The Detroit City Council has approved a site plan for a proposed WNBA practice facility on the former Uniroyal site on East Jefferson, clearing the way to reinvent the land after decades of failed plans and blight.
The council on Tuesday unanimously approved a plan to build the facility on 7.4 acres on the southwest corner of the former 42-acre Uniroyal site at 6000 East Jefferson. It will feature two full-size basketball courts, locker rooms, strength and conditioning areas, and more.
The developer, W-Detroit Property LLC, also eventually plans to build a youth sports academy on the site, though more detailed plans are to be unveiled later.
“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. “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 site lies just west of the MacArthur Bridge leading to Belle Isle and has a long history of industrial use, meaning it will require environmental remediation. A range of heavy industrial facilities operated at the site, including the production of cast iron stoves and later bicycle tires.
Uniroyal Tire produced 60,000 tires on a daily basis in the 1940s. In the mid to late 1990s, the Uniroyal site was rezoned from intensive industrial zoning to allow for mixed-use development.
Adam Patton, an environmental consultant for the Uniroyal project site, said the site is contaminated, given its decades of industrial use. More than 1,500 soil borings have done across the site to “ensure that we understand the site conditions, understand the extent of contamination and where contamination specifically is, versus where it is not.”
Patton said a plan has been developed to address the contamination, including removing as much as two feet of dirt in some areas and barrier, along with installing a geo-textile liner to separate contaminated materials from fresh ones.
The Detroit City Council, meanwhile, also approved $40 million in tax-increment financing to cover cleanup, site preparation and infrastructure improvements as part of the $50 million project.
The WNBA announced in June that Detroit and its ownership group were awarded an expansion franchise set to begin play in 2029. The city’s previous WNBA team, the Detroit Shock, played from 1998 to 2009 and won three league titles before relocating to Tulsa, Oklahoma.