Detroit City Council gave its blessing to a practice facility for the WNBA on what used to be the Uniroyal site at 6000 East Jefferson. Every council member voted yes on Tuesday. Construction will take place on 7.4 acres in the southwest corner of this 42-acre tract.

Council members also said yes to $40 million through tax-increment financing. This money will pay for cleanup work, getting the land ready, and building roads and utilities as part of the $50 million project. W-Detroit Property LLC will create the facility. Two full-size basketball courts will go in, plus locker rooms and places where athletes can build strength.

“I think it is an amazing project as we look at what our riverfront is to become, and can become,” said Councilman Fred Durhal III, according to The Detroit News. “It should be full of opportunity for our youth and our families… We’re talking about a site that has sat vacant for many years, contributing to environmental decay of our city, but also blight.”

The developer wants to put up a sports academy for young people on this same land. They’ll share more information down the road.

Back in June, the WNBA said Detroit and its owners would get a new team starting in 2029. The city had a WNBA team before. The Detroit Shock played from 1998 until 2009 and grabbed three championships before heading to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This site sits west of the MacArthur Bridge, which takes you to Belle Isle. 

Adam Patton works as an environmental consultant on this project. He said pollution sits in the ground because factories ran here for decades.

Patton described a plan to fix the contamination problem. Workers will dig up two feet of dirt in certain spots. They’ll put down a special liner made of geo-textile material to keep polluted soil away from clean fill.

Between the mid-1990s and late 1990s, officials changed the Uniroyal site’s zoning. It went from heavy factory zoning to rules that permit mixed uses.