According to a report from the Detroit News, the Ilitch family has backed out on a deal to purchase a homeless shelter in Detroit.
From Detroit News:
The owners of Little Caesars pizza chain have backed out of its promise to buy a Midtown building that houses a homeless crisis center, forcing the nonprofit to change plans on how it will build a larger facility on the east side, according to two sources familiar with the deal.
It’s the latest change in development plans by the Ilitch organization for the area near Little Caesars Arena, the sports/entertainment facility that’s home ice to the Ilitch-owned Detroit Red Wings. The IIitch group has drawn recent media and neighborhood criticism for its delays on various residential and commercial projects around the arena.
The latest change involves a homeless crisis center called the Neighborhood Service Organization‘s Tumaini Center on Third Street, near the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It’s one of the last down-and-out streets in the Midtown/Cass Corridor neighborhood. For decades, the street has been the gathering point for scores of people who congregated around the center and the surrounding empty lots.
A few blocks away, new condominiums recently have sold in the $650,000 range, an example of the billions in private investment that has taken root.
For more than one year, the nonprofit Neighborhood Service Organization, NSO, and Olympia Development of Michigan, the real estate arm of the Ilitch family’s host of businesses, had a verbal agreement about the Tumaini Center at 3430 Third Street. The agreement was that Olympia Development would buy the building for $1.5 million. Both sides confirmed the potential deal in September 2017.
To read the full story and to see the comments from Linda Little, NSO president, and CEO., please click here.
