Michigan State Fairgrounds Sold; Will Become Amazon Site

According to the Detroit News, the City of Detroit announced Tuesday it is selling its portion of the Michigan State Fairgrounds, at Eight Mile Road and Woodward Avenue, to an investor group, which will in turn eventually lead to Amazon investing $400 Million dollars to build a major distribution center that would employ more than one thousand workers.

The fairgrounds has been essentially vacant since then- Governor Jennifer Granholm vetoed funding in 2009, when Michigan was in the depths of the Great Recession.

While nothing is official yet, Amazon is attached to this deal. The city will sell the land to the group for $9 Million dollars and pending Detroit City Council approval, the plan is for Amazon to start construction in mid to late Fall. Amazon site will only take up a portion of the former fairgrounds. Detroit officials are hoping to a put an auto parts plant or something similar on other parts of the land

In addition, as part of the deal, a new indoor transportation center will be built near Eight Mile and Woodward to accommodate the estimated 30,000 commuters who wait for buses in the vicinity daily.

What this news also means is that three historic buildings at the Fairgrounds will be razed. All three built in the 1920's, but as Duggan said Tuesday, nobody had come up with viable plan in the ten years the fairgrounds has been sitting unused.