How do you develop Detroit's 400-acre riverfront?

Detroit leaders are hoping to move quickly to choose a team of architects and planners to create a new vision for Detroit’s east riverfront district — 400 acres of land often called the most important but underused development zone in the city.

Adding to the complexity of planning for such a vast area is the need to juggle three overriding concerns that often seem in contradiction with each other.

First, the city wants to generate economic development in the district — thousands of new jobs and residents to create much-needed tax base for the city. That would imply luring a gaggle of private developers to build there in expectation of good returns on their investments.

But, at the same time, leaders want to avoid making the east riverfront a gated enclave for the wealthy. Instead they insist that the east riverfront become an “inclusive” district that includes significant affordable housing and that “looks like Detroit,” in the current parlance.

Panel set to hear from potential riverfront planners

And third, the city hopes to enhance the east riverfront’s appeal as a recreational destination — not just along the RiverWalk itself, but to make the entire district a retail, dining and entertainment option for the region.

This past week, seven teams consisting of dozens of individual firms presented their credentials and preliminary thoughts to a panel of judges that included Maurice Cox, City of Detroit planning director, and Mark Wallace, president and CEO of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy that builds and operates the RiverWalk,

Cox and Wallace said at the end of last week’s day and a half of public presentations that they plan to choose a winning team within two weeks, and to get that team’s final recommendations by mid-summer, perhaps 120 days away.

That’s a pretty tight schedule to create a vision for a big, complicated district bordered by Jefferson to the north, the river to the south, downtown to the west, and Belle Isle to the east. The district now includes major developments like Harbortown and Stroh River Place but also a vast amount of vacant land — perhaps a third of the district in all — and many unused or underutilized buildings.

“I think we have an opportunity to do something quite unique here,” Cox told the public meetings last week at the state Department of Natural Resources' Outdoor Adventure Center on the riverfront.

Here are a few questions to consider as the planning gets under way:

Why a new plan now?

Back in 1979, the local architecture firm Schervish Vogel Merz produced a plan for the district called the Linked Riverfront Parks Project. It outlined how the city might create three pocket parks along the riverfront — what became the Chene Park music center and others.

There have been other plans presented along the way, including the aborted residential developments promoted by then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick a decade ago just before the Great Recession killed them all.

Today, several significant changes have taken place in the east riverfront. The old cement silos are gone, the RiverWalk is well on its way toward its full five-mile completion, the state’s DNR center is open for visitors, and a major new residential development, Orleans Landing, is under construction.

With the greater downtown filling up, it seems inevitable that investors will turn their gaze to the east riverfront. It makes sense for the city now to see an updated vision for the district, rather than just dusting off an earlier plan.

What to do with Jefferson?

East Jefferson Avenue, the northern border of the district, operates more as a barrier to the riverfront than as a gateway. Nine lanes wide in stretches, Jefferson works more as a high-speed roadway for east-side commuters than as a welcoming and safe neighborhood street.

Planners will have to figure out how to calm traffic on Jefferson — perhaps by reducing the number of lanes and using two or three lanes now devoted to traffic for bicycle lanes and wider sidewalks for cafés and such.

And planners will need to come up with ways to enhance the north-south crossing opportunities across Jefferson so that residents living to the north will find a welcoming entry to the waterfront district.

What to do with parking?

If the city really hopes to build thousands of new residential units in the east riverfront, it will need to plan for thousands of parked vehicles.

The uninspiring solution would be to build a row of ugly parking garages. Better, surely, to provide more public transit in the district as well bicycle lanes and greenways so residents and visitors can do without vehicles.

Looking further ahead, the city needs to get busy figuring out a vision for the coming autonomous vehicles and how those might fit into a vision of a walkable urban district.

So….

We definitely need a vision. Everything from the big-picture stuff — what type of housing to build — to micro decisions like which block should have cobblestone paving, needs to be decided.

The danger is that the city's thirst for new development will override whatever vision the winning team comes up with. But it’s encouraging that the city is at least attempting to take a thoughtful approach. The east riverfront is too important to be left to chance or haphazard development.

Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.