Demolition underway at blighted motel site

MOUNT CLEMENS — For decades, a motel has sat at the corner of North River Road and Gratiot Avenue, abandoned and left to exist as an eyesore on the doorstep to Mount Clemens.

It will be an eyesore no more.

The much hyped and awaited demolition of the old motel began on the morning of July 30. An excavator’s bucket gave an upper floor suite a fantastic view of the city’s downtown, ripping out the exterior wall and window as part of the ceremonial start of demolition.

“This is really a momentous day for Mount Clemens,” said state Rep. Denise Mentzer, D-Mount Clemens. “This building behind us in its day was state of the art. It was a beautiful building. It attracted residents and guests and people to Mount Clemens. But if you look at it now, it’s a cesspool and has been for years. This day, with Jim George and his company knocking this down and building new homes for people, it is just the most wonderful thing. It’s transformational for Mount Clemens and it’s transformational for this whole entire southeast Michigan community.”

Demolition of the motel at One North River Road — at times in its life known as the Victory Inn and a Holiday Inn — will make way for a four-story, 117-unit apartment complex known as the Manchester Mount Clemens, set to charge rents at market rates for the area. George, the developer, is spearheading the project with the help of $10 million in state incentives brought to the city through the work of Mentzer and state Sen. Kevin Hertel, D-St. Clair Shores.

“This could not have happened without their (Hertel and Mentzer’s) hard work,” George said. “They saw the vision … This is going to be something that we believe is going to revitalize Mount Clemens and hopefully it is the first of more projects to come.”

Full demolition and construction preparation will take about three months. Construction is expected to last 18-24 months. George believes the funding should be enough to see the project through to completion.

Many people, from city officials to passersby, stopped to see the first walls fall in the motel’s demolition. Few, if any, were sad to see it go. Mount Clemens City Manager Gregg Shipman, who booked a room at the Holiday Inn for his 1986 prom and visited the building on a near daily basis as a Mount Clemens firefighter, was glad to see the motel beginning to come down.

“It has been a source of blight and crime as far back as most people can remember,” Shipman said. “We shut this building down as a fire department and as a city more times than I can count, and they would always find a way to do just enough to reopen just to ultimately be shut down again. It’s just a relief. I drive by here every day to and from work, and for years I’ve said to myself ‘We’ve got to find a way to get this building torn down and get something there.’”

For a moment, the demolition was bittersweet for City Commissioner Theresa McGarity, who spent the night of her wedding at the then Holiday Inn in 1990. But once a second of nostalgia-fueled sorrow passed, McGarity began imaging how the apartments would reshape the attitude within the city’s northeast.

“When you ride past and there’s broken glass, buildings and houses people are living in where their yard isn’t cut, there’s a spirit in that area and it’s very depressing,” McGarity said. “To have something different is going to give positive energy to this side of town. You’ll see the difference; putting something better is going to be better for this side of town — actually, for the whole city.”

Another city commissioner bullish about the future apartments was Erik Rick. Stating the project would “change the face of downtown for 100 years,” Rick said having more than 100 new apartment units downtown would attract resident-essential businesses to the city.

“You get these folks here and the other apartments that went up on the river, and you might be able to have a viable grocery store downtown,” Rick said.

A key benefit of the development to Shipman was how the apartments could increase the city’s tax base. Up and down Gratiot Avenue are various county buildings — the courthouse and the vacant lot next to it, the Old Macomb County Building, the newer administration building, the clerk’s office just north of the motel and all the parking required for them — taking up a vast amount of land without providing tax revenue. With funding woes always on the minds of city officials, the chance for a stable local funding source is a desperately needed lifeline that could be built upon.

“I can’t thank the politicians enough for having the foresight to put money into a project like this, because this is going to help our city in ways beyond, I think, what most people realize,” Shipman said. “And Mount Clemens being over 50% nontaxable, we need help — but I don’t want help forever. What a project like this does is it gives us the gift of future sustainability. If we can get more things like this going on we can sustain ourselves, which is what we want … Mount Clemens has a great sense of pride and history and we want to be able to sustain ourselves without help, and it’s things like this that can bring us back and get us to where we need to be.”

Getting the project going has required a significant amount of state funding and the use of funding mechanisms. The initial deal in July 2023 to begin the project began with a $5 million enhancement grant to reimburse Geroge for buying the property and demolishing the motel. City commissioners approved a brownfield redevelopment plan on June 3, 2024, which will see the Macomb County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority capture the increases to the property’s taxable value to reimburse George for demolition and construction preparation. The plan estimates $4.6 million of work is eligible for reimbursement. Another $5 million enhancement grant will come to Mount Clemens this fall through the fiscal year 2024-25 state budget; those funds will be put toward the project.

The project has become a sort of case study for opponents of earmark funding. In May and June, Bridge Michigan ran stories critical of earmarks citing One North River Road and the involvement of Geroge. The developer has been tied to more than $500,000 in campaign donations. Recipients include Mentzer, Hertel, other state-level politicians in eastern Macomb County and the state funds and committees for Republicans and Democrats.

Without being asked about earmarks, Rick said demolition and development would not have occurred without collaboration between the public and private sectors.

“This kind of public-private partnership is the only way you can make something like this viable,” Rick said. “If anything else would have worked, it would have been done by now. Only with the public-private partnership and multiple levels of government partnerships could we even have a shot at getting something like this done in our little city. It’s very cool to have it finally starting.”

George’s business in Mount Clemens is not limited to apartments: He owns the Gibraltar Trade Center. An Alro Steel distribution center will be built near that.

Metzner and Hertel were able to secure $8.5 million in total earmarked funds for Mount Clemens in the upcoming state budget, including $2 million for a waterfront redevelopment project. Shipman said the project is still in its infancy but will involve repairs and upgrades to infrastructure along the Clinton River and could reconnect the downtown to the waterfront.

“We’ve got everything that a community could want,” Shipman said. “We’ve got a historic downtown district and we’ve got the water, but we need to be able to reconnect that water with the downtown and then get (the river) more usable for boat traffic and all the other things that come along with having a waterfront right in your downtown area.”

Moving Mount Clemens’ city government from its current site at One Crocker Boulevard to somewhere else in the city is being considered for the project. Shipman stated that the decision would be to either refurbish or replace the buildings at the City Hall site or move elsewhere. Shipman says this is “not completely a settled question” given it has been floated among city officials for the better part of his 25-year municipal career. No alternative City Hall location has been decided upon.