I have visited the downtowns of many surrounding Metro Detroit cities
numerous times and most have retail vacancies. While I do not have any
statistics, West Downtown Dearborn's vacancies appear to be higher.
No doubt, the situation is far worse than when I wrote about it last April.
Merchants
in West Downtown Dearborn seem to be going out of business in record
numbers with far too many to name. Some of the newer buildings have
entire second floors not only empty, but no suites have been rented
since being built. West of Military and east to Brady there are an
unbelievable number of vacancies.
Even worse, areas with free
parking, such as Newman's properties near ACO have had multiple retail
suites vacant for years. While user-paid parking is often blamed for
the shrinking number of businesses, it cannot be the main reason for so
many vacancies.
According to a recent "Detroit News" article,
the median income of Oakland County residents is well above those in
Wayne County and Oakland County has far more white-collar workers.
Since Dearborn is surrounded by more blue-collar, lower income cities,
it seems the probability of Dearborn becoming a Royal Oak or Birmingham
is remote to none.
Read the entire article
here.
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.