Mr. Casey advised that the (former suburban softball) property was owned |
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by REI, and that there was an existing, approved Brownfield Plan for the |
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site. There was a consent judgment that covered development, which put |
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four development zones in place. The consent judgment capped the |
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amount of commercial that could be built at 500k square feet and defined |
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where it could be. There could potentially be two million square feet of |
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development. There was a lot of discussion about remediation, but |
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nothing had occurred since 2004 except some testing. Several months |
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ago, the developers began holding meetings with individuals outside of |
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the City, which included Oakland County, Oakland University and some |
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legislators, and they began working on a concept for a medical park. The |
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goal was to acquire State and Federal funds to help with the clean up. |
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The meetings included discussions about developing the property in |
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conjunction with Oakland University’s new medical school. The economic |
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impact of the medical school was expected to bring over $1 billion. |
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Beaumont was an important part of the medical school, as was |
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Beaumont’s commercialization center. Oakland County was important |
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because it had the potential, through the Drain Commission, to provide |
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bonds and some funding for stormwater and infrastructure. Dr. Russi |
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from OU and Doug Smith, from Oakland County discussed the medical |
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school in front of City Council and discussed the possibility of the site |
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being developed as a medical campus. They believed this was the |
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