield. The process is likely to take about two weeks.
Northland went into receivership in September 2014, after New York City-based former owner/operator Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. defaulted on its loan. Southfield purchased the closed mall in 2015 for $2.4 million. It plans to redevelop the 125-acre site as a campus with green areas, a hotel, apartments, retail and office space.
It first unveiled the plans for the site at Eight Mile Road between the Lodge Freeway and Greenfield Road in August 2016.
But another possible use has since emerged: Northland was included as a potential location for Amazon.com Inc.’s second headquarters in the Detroit-Windsor bid pitch that was submitted last Thursday, Manion said.
The building at Northland Center that used to house a Target retail location is the first to be demolished, after environmental assessments, asbestos abatement and remediation were recently completed, Manion said. The process is likely to take about two weeks.
The Firestone building will come down next this fall, while demolition of the rest of the structures will start in the spring.
Bay City-based Dore & Associates will be paid about $573,000 for demolition of the Firestone and Target buildings; the entire demolition process is expected to cost around $10 million-$12 million.
One standing structure won’t be demolished, however: The nearly 500,000-square-foot former Macy’s department store that closed in 2015. Macy’s was the last remaining anchor tenant of Northland — the largest shopping center in the world when it opened in the 1950s.
“It had great potential for adaptive reuse,” Manion said. “There’s the iconic history of the building … and it was so well-constructed.”
Continue reading the full article on Crain’s Detroit Business here.
