When I read about new luxury condos coming to Howell, I got excited.
Real estate junkie that I am, I figured the “founding members” starting price of $408,000 for these new-build, luxury, 1,200-square-foot condos just a mile from downtown Howell didn’t sound TOO outrageous, until I realized that these condos aren’t meant for people. Nope. These condos are for cars.
The luxury garage-condos are part of Motorsports Gateway Howell — a unique development featuring an exclusive, 2.2-mile “European-inspired” race course designed on Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile standards.
It’s an exciting, high-end project, for sure. Said to be the largest of its kind in Michigan, Motorsports Gateway Howell will attract car and racing enthusiasts with lots of cash to spend (like $408,000 for a garage-condo); the development could add somewhere between $100M and $200M in value to the community’s tax base.
Motorsports Gateway Howell is a big, big deal, and I want to be among the first to welcome it. It’s exciting to me, not because I’ll be parking my old vehicle in one of those fancy car-condos, but because in addition to bringing car and racing enthusiasts to the area, it might end up spurring another transportation-related project. Motorsports Gateway Howell could be the key to Howell’s holy grail, the long sought-after loop road on the south side of the city.
For the three decades that I’ve been covering news in this county, the Howell loop road (or bypass, as it was once called) has been so close and yet so far.
The Motorsports Gateway development, set for 270 acres along the proposed loop road route from D-19 to Lucy Road, will have an MDOT access drive off D-19, not a public road.
It makes sense to me — especially now with a development of this size and stature set for the area — that the actual loop road itself might not be too far off.
For those of you unfamiliar with the project, plans for a loop road to run on the south side of Howell, from Michigan Avenue/D-19 to Lucy Road, has been in the works, off and on, for over 30 years, with talks about it going back even further. The city had actually set tentative groundbreaking for the initial leg of the project for May 2003.
The idea was to run the road first from the stub off Michigan Avenue called Morgan Street all the way to Lucy Road, with high hopes of one day extending it to Chilson Road, and ending it at Latson Road.
That idea was developed pre-Motorsports Gateway Howell project and pre-Latson Road/I-96 interchange, when the land along the proposed loop road route had been zoned to accommodate a large housing development and a light industrial business area.
The original plan was ambitious, involving lots of moving parts — inter-municipality cooperation, land transfers, wetlands mitigation, state approvals — and local support. It seemed most everybody realized the value of the project, and it seemed like it had a great chance of becoming reality.
As things sometimes happen, first one hurdle and then another sprung up, and the groundbreaking that was originally penciled in for May 2003 was moved to another month, and then another, until it felt like the project was relegated to official brass ring status, perpetually out of the city’s reach.
But now, with the arrival of the Motorsports Gateway Howell project, the project could be easily picked up from where it was left.
I am crossing my fingers.
Aside from creating another route east from the city’s center, there are a host of other benefits: From providing an alternate route for emergency workers and vehicles, to providing additional access to the shopping district in Genoa Township, to alleviating the pressure of Grand River truck traffic on Howell’s historic downtown, to creating additional access to I-96, the project will be a boon for the area.
There are still hurdles to be cleared before the loop road project ever gets off the ground; if it does, it will be developed in phases.
Should the project actually come to fruition, we’d first see the loop road constructed from Michigan Avenue/D-19 to Lucy Road. The city took over Lucy Road last year, and it’s run a 12-inch water main to the railroad tracks.
It would take participation from Genoa Township to move the loop road farther east. If that happens, the loop road could extend all the way to Chilson Road and then on to Latson Road, where there’s a full I-96 interchange.
Until then, that Motorsports Gateway Howell is coming to the proposed loop road area makes me hopeful.
In the kick-off piece to a 2002 loop road series we produced when I was editor of the local paper, former Mayor Paul Streng, then chair of the Howell planning commission, said the city’s focus should be to “look 50 years ahead.”
“It’s incumbent as policy makers to project what kind of (traffic) volumes we’ll have in 50 years and to add more road and strengthen the roads we have,” Streng said in an interview for the story. He added that the target for completing such a project at that time was about five years, but that “it could take a lot longer.”
“This is a momentous project and I don’t think the city has taken on one of this magnitude,” Streng said. “It might be five years before it gets off the ground.”
Five years? Here we are, 20 years later, crossing our fingers because it feels like the brass ring may finally be within the city’s grasp after all.
This post was originally published on Jan. 11, 2023.
